TPM Reader AR responds from the other side of the aisle ...
I must agree on at least one point that your Republican friend makes. There is a perception that Democratic politicians run when attacked that is rooted in a good bit of reality. My observations of the Kerry campaign (fairly up close) suggest that pusillanimous and risk averse consultants run campaigns. The are constantly polling the current situation and reacting. They rarely test how reframing the debate might change perceptions. You do not see ads attacking a messenger, attacking a message, using humor, using emotion and doing so on a sustained basis to build a brand.I was not the least bit surprised by the attack on Murtha (remember how they attacked Kerry). I'll bet you a dollar that the Democratic response (if there is one) will be a) unorganized (from Biden through Dean), b) incoherent (or at least internally inconsistent), c) slow, d) measured, and e) cerebral. All the wrong things to do. What they need to do is show some blood and gore, use a couple of veterans, and ask the question -- is this worth it? If it is, why are the families of Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Delay, Hastert, Rumsfeld et. al. not on the front lines? As we say in Marketing, an anecdote is worth a thousand data points.
As you can see from the last few posts, this topic is generating quite a bit of discussion. And it makes no sense to keep it just in the main TPM mailbox. So we've opened up this thread at TPMCafe to discuss it further.
--Josh Marshall
Earlier this evening I was exchanging emails with a longtime Republican reader. And in the course of that exchange I mentioned that while I understood the pushback against John Murtha and the announcement he made last week I didn't understand quite the ferocity of it. After all, how many non-political junkies outside of his district have ever even heard of John Murtha? As I said, I don't quite understand the full measure of ferocity behind the response.
Here's how this reader responded ...
I do, Josh.Instant response is what you do in a modern election campaign (unless you are way, way ahead). Discrediting a critic's argument isn't enough, because it takes too much time in an environment when time is everything. Campaign politics are the primary frame of reference for politicians in Washington today. Republicans of late have practiced this trade more aggressively, though I doubt that most of them are any more insensitive to non-campaign considerations than their Democratic colleagues.
Another factor, I think you'd agree, is that a lot of politicians tend to take cues from Presidents of their party. Reagan led a generation of GOP politicians to speak with sunny optimism; Clinton influenced Democratic politicians to project empathy in a somewhat ostentatious way. Bush, being more than a little insecure, tends to want to lash out at critics even when this is not politically necessary or productive, and this tendency has radiated downwards through his administration and outward to some Republicans, particularly in the House. Karl Rove's influence on GOP political operatives may be even more profound, and GOP political operatives have vast influence in Republican politics.
Finally and very frankly, Democratic politicians tend to be wimps. Anyone can see how easily they get pushed around by interest groups in their own party; when criticized aggressively, they tend to seek sympathy rather than hitting back. This encourages Republican political operatives to use rough tactics.
I don't think this is a matter of ideology. In fact I don't know what it is. I just know if I were a Republican politician there wouldn't be many Democratic politicians I would be afraid of. Maybe it's a reflection on my own personality that I take for granted the importance in politics of generating concern that one might be a very bad enemy to have. But of course I'm not actually in politics, something I don't expect to change.
Food for thought.
--Josh Marshall
I was just reading over a news account of the president's speech in South Korea in which he said "We will stay in the fight until we have achieved the ... victory that our brave troops have fought for." In the speech, he describes the war as being fought in theaters in Beslan, Bali, Riyadh, Madrid, Iraq -- virtually every place in the world over the last four years where any Muslim fundamentalists have blown anything up.
The real problem though -- and this becomes clear listening to the president, and increasingly from his supporters -- is that the president no longer has any coherent idea of what the war he's fighting amounts to or what victory would look like.
He says we'll fight it out to victory or that "as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." But it's been a really long time since I've heard any coherent plan for what we're trying to do besides slogans like this.
If we're honest I think what the president is saying is this: We're going to stay in Iraq until the place calms down and we can leave with a sense that we've accomplished something.
Isn't that basically the idea?
We're not going to leave as long as the place is a slaughterhouse and a total mess because leaving then will look like we couldn't accomplish what we wanted to accomplish and got run out and thus, in whatever sense, got beat.
I think perceptions of national power and 'credibility' actually mean something. But a sensible fear of losing either was a good reason not to get into this situation in the first place.
And I don't see where, at the moment, we have any real or coherent strategy for calming the place down -- either a military strategy or a political one, though Ivo Daalder thinks there are some signs of progress on the political front.
So at the moment, there's not even a reasoned fight between staying in and getting out. Getting out is the only coherent strategy or approach on the table. That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. But it is clear and defineable. On the other hand, there is the president, who hasn't put forward any concrete description of what our goals are or any coherent (let alone, a good plan) plan for accomplishing them. Under President Bush's leadership, in Iraq, we've become the national embodiment of the eternal Mr. Micawber, always waiting "for something to turn up."
--Josh Marshall
A note from TPM Reader ZG ...
I don't know if I am more angry or confused about this evening's congressional proceedings and, in a sense the everything going on with the Republicans. They won the elections; am I crazy to think they should, I don't know, do SOMETHING? What was the point of tonight's little stunt? Who let Rep. Schmidt make her remarks? How could anyone defend them? I'm having problems seeing what the big picture is (what a victory for us would look like), but I feel that so many Republican "leaders" have forgotten that a big picture even exists! (Aside, I hate the exclamation point. I've always thought it to be a pointless punctuation mark, but I've finally found a use for it.)I'd have to imagine that even the most ardent Bush supporters, and I'd hope that Bush and Co., would agree that things aren't going perfectly in Iraq and hence, there's room for improvement. I am in no way a military expert, so I have almost no clue about what our Iraq policy should be. I'm certain, however, that the strategy of "Let's just say everything is going fine and maybe that will become true" is not the way to go. Seeing the way the government is currently operating makes me think the most hardcore Libertarians have a point. Why have a government if this is how they're going to spend their time?
Quite apart from all the policy particulars, can't you understand the exasperation?
--Josh Marshall
It gets worse: House Republicans request ethics probe (sub.req.) of Murtha.
--Josh Marshall
Phony GOP Iraq withdrawal bill starts a bonfire this evening on the House floor. Check it out on C-SPAN if you have the chance.
Late Update: During the debate, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) came on the floor and read a letter purporting to be from a United States Marine which said something to the effect of "Please tell Murtha, cowards cut and run, Marines never do." The clear 'feel' of her statement was that she was calling him a coward. The House burst into yells and pandemonium. Schmidt was forced to come back to the House floor and ask that her remarks be stricken from the record. This is the woman, remember, who barely beat Hackett just months ago -- quite an auspicious start.
Here's what Schmidt said, word for word: "Yesterday I stood at Arlington National Cemetery attending the funeral of a young marine in my district. He believed in what we were doing is the right thing and had the courage to lay his life on the line to do it. A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bop, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body – that we will see this through."
--Josh Marshall
Very nice map of what's coming down the pike in the Abramoff case contained in the Scanlon indictment. Especially the references to Representative #1, aka Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) ...
19. From in or about January 2000 through in or about April 2004, SCANLON and Lobbyist A [Abramoff], together and separately, provided a stream of things of value to Representative #1 [Ney] and members of his staff, including but not limited to a lavish trip to Scotland to play golf on world-famous courses, tickets to sporting events and other entertainment, regular meals at Lobbyist A's upscale restaurant, and campaign contributions for Representative #1, his political action committee, and other political committees on behalf of Representative #1.20. From in or about January 2000 through in or about April 2004, SCANLON and Lobbyist A, together and separately, sought and received Representative #1's agreement to perform a series of official acts, including but not limited to, agreements to support and pass legislation, agreements to place statements into the Congressional Record, meetings with Lobbyist A and SCANLON’s clients, and advancing the application of a client of Lobbyist A for a license to install wireless telephone infrastructure in the House of Representatives.
Note the free meals at Abramoff's restaurant. He wasn't the only member of the House on that gravy train.
--Josh Marshall
Flipped: Abramoff business partner Scanlon charged, ready to plea out and cooperate.
John Bresnahan picks up the story in Roll Call (sub.req.) ...
Michael Scanlon has agreed to testify against one-time business partner Jack Abramoff in any future criminal case involving the ex-lobbying superstar.The Justice Department has filed a “criminal information” document in federal court related to Scanlon, and there will be a hearing before a federal judge Monday afternoon.
At that time, Scanlon is expected to plead guilty to one felony count of conspiracy. Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), would then testify against Abramoff and anyone else indicted in the case, according to Justice Department sources.
Release the hounds.
--Josh Marshall
We've now made it past the half-way point in our goal of getting 3000 contributors for our TPM Muckraking Fund Fundraiser. We're now at 1552 readers contributing. A very big and heartfelt thank you to everyone who's contributed. You'll each be hearing from us soon by email to express our appreciation. We're going to do our very best to make sure the new site is one you'll want to visit every day.
--Josh Marshall
Some of the White House jabs against their critics these days are so fatuous and simple-minded that it's hard not to step back every so often and wonder if they're even serious.
One of the silliest goes like this. We invaded because Iraq was "a threat". And all the Democrats agree that Iraq was "a threat". And, heck, here's this quote from Bill Clinton saying that Saddam was "a threat". So clearly everyone agreed with the president. So what's the problem?
Perhaps it seems like I'm oversimplifying the argument. But I really must plead its inherently moronic nature.
Sure, lots of people thought Iraq was a threat. But North Korea is a very serious threat. And we haven't invaded North Korea. And Iran's no bed of roses either. But we haven't invaded Iran, though I guess perhaps I shouldn't speak too soon.
For better or worse there was a vast consensus within the American political establishment that Saddam Hussein was a threat to American interests and that he must at least be maintaining some stocks of chemical weapons. It is even true that in 1998 the Congress passed and the president signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which put the US on record as supporting 'regime change' in Iraq, though we should not forget that this law was intentionally foisted on the president at a moment of maximum political weakness by most of the same connivers that brought us the real war four years later.
All true. But not everyone thought we should invade Iraq. And that's the heart of this. You could easily substitute "WMDs" for "a threat" in the sentences above. The question is 'how much of a threat'? Do we need to invade? Do we need to invade right now? Do we have to invade right now before we even get a chance to see if the suspicions which are the premise of our invasion are even accurate?
Various people of different political stripes said 'no' to one or more of these questions. And that's the heart of the matter. It's almost comical when you take a moment to think about it. President Bush has spent most of his presidency swinging around the cudgel that he has the character and the strength to defend the country when his political opponents don't. Now suddenly we learn that all the Democrats he's run against for four years as not tough enough to defend the country actually supported all of these decisions and would have done everything the same way had they been in power. What an extraordinary development.
Yesterday I linked to this exceptional post Mark Schmitt did today over at TPMCafe. What Mark tries to do is get into the mindset that's governed this administration, something that I tried to do, though I think not that well, in this article from two years ago. What we have here with President Bush and his key advisors is something more complicated and deep-rooted than garden variety lying. As Mark puts it ...
the whole practice of evaluating all information going into the war not for its truth value, but for whether it promoted or hindered the administration's goal of being free to go to war. The President could have been given every bit of intelligence information available, and he and/or Cheney would have reached the same decision because they would have discarded, discounted, or disregarded most of it. Information that was Useful to that goal was put in one box, Not Useful put in another. Entire categories of information were assigned to the Not Useful box because their source was deemed an opponent of U.S. military action, or assumed to have some other motive.
This is a deep insight into Mr. Bush and his coterie.
Garden variety lying is knowing it's Y and saying it's X -- Lyndon Johnson at the Gulf of Tonkin. This is a much deeper indifference to factual information in itself.
People ask me sometimes whether I think the president thought Saddam did have big stockpiles of WMD or whether he knew Saddam didn't and lied about it. Or the same with Iraq's alleged links to al Qaida. This even leads to a sort of inverted conspiracy theorizing when people ask, "If he knew there was no WMD, why didn't they at least try to plant some to avoid the catastrophic embarrassment which ensued after the war."
The real answer, I think, is as banal as it is devastating: I don't think they ever gave it much thought -- not in the sense of trying to get to the heart of the matter. A lawyer assembles a case. Whether his client is innocent or not is sort of beside the point. He's trying to get him acquitted. Very similar here. The point was to invade. Non-conventional weapons made it a real possibility. A connection to 9/11 would make it a slam dunk. Some of each might get you just past the goal line. And if that didn't something else might.
This is why there was the bum's rush for the inspections process. I'm sure they figured there were some chemical weapons to be found somewhere. But why take the chance that there weren't, or more likely, why take the chance there wouldn't be enough? That would defeat the whole purpose.
Thinking through these points would be and someday will be an important, critical conversation for this country to have. Because it is a toxic approach to governance which has suffused this administration. It will also be important to understand and come to terms with how various other parties and players set the ground work for, facilitated and enabled what happened over the last few years. George W. Bush and his crew may be the bad actors. But bad actors can't accomplish bad acts on this scale on their own in a nation of 300,000,000 people. At the moment, though, we can't even get those debate started because simply discussing the heart of the issue -- that the administration recklessly and dishonestly gamed the country into war -- triggers a new hurricane of lies, distortions and attempts to confuse.
--Josh Marshall
John Snow: "Millions of Americans have benefited from these important tax policies either directly through lower taxes or indirectly through new and better jobs and greater economic security for families."
Which category are you in?
--Josh Marshall
Joe Wilson has just posted a piece at TPMCafe on whether the Post should do an internal inquiry into the Woodward matter as the Times did with Judy Miller. Hint: He's for it.
--Josh Marshall
Rep Geoff Davis (R-KY) today on Rep. Murtha: "I think it's important to understand the political climate in which these shameful statements have been made. Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, as well as Abu Musab Zarqawi, have made it quite clear in their internal propaganda that they cannot win unless they can drive the Americans out. And they know that they can't do that there, so they've brought the battlefield to the halls of Congress. And, frankly, the liberal leadership have put politics ahead of sound, fiscal and national security policy. And what they have done is cooperated with our enemies and are emboldening our enemies."
--Josh Marshall
Remember Rep. Heather Wilson (R) of New Mexico?
She was the one who spent weeks early this year trying to use word games to bamboozle her constituents about what her position was on Social Security. (See this post from February when it finally occurred to me to try calling Wilson's press secretary from my new cell phone rather than my office number and -- voila! -- the guy who never seemed to be at the phone for days on end suddenly answered.)
Now she's got an opponent. And apparently she's a top-tier one, New Mexico AG Patricia Madrid.
Last week Roll Call said that "Wilson's outlook changed dramatically when state Attorney General Patricia Madrid (D) announced recently that she would run." And they put Wilson in the list of top ten most vulnerable members of the House.
--Josh Marshall
Murtha on Cheney: "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."
--Josh Marshall
Mark Schmitt: "We're asking very traditional questions: Was information withheld? Was there deceit about the information? Those are the familiar Watergate/Iran-contra questions. But they overlook the Ideology of Information that the administration created. By this I mean the whole practice of evaluating all information going into the war not for its truth value, but for whether it promoted or hindered the administration's goal of being free to go to war. The President could have been given every bit of intelligence information available, and he and/or Cheney would have reached the same decision because they would have discarded, discounted, or disregarded most of it. Information that was Useful to that goal was put in one box, Not Useful put in another. Entire categories of information were assigned to the Not Useful box because their source was deemed an opponent of U.S. military action, or assumed to have some other motive."
--Josh Marshall
House Republicans just had another legislative trainwreck this afternoon as they failed to pass another big spending bill because of defections by GOP moderates.
If you look in this AP story you find this ...
Twenty-two Republicans voted against the measure, many of them moderates who also are swing votes on the budget-cutting legislation....
The defeat upset Republican plans to finish up nearly all the spending bills before leaving for the Thanksgiving recess. Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, manager of the bill, said it may now get thrown into a year-end "omnibus" over which members have little control.
The point here is, who cares about this vote? Republicans control the body. So they can just stick this stuff back in the big omnibus bill at the end of the year when everything comes down to just one vote. Presumeably, then, these moderates will feel obliged to vote for the whole thing.
Doesn't this set these twenty-two moderates up for one of those juicy, 'I voted for it before I voted against it' moments?
Of course, it does.
And the same thing applies to the ANWR stuff from last week and a bunch of these other recent legislative defeats. Somebody needs to compile the lists of who these Reps are, what they voted against today and keep the list on hand to see if they vote for it later this year.
--Josh Marshall
Roll Call (sub.req.) ...
The partisan spat over the veracity of testimony by oil company executives last week spilled over into personal barbs on the Senate floor Wednesday, with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) accusing Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) of impugning his character on the chamber floor.“It’s been brought to my attention that the Senator from Illinois has unfairly maligned my character,” Stevens declared on the floor almost three hours after Durbin accused Stevens of making it easier for oil executives to lie to Congress about whether their companies were involved in closed-door energy policy meetings with Vice President Cheney in 2001.
How often do witnesses not get sworn in when they go before congressional committees?
--Josh Marshall
Ivo Daalder explains what Rep. John Murtha's (D-PA) call today for a US military withdrawal from Iraq means and questions whether he's right.
--Josh Marshall
There will be many such resources. But Knight-Ridder today has a good article summarizing and discussing several of the key falsehoods and distortions the president and his aides are now pressing on the public.
--Josh Marshall
There's one point that's important to remember about the White House's pushback to cover up its collective dishonesty about Iraq. We've noted before that in scandals or political nominations the decisive issue is not the number of opponents, the intensity of their opposition or even the quality of their arguments. The decisive issue is most often whether the scandalee or the nominee has some committed base of support, even if it only amounts to a distinct minority.
A parallel dynamic is in play with respect to what the White House is trying to accomplish with this current pushback.
Virtually all of the arguments the White House is now advancing are transparently ridiculous on their face to anyone who has closely followed this evolving debate over the last three years.
But that doesn't matter. The White House doesn't need to win any debates. What they need is for their core supporters to have something to say. Anything. And to be able to say it loudly. The one thing that would be fatal for the White House from its defenders would be silence.
I don't say this as a counsel of pessimism or futility. It's just important to understand, to know what they're trying to achieve. The good news is that most Americans have already figured this out. Clear majorities of the public now believe this president misled them about Iraq. And they'll certainly grow. The key is to press these on the specifics, why they said these things they knew weren't true.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhh. But sayin' it don't make it so.
Vice President Cheney was quite long last night with attacks that read like projection, calling his critics "dishonest and reprehensible" for their "cynical and pernicious falsehoods".
But he won't answer the questions.
He won't address the specifics because they're too unrefutable and damning. And that's probably one of the reasons why a decisive majority of American now think he and the president misled them. (Last WSJ/NBC poll, 57% "think that President Bush deliberately misled people to make the case for war.")
So Mr. Cheney can storm and scream all he wants. But he won't answer why he repeatedly misled Americans by claiming that the 9/11 ringleader Mohamad Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence not long before September 11th. Over and over and over. He can't answer that question because there is no answer. By every moral and factual standard, he provided false evidence to the American people. He lied. Over and over and over.
As late as January 2004, he was still trying to convince Americans of the by-then totally discredited 'mobile biological weapons lab' canard.
During the lead up to war, Cheney repeatedly claimed that Iraq was harboring and training al Qaida terrorists -- claims for which there was, at best, no good evidence. (For these and other examples, see this list. For some more fact-checking of the White House, see this article from Knight-Ridder.)
There's nothing more to say to Mr. Cheney than a) answer the questions and b) come clean.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader DM checks in ...
You need to get a transcript of Sen. Durbin’s comments on the Spike O’Dell show on WGN Chicago about 7:35 this morning. The gist of it is that he said for the President to say that we all had the same pre-war intelligence is just flat wrong. Also additional comments about the aluminum tubes issue.
Anyone know where we can get a copy of this?
--Josh Marshall
I think Matt Yglesias mentioned this in one of his recent posts. But it seems sort of silly for people to be claiming that the Woodward revelation demonstrates that Fitzgerald's investigation was somehow incomplete or flawed because he didn't find out about Woodward's role.
My recollection is that Fitzgerald said quite clearly in his press conference that he'd been prevented from getting the whole story and that a key reason for this was Libby's perjury and obstruction.
Remember the analogy about kicking sand in the umpire's face?
And there's another point just brought to my attention by TPM Reader NH. A lot is being made of the supposed fact that Woodward's revelation disproves one of Fitzgerald's claims, namely, that Libby was the first person to tell a reporter about Plame.
Libby's new lawyer Theodore V. Wells Jr. said this new information proved that Fitzgerald's accusations was "totally inaccurate."
The article in Thursday's Post makes the same point, if with far less inflammatory words: "Woodward testified Monday that contrary to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's public statements, a senior government official -- not Libby -- was the first Bush administration official to tell a reporter about Plame and her role at the CIA."
But look what Fitzgerald actually said (emphasis added) ...
But Mr. Novak was not the first reporter to be told that Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, Ambassador Wilson's wife Valerie, worked at the CIA. Several other reporters were told.In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.
Fitzgerald chose his words carefully. He didn't state as a fact that Libby was the first government official to leak Plame's identity. Nor did he hang any of his indictment on Libby's having been the first.
What he said is that Libby's was the earliest instance he'd found of an official leaking Plame's identity.
In truth, this whole point seems like a tempest in a teapot. For better or worse, I doubt that precisely what Fitzgerald said about who was first will play any role at Libby's trial. But it seems worth running this bit of imprecision to ground before it becomes a 'fact' by endless repetition.
--Josh Marshall
So maybe it was one of those two people who spoke to Fitzgerald not under oath.
This just out from the NYT ...
A senior administration official said that neither President Bush himself, nor his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., nor his counselor, Dan Bartlett, was Mr. Woodward's source. So did spokesmen for former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, former C.I.A. Director George J. Tenet and his deputy John E. McLaughlin.A lawyer for Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff who has acknowledged conversations with reporters about the case and remains under investigation, said Mr. Rove was not Mr. Woodward's source.
Vice President Cheney did not join the parade of denials. A spokeswoman said he would have no comment on an ongoing investigation. Several other officials could not be reached for comment.
Remember, there are only so many 'senior administration officials'. I wouldn't have much difficulty believing that Cheney is the ur-leaker. It's been obvious for some time that he's the prime mover in this whole affair. What I find hard to believe is that he came forward to Fitzgerald on his own volition. We shall see.
Late Update: Steve Soto nicely unpacks what it might mean for the president if the mystery SAO is Steve Hadley.
--Josh Marshall
Kerry on Cheney: "It is hard to name a government official with less credibility on Iraq than Vice President Cheney. The Vice President continues to mislead America about how we got into Iraq and what must be done to complete the still unaccomplished mission."
--Josh Marshall
Hour by hour, it seems like there's more muck to be raked down in DC. So thanks to everyone who's contributed so far to our TPM Muckraker Fund Fundraiser. We've had 1372 readers contribute so far. And we're trying to get to 1500 by the end of the evening. Join us.
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--Josh Marshall
With Cheney coming out tonight to preach more falsehoods to the 30+ percent of the population still willing to listen, let's remember that this is the established, all-too-familiar strategy.
How do you go after a decorated war veteran running against a quasi-draft-dodger? Hit him hard for cowardice and disloyalty to country.
How do you knock out a respected juvenile court judge? Spread rumors that he's a pedophile.
You can see pretty clearly that Karl Rove is back in the saddle because what we're seeing now is straight from the Karl Rove play book. You throw them off balance by charging directly into their line of fire.
When the veil is finally being lifted on your history of lies, hit hard against the other side for 'rewriting history' or trying to deceive the public.
According to Drudge, a knock line from Cheney's speech this evening has him saying, "yet in Washington you can ordinarily rely on some basic measure of truthfulness and good faith in the conduct of political debate. But in the last several weeks we have seen a wild departure from that tradition."
The up-is-downism is truly bracing -- hilarious or outrageous depending on your mood. And you can feel the belligerence and instinctual reliance on blunt force in all things that allows Cheney to say such things with a straight face or any hint of fear that sensible will see him digging himself still deeper.
All there is to do is just keep cataloging this man's history of lies and attempted cons. That's all that's necessary. They can't hide. But don't forget that this latest gambit is only the first flash of what we'll see from this crew as they swing over the downward arc of Fortune's wheel.
--Josh Marshall
Since I wrote my initial thoughts on the Woodward matter earlier today -- what I called "preliminary impressions" -- I've already revised some of my opinions, in large measure in response to a number of reader emails. I'll try to do a follow-up on that point later this evening.
But for now I want to share a few thoughts that have occurred to me about this mystery Senior Administration Official (SAO) who came forward to Patrick Fitzgerald.
One thing we learned toward the end of the build-up toward the Libby indictment is that Fitzgerald interviewed or deposed quite a few people in the course of his investigation. The SAO category includes a good number of people. But not that many. Is this someone Fitzgerald had never interviewed or brought before the grand jury? My recollection is that Fitzgerald talked in one fashion or another to most SAOs, maybe the great majority of them.
Whoever Fitzgerald talked to you would certainly think he'd have been sure to ask a question which would force the person being questioned to answer who, if anyone, they'd discussed Plame's identity with.
"Did you know Plame's identity?" "Did you discuss Plame's identity with anyone outside the White House?" etc.
You can probably see where I'm going here. Did this mystery SAO's testimony contradict earlier testimony provided in the course of the investigation?
Unless Fitzgerald had never spoken to this person, it's hard to see how that wouldn't have been the case.
Unless of course it was someone who'd been interviewed in some very cursory manner or perhaps not under oath.
Thoughts?
--Josh Marshall
Tonight Cheney comes out swinging against critics of White House lies, deceptions and sundry Iraq bamboozlements.
--Josh Marshall
The Times story on the Woodward/Post revelation.
And you thought cock fighting was illegal.
--Josh Marshall
Yglesias on how the Woodward revelation doesn't help Libby; Didion on Woodward fatal flaw.
--Josh Marshall
So it looks like the November 14th deadline Bill Frist set for a plan to pursue "phase two" of the senate Iraq intel investigation has come and gone. There's been progress apparently. But no resolution. No plan on looking into what happened in Doug Feith's office. And apparently no agreement from the majority as to whether the committee will actually be able to interview any of the key people in the administration. Roberts, Frist and Co. are still stonewalling for the White House.
--Josh Marshall
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--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader SB responds to my post below ...
I agree that under normal circumstances, Woodward would have had no obligation to reveal this info to the public. But the actual circumstances in this case are different. Woodward was about to publish (or had just published) a book purporting to give an accurate picture of the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. The fact that Woodward kept all of this secret under these circumstances just destroys his integrity as a journalist.Woodward gives a strong impression that the CIA should bear a great deal, if not most, of the blame for the Iraq invasion in his oft repeated interview quoting George Tennet as saying “Slam Dunk” on the issue of WMDs in Iraq. The revelation about Woodward’s secret knowledge destroys Woodward’s credibility in my view because Woodward never did anything to correct the information in his book. The independent CIA investigation of the Iraq/Niger yellowcake story and Tennet’s repeated refusal to sanction the accuracy of the yellowcake story just doesn’t fit with the “Slam Dunk” picture. Now we know that Woodward had early inside information of the smear campaign against Wilson (and possibly the CIA). A credible journalist wouldn’t have kept this information concealed when the information tends to undercut information in the journalist’s just published book.
SB broadens out the picture from Woodward's public stance about the Fitzgerald investigation, which I note below. I'll give the matter more thought.
--Josh Marshall
I just gave another close read to Bob Woodward's statement about his deposition in the Fitzgerald investigation. And I wanted to go back through the statement, the accompanying Post story and whatever else we might know to think through what, if anything, Woodward might have done wrong.
Let's start with the first fact. Woodward knew key information about the leak and was probably the first person to receive the leak. And yet this is the first we're hearing about it, more than two years later.
I can't see where there's anything wrong with this. Woodward was told something in a confidential conversation with a source. He didn't write an article based on it, as Bob Novak did. So I don't see where he needs to tell the public about the conversation. He could have chosen to write about the leak story itself, using the insight he gained as the target of one of the leaks, as Walter Pincus did. But I don't think he was under an obligation to do so.
Then there's the fact that Pat Fitzgerald didn't know about it until quite recently. I don't see where this is a problem either. Woodward was maintaining a confidence and I don't think he had any affirmative obligation or necessarily any right to step forward and tell the investigator what he knew. Whatever you think about Judy Miller, Matt Cooper fought Fitzgerald's investigation for some time -- and I don't know anyone who thinks Cooper got into any ethical jams in his part of this story. In his case, I think with all the other journalists, they got pulled in when Fitzgerald's investigation led him to them. None of them just came forward on their own, at least as far as I know.
Where he gets into trouble I think are on two points.
First, he didn't tell his editor, Len Downie, anything about this. Downie's legendary predecessor Ben Bradlee told Editor & Publisher today that he doesn't see anything wrong with that. "I don't see anything wrong with that. He doesn't have to disclose every goddamn thing he knows ... He's got his finger in a lot of pies ... Woodward never has 'no involvement' because he is who he is. He's always poking around the White House because he's always writing a book about the White House. So it doesn't surprise me that he knows a lot about that."
I really don't think that cuts it.
This isn't just any pie. This is a story that has embroiled Washington for more than two years, as much as a media and media ethics story as a legal and national security story. The Post's chief rival for the status of national political paper of record, The New York Times, has been involved in a debilitating entanglement with the case for more than a year. And one of its most renowned reporters has now, in effect, been fired, in large part, over her messy involvement in this case and her failure to come clean with her editors about the nature of that involvement.
This isn't just another pie Woodward had his finger in. Given the context and everything that surrounds this case, not telling Downie amounted to concealing it.
My big question is: did Downie really never ask? Seems hard to imagine. The Times asked their reporters. And Woodward would have been a very obvious person to ask.
Second, what he told the public. As I've said, Woodward had no obligation to discuss this publicly and in most respects probably no right. But he has been an aggressive critic of the investigation itself, challenging the premise that there was any underlying wrongdoing in this case. By becoming a partisan in the context of the leak case without revealing that he was at the center of it, really a party to it, he wasn't being honest with his audience. I don't see much way around that.
Now, his antipathy toward the investigation seems much easier to understand.
These are preliminary impressions. And I'd be eager to hear your views. I had intended to discuss this at a bit more length. But it's just been brought to my attention that a few minutes ago Howie Kurtz published an article in the Post in which Woodward apologizes to the Post. So I'm going to read that and follow up with more impressions later.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader BB is confused ...
I confess to be completely bewildered with the ability of this administration to make statements that clearly contradict their actions without being completely laughed off the American and world stage.Bush says we do not torture, that the scandal at Abu Graib was just a few bad apples, and doesn't even respond to the many other instances of prisoner abuse (including death) -- BUT he WILL veto a bill that bans torture of prisoners. We read articles about one and then articles about the other but most of the time only the columnists are there pointing out the transparent duplicty of it all. Why are elected Dems so silent? Why did it take McCain to make this an issue?
Bush can say these things with a straight face because that's the kind of guy he is, and the right-wing scream machine will back him in this because that's who they are -- but how the heck does the MSM reduce this complete nonsense to he-said/she-said when it's really a case of pathological deceit?
Good question.
--Josh Marshall
If you haven't seen it already, definitely take a moment to check out the debate/exchange we have going on over at TPMCafe Book Club about America's history with political Islam. Bob Dreyfuss, Steve Clemons, Jane Arraf and John Stuart Blackton are discussing Bob's new book Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. It's a fascinating discussion.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhh, the ghost of Brownies past.
From the Times: "New Jersey officials said yesterday that Bernard B. Kerik abused his position as New York City correction commissioner in the late 1990's by accepting tens of thousands of dollars from a construction company that he was helping to pursue business with the city. They say the company has long had ties to organized crime."
--Josh Marshall
As I said earlier today we're going to try to put our research energies for the rest of this week into compiling a detailed list of White House deceptions and lies in the lead up to war, along with a White House mendacity taxonomy distinguishing all the different flavors or deception, mistatement, exaggeration and generalized bamboozlement.
We've already got in almost 150 tips from readers for our list. And clearly cataloging all this mumbojumbo and dishonesty is going to be a time-consuming task. But while we're at it I just can't help passing on some gems.
Dick Cheney ever try to tell people Saddam might be behind 9/11?
Hmm, let's see ....
Russert: Do you still believe there's no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?Cheney: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that--it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.
That's from Meet the Press on December 9th, 2001. And remember, this was a claim that was floated and then rapidly discredited by, among other things, evidence that Atta was in the US at the time of the alleged meeting in Prague. The Czechs themselves eventually gave up on it.
A year later, Cheney was back at it again on Russert's show, for a chat on September 8th, 2002 ...
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I want to be very careful about how I say this. I'm not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can't say that. On the other hand, since we did that interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We've seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn't he there, again, it's the intelligence business.Mr. RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that? Is it credible?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: It's credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it's unconfirmed at this point. We've got...
Then in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News on January 9th, 2004 ...
On the separate issue, on the 9/11 question, we've never had confirmation one way or another. We did have reporting that was public, that came out shortly after the 9/11 attack, provided by the Czech government, suggesting there had been a meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker, and a man named al-Ani (Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani), who was an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague, at the embassy there, in April of '01, prior to the 9/11 attacks. It has never been -- we've never been able to collect any more information on that. That was the one that possibly tied the two together to 9/11.
Cheney just couldn't help spreading the Atta-in-Prague canard every chance he got and floating what were at best intentionally misleading claims about not being able to confirm one way or another whether Saddam was behind 9/11. Except, that is, when he denied saying anything about an Atta meeting in Prague. Or well ... let's go to Gloria Borger interviewing the veep in June 17th, 2004 ...
BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohamed Atta for a minute because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, I never said that.
BORGER: OK.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: I never said that.
BORGER: I think that is...
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9 of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down, we just don't know.
BORGER: Well, this report says it didn't happen.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, this report says they haven't found any evidence.
BORGER: That it happened.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: Right.
BORGER: But you haven't found the evidence that it happened either, have you?
Vice Pres. CHENEY: No. All we have is that one report from the Czechs. We just don't know.
Did Dick Cheney ever say anything misleading about Saddam and al Qaida and 9/11, anything he knew wasn't true? Face it. It's not even close. Really, it's an indictment of the state of our public discourse that it's even much of a debate at this late moment. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Like I said a couple days ago, let's unpack all the transcripts. Get it all out there. What everybody and anybody said. These guys are just as guilty as sin.
--Josh Marshall
Meanwhile, in other news (WaPo): "A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress."
I need to get one of my economist friends to walk me through the declining marginal value of Bush scandals/lie revelations under current circumstances.
Late Update: TPM Reader PJ cuts to the essentials: "The significant thing here is that Cheney remained silent while his cronies in the oil industry lied to Congress. He knew they were lying, and said nothing."
--Josh Marshall
So the news is out from the Post now -- both in a statement from Bob Woodward and in an article from the Post.
The details still seem sketchy and I suspect we're going to find out a lot more in the next few days. But it now seems that Woodward -- who has long been publicly critical of the Fitzgerald investigation -- has been part of it from the beginning. Literally, the beginning.
From the Post account it appears that Woodward was told of Valerie Plame's identity before any other journalist by an as-yet-unnamed senior administration official who is not Karl Rove or Scooter Libby.
More problematically for Woodward, he didn't tell his own Post editors about any of this until last month and then only after the unnamed senior administration official came forward to Fitzgerald and told him about it. That apparently led Fitzgerald to subpoena Woodward
Woodward claims that he told Post reporter Walter Pincus about it at the time. But Pincus says he has no recollection of such a conversation.
From the Post article ...
Woodward's statement said he testified: "I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at The Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson's wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst."Pincus said he does not recall Woodward telling him that. In an interview, Pincus said he cannot imagine he would have forgotten such a conversation around the same time he was writing about Wilson.
"Are you kidding?" Pincus said. "I certainly would have remembered that."
Pincus said Woodward may be confused about the timing and the exact nature of the conversation. He said he remembers Woodward making a vague mention to him in October 2003. That month, Pincus had written a story explaining how an administration source had contacted him about Wilson. He recalled Woodward telling him that Pincus was not the only person who had been contacted.
There's quite a bit here -- both as a media story and in the potential implications for the leak probe (Libby's lawyers are already using this as a cudgel against Fitzgerald's case, arguing that there are clearly key facts Fitzgerald did not know). And I'll need some time to digest them. At a minimum, though, Woodward seems to have some explaining to do, at least for the fact that he became an aggressive commentator on the leak story without ever disclosing his own role in it, not even to his editors.
--Josh Marshall
You can see right now the sort of ferocity and the hurricane of bamboozlement this White House is capable of unleashing when faced with a pretty much impossible to challenge case that they misled the American people in making the case for the Iraq war.
Much the same with public corruption and all the interwoven scandals only now bubbling to the surface in Washington and through the various tentacles of the DC political machine -- Abramoff, Safavian, DeLay, Reed, Norquist, Scanlon, Ney, Burns, Pombo, Tobin, the Duke, Tomlinson, the yet to be discovered cronies at FEMA and DHS. The same wave after wave of bamboozlement and misdirection is in store as these stories unfold.
So, yes, this is another bid for our fundraiser. But let me take just a quick moment to explain again what we're trying to do. We want to create a site, a blog devoted to a meticulously factual chronicling, explaining and aggressively reporting on the web of corruption in today's Washington. Basically, more focused, more frequently updated, and making more connections than any well-balanced person could possibly want. In all seriousness, these are really complicated stories (not usually ethically complicated, but factually so). And the forest is always threatening to get lost for the trees. We want to set up a special TPM site devoted to keeping these stories in focus. And we want to hire one and hopefully two full-time people -- reporter-bloggers -- to help keep us and all our readers up to speed on the story.
That's what this is for, basically for salaries for these two yet-to-be-hired (yet to be found, for that matter) people. We don't and never will charge for access to any of our sites. So if you think this is a site you're likely to read often and get something out of, we're asking if you can chip in some funds for the not insubstantial costs of launching the new site and getting it on its feet.
That's our pitch. It'll be an experiment in blog-journalism. And we'll do our best to make it fun in addition to worthwhile. So if you'd like to join us and make a contribution, click right here. As of 4:16 PM we're up to 768 contributors. And we're going to do our best to get to 1000 by the end of the evening.
--Josh Marshall
Desperate Santorum makes play for post-Enlightenment Era voter bloc ...
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Saturday that he doesn't believe that intelligent design belongs in the science classroom.Santorum's comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a "legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom."
But on Saturday, the Republican said that, "Science leads you where it leads you."
Actually, to insulate themselves from charges of liberal bias aren't journalists supposed to refer to this as "what some Democrats refer to as 'science'"?
Just asking.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, the White House has now finally engaged the debate over the exaggerations, misleading claims and falsehoods by which it led the nation to war. So we need the facts on the table. And this is an effort that is perfectly suited to refereed collective online research.
So here's what I propose.
What is needed is a list of specifics. Specific dates, specific statements and specific explanations of context, intent and consequence.
I would propose a few broad categories and we'll likely add to these or refine them as we go. First, instance, the 'smoking gun' and 'mushroom cloud' line wasn't a lie because it didn't assert any factual claim. I'd call it a "reckless exaggeration", given the facts we knew at the time.
Or how about the repeated claims that Saddam "supported terrorists". When asked to provide evidence for this, White House spokespeople will often point to the fact that Saddam offered financial support to the families of dead suicide bombers from the West Bank and Gaza. In other cases, they'll note that has-been uber-secular-terrorist Abu Nidal was living in Baghdad before the war. In both cases, you can say this counts as 'supporting terrorists'. But the point of these statements was to convey the impression that Saddam had and was supporting the terrorists we're fighting now, Islamist terrorists and specifically al Qaida. So I'd categorize claims like these as "intentionally misleading statements".
Then we get to statements like the one Dick Cheney made when he claimed that we'd neither been able to confirm or discredit claims that Mohammad Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague not long before the attacks. I think we can say this was a straight up "lie". Several US intelligence agencies had looked into this. And each had come back either not believing the claim or with specific and solid evidence to refute it. So Cheney was just lying. And of course there was an even larger meta-lie here or intentional deception since Cheney was trying to send the message that there was reason to believe Iraq played a role in the 9/11 attacks.
In any case, we'll likely need to refine these categories and perhaps expand them. But the key is precision and a systematic effort to distinguish among and categorize the various degrees and techniques of Bush White House mendacity and bamboozlement.
What we need from you is to send in examples. For the sake of simplicity and focus we'll restrict the possible speakers to the president, the vice-president, cabinet secretaries, the president's press secretary and the national security advisor. We'll write them up on the site and then collect and organize them on a separate page for easy reference.
Send your emails to the regular comment email address linked up on the upper right hand side of the site. Use the subject line "Road to War". Then give us a specific quote you think qualifies as some breed of exaggeration, misleading statement or lie. We'll need the specific quote, a date, the speaker, and a link or citation to verify it.
It should not be difficult to compile a long, long list.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader SS adds a piece to the puzzle ...
Another point that seems to be missed is that you can only call the 2002 vote a "vote for war" if you assumed that Bush was lying about how he was going to use the authorization (to pressure Saddam to get him to disarm) and that he had already decide to take out Saddam. That is obviously a fair assumption now but could senator have fairly assumed that in 2002? Is Bush saying that senator should have assumed he was lying when they voted?
I think this may be one of those cases where, like I noted last evening, neither side wants to engage because neither looks great. I think the answer is, yes in many cases, it was already getting pretty clear that the president was lying even then, though the full measure of his bad faith hadn't yet revealed itself. On the other hand, I think many senators don't want to cut a president off at the knees when he is trying to use a show of force to achieve a good end. It's a tradition that makes a good deal of sense if you're not dealing with a president like George W. Bush.
--Josh Marshall
A short note from TPM Reader KS ...
I would have defended my position for war by saying that prez needed authority to wage a war so he could push Saddam into agreeing for more inspections and controls. How come dems never say such a thing?
My thoughts on this in an upcoming post.
--Josh Marshall
A note from TPM Reader MS ...
While it may be clear to many of us how the Bush admins arguments for the war differ from the position of Democrats who were willing to give the president the authority, these nuance distinctions are lost to most of the public. What I think most people can grasp and Bush cannot wiggle out of is the timing. If we keep pointing out that regardless of the severity or seriousness of the threat Saddam may have posed, we had a process in place to determine these issues, and it was the RUSH TO WAR that distinguishes the administration position from everyone else. Both domestic and international leaders agreed that we had a right and even an obligation to determine whether Saddam was a threat, and if so, what to do about it, but this process was PREEMPTED by the decision to invade before knowing all the important facts. Let's hold them accountable for that premature decision and forget arguing about who thought what in 1999 or 2002. We could have reached a consensus with the international community and our own intelligence agencies if we had allowed the facts to come out from the inspections, and more complete intelligence that would have come from that process.Thus the accusation is that they pre-empted that process specifically to avoid the possibility that the consensus would have been not to invade. They were determined to invade and that's what led to the intelligence manipulations. That's what we need to focus on. The decision had already been made regardless of the intelligence. Once people realize that the invasion was already planned and the NIE or PDB had nothing to do with that decision, the issue will be framed in a way they can't respond to except to deny it.
This isn't the only point, but it's one of the key ones.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a short and insightful post by Matt Yglesias on the meaning of what's happening today in the Senate with the competing 'time limit on Iraq involvement' resolutions.
Bill Frist and the GOP leadership generally have lost effective control of the senate on this and other issues. Frist is struggling to create the appea