I think the Times is on to something in this piece in Saturday's paper. A few days ago I noted that 
the Democrats' success in blocking the White House's overtime rollback plan in the Senate might mark a small but significant shift in the political winds. It seemed questionable whether the Dems would win at all on this amendment. But they ended up winning by nine votes. In the context, that meant winning handily.
(Union sources tell me that they may also get another bite at this apple in the House on a motion to instruct the conferees who will reconcile the House and Senate bills.)
As the Times notes, the fact that this came just as the president is facing reverses on his Iraq policy and on the economy is no accident. (The Times piece also notes a handful of recent small victories for the Dems.) Basically what happened here is that six moderate Republicans didn't feel the White House could protect them on this one.
Those sorts of calculations have been critical to the president's power, as indeed they are to any successful chief executive. The president's partisans have said that they gave the Senate moderates a pass on this one, figuring there was no reason for them to cause themselves trouble over this vote. And that may be true, as far as it goes. But the real issue is that it was a dangerous vote for them. The president's popularity could no longer give them cover.
In a sense, all that's odd is that it ever should have been otherwise. The issue here is overtime pay for middle class families. Dice it, slice it, shred it, whatever --- it's awfully hard to paint that as part of some counter-culture agenda. It's a kitchen table issue if there ever was one. And yet for the last eighteen months the White House has been able to push through a lot of similar stuff. And all for a simple reason: politicians will do almost anything an extremely popular president of their own party tells them to do.
That sort of power has made the White House cocky. How else to explain their decision to push a cut in overtime pay going into an election year? This is the sort of thing Republicans would often like to do but seldom are foolish enough to try.
Now that's starting to change. It's a small change and perhaps an impermanent one. But I think we may look back on this single vote as the first small signs of the tide turning.
For more on the president's current standing, the backdrop for this vote, and the fall-out from last weekend's speech see this comment from CNN's Bill Schneider on Thursday night …
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): It didn't work. That is the unambiguous conclusion of a poll taken in the days following President Bush's speech Sunday night.Before the speech, the president's job approval rating was 59 percent in the CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll. After his rating dropped suddenly to 52 percent. That's his lowest rating since -- note the date -- September 10, 2001.
Why the drop? One word: Iraq.
SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R), ALABAMA: We knew that it was going to be a lot of money and it was going to take a lot of time. But this was the first strong message that the president put out like that.
SCHNEIDER: Approval of the president's handling of Iraq dropped from 57 to 51 percent.
BUSH: Two years ago I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts and many places. Iraq is now the central front.
SCHNEIDER: People don't get that connection. Approval of the president's handling of terrorism remains high. Much higher than his rating on Iraq. And that rating hardly changed.
SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D-CT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What President Bush gave the American people on Sunday night was a price tag, not a plan.
SCHNEIDER: The public agrees. Strikingly, after the president laid out his policy, the number of Americans who felt the Bush administration does not have a clear plan in Iraq went up, from 54 percent before the speech to 59 percent afterwards.
And what about that price tag?
BUSH: I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion.
SCHNEIDER: Yikes, said the Democrats.
REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's costing a billion dollars a week. He needs to get the help from the international coalition that he should have gotten months ago.
SCHNEIDER: Yikes, say the voters, who balk at the prospect of spending $87 billion in Iraq when the U.S. economy is shaky.
Our polls suggest President Bush is in political trouble.
Before his speech Sunday night, he had a 12-point edge over an unnamed Democrat for re-election. After the speech, that lead shrank to 4 points. Too close to call.
(on camera): There is a little good news for President Bush. Nearly 60 percent of the public still says Iraq was worth going to war over. The public hasn't turned against the policy, they've turned against the game plan and the price tag.
After everything that has transpired over the last two years we are back in a political situation very similar to that of September 10th, 2001.
--Josh Marshall
The headline summary from today's Nelson Report ...
IRAN…a real nuclear crisisSummary: the press is covering today's IAEA vote on Oct. 31 compliance by Iran as forced by U.S. pressure. In fact, the Europeans are just as worried and didn't have to be Boltonized. Russia, China also understand…that's critical, since Russia is at once the problem and the solution. Reliable sources confirm intel on Iran is real, not Feith-based. Iran is well on the way to what Saddam was blocked from doing…diverse WMD, with missiles. But U.S. misuse of intel to force the war in March, bullying of Europe and the U.N., and overextension of current resources in Iraq, now makes heading-off Iran very difficult. Next step…will Tehran quit IAEA? Maybe not…that's where Russia comes in.
More on this soon.
--Josh Marshall
One of the good things about the tight relationship between the United States and Israel is that the USA is on hand to save the Israelis from 
themselves when this or that Likudnik government decides to do something truly stupid.
The Israeli security cabinet's decision to expel Yasser Arafat from the occupied territories (so far a decision in principle, rather than implemented) is a case in point.
Set aside whatever you might think of Arafat and just consider how many positive things would flow from this decision.
On the positive side, expelling Arafat would confirm Israel's already ample support in Europe and around the world. It would strengthen the hand of accommodationist Arab governments like Jordan and allow pro-Israel Palestinian parties on the West Bank a chance to breath free. And of course since Arafat wouldn't have access to like a phone or anything there'd be no way he could continue to exercise control within the PA just as he now does from Ramallah.
So many upsides and no drawbacks.
What a great idea.
--Josh Marshall
I haven't had a chance to look at the specifics and contexts of all of Howard Dean's various remarks about Israel and the Palestinians in recent days. But it strikes me as an extremely bad move on the part of his opponents to try to make Israel into a divisive issue in the Democratic primaries. Bad for the party, bad for the country, bad for everybody.
--Josh Marshall
If you're interested in reading the tea leaves for 2004, the Kentucky governor's race is one to watch.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, from the ridiculous to the sublime, only in reverse.
Adam Nagourney's piece in the Times gives the standard run-down of Wes Clark's seemingly imminent announcement of his candidacy. He puts a bit more flesh on the story than Dan Balz in the Post and leaves less doubt about the outcome.
But look at the quote he got from Mark Fabiani ...
He's an intriguing figure. You spend any time with him and you realize he is a prestigiously talented person with an extraordinary record. He would be a very potent candidate.
Here's my question: what the &#$% is a "prestigiously talented person"?
--Josh Marshall
This piece by Dan Balz is Friday's Washington Post strikes me as a very accurate assessment of the swirl currently whipping around Wes Clark and the pressure on him to get off the dime.
--Josh Marshall
Aha! More news about Dean Campaign Manager Joe Trippi's 'he's-begging-to-be-our-VP' dirty tricks campaign against Wes Clark. This from the just-posted edition of USNews' Washington Whispers ...
And forget about that talk that all the retired four-star general and former NATO boss wants is the veep nomination. Supporters say that's a dirty-tricks campaign pushed by rival Howard Dean who's scared of a Clark candidacy. Says Frisby: "Wes Clark firmly believes that he is the best choice to be president, not be vice president or hold any other government post."
Leave it to TPM to bring you the scoop first.
And in this just-released AP story signaling Clark's decision to run, see these two grafs ...
While mulling his options, Clark has met with several presidential contenders who covet his endorsement and might consider him for a vice presidential slot. He met Saturday with former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who said it is too soon to talk about political alliances."There is a lot of vetting that would have to be done before you would have those kinds of discussions," Dean said when asked whether he had discussed the vice presidency with Clark.
In other words, the Dean camp is trying to pooh-pooh the bogus spin they floated to the Washington Post only yesterday.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave ...
--Josh Marshall
Is the Dean camp trying to set up Wes Clark? (Yep, I'm talkin' about you, Joe!) This piece in today's Post says Dean and Clark "discussed the vice presidency at a weekend meeting in California." Read down into the article and there doesn't seem to be that much there there. But the story got picked up on CNN too. And now the story of the day is not those very active discussions Clark is having about his own presidential run, but the potential 'Dean/Clark alliance'. And if Clark decides to get into the race after all, doesn't that mean that he wobbled, that as recently as this week he was thinking of taking the number two slot from Dean, or endorsing Dean? (His opponents want to play to the 'indecision' meme, remember.) I think that's what some people would like us to think. The Post calls those people "sources familiar with the [Dean/Clark] discussions." But I think we can imagine who those folks might be.
--Josh Marshall
Two years ago today I rolled out of bed in the morning, still semi-conscious and half asleep. As I walked into my living room --- the TV was still on from the night before --- I saw the second plane slam into the World Trade Center and explode in an orange and black fireball.
I'll never know whether that was a live shot or a replay of the images from a few minutes before. It was just after nine. Still groggy, I had a hard time processing what I had seen. I knew it was a big deal. But I didn't at first grasp just how big a deal.
When I sat down at my desk my girlfriend was already typing out messages on IM from her office at work. Had I seen? Where was I? They (she worked on Capitol Hill) were next, she said.
Beside watching the plane crash into the building, what stands out in my mind about those few minutes was that I asked her why she was so sure it was terrorism.
Partly --- mainly, I think --- this was because I was still only half awake and still trying to process what I had seen. I'm not sure in those first moments I was quite clear on how large the planes were. But certainly part of what was happening was that I was still for a moment living in a pre 9/11 world, where something like this was still hard to comprehend, hard to imagine.
Then she said something like: Two planes one after another in to both buildings? What do you think it is?
With that, suddenly everything snapped into place. The sleep fell from my eyes. My mind cleared. Everything was obvious.
A few moments later she typed out a quick message: they were evacuating.
This weekend I watched a CNN documentary about September 11th. 'Documentary' is probably too grandiose a term. But the images and recollections still cut into me. Perhaps more than I'd expected, perhaps because it had been some time since I had seen some of these pictures.
There was one set of images that got to me most, ones I didn't remember seeing before. As we all have, I'd seen many times the crushing images of bodies falling the hundreds of feet from the upper floors of the towers. But I hadn't seen or didn't remember the close-ups, the zoom-ins of people on the upper floors leaning out the windows and waiving shirts or clothes into the air, trying to grab the attention of helicopters circling nearby, hoping for help.
To me these sorts of images are worse than all the rest, the bodies falling, all of them. There is something unbearable about seeing people clinging to hope when, you know, there is no hope. Their fate is sealed; they just didn't know it yet. Those were the pictures that even today made me grit my teeth and twist up my face.
Watching brought me back to the newness and rawness of those first hours and days. I recalled the images of the president getting the first word from Andy Card about the attacks, the later ones of his touring ground-zero and talking to the assembled search and rescue crews. I found him an inspiring leader in those moments. And not simply because it was such a traumatic event. I never thought much of the criticism that President Bush didn't get back to Washington till late that evening. I thought he served admirably in those first days.
As the documentary moved toward the aftermath, I wondered whether those thoughts of mine would seep into the present to color what's happening today.
They didn't.
What I felt wasn't continuity but the jarring contrast, the cheap, obvious lies, the hubris, the tough-talk for low ends, not so much the mistakes as the tawdriness of so much of what's happened, especially over the last eighteen months. Fred Kaplan has an excellent piece in Slate this week about the missed opportunity of September 12th. "By the summer of 2003," writes Kaplan, "it could fairly be said that most of the world hated the United States, or at least feared the current U.S. government." That sounds like such an extreme, over-the-top statement. "Hate" is a pretty subjective word. But it's hard to read the papers regularly and not realize that what Kaplan says is true. It's sickening.
--Josh Marshall
Up-is-downism from Michael Ledeen on CNN ...
Lou Dobbs: Have we really seen a significant change in the way in which our allies deal with us over the course of the past two years?...
Michael Ledeen: No. I think, basically, that France and Germany have alienated the rest of Europe. They're the ones who have been more unilateral than anybody else. And the French invaded the Ivory Coast, never once went to the Security Council, never once even went to the European Council. And nobody said boo. So what we're seeing here is just the usual ebb and flow of political concerns, varying from one government to another. The anti-Americanism of today is nothing compared to anti- Americanism back in the 1970s during Vietnam or even in the 1980s, towards the end of the Cold War.
...
Lou Dobbs: This administration has apparently chosen to acknowledge some humbleness, some humility by going back to the United Nations. Are you both in any way assured by this new direct, by this administration on the issue of at least Iraq -- Clyde.
Clyde Prestowitz: Yes, I think it's a positive step. I think he did the right thing. But again, in a kind of churlish manner, it was kind of OK, I know you didn't agree with us, but we're in trouble and send soldiers and send money, But we're not going to give up any control. I think it's important that we go to the u.n. I think we have to be prepared to share some of the power, some of the decision making.
Lou Dobbs: Clyde, we have to turn quickly. We're running out of time. I have to turn to Michael Ledeen. Last word, Michael.
Michael Ledeen: We're not in trouble. We're doing fine. And we will do better yet. What we're doing is providing a fig leaf to countries who want to join with us and want to participate in Iraq, but for one reason or another, feel they need some kind of blessing from the United Nations before they do it.
A fig leaf.
--Josh Marshall
Department of Homeland Security.
36 billion dollars ...
Current Projected Cost of War-fighting and Reconstruction in Iraq.
241 billion dollars ...
Having a president who's got a friggin' clue.
Priceless ...
--Josh Marshall
Here are the results of a comprehensive poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (Pipa) at the University of Maryland. They're bad news for the White House.
A summary of the findings in the Financial Times includes ...
SIXTY-FOUR PERCENT of respondents said that the U.S. military presence in the Middle East increased the likelihood of terrorism, 77 percent thought there were widespread negative feelings towards the U.S. in the Islamic world that enhanced terrorist recruiting, and 54 per cent thought the US had been too assertive in its foreign policies.In addition, 81 percent thought a key lesson of September 11 was that the U.S. needed to work more closely with other countries to fight terrorism, up from 61 percent in a similar poll more than a year ago.
The poll was conducted between August 26th and September 3rd. And it's only fair to say that that was one of the worst foreign policy weeks this White House has ever had.
But these numbers do show that the White House has serious vulnerabilities on foreign policy and national security issues. The 2004 election could well turn on whether the Democrats will nominate a candidate who has sufficient credibility on national security issues to exploit those vulnerabilities.
--Josh Marshall
Today when taking questions about Iraq, President Bush said, "I will once again make that plea" for money and troops from other countries.
I guarantee you that the president's handlers in the room gritted their teeth or drew blood from their lower lips when they heard the P-word come out of the president's mouth.
Just for starters, what would the Standard and the National Review have said if Bill Clinton had used that word in the context of seeking help from other countries?
(Actually, scratch that: What will the Standard say? They're getting as much distance from this administration on this as they can.)
This is what we call a Kinsley Gaffe, the unintentional and deeply embarrassing statement of the truth.
The truth is that we do need other countries' help. But it's only the president's folly which has put us in the position of needing to beg.
--Josh Marshall
A victory in the senate. Senate Democrats succeeded in getting an amendment passed to block the White House's proposal to restrict overtime pay. The vote wasn't even as close as might have been expected -- 54-45. As noted earlier, this is a very important issue in its own right. But it's also a cutting political issue and one that will now keep bubbling through the system.
The president has issued a veto threat against any legislative attempts to overturn his new overtime rule. And at first I had assumed the whole issue was academic since the Senate amendment would be stripped out by the House in the conference. But apparently the Dems might get another bite at this apple in the House, and perhaps even a vote to instruct the conferees. And I'm curious to find out whether that nine point spread in the Senate points to a shifting political climate, a growing perception of the Republicans' vulnerability on the economy, or a growing salience of economic issues as the foreign policy trump card weakens.
In any case, I'll try to find out more.
--Josh Marshall
Back before things got bumpy in Iraq there was a surge of talk about an Alaska fund for Iraq -- that is, a fund to distribute some of the proceeds of Iraq's oil wealth to individual citizens, an idea first proposed by Steve Clemons in the Times on April 9th.. Today there's an update on the idea in the Times with actual reporting from on the ground in the country. Take a look.
--Josh Marshall
It looks like the third special session for Texas redistricting may be the charm for Gov. Rick Perry and Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Read the latest before The Hammer strikes the final blow.
--Josh Marshall
This article in tomorrow's Boston Globe says that "the US-appointed Iraqi interim government said late last month in a little-noticed statement that it would buy electricity from Syria and Iran, a deal that would probably enrich with US funds two countries that top the White House list of states that support terrorism."
Certainly that's an ironic development, though I'm not certain it's more than that. One of the ideas here was that our presence in Iraq would overawe the Iranians and the Syrians into better behavior. Making our occupation dependent on their selling the Iraqis electricity would seem to make the flow of leverage and dependence run in a slightly different direction.
Having said all that, this seems more like welcome pragmatism than an error, although it does demonstrate again the chasm which too often separates the administration's chatter from reality.
More troubling is this piece in tomorrow's LA Times. According to the Times article, the $87 billion the White House is now requesting from congress leaves roughly $55 billion in reconstruction costs still unfunded. (Actually, this fact sheet at the White House website says it's between $55 and $75 billion.)
Now, the White House says it's going to pressure other countries to pay that part of the tab.
But according to everyone I've spoken to and everything I've read (see the Times article for a good discussion of this) that is vastly more than anyone thinks other countries are going to contribute.
One of the outside experts Don Rumsfeld sent out on that fact-finding mission to Iraq a couple months ago, Bathsheba Crocker, tells the Times that, "from what we have been hearing about the donors conference [next month], they'll be lucky if they get $1 billion."
Now, some of that extra sum should be offset by Iraqi oil revenues. But yesterday the administration again revised downward those expected oil revenues. It now predicts only $12 billion worth in 2004.
For the moment, let's assume that Crocker is right or close to right. Congress appropriated $79 billion just after the war in April. It seems certain to appropriate this new allocation of $87, albeit with greater oversight. If you add on another $55-$75 billion you start getting perilously close to a quarter of a trillion dollars as the price tag for the first two years of this endeavor.
--Josh Marshall
Another postcard from the 'responsibility era' ...
It's reassuring in a way when an apparent scoundrel reveals his scoundrelhood straight-out. Straight, no chaser, shall we say. Today, in case you hadn't heard, Don Rumsfeld told reporters that (in the words of the Post's Dana Priest) "critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy are encouraging terrorists and complicating the ongoing U.S. war on terrorism."
Rumsfeld went on to say that ...
To the extent that terrorists are given reason to believe he might, or, if he is not going to, that the opponents might prevail in some way, and they take heart in that, and that leads to more money going into these activities, or that leads to more recruits, or that leads to more encouragement, or that leads to more staying power, obviously that does make our task more difficult.
In other words, the problem is not any shortcoming in the president's policies, but the president's domestic critics who are emboldening 'the terrorists' by pointing out the shortcomings of the president's policies. A week ago I said I saw the first signs of "a 21st century version of the 'stab-in-the-back' charge German militarists used against the fledgling republic which replaced Kaiserdom in the aftermath of World War I."
But I have to confess to some surprise at seeing it so quickly.
In fact, a friend alerted me today to a slightly more literary-minded version of the Rumsfeld storyline in a piece by Stanley Kurtz in the National Review Online.
Kurtz says that internationalizing the mission in the Middle East isn't an ideal solution, but rather a poor one that has nonetheless been forced upon us by unamerican liberalism and the culture war. "The best foreign policy requires not the United Nations," says Kurtz, "but a united nation. Unfortunately, our nation is not united. The occupation of Iraq is not the occupation of Japan or Germany. This is even more because of the fact that we are different than we were back then than the fact that Iraq is not Japan or Germany."
Continues Kurtz ...
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. A nation where–even after an event like 9/11–a draft can be offered as a political tactic against the hawks, is a nation unready to manage social transformation on the other side of the world. 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.
Rumsfeld says that the struggle is harder than it should be because domestic critics are making the country's enemies stronger. Kurtz says our hopes for true success are diminished because the electorate has been degenerated by liberalism.
So here the whole sordid business comes full circle. The administration games the public into an endeavor by exaggerating the gains and minimizing the price. Then the gains are revealed as not quite so great. And the price is revealed as very much greater. And if all that weren't bad enough, the operation is bungled on several fronts. So the gamers and the scammers say it's the fault of the critics who tried to carve through the mumbo-jumbo in the first place. And when the public has a touch of buyers' remorse over a product that was peddled on false advertising, the answer lies in the public's own degeneracy and division.
It's everyone's fault but theirs. 'The terrorists', domestic enemies, cultural declension, the French, perhaps tomorrow the decline of reading, the end of corporal punishment in the schools, permissive parenting, bad posture, rock 'n roll, space aliens. The administration is choking on its own lies and evasions. And we have to bail them out because the ship of state is our ship.
--Josh Marshall
Great moments in the passive voice ...
BLITZER: But the bottom line is you have to admit that you could have done a better job planning for this current environment.RICE: The planning went on. Obviously, there were things that were not foreseen. They have now -- are now being addressed.
From today's interview on Late Edition ...
--Josh Marshall
It's the totalitarianism's fault!
Condi Rice on Late Edition: "But I would just remind people, when you're dealing with a society like Saddam Hussein's, you're not going to know very much about it."
--Josh Marshall
We went into Iraq to eliminate Saddam's stock of weapons of mass destruction, to depose a reckless strongman at the heart of a vital region, and to overawe unfriendly regimes on the country's borders. Agree or not, those were the prime stated reasons. Now we've got a deteriorating security situation and a palpably botched plan for reconstruction. And our effort to recover from our ill-conceived and poorly-executed policy is now the 'central front' in the war on terror, which is among other things extremely convenient.
The president has turned 9/11 into a sort of foreign policy perpetual motion machine in which the problems ginned up by policy failures become the rationale for intensifying those policies. The consequences of screw-ups become examples of the power of 'the terrorists'.
We're not on the offensive. We're on the defensive. A bunch of mumbo-jumbo and flim-flam doesn't change that.
--Josh Marshall
Excerpts from tonight's presidential speech ...
In his address on Sunday night, the President will inform the American people about the current actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He will discuss the progress our coalition is making in winning the War on Terror; outline our strategy for meeting our objectives in Iraq; and emphasize why our efforts in Iraq and the Middle East are critical to winning the global war on terror:"The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations. The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and beyond, would be a grave setback for international terrorism."
The President will discuss the recent bombings in Iraq and why the terrorists are making this desperate stand in the heart of the Middle East:
"There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world."
The President will reaffirm our nation's commitment and outline our strategy to meet this challenge:
"Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there, and there they must be defeated. This will take time, and require sacrifice. Yet we will do whatever is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom, and to make our Nation more secure."
"Our strategy in Iraq has three objectives: destroying the terrorists, enlisting the support of other nations for a free Iraq, and helping Iraqis assume responsibility for their own defense and their own future."
Finally, the President will call on the nations of the civilized world to contribute to the efforts in helping the citizens of Iraq transition to self-government:
"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?"
"Iraq is ready to take the next steps toward self-government. The Security Council resolution we introduce will encourage Iraq's Governing Council to submit a plan and a timetable for the drafting of a constitution, and for free elections. From the outset, I have expressed confidence in the ability of the Iraqi people to govern themselves. Now they must rise to the responsibilities of a free people, and secure the blessings of their own liberty."
Just released by the White House.
--Josh Marshall
An update and (partly) a revision of the post below. Juan Cole throws serious cold water on the Iran element of the Post story, fingering a lot of that info as coming from the Iranian exile community eager to have the US turn our attention to them. Cole, as in recent posts, continues to see the current troubles as much more a matter of ex-Baathists than the still small stream of jihadists coming in from over the borders. See Cole's morning post here and particular the second graf ... Perhaps the name of Sue Schmidt on the byline of the Post piece should have gotten my reportorial defense mechanisms more in gear (alas, such are the dangers of penning political analysis late on a Saturday night.)
Two points seem clear to me. 1) The chaos in Iraq has opened the place up to serious infiltration by all manner of bad-actors from around the region -- a development which is not a justification for administration policy, but an example of its failure. 2) The administration is far from weaned of its propensity for using manipulated or just plain bogus intelligence to advance its policy or cover its tracks. One veteran journalist/sage whose take on things I never discount tells me this morning: "Yes, the more I think of it, the more the timing is suspicious, and reminiscent of the last Sept. 11 'celebration.' Ridge saying there is a new Al Q threat in the US (but not issuing an alert, because they know that alerts are now politically counterproductive). The Wolfowitz opeds on terrorism. I'd watch for Bush to make a reference to the Post article, or at least to its contents, in his speech tonight. The main difference this year is that they are using the Post rather than the Times to do their leaking."
--Josh Marshall
This is one hell of a story in Sunday's Washington Post. The outlines of the tale are ones we've known for a while now: Iraq had little or nothing to do with al Qaida before the war. But the war itself -- the supposed remedy for the tie between Iraq and al Qaida -- ended up making the Iraq/al Qaida mumbo-jumbo into a reality.
You knew that in general terms. But here are the particulars. One confluence of events seems key. By the middle of 2002 al Qaida was seriously damaged, its infrastructure disrupted, many of its soldiers and key leaders dead. The mix of damage to the organization and increased security in the United States made new mass-casualty terrorism in America all but impossible. The organization had to fall back on smaller-scale attacks mainly in Muslim countries, carried out by local affiliated groups.
But the Iraq war -- and the onset of the occupation -- provided the organization (or its remnants) with a new opportunity. It was both a new vehicle to galvanize followers and operating there meant fewer logistical difficulties since it was close by. Even just before the war, in February of this year, key al Qaida operatives started planning the move toward Iraq as the new front.
Also key is the role of Iran, which, according to the Post article, provided key members of the damaged al Qaida organization with a safe-haven during the period between their expulsion from Afghanistan and the opening of their new front in Iraq.
A story like this, culled together from different sources, many of whom are no doubt interested parties, is only a first run at the truth. Points will be refined; major elements of the story may change. But I think this story and those that will follow it will be a major point of discussion for some time to come.
When I read it, the story left me mute, expressionless, bereft -- as though I'd just watched someone die.
--Josh Marshall
