Are we about to have our first real investigation into the lead-up to the Iraq War? In the UK it actually may happen.
--Josh Marshall
Only yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported new signs that the Abramoff investigation is targeting multiple lawmakers and numerous current and former staffers. Today the Post says the same.
--Josh Marshall
We've just witnessed a ferocious two weeks of attacks over the future direction of our policy in Iraq. And in that brawl, the White House and its surrogates have launched all manner of attacks against those who would 'cut and run' before 'our job is finshed' in Iraq,
Now comes this article in Saturday's Los Angeles Times which reports that said turbo-testicular worthies have reviewed the situation and -- surprise, surprise! -- our job appears to be almost done.
Bearing the good news ...
In a departure from past statements, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week that the training of Iraqi troops has advanced so far that the current number of U.S. troops probably will not be needed for much longer.President Bush will give a major speech Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy in which aides say he is expected to proclaim the improved readiness of Iraqi troops, which he has identified as the key condition for withdrawing U.S. forces.
...
Some analysts say the emerging consensus might have less to do with conditions in Iraq than the long-term strain of the deployment on the U.S. military. And major questions over the readiness of Iraq's fledgling security forces pose risks for any strategy that calls for an accelerated American troop withdrawal.
As recently as late September, senior U.S. military commanders told a congressional hearing that just one Iraqi battalion, about 700 soldiers, was considered capable of conducting combat operations fully independent of any U.S. support. Administration officials now dismiss that measure of military readiness, saying more Iraqi units are able to perform advanced operations each day.
I'm going to way out on a limb and take James Fallows' word over the president's and assume that there's been no radical turnaround in the training and functioning of the Iraqi Army over the last couple months.
And if that's true, it clarifies this essential point: there is no debate about withdrawing American troops from Iraq. That's over. What we have is posturing and positioning over the political consequences of withdrawal. The White House and the president's partisans will lay down a wall of covering fire, calling anybody who considers withdrawal an appeaser, to allow the president to go about the business of drawing down the American presence in Iraq in time to game the 2006 elections.
--Josh Marshall
Tory MP offers to publish the Bush-Blair al Jazeera bombing memo (and risk jail) if someone will only slip him a copy.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Norm Dicks (D) of Washington says the whole thing (i.e., the Iraq War) was a mistake.
--Josh Marshall
Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello implicates Jack Abramoff's business partner Adam Kidan in the 2001 gangland murder of Gus Boulis. The money for the murder was allegedly paid out of the business accounts of SunCruz, the casino boat company Kidan and Abramoff jointly owned.
In August, Kidan and Abramoff were indicted for bank fraud stemming from their purchase of SunCruz.
--Josh Marshall
Just yesterday a TPM Reader asked me if the Abramoff operation wasn't mainly restricted to the House of Representatives, rather than both the House and the Senate. Mainly, I said. But senators were in the mix too. And I suggested Montana Sen. Conrad Burns (R) as at least one senator who was tangled up in the Abramoff web. Not to the point of legal jeopardy, I figured, but at least to the point of potentially substantial political damage (here's a run-down I wrote in August about the Burns-Abramoff connection).
Well, seems I spoke too soon.
An article out in today's Wall Street Journal (sub.req.) names Burns as one of four members of Congress DOJ lawyers are looking at in the Abramoff scandal -- the other three being Reps. DeLay (R-TX), Doolittle (R-CA), Ney (R-OH).
(Come to think of it, that's sort of comment on the GOP hegemony in the House: delay, do little and ney!)
In any case, the Journal expresses what seems like an odd level of surprise that the Abramoff investigation goes well beyond bilking those Indian casinos and has spawned inquiries into multiple members of Congress, "more than a dozen current and former congressional aides and two former Bush administration officials." I strongly suspect that understates the scope of the inquiry.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader HR comments on the post below ...
The thing about Harry Reid you didn't mention was- he represents Nevada. Thus both he and John Ensign are largely off the hook, and either Abramoff is an idiot for forking out to guys who are never going to back competition to Las Vegas in the first place, or Abramoff is a pretty sharp con man for figuring that for $5000 per head- pocket change for him- he could tell his clients that he'd also influenced those two votes, and charge them for it. Your pick.William Jefferson, on the other hand, from all that I can gather needs to go down now.
Sounds about right to me.
--Josh Marshall
More details about Brownie's new disaster preparedness consulting firm.
Earlier today I suggested that from what Michael D. Brown told the Rocky Mountain News, "it seems that Brown's actual angle may be providing not generic emergency response consulting services but rather consulting services to incompetents who've been saddled with emergency preparedness responsibility and fear becoming national laughing stocks when they turn mid-size disasters in to full-on catastrophes through gross mismanagement."
And the new report out from the AP seems to confirm it ...
Brown said officials need to "take inventory" of what's going on in a disaster to be able to answer questions to avoid appearing unaware of how serious a situation is.In the aftermath of the hurricane, critics complained about Brown's lack of formal emergency management experience and e-mails that later surfaced showed him as out of touch with the extent of the devastation.
This guy's really a Bush man through and through, ain't he?
It's important to keep close tabs on everything going on in your disaster so as to avoid the true catastrophe of having the press think you're not on top of things.
It's good to see that getting knocked around last Fall helped get his priorities straight.
--Josh Marshall
Joe DiGenova, on the case.
Friday's Times has an article looking at the nature of the bribery charges Michael Scanlon pled guilty to and noting that some of the bribes were not that much different from what happens every day in Washington when campaign contributions are given in (de facto or tacit) exchange for support on various issues.
The author Carl Hulse then quotes Joe DiGenova saying, "The department has rarely charged campaign contribution cases. It would be a surprise that a contribution that has been lawfully reported" would lead to a criminal charge."
He identifies DiGenova as a "a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor."
Not sufficient. A lot more information is required here. Joe DiGenova (as well as his wife and law partner Victoria Toensing) is a part of the DC Republican establishment who is routinely put forward when legal opinions are needed which exculpate Republicans or inculpate Democrats.
There's no other way to put it. Look at their public statements in the various Clinton 'scandals', the Fitzgerald investigation and now this case. In their voluminous public pronouncements they are both, in the clearest sense of the word, advocates. And their 'client' is the Republican party establishment in Washington, DC. That's fine, as far as it goes. But they should be identified as such, albeit perhaps in gentler terms, when they provide quotes in papers like the Times.
And to the underlying issue, is this use of the bribery statute novel?
And is it unfair?
The issue takes on a clearer partisan saliency because of this graf down in the piece ...
Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican who has acknowledged being Representative No. 1, dismisses any suggestion that he was persuaded to do Mr. Scanlon's bidding because of campaign aid or perks like meals, entertainment or overseas travel."Whenever Representative Ney took official action," a statement from his office said, "actions similar to those taken by elected representatives every day as part of the normal, appropriate government process, he did so based on his best understanding of what was right and not based on any improper influence."
But the scrutiny of Mr. Ney has caught the attention of anxious lawmakers who have lobbying relationships of their own. It has also spurred advocacy groups. The campaign finance watchdog Democracy 21, for instance, is calling for inquiries by the House and Senate ethics committees into whether three dozen other members of Congress received contributions in exchange for intervening on behalf of a client of Mr. Abramoff.
The Associated Press reported this month that various lawmakers of both parties had asked the Interior Department to reject a casino application from a tribe that was a rival to one of Mr. Abramoff's clients. The lawmakers later received campaign aid from the tribe and Mr. Abramoff. Among the beneficiaries was the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who received a $5,000 contribution to his political action committee shortly after sending a letter to the department in 2002.
Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said Mr. Abramoff and the donation had had nothing to do with the position of the senator, who Mr. Manley noted was an author of Indian gaming laws and an opponent of new Indian casinos. "There was absolutely no connection between the letter and the contributions," he said.
So is Harry Reid singed by this too?
Maybe, though I doubt in any significant way. I've looked at this whole story pretty closely. And while Abramoff's racket was overwhelmingly with Republicans, some Democrats were in the mix too, usually on the margins and never very tightly. But some are there, particularly in some of the states where the Indian gambling issues were located.
In the case of Ney and Reid, the comparison is ludicrous if you look at the case at all seriously.
Abramoff owned Bob Ney. He took him on trips, gave him endless free meals on his tab, gave him contributions galore. And in exchange Ney pulled strings for Jack's clients, tried to get bills passed, helped muscle Gus Boulis to sell his Casino boat line to Abramoff and all sorts of other things. Boulis, you'll remember, is the guy who later got whacked after the deal went sour. And the money paid to the men who are now under indictment for Boulis's murder came out of Abramoff's company.
So, let's just say Abramoff and Ney were tight.
DiGenova notwithstanding, the lawyers at the Public Integrity Section at DOJ (just now coming under the gun from DiGenova and his pals) are doing a pretty decent job finding cases where even the normal rules of the road in Washington were trashed so egregiously and overwhelmingly as to cross over into criminal conduct.
But let's return again to this issue of whether some Democrats might get singed by the Abramoff bonfire. Frankly, so be it. Republicans are about to reap the whirlwind because the operation that Jack Abramoff and Co. were running in Washington went way beyond what the already corrupted and corrupting rules of the road in Washington allow or anyone in the town has witnessed at any time in recent history. And as I've written before, pay offs to dirty reps. like Bob Ney were only one relatively small part of the racket.
But if Democrats are going to run on reform, they need to be for reform. And if they're going to fan the flames of this bonfire they'll need to let it burn its course.
--Josh Marshall
Ha'aretz: "In a blow to Ariel Sharon, Ben-Gurion University President and noted economist Avishai Braverman Thursday spurned the prime minister's offer to become a part of the new Kadima party, and announced that he would instead join forces with Labor Party Chairman Amir Peretz."
--Josh Marshall
Failing up and failing west.
Michael D. "Brownie" Brown announces plans to relocate to Colorado and become a government emergency preparedness consultant.
Says Brown, when asked how he plans to pull this off: "You have to do it with candor. To do it otherwise gives you no credibility. I think people are curious: 'My gosh, what was it like? The media just really beat you up. You made mistakes. I don't want to be in that situation. How do I avoid that?'"
So it gets better, Brown is not only selling emergency preparedness expertise, he's opening a secondary racket in 'candor'.
Actually, from the quote it seems that Brown's actual angle may be providing not generic emergency response consulting services but rather consulting services to incompetents who've been saddled with emergency preparedness responsibility and fear becoming national laughing stocks when they turn mid-size disasters in to full-on catastrophes through gross mismanagement.
This actually may be a solid and underserved niche Brown could cater to, though my understanding is that in such a learning process someone like Brown is generally referred to not as a 'consultant' but rather as 'specimen'.
However that may be, this might also suggest more evidence for a government management consultancy bell curve -- GMCBC, also sometimes referred to as the 'Kerik Principle', KP -- in which the most lucrative work is available for the truly able and the abjectly incompetent, leaving the great majority of hard-working, though middling operatives unable to find big-ticket post-government work.
Any takers?
--Josh Marshall
This isn't a Thanksgiving Day question exactly, but a question on Thanksgiving Day nonetheless.
What do we know exactly about Abu Musab Zarqawi?
According to various news accounts he is the chief jihadist/insurgent in Iraq. He is the head of the Iraqi 'branch' of al Qaida, the local subsidiary. Responsibility for numerous bombings and atrocities has been ascribed to him; or, in other cases, he, his supporters, or those speaking for him seem happy to take responsibility themselves.
But it is hard not to see this information in the light of the fairly constant tendency through the War on Terror to build up varous Terrorist Masterminds, who become the focus of most or all news reportage, then trail off into nothing. Not infrequently, they have an uncanny resemblance to characters out of 1984. And with Zarqawi particularly there is a welter of contradictory and often difficult-to-credit information about him that invites further suspicion.
Remember, we first heard of Zarqawi because his alleged 2002 trip to a Baghdad hospital to have his leg amputated was the sign of Saddam's dalliance with al Qaida figures. Only now he seems to have two legs. So, assuming he's not some sort of amphibian who can regenerate limbs, that story doesn't pan out.
With some regularity he is apparently killed, but then turns out not to be dead. Often, if you read between the lines, it's not clear that we know enough about Zarqawi to be able to identify him even if we had a relatively intact body to examine. In a similarly odd fashion, second-in-commands seem to be caught with some regularity, only to be replaced by other long-time second-in-commands.
Now, I haven't followed the Zarqawi story that closely. I've just observed it over time as many of you have. So probably or perhaps some of this information has been nailed down more securely than I've suggested. And if so, please let me know -- the questions I'm asking here are not purely rhetorical.
But let's recognize that Zarqawi's enemies and his supporters -- probably, the man himself above all -- have a common interest in building up his reputation and his centrality. The Bush administration has consistently tried to portray al Qaida as a distinct, coherent and hierarchical organization, even in the face of evidence that, since the Afghan War, it has fragmented (or metastasized) into something more like a movement than an organization. This is particularly the case in Iraq where the administration has sought to bundle various sorts of terrorist and paramilitary violence into the al Qaida basket. So building up Zarqawi into the Iraq's al Qaida boss must be tempting.
You needn't posit intentional deception. In a case as chaotic and bloody as Iraq, the mind naturally looks for hidden organization and hierarchy, definable culpability, particularly if you're the one on the line for stopping the violence.
Now, clearly, Iraq has become a charnel house. And there has been a relatively constant stream of terrorist attacks around the world -- Bali, London, Madrid, Amman, Riyadh, the list goes on and on. The perpetrators all seem at least inspired by bin Laden or bin Ladenism and many of the ringleaders were trained in Afghanistan before the war.
But I'm curious-bordering-on-suspicious about just what we know about Zarqawi, how much specific information we have about who he is and what attacks he may be responsible for.
This article which appeared last year in Newsday contains one of the few detailed skeptical accounts of his role ...
Whenever a car bombing, beheading or other spectacular act of violence takes place in Iraq these days, American officials are quick to blame Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. If he hasn't already taken responsibility himself.But according to an Arab intelligence assessment, al-Zarqawi is not capable of carrying out the level of attacks in Iraq that he has claimed and that American officials have blamed on him.
Al-Zarqawi's own militant group has fewer than 100 members inside Iraq, although al-Zarqawi has close ties to a Kurdish Islamist group with at least several hundred members, according to two reports produced by an Arab intelligence service.
Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam has provided dozens of recruits for suicide bombings since the United States-led invasion of Iraq, the reports say. And while US forces relentlessly pound the Sunni insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and Samarra, claiming to hit al-Zarqawi safe houses, the elusive militant could be hiding in the northern city of Mosul.
The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, 37, has used the media effectively to inflate his role in the Iraqi insurgency. In recent months, he and his supporters have claimed responsibility for scores of suicide bombings, attacks on US and Iraqi forces, kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners, and coordinated uprisings in several Iraqi cities.
Al-Zarqawi is thought likely responsible for the beheadings of American contractor Nicholas Berg and several other foreigners. But the sheer level of other attacks that he has claimed is not consistent with the number of supporters he has inside Iraq and his ability to move around the country, according to the analysis. The reports say former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime are responsible - directly or by paying others - for many of the attacks, especially sophisticated roadside bombings and ambushes of US troops.
The assessment contradicts many of the Bush administration's statements about al-Zarqawi and his terrorist network.
So what I'd ask is this. I'm interested in seeing articles -- from reputable news organizations -- which give specific information about Zarqawi and what reliable information we have connecting him to these various attacks.
Are we getting the straight story? Or are we falling victim to the ironically overlapping needs of Bush administration officials and Zarqawi himself to over-inflate his role and give us all a highly distorted impression of just what is going on in Iraq?
--Josh Marshall
Because self-esteem matters?
FEMA lists Katrina disaster response as one of its top three accomplishments of 2005.
(ed.note: Note of thanks to TPM Reader BM.)
--Josh Marshall
Salt Lake Tribune: "When lobbyist David Safavian signed on as chief of staff to Utah Rep. Chris Cannon in 2001, he left the door open to return to his old lobby firm and its lucrative stable of clients. Safavian did not sever his ties with his lobbying firm, Janus-Merritt Strategies. Instead, he took a "leave of absence" to work for Cannon." Cannon's press guy now says: 'It was our understanding that when David Safavian left the firm he severed all ties.'"
David Safavian, you'll remember, was the first person to be indicted in the Abramoff investigation.
Late Update: For more detailed info about Safavian's leave of absence racket, check out this post.
--Josh Marshall
We're almost two-thirds of the way to our goal of 3,000 contributors for our TPM Muckraking Fund Fundraiser. So we wanted to make one more push before everyone leaves for the holiday. The funds are going to hiring two staff reporter-bloggers for our new site TPMmuckraker.com which will be devoted to unearthing, explaining and publicizing the web of public corruption scandals breaking out across Washington today. Along the way we'll try to keep in the TPM punch and edge many of you who've written in have said you want in the new site.
There's so much muck to be raked, it'll be a challenge for the two of them to cover it all. But we'll make sure they burn the midnight oil to bring you all of it.
For those of you who've already contributed, our sincere thanks. You'll be hearing from us shortly.
And to all of you a happy and safe Thanksgiving.
--Josh Marshall
A few tidbits on the Niger story.
There are some signs the FBI is starting to back off the earlier blanket exoneration they gave the Italian intelligence agency SISMI last year of any role in the Niger forgeries caper. Meanwhile, Senate Dems still seem to be dragging their own heels on taking action that might get to the bottom of the story.
--Josh Marshall
In case you missed it, from Murray Waas in The National Journal ...
Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.
One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.
The September 21, 2001, briefing was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Not surprisingly, the White House is refusing to provide copies of the document to the Senate intel committee which is, allegedly, trying to investigate whether the White House hyped, manipulated or misrepresented pre-war intelligence about Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH): "I pledge to walk in the shoes of my colleagues and refrain from name-calling or the questioning of character."
First speech on the House floor, September 6th, 2005.
--Josh Marshall
Here's one thing I'm interested in. A couple days ago, the Washington Post quoted sources close to the Abramoff investigation saying that investigators are "are looking at half a dozen members of Congress, current and former senior Hill aides, a former deputy secretary of the interior, and Abramoff's former lobbying colleagues."
Now, six members of Congress -- not so many when you consider there are more than 500 hundred of them. But note the standard. Presumably, these are the ones FBI agents and federal prosecutors are looking to possibly charge with criminal offenses and send to prison.
Given how common a practice it is for big contributions to secure votes on key legislation in today's Washington (and yesterday's Washington too, for that matter), you've really got to cross the line in a big way to get into legal trouble for taking bribes, as already seems to have happened with Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH). The DOJ doesn't enforce House ethics rules (then again, nobody does anymore. but that's another story). Nor are there laws against general sleazeballery.
So how big a swath will the Abramoff scandal cut in the House? Six under scrutiny for actual charges? Figure there are ten times that many tarred with his brush, revealed to be deep in his web of corruption, on the freebie gravy train, even if they violated no specific laws which could land them in jail. How does the Abramoff scandal play in their districts?
Last month we did a few posts about a guy named Mark Graul, one-time Chief of Staff for Rep. Mark Green (R) of Wisconsin and now his campaign manager as Green runs for Governor. We noted that Graul's name shows up again and again getting tickets to various Abramoff skyboxes back in 2000. (These are from a collection of Team Abramoff emails we received a few months back.)
Graul first denied getting any freebies. But as we published more and more of the emails and the local press started taking notice, he eventually sorta kinda 'fessed up. And he came up with a new line which was basically, tough luck, that's how business is done in Washington.
When asked about the Abramoff freebies, Graul told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "I believe it's illegal in [the Wisconsin state capital of] Madison. It's legal in Washington."
So how many other members of Congress up for election next year were on the Abramoff gravy train?
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) just keeps getting better and better advancing an unintentional humor agenda for sane people around the United States.
Schmidt, of course, is the freshman representative from Ohio who reaped almost universal derision on Friday when she went on the House floor and said "A few minutes ago, I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp. 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."
Today she told the Post: "There's no way that I remotely tried to impugn his character." She's portraying herself as a victim of unscrupulous attacks. In a press release she laments that "[s]ince that moment I have been attacked from across the country by the left."
From the Post ...
Noting that criticism has poured in via phone calls, e-mails and TV reports, she said in her statement: "I am quite willing to suffer those attacks if in the end that policy I so strongly oppose is exposed as unsound. First and foremost, I support the troops. They dodge bullets and bombs while I duck only hateful words."
Now she even seems to be a spat with the wingnut who she was allegedly quoting when she attacked Murtha.
From the Post ...
Bubp, a GOP state legislator and Marine Corps Reserve officer, had campaigned for Schmidt. He put out his own statement yesterday: "The comments and concerns I shared with Congresswoman Schmidt were never meant as a personal reference to Mr. Murtha. . . . We never discussed anyone by name and there was no intent to ever disparage the congressman or his distinguished record of service for our nation." Bubp, through a spokeswoman, declined an interview request.Schmidt recalls their Friday phone conversation somewhat differently. "I wrote down what he was saying," she said in the interview. "He did ask me to send a message to Congress, and he also said send a message to 'that congressman.' He did not know that congressman's name, but I did. Neither one of us knew he was a Marine."
It just gets better and better, doesn't it?
Late Update: Actually, wait! I was wrong. It gets better still. According to the Dayton Daily News, Schmidt is now saying that "she has been made a scapegoat by a media disappointed that Congress didn't vote to withdraw troops from Iraq." Local Republicans seem not to agree, judging by the fact that two challengers from the GOP primary in her race are now saying they may run against her again.
--Josh Marshall
This is an awfully weird story.
Yesterday Britain's Daily Mirror ran a story claiming that a top secret British government document records a conversation in Washington between President Bush and Tony Blair in April 2004 in which President Bush discussed bombing the headquarters of Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
The literal account of the conversation, says the Daily Mirror, has Bush suggesting an attack and Blair talking him out of it by noting the international backlash that would certainly ensure. The paper goes on to quote one anonymous source suggesting that Bush was joking, letting off steam, etc., and another saying that Bush was actually serious.
The added wrinkle to the story is that there does seem to be such a top secret document. We know that because two British civil servants have been charged under the UK Official Secrets act for leaking it. They were charged just last week.
In Wednesday's paper the Post follows up and reports a brush off quote the White House gave the AP. Said Scott McClellan, "We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response."
The Post also has this passage ...
In Washington, a senior diplomat said the Bush remark as recounted in the newspaper "sounds like one of the president's one-liners that is meant as a joke." But, the diplomat said, "it was foolish for someone to write it down, and now it will be a story for days."
The Times also picks up the story, but does less with it. Tomorrow's Guardian says that the UK government is now threatening to prosecute editors who reveal details of the memo. And the AP points out, among other things, that the British tabloids not infrequently get things wrong and that the Daily Mirror's last editor was forced to resign last year after the paper published what turne out to be faked pictures of alleged prisoner abuse by Britihs soldiers.
I'm really not quite sure what to make of this. Reading over the stories in the Daily Mirror, the Post, the BBC and other news outlets, there doesn't seem much question that there is a memo/transcript and that it does have Mr. Bush discussing bombing Al Jazeera HQ. What's unclear is whether he was serious or not. That of course makes all the difference in the world. And there's just no way to judge without seeing just what it said.
With my very limited sense of how George W. Bush operates in private, I think it does sound the like the sort of thing the president might joke about or say merely for effect, though I wouldn't say that shows him in such a great light either.
The only thing that strikes me as odd is that a diplomatic aide would memorialize this exchange between if it were merely a joking aside. Did the aide either think Bush was serious or perhaps found the discussion so disturbing that he chose to note it down?
The one thing that I think you can say with some surety is that this is yet one more example of the president's rapidly diminishing power, credibility and prestige. Six months, not to mention a year ago, I think there's little reason to believe a paper like the Post would have touched such a story and touch it in a way that entertains the possibility that President Bush actually had to be talked down by Tony Blair from bombing a news network whose editorial line he found too critical.
--Josh Marshall
Read Matt Yglesias's take on what the new Murray Waas article tells us about the origins of the Plame Affair.
--Josh Marshall
Still more intel the Congress didn't see, more fibbing on the phantom Iraq-al Qaida link.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JS asks ...
Have you noticed the lack of commemoration of the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963? I find no reference to that sad, and seminal, event. Am I the only person who reads the blogs and has a personal memory of that day?
Certainly hadn't occurred to me. But now that he mentions it, yes, it did used to be a date for which there was always some build up and moments of commemoration. But now nothing. Is it just some critical mass in the passage of years? Forty-two years and it's just definitively part of the past? Or is it some political or cultural inflection point the country's passed through post-9/11? Maybe it's none of these and JS and I are noticing a difference that's not there.
Thoughts?
--Josh Marshall
The Post's Tuesday piece about Cheney says, among other things ...
Cheney repeated assertions -- disputed by some senators -- that members of Congress had access to the same intelligence that was provided to Bush about the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction under the rule of Saddam Hussein.
Disputed by 'some senators'?
Please. Try disputed by the Post itself little more than a week ago.
How much of a difference there was or how relevant that difference may be to the underlying debate -- those may be a up for discussion. But the claim that members of Congress had access to the same intelligence the president did is just demonstrably false.
Why create a he said/she said, when the facts on the table are not in dispute?
--Josh Marshall
Here's the Scanlon plea agreement.
And since we expect to see many more of these, TPMmuckraker.com.
--Josh Marshall
Jean Schmidt-Piece O' Work Watch, Installment #1.
Jean Schmidt's excuse for disparaging Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) as a coward on the House floor is apparently that she didn't know he was a Marine.
I'm not sure I knew that Murtha was a Marine. In fact, though I certainly knew who Murtha is, I'm not sure I'd ever given it a lot of thought. But since Washington had been plastered with a day or so's worth of wall-to-wall coverage which mainly boiled down to "Murtha, Marine, Wants out of Iraq" she's obviously a pretty big fibber or a pretty big fool.
Actually, scratch that -- probably both since she was probably fibbing but still also a fool for coming up with such a moronic excuse.
Add to this the fact that the night before Schmidt had a starring role in the official House GOP game of Whack-a-Murtha, the trancript of which is here. So Schmidt is dug in so deep on this one her head is barely peering up over the ground.
But there's more, as you know doubt knew there would be.
According to tomorrow's Times ...
a spokeswoman for the colonel, Danny R. Bubp, said Ms. Schmidt had misconstrued their conversation.While Mr. Bubp, a Republican member of the Ohio House of Representatives, opposes a quick withdrawal for forces, "he did not mention Congressman Murtha by name nor did he mean to disparage Congressman Murtha," said Karen Tabor, his spokeswoman. "He feels as though the words that Congresswoman Schmidt chose did not represent their conversation."
Now, as the old saw goes, no honor among 'wingnuts (okay, so I'm paraphrasing). And as Max Blumenthal shows in this piece, Bubp's quite a piece of work himself. So he's probably full of it too. Still, even if he's full of it, it's sort of nice to see him selling her out.
And just to finish off, here's the last graf of that Times piece ...
Asked to respond on Monday, the congresswoman's office said only, "Mrs. Schmidt's statement was never meant to disparage Congressman Murtha."
Here's what she said ...
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 Bubp, 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.
Do her constituents really want to keep her in the job?
--Josh Marshall
Today must have been a very bad day for a handful of members of Congress, numerous current and former Hill staffers and others as yet unnamed.
That's because today Michael Scanlon, Jack Abramoff's partner in much of the Indian gambling-congressional cash-n-carry hijinks you've been hearing about, pled guilty to bribe a congressman and other public officials. He agreed to pay back $19 million to Indian tribes he and Abramoff defrauded. He was also sentenced to 51 to 63 months in federal prison.
However, that sentence was immediately suspended. And it will be reduced if Scanlon continues to cooperate with federal prosecutors.
The first thing to note is the political and legal fate of Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH). A few days ago a fellow blogger sent me a post in which he incorrectly stated that Ney was not running for reelection. I pointed out the error -- he'd confused him with retiring Ohio Rep. Mike Oxley (R). But I told him not to feel bad since he was right. Ney is retiring too; he just doesn't know it yet.
Which brings us back to Scanlon's plea. In their charge against Scanlon, federal prosecutors assert that Scanlon and Abramoff offered and Ney accepted numerous bribes for various official acts. (He's referenced as 'Legislator #1'; but it's Ney.) By pleading guilty, Scanlon of course agrees that that is true. And he will testify to that effect.
That just can't sit well with constituents.
And he's not the only one.
This graf from the article in the Post tells the tale ...
Investigators are looking at half a dozen members of Congress, current and former senior Hill aides, a former deputy secretary of the interior, and Abramoff's former lobbying colleagues, according to sources familiar with the probe who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Because of his central role in much of Abramoff's business, Scanlon could be a key witness in any trials that arise from the case.
This is just the beginning.
Late Update: My characterization of Scanlon's sentencing was based on this report in Roll Call. But I'm now told this is not precisely accurate. He apparently faces that much prison time. But the judge has delayed sentencing pending Scanlon's cooperation, etc. The Post's account seems to square with that account, saying Scanlon "faces a maximum five years in prison." Same difference basically. They're holding five years over his head to insure full cooperation. But just wanted to clear that up.
--Josh Marshall
Murtha-basher Jean Schmidt breaking House ethics rules too? And more here about the guy Schmidt used to call Murtha a coward.
--Josh Marshall
This is one of those media questions for which there is no real way to provide a concrete answer. But it is at least worth asking: How many of the stories coming out now under the very broad heading of botched or manipulated intelligence could have been reported and written at more or less any time over the last two years? I suspect the answer is, the great majority of them.
They're getting written now because the president's poor poll numbers make him a readier target.
I know I'm not saying anything most of you don't know. And better late than never, of course. But all working reporters and editors should consider what that says about the profession.
--Josh Marshall
The CrooksAndLiars.com -- in this case aptly named -- has video up of Vice President Cheney's speech this morning.
--Josh Marshall
Are you beginning a career in journalism? A reporter looking for an exciting new challenge? TPM Media is hiring.
--Josh Marshall
The ACLU takes up the case of the 'Denver Three', the non-Bush-true Denver residents ejected from last year's Social Security Bamboozlepalooze event in their city.
--Josh Marshall
I've always felt deeply passionate about and fascinated by Israeli politics. And now, through my marriage, I have an immediate familial connection to it. But it's a topic I don't talk too much about on the site. Because I'm in that editorially dangerous position on having just enough knowledge to say things that are really foolish.
So let me just again draw your attention to the tectonic plates moving in Israeli politics today -- ones that seem likely to have deep repercussions throughout the region and even in the world.
Ariel Sharon has now officially resigned from the Likud party and set in motion the steps which should lead to new elections in March.
Sharon was a key founder of Likud. And many Israeli editorialists are noting the irony -- if that's what it is -- that Sharon may be doing to Likud what he has already begun to do with the settlements, dismantling or destroying what he took the key role in creating. There is already talk that the rump Likud may be forced to form a new bloc with other rightist parties.
Sharon will now form a new centrist party ("National Responsibility") and seek to win what -- in the dynamics of Israel's fractured politics --counts as a mandate and freedom of maneuver to move ahead with his brand of peace-making free of the Likud's hardline pro-settler base.
The question I have been most interested to hear answered was whether Shimon Peres would join the new party, a possibility widely hinted at over the weekend and encouraged by Peres's recent loss of the leadership of the Labor party. But according to the latest word this won't happen. Peres won't leave Labor. Peres aside, will Labor's new direction under Amir Peretz allow Sharon to peel off other Labor party members for his new party?
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has yet to announce whether he'll follow Sharon out of Likud or, more likely, stay in the party and attempt to become its new leader.
The latest word I've been able to find is that the first meeting of Sharon's new party, which took place this morning, had twelve ex-Likud members present. But all the reporting seems fluid. When I first read this article in Ha'aretz about a half hour ago it said there were eleven. Sharon needs 14 to lay claim to some of Likud's state funding.
Everything in the party structure of Israeli politics seems up for grabs.
--Josh Marshall
Reuters: Ariel Sharon to leave Likud.
If this story bears out, I wonder how it might intersect with the recent shake-up in Labor. Or could it even be the trigger.
--Josh Marshall
Tucked into that LA Times article about 'Curveball' is yet more evidence that we are still yet to have a serious and comprehensive investigation of the handling of WMD intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war.
There are many bits of evidence. But this one is worth noting.
From the LAT (emphasis added) ...
Curveball was the chief source of inaccurate prewar U.S. accusations that Baghdad had biological weapons, a commission appointed by Bush reported this year. The commission did not interview Curveball, who still insists his story was true, or the German officials who handled his case.The German account emerges as the White House is lashing out at domestic critics, particularly Senate Democrats, over allegations the administration manipulated intelligence to go to war. Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney called such claims reprehensible and pernicious.
...
An investigation by The Times based on interviews since May with about 30 current and former intelligence officials in the U.S., Germany, England, Iraq and the United Nations, as well as other experts, shows that U.S. bungling in the Curveball case was worse than official reports have disclosed.
The White House, for example, ignored evidence gathered by United Nations weapons inspectors shortly before the war that disproved Curveball's account. Bush and his aides issued increasingly dire warnings about Iraq's biological weapons before the war even though intelligence from Curveball had not changed in two years.
So the Silbermann-Robb Commission hasn't spoken to Curveball or the German intelligence officials who handled his case and provided the conduit of information to US intelligence agencies. Almost certainly, the Senate intel committee investigation hasn't either. But the LA Times has managed to speak with a slew of current and former intelligence officials who have provided information not included in those official reports.
Now, gaining direct access to the sources of even an allied intelligence agency is quite dicey and frequently not possible. Even more so in a highly politicized investigative context as opposed to in the process of intelligence gathering and analysis. So there's no reason to fault these investigations for not getting a hold of Curveball himself; nor do I think there would have been any particular purpose served in doing so.
But the Times article suggests that many people in the stream of information passing back and forth between German and US intelligence and the White House were not spoken to either. And those people provided information which puts the whole matter in a rather more sinister light -- not just botched intelligence work and analysis but deliberate distortions of what evidence we had before the war and refusals to come clean about highly relevant contradictory information.
This speaks again to a point we and many others have made repeatedly: the highly circumscribed nature of these two investigations. The very structure and scope of these inquiries were designed to leave much of the story untold -- quite apart from the numerous intentionally misleading passages we've noted in the Senate intel report from last year.
--Josh Marshall
Curveball or a spitter? From the LAT ...
The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.
According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.
Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm.
"This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."
Just gets worse and worse.
--Josh Marshall
