This article in the Times suggests that the uranium which Libya turned over to the US in January may have come from North Korea rather than Pakistan, an ominous development, if true.
--Josh Marshall
Finally, finally, the president has decided to confront <$NoAd$>the root problem in our troubled occupation of Iraq: the spin deficit.
From Robin Wright's front page piece in tomorrow's Post ...
President Bush will launch an ambitious campaign tomorrow night to shift attention from recent setbacks that have eroded domestic and international support for U.S. policy in Iraq, particularly the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the escalating violence, and focus instead on the future of post-occupation Iraq.The president will open a tightly orchestrated public relations effort in a speech at the Army War College outlining U.S. plans for the critical five weeks before the transfer of political power June 30.
Along related lines, I can't help but wonder whether the spill the president took from his bicycle today won't become iconic in the same way that the state dinner the first President Bush attended in Tokyo on January 8th 1992 in which he collapsed into the arms of, and then vomited on, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa became a symbol of his then-faltering presidency.
Drudge reported the following about John Kerry's alleged response ...
Kerry told reporters in front of cameras, 'Did the training wheels fall off?'... Reporters are debating whether to treat it is as on or off the record... Developing...
Let me translate this: Off the record John Kerry quipped "Did the training wheels fall off?" But the quote was so good that several reporters couldn't resist and passed it on to Drudge.
Bad politics? Maybe.
But I have to admit that it made me laugh and think of these two grafs from a post from Thursday afternoon ...
According to several participants, President Bush told Republicans that the Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" by assuming power.That's a bit of a condescending thing to say about a country which encompasses what is generally considered to be the cradle of civilization. But the thought that an extra set of training wheels may now be available prompts the question of whether the Iraqis might be willing to hand their pair off to the White House.
On the other hand, giving it more thought, perhaps what he needs is not so much a pair of training wheels as a set of brakes ...
--Josh Marshall
So how about the reader survey? We're still slicing and dicing the numbers in different ways. But I wanted to share some of the highlights.
We had a lot of respondents (20,708) and we left the survey open for twenty-four hours on a week day. So I think we got a pretty good sample of our audience and good coverage of different readers who visit at different times of the day.
First, the number that, I have to confess, left me a touch chagrined: 81% of TPM readers are men.
(By the way, on all these numbers, I'm rounding to the closest whole number -- the exact figure was 80.82%).
Now, not only are you mainly male. But you're also, well ... pretty rich.
Here are the income figures ...
$200,000 or more = 7%
$150,000 to $199,999 = 7%
$100,000 to $149,999 = 20%
$75,000 to $99,999 = 18%
$50,000 to $74,999 = 19%
$25,000 to $49,999 = 16%
Under $25,000 = 7%
Rather not respond = 6%
Pretty well educated too. 85% of our readers have a college degree. And 46% have an advanced degree.
The age spread seemed pretty unsurprising to me ...
75 and older = 1%
65-74 = 4%
55-64 = 14%
45-54 = 25%
35-44 = 26%
25-34 = 24%
21-24 = 4%
18-21 = 1%
0-18 = 0.17%
Now, the one question that people wrote in and complained about was the one that asked people to characterize themselves politically. And the complaint in almost every case was that they weren't given enough flavors on the leftward side of the spectrum to choose a designation that fit them. The options were Liberal, Moderate, New Democrat, Independant, Libertarian, Conservative, and Neo-Conservative.
Lots of people wrote in saying they wanted to be able to choose "progressive", though in a sign of how complicated this political designation issue is, it was clear that some of those people meant 'progressive' as a designation to the left of 'liberal' and others meant it as a designation to the right of 'liberal'.
Others simply wanted to be able to call themselves Democrats or Republicans, rather than define themselves in terms of ideology. Not a few complained that the menu of options left no choice for those who defined themselves to the left of liberal. And at least one reader wrote in to tell me that since I clearly meant to demean those to the left of liberal he was removing TPM from his 'favorites' list. (Yeah, it's a tough business running a center-left website!)
In any case, there was no great thought, to be candid, that went into choosing these designations. And the point of the exercise was not reader self-expression. What we were trying to find out was the answer to a question people often ask about this and other related sites -- Is the audience just made up of people who, on balance, agree with my views or is it more diverse? Is it just preaching to the choir? We started with Liberal/Moderate/Conservative and then added from there in a pretty arbitrary fashion.
In any case, here were the answers, from the choices given above, 60% chose "Liberal" while another 35% chose "Moderate" (12%), "New Democrat" (12%) or "Independent" (11%).
Responses to the other choices were negligible: "Libertarian" 2%, "Conservative" 1%, "Neo-Conservative" .28%.
Remember, in all but the last instance I'm rounding off.
Those numbers basically make sense to me, since they range across the center-left spectrum. Cross-referencing these numbers with the income numbers, I guess we could say that TPM has a high percentages of readers who aren't "paying their fair share" and know it -- a little Clintonian humor there.
In any case, the responses confirmed to me that the site's readers are measurably, though not markedly, more to the left than I am.
I suspect that there was a sample bias on the rightward side of the spectrum since self-identified Conservatives probably have an antagonistic feeling towards the site. And thus, I think, they were probably less inclined to give us time to help the site by completing the survey. But that's just a surmise. You have the hard data in front of you and can make your own judgment.
92% of readers live in the United States. And of those, the responses were fairly evenly spread out over the country. I haven't looked too closely at these numbers yet -- and we did it by zip code so we'll eventually be able to look down very specifically into urban/suburban/rural divisions, etc. -- but a brief look shows some clear red state/blue state division, but not a stark one. So for instance, 17% of our American readers are from California, 10% from New York, 6% from Texas.
83% of our readers have "donated money to a political campaign, party committee or non-profit organization." 81% have bought a book online in the last six months; 70% have made travel arrangements online over that same time period, etc.
Finally, the five top professional categories were ...
Computer / IT = 16%
Education (includes students) = 15%
Other = 11%
Lawyer = 8%
Media / Publishing / Entertainment = 7%
2.5%, 509 respondents, classified themselves as "journalists".
We'll eventually put all this together in a more systematic fashion. But, as I said, those are some of the highlights.
--Josh Marshall
An important new development.
According to an article in the New York Post, of all places, the Bush administration's dramatic turn against Ahmed Chalabi and the INC was precipitated by a dossier which King Abdullah of Jordan brought with him on his recent visit to the White House.
The dossier, writes Niles Lathem, included details of INC "Mafia-style extortion rackets and secret information on U.S. military operations being passed to Iran."
This provides a key piece of background information on the reports from last night that the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that Chalabi's INC 'intelligence operation' was in fact a front for Iranian intelligence, filtering the US WMD disinformation prior to the war and sending highly classified American military intelligence to the Iranians since the beginning of the occupation. The charges center on Aras Karim, Chalabi's intelligence chief.
As we noted last night, the CIA has apparently believed Aras Karim was an Iranian agent since the middle 1990s. It was, says the Post, this Jordanian dossier which confirmed already existing suspicions of Chalabi in the US intelligence community and led to the termination of his monthly American subsidy of $340,000 use to spy on us, it would seem, for the Iranians.
The enmity between the Jordanians and Chalabi is both primal and mortal. And as I've told you a few times recently, late last year, Abdullah brought the US reputedly incontravertible proof that Chalabi had had advance warning about the bombing of Jordan's embassy in Baghdad at the end of last year.
(The Chalabis are an old family; the Hashemites, much, much older.)
Also, see this post from last night for an important note of caution about all this new stuff we're hearing.
--Josh Marshall
On the new charges that Ahmed Chalabi's 'intelligence chief' Aras Karim is in fact an Iranian spy, Knut Royce's piece in Newsday contains the biggest bombshells. This is a follow-up on his piece from yesterday.
The Post meanwhile has a lengthier, though less clear-cut account, which includes important new details and an interview with Chalabi's long-time Washington handler Francis Brooke.
(ed. note: Most of the articles discussing this issue refer to the man in question as Aras Karim Habib, though he is sometimes referred to as Aras Habib, Aras Karim, or Aras Habib Karim.)
Now, you probably remember all that has been said about the $340,000 a month stipend that the US was paying until just a few days ago for Chalabi's 'Information Collection Program' (ICP), basically the INC's intelligence operation, which was until recently supposed to become the nucleus of the new Iraqi intelligence service.
(According to a June 2001 letter which the INC sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the information collected was sent directly to the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President.)
Now, who was in charge of the ICP?
Right, Aras Karim.
A few more details.
We've been discussing for some time that Chalabi's connections to the Iranians and his flow of money from the Iranians has been known about among Chalabi's Washington supporters for years. But suspicions that Aras Karim was an Iranian agent are not new either.
Take this October 13th, 1998 New York Times article, which says that "An F.B.I. report said Mr. Karim's cousin Aras Habib Muhamad Al-Ufayli, who had been the intelligence chief for the Iraqi National Congress, had a 'well-documented connection to Iranian intelligence.'"
That article in the Times was about the on-going INS detention of a group of Iraqis who had worked with the INC in northern Iraq and were later held in detention by the INS because of alleged national security concerns. They were represented by former CIA Director James Woolsey, who was also a lobbyist for the INC.
(At the time, the case garnered a great deal of attention, and for good reason, because of the use of so-called 'secret evidence' in the detentions.)
Two years later, Dr. Ali Yasin Mohammed Karim, of the six original detainees, was finally released from INS custody. And the following passage appeared in an August 19th, 2000 article in the LA Times (emphasis added)...
Attorneys for the INS have contended that there is a reasonable belief Karim is a danger to national security. They have argued that one of the doctor's cousins is a suspected Iranian intelligence agent, the doctor's travel patterns were suspicious, and he might have misled federal agents about how his brother Mohammed made it into the United States.Defense lawyers say the declassified material amounted to little more than rumor.
They said the espionage allegations were largely based on uncorroborated reports culled by FBI agents from Iraqi refugees, who were interviewed in Guam by the FBI after being evacuated from Iraq.
That information shows, for example, that one FBI agent thought Karim might be a spy for Iran, while another agent thought he was a mole for Iraq; the two countries are enemies.
In addition, the summary states that Karim's cousin, Aras, is suspected of being an Iranian intelligence agent, but it offers no specifics.
I suspect we'll be hearing more specifics.
--Josh Marshall
The Ryan campaign, it seems, has decided to cut its losses.
As we reported early Friday, Jason Miller, campaign manager for Illinois Republican senate candidate Jack Ryan, defended the actions of the videographer/stalker his campaign sicced on opponent Barack Obama in quotes given to the Chicago Sun-Times.
(For the details of what was involved, see this earlier post.)
But the campaign has now decided to apologize, according to this late report, and call off the dogs, or rather the dog.
"I have no reason to doubt [Obama's] word and I offer an apology on behalf of the campaign," said Communications Director Bill Pascoe, according to late reports.
--Josh Marshall
I've asked you, the TPM readership, for many things -- to give contributions, to take surveys, and certainly other things I can't remember. But this is the greatest request. Someone ... someone out there, I have to imagine, and probably it will be someone with connections in the New York theater world, where I'm told the site has a few fans, can secure me prime seats at the premier of the Iraq regime change opera, which I assume will debut sometime toward the end of this decade, probably in New York but perhaps on the continent.
At an earlier point, we might have imagined it would be Wagnerian. But I'm thinking more Verdi or actually Mozart, some sort of Opera Buffa, though perhaps the better question is whether Paul Sorvino is cast as Ahmed Chalabi or Richard Perle.
Who could miss the duet between Chalabi and Ali Khamenei in which the dark secret is revealed or Richard Perle's haunting, despairing aria at the beginning of the final act, in which this hawk of hawks, friend of Israel, swordsman against terror, and deacon in the high church of moral clarity confronts the shattering truth that he's played the cat's paw for what the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to this just-released article from Newsday, has determined was (horribile dictu!) actually a front for Iranian intelligence.
(Yes, the DIA, says Newsday, has concluded that the INC's 'Information Collection Program' was an Iranian front.)
Even now, I can almost feel myself raising a tissue to my eye for his moment of bleak sorrow. La Donna e Mobile, indeed!
--Josh Marshall
From a trickle to a torrent ...
On Friday, Stahl reported that senior intelligence officials stress the information Ahmad Chalibi is alleged to have passed on to Iran is of such a seriously sensitive nature, the result of full disclosure could be highly damaging to U.S. security. The information involves secrets that were held by only a handful of very senior U.S. officials, says Stahl.Meanwhile, Stahl reports that "grave concerns" about the true nature of Chalabi's relationship with Iran started after the U.S. obtained "undeniable intelligence" that Chalabi met with a senior Iranian intelligence, a "nefarious figure from the dark side of the regime - an individual with a direct hand in covert operations directed against the United States."
Chalabi never reported this meeting to his friends and sponsors in the U.S. government, says Stahl.
In truth, and not to defend Chalabi, but I think we need to wait and watch these reports closely. Much <$Ad$> of the charges we're seeing here have been out there for some time, though not with quite the specifics or with such gravity. Chalabi's ties with Iran have been known (and winked at) for years; claims that he was sharing sensitive US info with them have been out there for at least a few months.
It's not that the claims are false. In fact, I quite suspect the opposite. But what we're seeing here is less the result of new revelations than the outward signs of deep tectonic shifts within the US government -- the discrediting of some factions and agencies, the attempts of others to reposition themselves in a moment of acute crisis and get ahead of the storm, and the freeing up of others to assert themselves for the first time in years.
It's probably too dramatic to compare this to the bubbles, choppy water and occasional scraps churned up by a Piranha feeding. But the struggles that are giving rise to all these leaks and tergiversations of the state are the real story -- one that it is difficult to see directly, but possible to glimpse in what we can infer from its effects and repercussions.
--Josh Marshall
From regime change to seat change.
Here's <$NoAd$> a clip from the Washington Post's Inside the Loop column from January 23rd, providing some backdrop to that Chalabi at the State of the Union picture ...
Meanwhile, the buzz is that enemies of Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon's favorite, appeared to have misplaced his seating reservations. Council chief (they rotate) Adnan Pachachi was set to be on Laura Bush's left and the council's rep here, Rend Rahim Francke, given a seat on her right.Chalabi and his folks are said to have mounted a fierce campaign to correct this obvious oversight. The effort rivaled in intensity one undertaken at the end of the Iraq invasion which, as reported in The Washington Post, the Pentagon flew Chalabi and several hundred heavily armed men into Baghdad. Vice President Cheney approved that move, which some people thought might have been an effort to have Chalabi take over and avoid all this messy transition business.
And so it goes ...
--Josh Marshall
Pelosi, Shlemosi ... On the incompetence beat before incompetence was cool!
"Confidence Men: Why the myth of Republican competence persists, despite all the evidence to the contrary" September, 2002, The Washington Monthly.
For the Cheney-specific incompetence case, see "Vice Grip" from Jan/Feb 2003.
What? I've gotta plug my own stuff sometimes, right?
--Josh Marshall
Another article to read: the San Francisco Chronicle's Robert Collier on the Chalabi, the dense web of power he's put together by installing (with our backing) relatives and cronies at the key government ministries in Baghdad, and how much mischief there still is for him to make.
--Josh Marshall
Some thoughts to consider on the Israeli-Palestinian death-embrace in Gaza, from the Israel Policy Forum ("A Way Out?").
--Josh Marshall
A note from a reader who is a former US government <$NoAd$>official ...
OK, the press has now understood that Chalabi was providing US intelligence to the Iranian intelligence service. That's a start.Here are some questions you might want to ask.
Where did he get the intelligence to leak? Who gave Chalabi the leaked classified information?
Was it lawful to provide Chalabi with classified USG military information that included such things as where our troops were and what they were doing?
Who is under investigation as a result of the intercepts of the Iranians discussing the intelligence provided by Chalabi? Who are the investigators? Has this been referred to the Department of Justice?
Did his provision of that information to Iran result in the death of US soldiers in Shi'ia areas?
Are the intel leaks the reason for the raids of Chalabi's home?
Are the intel leaks the reason they cut off his income?
Why did the USG say that Chalabi was not a "target" of the raids on his home? (It's possible other members of his family are the ones who are being used directly to provide the intel to Iran.)
Hmmmm. Who were Chalabi's US government interlocutors? What a mystery ...
--Josh Marshall
Politics is certainly a rough business. And it's common, and understandable, that candidates will often send staffers to videotape or record their opponents' speeches.
But we seem to have an embarrassing new low in the Illinois senate race -- one that might even amount to stalking.
Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate for the open seat and his opponent is Republican Jack Ryan. For the last ten days, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, Ryan has had a campaign staffer, Justin Warfel, follow Obama with a video camera all day.
And I mean, all day.
Not only does he record Obama's public appearances, he tails Obama in his car; he follows him into restrooms; he stays a couple feet behind him when he's walking in public; he waits outside his office and pesters his secretary. And he heckles Obama at public appearances.
The Chicago Sun-Times asked Ryan's campaign manager if this was appropriate ...
But Jason Miller, Ryan's campaign manager, insisted Obama's public movements are fair game and the point is to make sure Obama doesn't contradict himself with his public statements."If he's having a phone conversation, then Justin is not trying to tap into the conversation or record what he is saying or something like that," Miller said. "He's monitoring because you never know when ... a reporter comes up and starts asking questions."
The State's Republican Senate Minority Leader disagreed. "I don't care if you're in public life or who you are," Frank Watson (R-Greenville) told the Sun-Times. "You deserve your space, your privacy. I don't think it's appropriate."
If you'd like to register your opinion here's Obama's website and here's Ryan's.
--Josh Marshall
Next up Gen. Zinni.
This from a CBS press release about Zinni's appearance this <$NoAd$>Sunday night on 60 Minutes ...
Accusing top Pentagon officials of "dereliction of duty," retired Marine General Anthony Zinni says staying the course in Iraq isn't a reasonable option. "The course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it's time to change course a little bit or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course," he tells Steve Kroft in an interview to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, May 23 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.The current situation in Iraq was destined to happen, says Zinni, because planning for the war and its aftermath has been flawed all along. "There has been poor strategic thinking in this...poor operational planning and execution on the ground," says Zinni, who served as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000.
He blames the poor planning on the civilian policymakers in the administration known as neoconservatives who saw the invasion as a way to stabilize the region and support Israel. He believes these people, who include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, have hijacked U.S. foreign policy. "They promoted it and pushed [the war]...even to the point of creating their own intelligence to match their needs. Then they should bear the responsibility," Zinni tells Kroft.
In his upcoming book, Battle Ready, written with Tom Clancy, Zinni writes of the poor planning in harsh terms. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption," he writes. Zinni explains to Kroft, "I think there was dereliction in insufficient forces being put on the ground and [in not] fully understanding the military dimensions of the plan."He still believes the situation is salvageable if the U.S. can communicate more effectively with the Iraqi people and demonstrate a better image to them. The enlistment of the U.N. and other countries to participate in the mission is also crucial, he says. Without these things, says Zinni, "We are going to be looking for quick exits. I don't believe we're there now, and I wouldn't want to see us fail here," he tells Kroft. Also central to success in Iraq is more troops, from the U.S. and especially other countries, to control violence and patrol borders, he says.
Zinni feels that undertaking the war with the minimum of troops paved the way for the security problems the U.S. faces there now - the violence Rumsfeld recently admitted he hadn't anticipated. "He should not have been surprised," says Zinni. "There were a number of people who before we even engaged in this conflict that felt strongly that we underestimated...the scope of the problems we would have in [Iraq]," he tells Kroft.
The fact that no one in the administration has paid for the blunder irks Zinni. "But regardless of whose responsibility...it should be evident to everybody that they've screwed up, and whose heads are rolling on this?"
Incompetence + No Accountability = Bad Show for Nation. I was never good at math; but I think I've got this formula right.
And what will they say about Zinni? Another disgruntled showboater like Clarke and Wilson?
--Josh Marshall
Department of unintended Chalabi ironies. From President Bush's commencement speech at LSU: "On the job, and elsewhere in life, choose your friends carefully. The company you keep has a way of rubbing off on you. And that can be a good thing or a bad thing."
--Josh Marshall
Ahmed who? From Robin Wright's piece in Friday's Post ...
"The vast majority of reports of his proximity to and influence on administration policy have been greatly exaggerated," said a senior administration official involved in Iraq policy who knows Chalabi. "The reality is that he was among a wide variety of Iraqi figures who made the case to an array of American officials over a period of time for the liberation of the Iraqi people."
Ask not for whom the memory-hole sucks, Ahmed; it sucketh for you ...
--Josh Marshall
For years the backdrop to the Chalabi question <$NoAd$> was his 1992 conviction in absentia on charges of embezzlement in Jordan. To his American critics this was the crux of who Chalabi was: a crook. To his American partisans it was a political conviction, a slur, a price Chalabi had paid for earlier opposition to Saddam. (The Jordanians had, so the story went, turned on Chalabi at Saddam's behest.)
Now read this: a few grafs at the end of Post's piece on the Chalabi raid ...
For several months, U.S. officials have been investigating people affiliated with the INC for possible ties to a scheme to defraud the Iraqi government during the transition to a new currency that took place from Oct. 15 last year to Jan. 15, according to a U.S. occupation authority official familiar with the case. The official said the raids were partly related to that investigation.At the center of the inquiry is Nouri, whom Chalabi picked as the top anti-corruption official in the new Iraqi Finance Ministry. Chalabi heads the Governing Council's finance committee, and has major influence in its staffing and operation.
When auditors early this year began counting the old Iraqi dinars brought in and the new Iraqi dinars given out in return, they discovered a shortfall of more than $22 million. Nouri, a German national, was arrested in April and faces 17 charges including extortion, fraud, embezzlement, theft of government property and abuse of authority. He is being held in a maximum security facility, according to three sources close to the investigation.
Speaks for itself.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhh nothing like money well spent ...
According to a new GAO report, from March 2000 to September 2003, the State Department doled out some $33 million to Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.
You can see the highlights of the report here and the whole deal here.
Of course, by a rather more expansive, though not unjust, measure, we dropped around $300 billion on our association with the Chalabi crew.
--Josh Marshall
In Slate this afternoon, Chris Suellentrop, has a short profile of Doug Feith, the man who put the FU in the FUBAR that is the American adventure in Iraq. The subheading of the piece pretty much says it all: "What has the Pentagon's third man done wrong? Everything."
Feith has become the living, breathing, employed example of the fact that epochal screw-ups are the best source of job security within the Bush administration.
If anything, I'd say Chris lets Feith off a bit easy on several counts. But then, consider the source (i.e., me).
In any case, take a look.
--Josh Marshall
In the category of articles you should not miss: Take a look at Wes Clark's new piece in The Washington Monthly on democracy, the Middle East and the how the Bush administration failed to understand how either works.
--Josh Marshall
A tad tentative?
On CNN's new Chalabi story, the caption under Chalabi's picture reads: "Ahmed Chalabi is thought to have been a source of intelligence about Iraq's alleged WMD."
Like alleged Ba'athist Saddam Hussein.
--Josh Marshall
A follow-up on this morning's post: Juan Cole says Chalabi has been suspended from the IGC. Maybe now he'll head north and found the Salo Republic -- that's a little Italian history shout-out. Another thought: why doesn't someone ask the Jordanians about the telephone intercept they shared with the Americans last fall showing that Chalabi had foreknowledge of the bombing of their embassy in Baghdad on August 7th.
Of course, the heart is a fickle, fickle thing. Here's the pre-Sharia-Chalabi (in the back on the left in the picture) as the guest of the First Lady at the 2004 State of the Union, a mere four months ago.
--Josh Marshall
Talk about a not-so-fun meeting.
President Bush was up on the Hill this morning meeting with Congressional Republicans to quell their growing anxiety that their job security may be only marginally greater than that of the Iraq Interim Governing Council.
The tenor of the event can probably be judged by the fact that the 'rallying cry' coming out of the meeting seems to have been that things are really bad and almost certain to get worse.
Rah! Rah!
According to several participants, President Bush told Republicans that the Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" by assuming power.
That's a bit of a condescending thing to say about a country which encompasses what is generally considered to be the cradle of civilization. But the thought that an extra set of training wheels may now be available prompts the question of whether the Iraqis might be willing to hand their pair off to the White House.
As it happens, I was up on the Hill myself this morning for an early meeting and managed to get caught in the security sweep that preceded the president's visit -- something complicated by the fact that I wasn't carrying a press credential on me.
After parting company with my host, I went to one exit and was told I couldn't leave that way. And then, amid a thickening crowd of capitol police and secret service, I went to another exit.
"Where are you trying to go?"
"I'm just trying to leave."
"Lemme see some ID?"
"Why are you here?"
Etc. etc. etc. ...
Eventually one of the security team said I had just been seen walking down the hall with a member of congress. That seemed to stand me in semi-good-stead. And after being escorted to the Senate side of the Capitol I was cut loose in true catch-n-release fashion, none the worse for wear.
--Josh Marshall
I've had a slew of readers writing in and asking -- or insisting -- that the raid on the Baghdad home of Ahmed Chalabi and INC headquarters was, if not staged, then conducted with the intent of boosting Chalabi's popularity by appearing to place him at odds with the American occupiers. (The idea, you might say, would be to Sadr-ize him.) Indeed, one of those notes came from someone who I'd describe as loosely affiliated with the United States military establishment and quite knowledgable about Iraq and the Middle East at large.
So could this be true?
I have no direct knowledge. I just got back from a few meetings. And I've had no time to make any calls yet. But I'm very skeptical of this interpretation.
I don't doubt that some of Chalabi's Washington supporters have encouraged him to take a more oppositional stand toward the occupation authorities to bolster his own popularity. But there are many US government players in Iraq right now. And many of them really are hostile to Chalabi.
Something quite that orchestrated would, I suspect, be far too difficult to pull-off. And are we dealing here with smooth operators? Answers itself, doesn't it?
One other point: You only have to look next door to see what happens to American puppets after they have their fallings-out with the Americans. Clue: They don't get embraced by the other side. In fact, that guy from nextdoor was lucky to get out of the country in one piece.
Another theory -- or at least a portion of one -- is contained in an article appearing this morning in Salon by Andrew Cockburn. The article points to US government suspicions that Chalabi may be plotting against the soon to be announced caretaker government, chosen by American officials and UN representative Lakhdar Brahimi.
Cockburn notes Chalabi's continued efforts to ally himself with Shia sectarian groups in Iraq, particularly the new umbrella group he's created, variously translated as the Shiite Political Council or the Supreme Shia Council (I'm assuming these titles I've seen referred to are in fact the same group).
Cockburn mentions that Chalabi's new Shia sectarian faction includes members of Iraqi Hezbollah. And though he doesn't mention him by name, I believe he is referring in particular to a man named Karim Mahoud al-Mohammedawi, a key member of Iraqi Hezbollah.
Chalabi's dwindling number of Washington supporters have awkwardly claimed that his efforts to ally himself with Shia Islamist groups in Iraq is an evidence of their man's 'pragmatism', recognizing the political realities of the country and adjusting accordingly. This is an echo of their pre-invasion efforts to explain the copious funding Chalabi received from the government of Iran, which, in case you hadn't noticed, is not supposed to be a great friend of ours.
If you're looking for any entertainment, any silver lining to this mess, watch the faces of the hardest core Chalabistas and watch the less and less subtle ripples of chagrin on their faces as their man more and more publicly shows how much he played them for fools.
--Josh Marshall
Could this really be happening? US troops raid Chalabi's residence in Baghdad, seize documents? What will Harold say? Will Richard be next?
--Josh Marshall
It's an obvious question really, but worth asking, worth considering: How long do we think the administration, the CPA, the UN and whoever else now has a finger in the pie will wait to announce what government, even what sort of government we'll be handing 'sovereignty' over to at the end of June?
What's the absolute latest you can imagine? A month? A week? Could it be like one of Bill Clinton's state of the union addresses where they're fiddling with the small print until a couple hours before showtime?
I'd be surprised if they came up with a plan by the end of this month and I cannot imagine they'd leave it until less than a week before June 30th.
But just step back and look at how crazy this is: we've run Iraq for more than a year, spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the whole effort, lost many of our own sons and daughters as well as many Iraqis. And here you have what is arguably the big issue: who you hand the place off to and how you hand it off to them. And it's left to the last minute, with the powers that be having to ditch almost everything that has come up until this point and start from scratch.
The market in examples for how badly the Bush team has bungled this situation is admittedly glutted. But even if they're now going for a dime a dozen this is really one to marvel at.
Now, another related point: the increasing velocity and ferocity of war-hawks trying to shift the blame for their own goofs by inventing a new stab-in-the-back theory (nicely patterned on the original one from Weimar Germany) to cushion their consciences from the brunt of recognizing the dire pass to which their own foolishness and reckless zeal have brought their country.
The chief example I've seen -- though there must be many others -- is John Podhoretz's column in The New York Post from last Friday, May 14th.
The column is a string of accusations. The first is against The New York Times for, according to Podhoretz, blaming the United States, rather than his murderers, for Nick Berg's death. "The Times," writes Podhoretz, in concluding this section of his piece, "is leading the mainstream media in turning the United States into the bad guys in Iraq."
Podhoretz's evidence is an article in the Times which reports the Berg family's claims that the Bush administration somehow bears some of the blame for their son's death.
Now, just as Berg's death shouldn't have been cynically exploited by Bush partisans, what his family says shouldn't be exploited in the other direction. But simply reporting what the family says in a news article hardly seems to merit anything Podhoretz says. What he wants is a black-out on anything the family says -- and that in the context of the saturation coverage of the murder itself -- because it is politically off-message.
Then there's the Time magazine cover with an Abu Ghraib image which reads "Iraq: How Did It Come to This?"
After blowing some smoke about the war's aim of "liberat[ing] 25 million people and rout[ing] Islamic extremists, terrorists and those who thirst for the mass murder of Americans" Podhoretz calls the Time cover "a vile and grotesque slander against every American in uniform in Iraq."
At length, the column concludes with these four grafs ...
So let's be clear what's going on here. As we speak, 138,000 Americans are serving under dangerous conditions in Iraq. And our forces in Karbala are fighting against the goons and thugs of Muqtada al-Sadr with some success. They're risking their lives for freedom and honor and duty and love of country.And conventional liberal opinion wants them to lose.
Conventional liberal opinion believes that the Abu Ghraib photos are the true meaning of the war, and that Nick Berg is just another victim of callous U.S. policy.
Conventional liberal opinion is actively seeking the humiliation and defeat of the United States in Iraq.
Let's be a little more clear about what's going on here. Having led the country perilously close to humiliation and defeat, the architects of the war want to shift the blame for what's happened to their opponents who either said the whole thing was a mistake in the first place or criticized the incompetence of its execution as it unfolded. They take the blame, the moral accountability, by 'wishing' for a bad result. That at least is Podhoretz's reasoning.
If ever there was an example of moral up-is-downism, this is it. And claiming that their political opponents -- liberal, in Podhoretz's usage here, is just a catch-all -- want defeat and humiliation for their country is certainly the most gutterish sort of slander there is.
There's something almost uncomfortable about watching the mix of desperation, panicked zeal and projection evidenced in Podhoretz's column. It's like the pornography of watching someone beg for his life or shift the blame onto someone else when they've been caught in the act -- with the added twist of spasms of aggression mixed in. But on a broader level, it's in character. Not for Podhoretz -- this isn't at all directed at him as a person -- but for the movement, the crew, he's part of and is trying to defend.
How'd we get into this? After 50 years of pretty consistently prudential foreign policy, managed mostly on a consensus of bipartisan agreement (yes, there are exceptions, but by and large, true), they decided to bet the national ranch on an idea. Actually it was a series of ideas, wrapped together in an odd tangle that could look like an odd jumble when viewed from outside. The key, however, was betting the national ranch on steep odds.
Only, they weren't confident the country would get behind such a riverboat gamble. So they lied about what they were doing. They didn't trust the people -- which might be an epitaph we should return to.
Now, what do we expect of people who make reckless gambles with other people's money? Of people who can't discipline themselves enough to distinguish between their hopes and reality? What do you expect of that ne'er-do-well relative who's always hitting you up for a loan because he's come up with a sure thing?
Do you expect those sorts of folks to take responsibility when things go bad? Or do you expect them to blame others?
Character, alas, really does count.
--Josh Marshall
Frequently, when I read a column by Bill Safire, I have to think to myself: who was the editor on this piece? And what must he or she have thought when they were editing this stuff? Read the man's column for Wednesday's paper and it has about as much coherence and rationality as one of your more loopy C-Span ranters just before Brian Lamb mercifully hits the button and sends him off into telephonic oblivion.
This piece is such a clotted mix of discredited ridiculousness, slurs, false claims of racism, disinformation and lies that it's hard to know where to start.
But allow me a few examples.
First, there's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Safire is still claiming that back before the invasion Zarqawi's group was working not just within Iraq's international borders but at the behest of Saddam Hussein. In other words, Safire is still relying on the say-so of the folks who peddled the most discredited of pre-war intel mumbojumbo. Apparently he hasn't gotten the word. The line is still open to Chalabi, who finally got cut off by the Pentagon this week and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, the guy who put the FU in FUBAR.
(Remember how Zarqawi was supposed to have had his leg amputated in Baghdad before the war? Notice how he now seems to have two legs?)
Then there's the about-to-be-found caches of biological weapons. For a few months after the war, Safire and similar folks claimed that we weren't finding the goods because scientists were still afraid Saddam might make a come back -- after all, he and other high-value targets were still on the loose. Never a very probable theory -- and one pretty well disproved by the deaths of Saddam's sons and Saddam's eventual capture.
Now Safire has a new theory. "In a sovereign and free Iraq, when germ-warfare scientists are fearful of being tried as prewar criminals, their impetus will be to sing — and point to caches of anthrax and other mass killers."
To use a much-overused line, you can't make this stuff up. It transcends self-parody.
Conservatives hunting for media-bias in the Times often pick on its more liberal columnists. In fact, if there's bias to be found, it's in Safire. Only lack of interest and respect for conservative opinion can fully explain Safire's continued presence on the page.
--Josh Marshall
Thank you, thank you and ... well, thank you.
We posted our TPM reader survey overnight last night. And the response has been amazing. As of late this evening, we're just shy of 20,000 responses. To be specific, as of 11:30 PM here on the east coast, we're at 19,448.
We're going to keep the survey running for a full twenty-four hours. So if you haven't had a chance to fill it out yet, please take a moment to do so. It takes no more than 90 seconds to complete.
For info about our privacy guarantee and other info, see this earlier post.
We'll be posting some of the results hopefully some time later this week.
--Josh Marshall
Here's one of the Democratic candidates that everyone is excited about. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for the open Senate seat in Illinois. And now his campaign's got a blog.
--Josh Marshall
In this new piece, Fred Kaplan hits on key point in the unfolding prison abuse scandal -- one that is, oddly, easy to overlook with all the daily revelations.
Set aside, for the moment, the underlying claims and misdeeds. Right out of the gate, multiple officials at the White House and the Pentagon pretty clearly lied about their own roles in putting in place the policies that led directly to what was taking place in those photos and went along with trying to pin the whole thing on these half dozen jokers whose pictures we've now seen again and again.
The whole progression of the story has an odd doubled-up quality. On the one hand we have repeated claims from top officials insisting that the abuses were the isolated work of a few miscreants. Then, simultaneously, we have numerous stories showing specific policy decisions (often confirmed on the record by slightly lower-level officials) which sanctioned pretty close to all the stuff we're seeing in those photos, even if not quite practiced with the same relish and glee.
This new article in Tuesday's Times says that the the head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib apparently put military police at the disposal of interrogators and gave them orders to do stuff like strip detainees, shackle them and generally give them a working over (though only, he said, when there was "some good reason"). But, along with this, there was no superivision of what they were doing and no guidelines or rules given to them saying what was acceptable and what wasn't. And remember, this isn't the testimony of a disinterested observer, but rather someone who is on the line for a lot of it and who presumably has an interest in putting the best face possible on the situation.
At a minimum, that sounds like giving benzine, some cordite, a gallon of gas, firecrackers, and a hundred rolls of toilet paper to some teenagers, telling them to see if they could put it all together to have some fun in the neighborhood on Friday night and then leaving them to their own devices.
And, remember, that's the generous interpretation.
--Josh Marshall
Before going on to the new posts below, I need to ask <$NoAd$>you an important favor.
No, this time it's not a request for money, just for a few moments of your time.
TPM is running a reader survey.
This isn't the one you may have seen running on some other blogs. It's specifically for TPM. It's very short. It has only twelve questions -- most of which are of the easy-to-answer, 'are you male or female', 'how many people live in your household' variety. It shouldn't take more than 90 seconds tops to fill out.
If you can take a few moments to complete the survey that will go a long way to helping us fund the site and thus keep it up and running. And I would appreciate it greatly.
Why the survey?
Two basic reasons. First, we'd like to know more about our readers -- who they are, where they're from, what their politics are, etc. Even more, potential advertisers would like to know who our readers are. And, no bones about it, advertising is what will help us keep this site up and running.
Finally, a note about privacy. No information about you from this survey will ever be provided to anyone on any basis. In fact, we won't even ask who you are -- no name, no email address, no cookies, nothing. All we're trying to put together is an aggregate demographic profile of the TPM readership.
I hope I've convinced you. If I have, click here to fill out our survey.
--Josh Marshall
The one point of solace Republicans find today in the polls is this fact: despite how egregiously bad 2004 has thus far gone for President Bush, and regardless of the broad deterioration in the president's poll numbers, John Kerry is still, at best, only a few points ahead of him. And in some cases he's not ahead at all.
This leads to the conclusion -- their conclusion -- that Kerry is a terribly weak candidate, or is running an awful campaign, because he cannot even open up a serious lead against a president whose presidency seems on the verge of collapse on so many fronts.
There's a related line of criticism from Kerry's Democratic partisans. Why is he so silent? With the mix of poor values and incompetent leadership that is at the heart of the Abu Ghraib scandal, why isn't he out there affirmatively making the case against the president?
I've been listening to these criticisms for some time. Indeed, in a pretty prominent venue last month, I made an argument that was at least partly along these lines.
But I've begun to think that all of this is misguided, that whether by design or accident -- and I'm not at all sure which it is -- Kerry is doing more or less exactly what he should.
There are a number of ideas I want to air along these lines. But for now let me start with just a few.
First, what to make of the head-to-head numbers, which show the two candidates close to neck-n-neck down in the mid-to-low 40s? Nothing bad for Kerry, I'd say. Presidents who can't even get near 50% approval going into an election end up losing. It's that simple. In fact, presidents who are a lot closer to 40% than 50% end up getting crushed.
Bush's low numbers are almost infinitely more significant than Kerry's in that regard. Kerry hasn't even been officially nominated yet. He doesn't have a running mate. And the intensity of the news cycle makes it hard for him to get too much face time with the American people.
Now, here's the point I'd like to discuss in a bit more detail: the fact that Kerry can't get a lot of attention to himself right now or that he's not seizing the opportunity to make the case against Bush. I don't think this is a bad thing at all. At least not for now.
Let's think of this battle as a prize fight, with both men in the ring. If you're up on points and the seconds are ticking down on the final round, what do you do?
Simple: stay out of his way.
Trying to land punches when he's desperate and going down gives him the opportunity to hit back. And in such a dire moment that may be all he has. Why give him the opportunity?
With all we're seeing in Iraq right now, does anyone really need to 'make the case'? I'd say the case is making itself. For anyone who can't see it, the case probably can't be made.
The boxing analogy doesn't work perfectly. But let me explain what I'm getting at and get this back to concrete points.
The most salient fact about the contemporary American political landscape is its profound political polarization. And that is almost the last thing the president has going for him. There are forty-plus percent of the electorate on both sides that will stick with their candidate, and fight for him, simply because he opposes the other side. I think that that's one of the few things keeping the president's approval ratings as high as they are.
Further injecting partisan political sensibilities into this current moment will, I think, steady the president and perhaps even help him in his current state.
Of course, that moment can't be avoided. By the late summer and into the fall, the political climate will become intensely polarized as the two campaigns and all their official and unofficial surrogate organizations start pouring money into paid advertising, after the conventions run, and then eventually when the debates are held.
But for now it's salutary for the Democrats to have President Bush the focus -- near exclusively -- of attention. There is, I think, a coalescing sense that President Bush is a failed president -- that key and grave decisions he has made have been the wrong ones and that his leadership and management have been deeply flawed on many fronts. The public mind -- though in a sense a fiction to describe the individial cogitation of three hundred million individuals -- is a powerful reality. And if we look into the 'internals' in these recent polls I think we can see it turning against the president.
Take the president's declining numbers on terrorism.
For more than two years this has been the president's strongest number -- one that stayed strong even after support for his policies on Iraq or the economy declined. I've long thought that this number -- more than any other -- was a measure of public confidence in the president's strength and fortitude.
I say this because, what is confidence in his ability to fight terror a measure of? To judge the president in this regard, all we can really go on is the fact that no other major terrorist incident has occurred within the US.
The other signs are in most cases hidden from the public eye -- or if not hidden, not easily seen. Policy wonks may get into studies about money put into security at America's major seaports or what the president is doing to get the FBI into shape to combat terror. But that's deep in the weeds where few non-policy wonks venture.
In the case of Iraq, the public has something to look at: Iraq. The president's numbers were once very strong on Iraq. But they've fallen dramatically as visible reality has overwhelmed whatever people's assumptions about the president's leadership may have been. Same with the economy.
But, again, on terrorism there's much less concrete for the public to look at. So I think that measure is much more an intuitive sense, a general gut sense of the man himself. And that number -- so long so high -- is now falling and falling fast.
The new CNN/Time poll has Bush leading Kerry on this question by a mere 7 points -- his highest spread on any question.
Why is it falling? There hasn't been a terrorist attack. There were the Clarke revelations, yes. But I don't think these account for the change, at least not in themselves. I think they're falling because Iraq and other failures are eroding the public's belief that the president knows what he's doing and making people believe that his 'toughness', if it exists, is not directed in any productive or beneficial direction.
Now, as I say, the partisan polarization will intensify in the coming months. And that will help the president in many ways, getting some of the attention off him and on to Kerry. But a judgment about the president like the one I've described above, once made, can be hard to unmake. And for the moment, with so many of the president's actions delivering abysmal dividends to the nation he's led, that judgment is being made against the president. So, for the moment, I'm not sure having Kerry give Bush center stage is such a bad thing.
--Josh Marshall
As I said earlier this morning, here's the latest <$NoAd$>update from my friend in Iraq, a retired military intelligence officer, now working as a security contractor in Iraq ...
Hey Josh,Sorry about the delay but I have been out on the streets more than usual these days despite the micro-Intifada in the South.
Let me answer your questions:
Q1. From on the ground, how would you rate the effects of Abu Ghraib on the population at large and on the morale of Iraqis who are at the moment working with us?
A1: Abu Ghuraib just confirmed what we have been hearing here for a long time. I am amazed that the ICRC didn't push this forcefully. It is very easy to find people who have been in the prison and could make statements to that effect. What I am sure amazed the ICRC was the callousness of the Bush administration blowing off eye-witness testimony of ICRC delegates in the prison. It had to be done with pictures and I applaud and honor the men who blew the whistle ... If I was the NCOIC of that place I would have been filing courts martial papers just to make sure it was indestructibly document that things were going on ... Someone obviously did something official for General Taguba to be sent there.
The Iraqi people, even my 150 staff think the Americans are essentially not welcome anymore. They fear for their security but would rather go through a cataclysm with a new Iraqi police and army as their security force, rather than be occupied by the Americans. Then they could work through the system and know that their security was in their hands ... Trust me I am training 40 Iraqi bodyguards and the demand is getting serious. Listen Josh, EVERYONE outside of the Green Zone, Iraqis Westerners and Americans alike refer to the CPA and the US Army as "The AMERICANS" as if they were a third-party nation.
No one sees them as part of the solution anymore but as a foreign entity that does as it likes and pisses everybody off in the process. The thinking in the usually suspicious Iraqi mind is that this is still being staged to seize control of their oil... Well that's been done but now they think the domestic troubles like the bad electricity (3 hours on, three hours off) the major Dysentery outbreak in the tap water this week (all of us have been ill due to our cooks washing with tap water) and the inability to drive down the street without having a Hummvee point rifles at you (or worse yet explode next to you) is punishment or, more accurately, incompetence.
Abu Ghuraib was always part of their belief that the Bush Administration would "do anything" to defeat the Baathists. One guy said "you hired the Baathist Intelligence back and now you are doing as they are doing." Well that's not exactly true. We're more open about it. But as long as we are seen as occupiers we will never earn the trust of the Iraqi people. Turning over in a month to a new set of lackeys (here they call them Lougies ... Iraqi Arabic for "fawning Brown-noser") and asking them to invite us to stay and continue our ways is absolutely laughed at.
Q2. I’ve heard rumors that the DOD had instructed Halliburton or other contractors to cut off internet access to troops, at least for all but non-essential stuff. Heard anything about that?
A2: No, Internet seems to be humming along ... Now, at some of the more remote field camps they may have them off but not at the CPA. That place would shut down without Internet because they NEVER leave the Green Zone.
Q3. Was any of the AbuG stuff known on the street, as it were? Was this stuff an open secret, even if people hadn't seen the pics?
A3: As I said above, it was an open secret because guys were being released and complaining ... The ICRC was inspecting the place and dropping hints. Al Jazeera had done pieces on torture there and had interviewed people. Here in Iraq it was an anecdotal-evidence-supported ASSUMPTION. Until confirmed by photos we didn't know the depth of it. Remember, they chose a really high ranking General (Taguba) to documented this, which means it burned hot in the craw at Central Command when they found out it was true. Taguba showing up meant that they probably intended to court martial or dismiss the General in charge. Also it is no secret that ON THE STREET the US Army was and remains openly kicking Iraqi asses whenever and wherever they want to.
About the Army - Man, it hurts my heart to write this about an institution I dearly love but this army is completely dysfunctional, angry and is near losing its honor. We are back to the Army of 1968. I knew we were finished when I had a soldier point his Squad Automatic Weapons at me and my bodyguard detail for driving down the street when he decided he would cross the street in the middle of rush hour traffic (which was moving at about 70 MPH) ... He made it clear to any and all that he was preparing to shoot drivers who did not stop for his jaunt because speeding cars are "threats."
I also once had a soldier from a squad of Florida National Guard reservists raise weapons and kick the door panel of a clearly marked CPA security vehicle (big American flag in the windshield of a $150,000 armored Land Cruiser) because they wanted us to back away from them so they could change a tire ... as far as they were concerned WE (non-soldiers) were equally the enemy as any Iraqi.
Unlike the wars of the past 20 years where the Army encouraged (needed) soldiers, NGOs, allies and civil organizations to work together to resolve matters and return to normal society, the US Forces only trust themselves here and that means they set their own limits and tolerances. Abu Ghuraib are good examples of that limit. I told a Journalist the other day that these kids here are being told that they are chasing Al Qaeda in the War on Terrorism so they think everyone at Abu Ghuraib had something to do with 9/11. So they were encouraged to make them pay. These kids thought they were going to be honored for hunting terrorists.
Best, [Name Suppressed]
More soon.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. I noted last night that the DOD Statement from Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita about Sy Hersh's article in The New Yorker was a classic non-denial denial. The statement posted at the Pentagon website is dated May 15th, 2004.
This afternoon I got an email from TPM reader MM, pointing to parts of the statement which seemed more specific and definitive than I'd let on. I didn't remember those parts of the statement. So I went back and read it again. And when I did I realized that the statement had changed.
Yet, it's not listed as a new statement. It still carries the same May 15th, 2004 date, implying that the current version of the statement at the DOD website is the one that ran originally.
Specifically, the revised version adds a new first sentence and a new final sentence, both of which appear to go further in denying Hersh's claims than did the original.
Now, I didn't copy the original. But GlobalSecurity.org did copy it. So you can compare the original archived at their website and the new embroidered version, both carrying the same post date.
--Josh Marshall
Coming shortly, another update from my friend in Iraq, the retired military intelligence vet now working as a security contractor in Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
To follow up on this afternoon's post, various news outlets are reporting that the Pentagon steadfastly, firmly, or -- put in your tough-sounding adverb here -- denied the claims Sy Hersh makes in his new piece in The New Yorker.
But read the actual statement by Pentagon Spokesman Larry Di Rita, posted at the Pentagon website. This is not a denial of anything. It's a classic non-denial denial -- a bunch of aggressive phrases strung together to sound like a denial without actually denying anything.
The one thing Di Rita terms an error is, I believe, largely a matter of semantics rather than one of substance.
I don't fault Di Rita. This program Hersh says exists is even more secret than the normal classification system allows. So even if Di Rita had wanted to come out and say Hersh got everything right, he probably couldn't.
But reporters who characterize Di Rita's words for their readers should read them a bit more closely before describing them as any sort of blanket denial.
--Josh Marshall
People who analyze polling data will often take a group of polls, toss out the outliers on either side, and then focus on the cluster of data in the middle which seems overlapping and confirming.
A similar procedure seems in order with the various information we're getting about the situation at the Abu Ghraib prison. All attention is now focused, and rightly focused, on Sy Hersh's latest installment (who says there are no second acts?) on the story in The New Yorker, in which he reports that the situation at Abu Ghraib was the result of a highly-secret 'black operation' intended for use against select, high-value al Qaida operatives, which tumbled out of control when expanded for use against the Iraqi insurgency -- which Pentagon and administration officials were understandably desperate to get under control.
Then there is another important Newsweek article which quotes a memo White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote to the president in January 2002, saying the following: "As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians ... In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
I've been away from regular Internet connectivity for the last couple days (one of the reasons for the lack of posts) so I haven't had the chance to dig into the rest of the news coverage in quite the depth I'd like to. And I think we'll need to wait a few days, and for follow-ups from other sources, to render a full judgment on Hersh's piece. (Rumsfeld spokesman Larry Di Rita's widely-quoted statement -- "Assertions apparently being made in the latest New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees are outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture." -- isn't a denial, it's splutter -- a classic non-denial denial.)
But to go back to my analogy about analyzing polls, even if we set aside the issue of whether there was this specific black operation -- noted by Hersh -- the basic story seems more and more clear, and increasingly confirmed from multiple sources. That is, that irregular methods originally approved for use against al Qaida terrorists who had just recently landed a devastating blow against the US, were later expanded (by which mix of urgency, desperation, reason, bad values or hubris remains to be determined) to the prosecution of the insurgency in Iraq.
In the words recently attributed to Gen. Miller, they Gitmo-ized the counterinsurgency operation in Iraq.
In other words, methods approved for use against the worst and most dangerous terrorists spread -- like ink through tissue paper -- to other military theaters that were, at best, only tangentially related to the war on terror. And this, I think we can say, is tied to the boundless, amorphous and ever-expanding definition which the administration has given to the war on terror.
--Josh Marshall
