Now, with the medieval awfulness of charred remains swinging from a bridge, is a good time to remember the immortal words of James Carville: "He lied to get us in, and he has no plan to get us out."
Should-be president Al Gore is about to buy the Newsworld International (NWI) digital-cable channel, according to Joe Hagan in today’s New York Observer.
I find the tiny NWI channel to be one of the most useful and intriguing stops on TV already; it will be interesting to see Gore try to build it into an antidote for Fox.
Thanks to novelist K.C. Constantine for the link.
I began to support Big Howard Dean when he was an asterisk for two reasons. First, I thought he would be the best candidate to beat Shifty George in the fall. Second, I thought he would make a damn good president.
Based on a brief section in the new long article by Paul Maslin (Big Howard’s pollster), I now have the first hint of doubt on the second rationale, that he would have been a good president.
Here’s Maslin:
I felt that failing to release the records would be more damaging than anything the records might contain … But others, who had known him longer, were more circumspect. They were particularly concerned about the weekly memos Dean was given as governor, on which he would write comments. Nobody could remember a precise example, but all, including Dean himself, thought that he had probably insulted many major political players …
Dean was increasingly uncomfortable … and … in the end, he lowered his head and said to us all, but mostly to himself, “I’d rather end the campaign than have the world see everything.” … To this day I am convinced that no “smoking gun” exists in those records. What is probably there is an accumulation of cuts from a man who routinely made acidic or even profane comments to all around him, in conversation and in writing.
“IN WRITING” ????
I have no problem with Dean’s decision that he was willing to risk it all — including the millions of man- and woman-years of effort that volunteers all across America had invested in him — because he wanted to keep his indiscreet comments secret. There is actually a small measure of courage, breeding, and honor in that decision.
What gives me pause is that a man with national political ambitions, sitting in a governor’s chair, doing governor’s work, was foolish enough to actually commit to writing, on official documents, thoughts that he did not want to travel beyond his inner circle. That’s what the phone is for. That’s what staff meetings are for. That’s even why shouting out to the secretary was invented.
Or, as Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana once said, “Never write when you can call; never call when you can visit; never talk when you can whisper; and never whisper when you can wink.”
At the store just now, a man was looking at the Times’s picture of charred American corpses hanging from the bridge in Fallujah.
“Seeing that makes you want to retaliate,” he said.
My God, I thought, of course! Why haven’t we thought of that? George Bush should get off his ass and start acting like a man. Retaliate — so simple and yet so brilliant. Look how well it’s working for Sharon and Arafat. And how well it worked for the Hatfields and the McCoys. Why not give it a try in Iraq? Email your congressman today.
I just now caught the tail end of a TV segment about something called Operation Desert Badger, which sounded like an early half-assed plan to phony up a Tonkin Gulf incident in Iraq.
Apparently the warhogs’ idea was to provoke Saddam into shooting down an American plane, whereupon Bush would crush him like an insect. It would be tough on the pilot maybe, but hey, you can’t fight evil without breaking an egg or two.
Google gave me only a single hit for Desert Badger. Apparently Bush had made a semi-coherent reference to that code name back in January, when asked about Paul O’Neill’s claim that the administration had targeted Iraq at least as early as the day after 9/11.
Perhaps we’ll be hearing more about Badger now that it’s been on TV — the ultimate ratification of newsworthiness in our present state of intellectual evolution.
But it was like old times for me. In October of 2002 I put up my first post on the hidden agenda behind Bush’s otherwise pointless bombardment of Iraq’s no-fly zone. Here’s a collection of earlier postings (oldest last) on what we have now learned was called Operation Desert Badger:
Blind Iraqi Gunners Still 0 for 0
No-Fly Lies Still Fly As Press Slumbers
Pentagon Reveals Iraqi Gunners Didn't Miss U.S. Plane by Much
Did you know that Bush just turned down an IRS request for 80 more criminal investigators to block the flow of funds to Al Qaeda?
Not unless you happened to read a story tucked away on page C3 of today’s New York Times; it didn’t make the AP wire, or the news roundups on Google and Yahoo.
Yet it offers a truly fascinating glimpse into Bush’s Washington, where a GOP congress joins hands with a GOP White House to hide embarrassing truths from the American people. And Bush would have got away with it clean if a single Democratic congressman hadn’t been paying close enough attention to spot the pea under the shell.
By all means read David Cay Johnson’s whole article — maybe even twice, to get the confusing details straight in your mind. Meanwhile, an excerpt:
The disclosure, to a House Ways and Means subcommittee, came near the end of a routine hearing into the I.R.S. budget after most of the audience, including reporters, had left the hearing room.
It comes as the White House is fighting to maintain its image as a vigorous and uncompromising foe of global terrorism in the face of questions about its commitment and competence raised by the administration’s former terrorism czar, Richard A. Clarke, and its first Treasury secretary, Paul H. O’Neill.
Representative Earl Pomeroy, a North Dakota Democrat whose question to a witness about one line on the last page of a routine report to Congress prompted the disclosure, said he was dumbfounded at the budget decision.
“The zeroing out of resources here made my jaw drop open,” Mr. Pomeroy said. “It just leaps out at you.”
The railroaded Chaplain Yee, his innocence apparent from the very outset, is still struggling against the Army’s dull, vindictive refusal to admit its own stupidity. This persecution could be ended by a single phone call from Rumsfeld’s office, but naturally that call won’t be made. A dead fish rots from the head.
And everyone knows about the sliming of Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, and of Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill and any anyone else who suggests, however diffidently, that Bush is not the God King.
But who remembers Jesselyn Radack? She was the brilliant young lawyer in the ethics office of the Justice Department, forced out when she raised questions about the treatment of John Walker Lindh.
Not content with that, the Justice Department has continued to harry her. She was driven from her next job, too, this one with a Washington law firm. And Ashcroft is still after her.
There is something primordial about Team Bush’s reaction to dissent, something reptilian. They’re like the gila monster, its jaws holding their poisonous grip even after its head is severed.
Humphrey Bogart once remarked that sometimes it seems like the whole world is three drinks behind. Today, I think I’m about five drinks behind the world. Can the news possibly get any more insane?
First, we have the good Rev. Moon declaring to Congress that he’s the Messiah.
Next, we have the Bush administration getting ready to refute Richard Clarke’s assertions by saying he’s gay.
Meanwhile, the White House finally says Condi can testify, but only if the 9/11 Commission agrees to a laundry list of conditions that would preclude the commission from being able to follow up on anything Condi might say.
I definitely picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
…we discover that No Child Is Left Behind:
The reporters always appear in front of the same bale of hay, creaky farm equipment and dilapidated shed, making it look as if a cow might wander by any moment. In fact, the scene is right behind the Crawford Middle School gym, which the White House press corps uses as a filing center when the president is in town…The reality is that Crawford, which is right now temperate and covered with bluebonnets, is fast becoming a bedroom community of Waco, 18 miles away, where more and more Crawford residents work. By Mr. Judy’s estimate, only a quarter of Crawford students live on farms. The rest are the children of firefighters, police officers, teachers, college professors and accountants who commute to Waco.
There is also a sprinkling, he said, of doctors, lawyers and business people who have moved to Crawford for its schools, which have exemplary reading scores and are considered among the best in the state. The schools have an average elementary class size of 18 to 20 students. Mr. Nugent, who lives on a 270-acre [$1.4 million] ranch in the neighboring town of China Spring, sends his 13-year-old son, Rocco, to Crawford Middle School.
Half those surveyed in the poll after Clarke’s testimony Wednesday said they thought he was acting for political and personal reasons, while a quarter said they feel he’s acting as a dedicated public servant.
This bit of good old American horse sense comes from a Newsweek poll. It reminds me of something I heard a Mondale staffer said one night just before the 1984 re-election of Reagan: “Democracy is where you give the people what they want, and give it to ’em good.”
The natural state of Americans is serfdom, as may be seen from our way of joining our voices in perfect harmony to insist that each and every ornery cuss in the chorus is a rugged individual.
But of course we passively absorb what we are told, and our regular preference is to follow orders without question. We despise Lone Rangers, and are most at home in the posse or the lynch mob. At heart we are a nation of cop-lovers and soldier-sniffers. George W. Bush was appointed commander-in-chief by the Supreme Court and Richard Clarke was nothing but his special assistant; we know whose side we’re on.
Sing Sing prison was built in 1825 by the convicts who would be jailed there, but at least they had to be lashed into building their own cage. They didn’t volunteer for the job under the illusion they were wardens.
The Bush administration has a proven proclivity for doctoring the output of government agencies to suit the agenda of the moment. Whether it’s messing with EPA reports (deleting all references to global warming, falsely claiming the air at Ground Zero is safe, etc.) or submitting known-false cost projections to Congress over the prescription drug benefit, the White House has shown time and time again its willingness to lie about anything and everything.
All of which leads to the real dilemma: The reliability of the data issued by the White House is questionable, and that makes it difficult or impossible to govern the country, and impossible for business to flourish. The president’s economic forecast, issued last month, was quickly proven to be so much fantasizing to meet the political needs of Team Bush. With that document now on the trash heap, how can Congress or the White House do any substantial planning for the next year?
Similarly, the Bush budgets famously leave out known extreme expenses (i.e., the cost of the Iraq occupation). Again, this makes it impossible to prepare a budget that’s based on anything other than blue-sky fantasies.
All this should disturb voters of any political stripe — from far-right to extreme left. If the data upon which our government governs is twisted or fabricated to suit instant political needs, governing is impossible. And that poses far more of a threat to our system of government and our way of life than any possible terrorist attack.
What I want to know — who vetted the Clarke book? You would think that the Bushies would have had ample time to figure out how to deal with this book, since they had advance notice and cleared the damn thing. Unlike many of the politicians and commentators weighing in on the controversy, probably someone in the White House actually read it.
What this suggests is that the Bushies are seriously out of touch and simply not very smart. From the mission accomplished banner, to the unravelling of the Leave No Child Behind act, to the recent tasteless jokes about Bush hunting for WMDs, virtually everything the Bush spinmeisters have done has just been stupid.
9/11 handed Bush an historic opportunity where he could have become a true giant in US history. Now he sits in the White House, warm in his bubble. All his information comes from aides with their own agenda, so Bush is increasingly isolated, still sure of his opinions, but puzzled and angry that anyone questions the rightness of his actions. But now there also must be an undercurrent of fear seeping into the White House, since Rove and company know that they could actually lose in November. How the mighty have fallen.
Kerry never mentioned Bush by name during his speech at New North Side Baptist Church, but aimed his criticism at “our present national leadership.” Kerry cited Scripture in his appeal for the worshippers, including James 2:14, “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?”“The Scriptures say, what does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” Kerry said. “When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the works of compassion?”
Kerry told worshippers in the largely black congregation that the country’s leadership has served the privileged while ignoring people across America who live in neighborhoods like theirs.
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry’s comment “was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack.”
The Associated Press from St. Louis, yesterday.
Here is a theory about the source of Condoleezza Rice’s current travails which is so devious that only a Xymphora could have dreamed it up — or a Dick Cheney.
The compassion part of Bush’s compassionate conservatism consists mainly of the No Child Left Behind Act. So how’s Bush new law coming along?
Well, it’s “threatening to wreck public education in Minnesota and elsewhere. That’s what it was designed to do.”
Or so says Britt Robson, who calls his report in City Pages “Built to Fail.” I have a particular interest in this, as several of my grandchildren attend the currently excellent public schools outside St. Paul which Robson examines.
The acclaimed but unfamed novelist K.C. Constantine sent this along. He doesn’t know who wrote it; if you do, let me know and I’ll credit him or her.
Scientists in the current issue of the journal Nurture announced the discovery that affiliation with the Republican Party is genetically determined. This caused uproar among traditionalists who believe it is a chosen lifestyle.
Reports of the gene coding for political conservatism, discovered after a decades-long study of quintuplets in Orange County, CA, have sent shock waves through the medical, political, and golfing communities.
Psychologists and psychoanalysts have long believed that Republicans’ unnatural disregard for the poor and frequently unconstitutional tendencies resulted from dysfunctional family dynamics — a remarkably high percentage of Republicans do have authoritarian domineering fathers and emotionally distant mothers who didn’t teach them how to be kind and gentle.
MORE...
For some reason, people have been trouble posting comments. The message is "You are not allowed to post comments." Well, you are. But for some reason Movable Type thinks otherwise. I have to take my son to the airport right now. I'll try to sort all this out when I get back.
Over at Bush Wars you will find one of the best looks at Karl Rove (aka “Bush’s Brain”) anywhere in print or on the Web. Click, read, think,
Discuss!
George W. Bush playfully pretends to search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Oval Office. He did not find any. Nor did he find any snipers, car bombs, landmines, or rocket-propelled grenades. The buck was nowhere to be found either, although it used to stop there.
Dwight Meredith at Wampum catches Robert Novak playing the race card — and lists a few of the many times that the Prince of Darkness has accused Democrats of doing that very thing.
It may be putting the cart before the horse, but the events of the last week raise an interesting question: If Bush loses the election, how will his team handle the transition?
Perhaps more important, how can an incoming Kerry team “filter” the transition briefings?
For example, when Team Bush briefs Team Kerry on the current status of the war on terror, how can Team Kerry rely on that information? The public statements of the Bush administration are so demonstrably at odds with verifiable reality, one is left to wonder what, exactly, Team Bush could produce during the transition that would help the incoming administration keep the country safe.
This may be the first time since George Washington that an incoming president essentially had no briefing from the preceding administration. If the private transition briefings are full of the same “facts” that the Bush administration has been palming off on the public for the last four years, Kerry may as well consult a Magic Eight-ball.
The picture below was taken during Bush’s tasteful slide show presentation at the Radio and Television Correspondents dinner Wednesday. Think about it.
Someone — let’s hope it wasn’t at the Highest Level of Government— had to come up with this terrible idea in the first place. It then had to be approved by Rove and by McClellan, and of course by the Highest Level himself.
Work would have begun on storyboard and script. Trial runs were no doubt held to get the lighting and the angles right. The photo session had to be pencilled into the presidential schedule, giving the First Actor a quarter hour or so to mug and emote for the still photographer.
The film had to be developed and edited and circulated among those charged with presidential imagery. The giant screen had to be obtained and installed. The president had to become familiar with his lines, perhaps even rehearsing them.
And during all of this, time was passing at its usual rate. Time for reflection and the airing of doubts, for second thoughts, and for weighing costs against benefits. More than enough time for the collective Bush mind to change.
I’m sorry, folks, but the collective Bush mind just ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Bush put on a slide show, calling it the “White House Election-Year Album” at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.
There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,” he said.
And so forth.
Watching Richard Clarke testify makes you understand what an accomplished bureaucrat he has been for Democratic and Republican administrations. He has thoroughly outmaneuvered the Bushies and made their efforts to tear him down seem ineffective and petty.
At the beginning of his testimony, Clarke used a new approach that took the Bushies completely off guard. He took personal responsibility for his actions. “Your government failed you,” he said. “Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard. But that doesn’t matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.” The one cardinal rule for the Bushies is to never admit that they are wrong. And here is Clarke, blaming the Bushies by coming clean himself.
So National Security Advisor Rice is left frantically declassifying documents and running out to the cameras to try to refute Clarke. Which makes her refusal to testify to the 9/11 committee look phony. Cheney argues that they did everything Clarke recommended, but undermines that by also claiming Clarke is embittered because he was out of the loop.
The Bushies have to keep changing the subject because what they don’t want to do is to talk about the really explosive charge Clarke is making — that the war on Iraq has distracted us from the war on terror and made us less safe. It seems that Bush really pissed off Clarke when he made his success in the war on terror the centerpiece of his campaign. It looks like the Bushies have made the wrong enemy.
Looking over blog statistics just now, I came across this on the list of queries that bring seekers after truth to our door:
This led me to Yahoo’s search engine:
Tim Dunlop at Road to Surfdom is blogging Richard Clarke’s new book as he works his way through it. Kick the tires on Against All Enemies before you buy it.
Bush’s latest choice to ornament the federal judiciary is William Haynes II, top mouthpiece for the Rumsfeld mob. Haynes’s principal contribution to Pentagon legal doctrine has been to hold suspects indefinitely in jail while denying them lawyers.
But that’s not all.
Haynes also supervised a legal team which maintained that “bombing an island in the Northern Marianas did not violate the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The bombing can enhance bird-watching, his team said, because people ‘get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one.’”
So Dick Cheney is making the rounds claiming that Clarke was “out of the loop” in the administration’s counter-terror efforts. Therefore, Clarke doesn’t know what he's talking about and anything he says should be instantly discounted.
It’s amazing that Cheney does not seem to realize what he is actually saying: That the Bush administration’s top expert on terrorism was not consulted about their counter-terrorism efforts. This presents several unpalatable choices:
1. Cheney is lying for political gain. If the public picks up on this, the backlash could be out of all proportion to the damage Cheney is trying to control.
2. The administration deliberately ignored its in-house expert, with September 11 being the result. This eliminates one more scapegoat, since the White House cannot simultaneously blame Clarke for failing to stop 9/11 while claiming he was “out of the loop” on counter-terrorism.
3. Assuming Cheney speaks the truth, it actually bolsters Clarke’s claim to Cassandra-hood. Cut out of the loop, his warnings went nowhere and were ignored. That, too, is pretty damning of the administration.
With Clarke due to testify before the 9/11 Commission, how long will it be before Cheney’s statements are "no longer operative?"
If Alan Greenspan had the common sense of an avocado, he’d get out of Dodge while he’s ahead instead of waiting till he becomes a laughingstock or worse. But he’s so desperate to keep his job that he’ll say anything, no matter how idiotic.
