More evidence that the administration has no plan in Iraq.
No leaving Iraq until 2009, the president says. But then the administration leaks word that the pull-out is in 2007. No plan -- just whatever sounds best at the moment.
Against a phased withdrawal before they were for it.
They can't keep their story straight because they don't have any plan or sense what they're doing.
Who can trust them to get it right after they've gotten it wrong so many times?
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader GG advances the point ...
I'm convinced that one of the primary reasons this administration doesn't want a timetable is that it would pin them down on what they are trying to do, how long they think it will take, and what it's going to cost. It would start to make them accountable. This drivel about not wanting the insurgents to know when we will be leaving is just bunk. It's easy to create a timetable with enough latitude and thresholds to allow the flexibility to alter or delay troop movements. I would hope that troops would be moved in progressive stages and positions, so that if setbacks occur we can reverse course.The administration's position is geared to hiding as much as they can from us. Accountability is not a word in their vocabulary. The Dems need to keep pushing for a flexible timetable with thresholds set for Iragi army and security force levels and competence. While there should be some flexibility to accommodate setbacks, the only way we can get Iragis to really step up is to provide them with reasonable deadlines. A timetable will also have an positive impact on all the reconstruction efforts (such as they are) and force them to a timetable of their own, which would also create some accountability.
Bottom line is this administration doesn't want to be accountable.
--Josh Marshall
The Iraqi government wants a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The Bush administration is firmly against it.
What should we draw from that?
The key, I think, is this: putting a limit on the duration of the US troop presence in Iraq is not a counsel of despair. It isn't just getting the hell out. It is a necessary part of the solution, or what we might call, at this late stage, the least bad possible outcome for the country.
Not just the departure of American troops at some distant and unspecified point in the future when everything in Iraq has calmed down and it's a fun place to live, but having it begin to unfold in the here and now. That accomplishes two things -- it begins to lance the boil of foreign occupation and it forces the Iraqis themselves to start taking steps to run and control the country themselves. This would have to take place as part of a political program of national reconciliation as Prime Minister Maliki is proposing.
Am I sure this will work? Not at all. As I've written at various points over the last couple years, this is the root irony and tragedy of the situation we've gotten ourselves into in Iraq. We are both the glue holding the country together and the solvent tearing it apart.
But President Bush's policies are not only failing. He has shown by words and deeds that he's given up on doing anything else but holding on with the status quo until he can unburden himself of his responsibility for the situation in January 2009. He has no policy or plan but denial.
--Josh Marshall
Uniforms and shoes were the least of it.
It seems the new terrorist cell rolled up near Miami was in such preliminary stages of launching their jihad that they hadn't yet set aside time to become Muslims.
From the NYT: "Neighbors said at least some of the men were in a religious group called the Seas of David that appeared to mix Christian and Muslim beliefs. The group wore uniforms bearing a Star of David and met for Bible study, prayer and martial arts in a one-story warehouse in the heart of the predominantly Haitian section of the impoverished Liberty City area."
From CNN: "The sister of Lyglenson Lemorin, or "Brother Levi," one of the men arrested Thursday on charges of concocting a terrorist plot, said her brother was involved with the group of men to study religion. Gina Lemorin, who had just returned from her college graduation in Atlanta, Georgia, when she learned of the charges, said he had been with the group in Miami doing construction work. But when the group began practicing "witchcraft," she said, Lemorin left and moved to Atlanta about four months ago ...The family of Phanor, who according to the indictment calls himself "Brother Sunni," told reporters in Miami he was innocent of all charges and was a practicing Roman Catholic, not a Muslim. "They all call themselves brothers and they well-mannered," said his older sister, Marlene Phanor. "All they was trying to do was clean up the community. We are Catholic. He's Catholic." She said the family attends St. Mary's Catholic Church in Miami. Sylvain Plantin, a cousin of Phanor's, said he was involved in a religious group called "Mores," which met to read the Bible."
From KR: "The group apparently did little to inspire fear in the Liberty City neighborhood where they took up residence. A close family friend and a distance cousin of Stanley Grant Phanor described the leader of the group, Narseal Batiste, as a "Moses-like figure" who would roam the streets in a cape or bathrobe, toting a crooked wooden cane and looking for young men to join his group. Sylvain Plantin, 30, said Batiste was a martial arts expert who preached an obscure religion."
--Josh Marshall
So Grover Norquist has been exposed as a money launderer and crypto lobbyist. What happens now?
--Paul Kiel
It's good news whenever we roll up anyone who aspires to become a terrorist whacko. But even if Al Gonzales won't 'fess up, I'm sure the FBI special agents working this case must have realized this was the stupidest group of would be terrorists they're likely to come upon.
From the DOJ release ...
In addition to conducting surveillance, the defendants allegedly provided the individual, whom they believed was an al Qaeda member, with a list of materials and equipment needed to wage jihad, including boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios and vehicles.
Boots and uniforms? Terrorist uniforms?
Here's the indictment.
--Josh Marshall
Consider this post an open letter to Senate Democrats.
You're really doing a poor job in the public debate over Iraq.
Luckily, unlike what's imagined by the imbeciles who write The Note and others in Washington, reality is not simply a DC media and politics confection. The Dems can muff this several times before coming back and getting it right. And they'd still be more or less fine. Because the Iraq War is still really unpopular. And the great majority of the country has lost faith in President Bush's conduct of the war.
But that's still no excuse for handling this so poorly.
The Democrats have to be much more aggressive. But 'more aggressive' doesn't mean a quicker withdrawal. It means making your point forcefully, on your own terms, repeatedly.
But they're not doing that.
What I see is Republicans on TV repeating their 'cut and run' charges. And to the extent I see Democrats, it's Democrats denying the charge. No, we're not for cutting and running.
The president wants to stay in Iraq for at least three more years. It's not that he won't set a date to withdraw. He doesn't even have a plan that gets to the point where the US could end the occupation. In practice he wants to stay in Iraq forever. What Repubicans are voting for is More of the Same, More of the Same failed policy.
Let's work through a bit of this. If the president had a plan for success he would say, 'I plan to get X, Y and Z done and then we're going to bring American troops back home. I expect those three things will be accomplished by the middle of 2007.' Or maybe he'd say 2008 or the beginning of 2009.
But he doesn't say any of those things. When he says we're staying in Iraq as long as he's in the White House he makes clear that he doesn't have any plan other than staying in Iraq. Other than staying there indefinitiely or basically forever. Isn't it possible his 'plan' could work and have us out in 2008? Obviously, he's discounted that possibility because, again, he has no plan.
For my part, I'd rather put more troops into Iraq than leave the status quo, as long as there was a clear plan for bringing the war and occupation to a satisfactory conclusion. The thing is that the status quo is morally indefensible because it just means continue to burn through men and money for a failed policy because President Bush isn't capable of admitting his policies have failed.
He's like an owner of a business that's slowly going under. He doesn't know how to save the situation. So he won't get more money or resources to fix the business. That's throwing good money after bad. And he won't just liquidate and save what he can, because then he'd have to come to grips with the fact that he's failed. So his policy is denial and slow failure. Here of course the analogy to President Bush is rather precise since he only has to hold out until 2009 when he can give the problem to someone else, just as he did in his past life with other businesses he drove into the ground.
But for the country that's not acceptable. We don't have a policy except for slow burn and denial. And the president's ego isn't enough to ask men and women to die for. We need an actual plan. And the president doesn't have one.
Democrats need to hammer this point again and again and not get tripped up in the president's bully-boy rhetoric. The president has no plan. He wants to stay in Iraq forever. He says for at least three more years. All the Republicans agree they want more of the same.
No one wants that in this country. All the Democrats have to do is get up on the airwaves and say it. Again and again.
Even the side with an insipid argument can take the day if the other side remains unheard.
--Josh Marshall
On Wednesday, we were told that Kentucky's administration wasn't censoring particular blogs -- they had cut off the whole category to state employees. But it seems there are exceptions...
Update: A Kentucky official says it's up to the individual agencies as to which blogs their employees can read. Good thing the government isn't in the middle of a scandal over political favoritism in hiring -- or there might be cause for concern.
Later Update: Indiana just instituted its own filtering technology but strangely doesn't see the need to manage employees' reading habits.
--Paul Kiel
More questions raised over Kentucky's Great Blog Ban of 2006. This and more of the day's news in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Oh that's pretty weak.
Earlier today, Paul Kiel noted that according to the McCain Committee Abramoff report, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), well ... lied when he was interviewed by committee investigators.
Now, in tomorrow's paper the Post has a run-down on this part of the story. And Ney's response to charges he lied? He wasn't under oath when he talked to the committee investigators.
Let's go to the tape ...
Brian Walsh, a spokesman for Ney, said yesterday that the congressman's meeting with the committee "was a voluntary meeting -- it was not conducted under oath."
Walsh also notes that the committee report relied on emails written by "convicted felons."
Specifically, it would seem, Neil Volz, Ney's long-time Chief of Staff who recently copped a plea in the Abramoff case.
Update: Oops, looks like it doesn't matter whether Ney was under oath or not.
--Josh Marshall
That's good news. Osama bin Laden had 60% popularity last year in Jordan. This year 24%.
--Josh Marshall
I'm a bit confused. I'm hearing a lot of reports about Republicans chanting about staying in Iraq forever, the danger of ever withdrawing our troops. There's Cheney. There's Frist. I can't say I've done a systematic scan of all media. I'm just saying what I've happened across during a day of work. And I'm not seeing any Dems. Not hearing any clear message.
What Republicans want is More of the Same.
That's the motto. More of the Same.
The president says he wants to stay in Iraq for at least three more years. Virtually every Republican agrees. Three more years. They approve the course the president has set.
They're for More of the Same. They don't have a plan. They just want to stay indefinitely.
They're just for More of the Same.
I must say it drives me to distraction that Democrats aren't saying this more clearly. Get on TV. Get on the radio. Why cede all the ground to the likes of Dick Cheney?
Late Update: Sherrod gets it.
--Josh Marshall
Heads up. As you probably know, the Senate Abramoff report came out today. And Paul Kiel's found a slew of nuggets in it. Here's Paul's reporting on the report from today. He's got the goods on Ney, Griles, Ralph Reed. As long as you're not one of the lawmakers McCain is protecting, it's something of a bloodbath.
--Josh Marshall
Yet another memorable description of Ralph Reed's character in today's McCain report.
--Paul Kiel
Last night I linked to the new senate poll numbers released last night by WSJ/Zogby. There are 17 races -- Dems up in 10, GOP up in 5, ties in 2. Pretty good for the Democrats. But not enough to retake the body. In the legend to one of the graphs the data sheet says "breakdown assumes unpolled seats do not change." Which makes sense since the ones they're polling are supposed to be the most competitive.
But TPM Reader ST just pointed out -- and I'm embarrassed to say I didn't catch this -- the Burns-Tester Montana senate race isn't included in their list. That's arguably the Democrats best chance for a pick-up this year.
What's that about?
Late Update: JS has another good point. WSJ/Zogby also isn't polling RI-Sen.
--Josh Marshall
Bad news for Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist in the new report just out on the Abramoff scandal from the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
Update: More from the report. Ralph Reed is "kind of like hypocritical."
--Paul Kiel
I think Paul Begala has it exactly right on what the Democrats should be saying about Iraq. Give it a read.
--Josh Marshall
Convicted former White House official speaks. This and more of the day's news in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
TPM is hiring.
We're hiring for an immediate opening for a short-term writer/editor position working from our New York office. Applicants need to have good writing skills, editing skills and politics junkydom is pretty much a must.
If you're interested and would like more details, contact us at the comment email address up on the upper right. Use the subject line "TPM Job".
--Josh Marshall
Zogby has a new round of polls out for the WSJ. GOP leads in just 5 of the 17 senate races tracked.
--Josh Marshall
Fresh out of the toaster. From Quinnipiac: "Pennsylvania voters give Democratic State Treasurer Robert Casey Jr. a 52 - 34 percent lead over incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, with 12 percent undecided, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today."
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader RW on Hastert's sweet earmark deal ...
You can tell how bad a deal is by the mendacity used to defend it. Take, for example, J. Randolph Evans, Esq. (sounds like someone out of Trading Places), attorney for Denny Hastert. He defends Hastert's land-deal earmarks by "asserting that a new road project would have an impact on land values more than 5 1/2 miles away 'would be like complaining about a purchase in Alexandria, Virginia, based on renovations at the Capitol'." I can assure you, there's a big difference between a change in a well-settled city like Washington, D.C. and proto-exurban farmland outside of D.C. I've lived in both places and I can tell you that before development got there, there was nothing. A multi-lane highway going through near proto-exurban farmland like that is bound to make land values skyrocket. I assure you however, if there was a way in which GOP legislators could make money off of a parcel of land in Alexandria by renovating the Capital, there would be an earmark ready to go.
--Josh Marshall
In case the Casey campaign needs more stuff to beat Rick Santorum over the head with. From the Post ...
Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told reporters yesterday that weapons of mass destruction had in fact been found in Iraq, despite acknowledgments by the White House and the insistence of the intelligence community that no such weapons had been discovered.
What' worse is that Hoekstra is the head of the House intel committee. Incorrigible.
--Josh Marshall
This genuinely surprises me. William Perry and Ashton Carter have an column in Thursday's Post in which they argue that President Bush should use a cruise missile attack to destroy the Taepodong missile now sitting on a launch pad in North Korea and apparently being prepared for launch. (There is also an article in the Post that discusses the significance of the article.) This latest version of the Taepodong missile can reportedly hit the United States.
Here are some key portions of the piece ...
Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. The Bush administration has unwisely ballyhooed the doctrine of "preemption," which all previous presidents have sustained as an option rather than a dogma. It has applied the doctrine to Iraq, where the intelligence pointed to a threat from weapons of mass destruction that was much smaller than the risk North Korea poses. (The actual threat from Saddam Hussein was, we now know, even smaller than believed at the time of the invasion.) But intervening before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent policy....
This is a hard measure for President Bush to take. It undoubtedly carries risk. But the risk of continuing inaction in the face of North Korea's race to threaten this country would be greater. Creative diplomacy might have avoided the need to choose between these two unattractive alternatives. Indeed, in earlier years the two of us were directly involved in negotiations with North Korea, coupled with military planning, to prevent just such an outcome. We believe diplomacy might have precluded the current situation. But diplomacy has failed, and we cannot sit by and let this deadly threat mature. A successful Taepodong launch, unopposed by the United States, its intended victim, would only embolden North Korea even further. The result would be more nuclear warheads atop more and more missiles.
All sorts of people write all sorts of columns. But Bill Perry isn't some nut. Far from it. He was Bill Clinton's second defense secretary. He's a very shrewd, level-headed guy. And he's been deeply involved in the North Korea issue for years. Carter was an assistant secretary of defense under Perry.
--Josh Marshall
Good work: the Hastert earmark scam makes it into the Washington Post. Post writer Jonathan Weisman also notes that Reps. Calvert (R-CA) and Miller (R-CA) also profited through similar arrangements in which road construction earmarks they got dramatically increased the value of nearby parcels of land they owned.
--Josh Marshall
We get emails ...
Nope, the dead enders appear to be those on the left who despite continuing electoral nightmares continue to cling to the idea that if only they upped the vitriol a couple of quanta they would surely either convince or cow the public into voting for the party of the Murthabots.You see the problem with that hypothesis is that you really can't heat things up much past where they are now unless that thin line between unreasoning rage and violence is crossed, in which case it's important to remember which philosophical camp owns and knows how to use the guns.
It seems to me that the dead enders are the folks at KOS [5 NYT reporters at the Vegas gig?? absolutelyunbelievable] and Dem Underground, who have no understanding of Islamism and probably wouldn't care if they did, because to them the U.S. is the real enemy and heaven forbid the idea that the United States has the right and obligation to proactively de-Islamize the area of the world from whence the threat has arisen.
Re Fr. Coughlan, not me - its the left who are the anti-Semites.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Ben Chandler (D-KY) comes out against Gov. Fletcher's blog ban.
Update: Finally, an official from Kentucky's Office of Technology called to give their side of the story -- and to spare us any hurt feelings.
--Josh Marshall
After winning a guilty verdict, the Justice Department looks ready to kick the Abramoff investigation up a notch.
--Paul Kiel
Okay, back on Monday we discussed Tony Snow's comments about how if polls had been taken during World War II's Battle of the Bulge people would probably have been pushing for a change in the course of the war as they are now in Iraq.
That's actually an insult to the American people generally, as well as the men who fought World War II and those who supported them on the homefront.
In any case, Snow clearly believes he can get away with this malarkey because he thinks polls weren't taken at the time.
But he's wrong. They were taking them. And they pretty clearly belie Snow's whole point.
My great friend and former graduate student colleague James Sparrow dropped me a line last night to tell me that "Hadley Cantril, at Princeton, did secret polling for FDR throughout the war on public support for the war, and specifically focused on trendlines, noting shifts from event to event."
This morning we managed to dig up a helpful chart that shows the polling Cantril did (click the image below for a full sized picture).
As you can see, there was no downtick in public support for the war around the time of the Battle of the Bulge. Approval for President Roosevelt's conduct of the war continued at around 70% where it had been for years. The number of people who said they had a clear idea of what the war was about was at about the same level and appears to have been rising. Support for a negotiated peace with Hitler remained around the anemic levels it had been for years -- at around 15%.
The only slight movement in the polls was a brief uptick in the number of people who would be willing to negotiate a peace with the German Army if they got rid of Hitler. That went up to the mid-30s before falling down again into the 20s. Keep in mind too that this was a much more primitive period for the collection of public opinion data. So a lot of the small wobbles in the trendlines are probably within the polls' then-larger margins of error. But the basic picture is clear: the American people then, as they will now, will stick through a lot of adversity if they think the war they're fighting matters and that their president knows what he's doing.
Then they did. Now they don't.
Also, this isn't just a gotcha on Tony Snow, showing the existence of polls he wasn't aware of, and so forth. There's a serious underlying point here about the administration's basic frivolousness in its conduct of the war.
No one thinks you can fight a war or conduct any project of great consequence by following minor oscillations in polls. But long term and imbedded trends in public opinion mean something. In this case, the public can see President Bush doesn't know what he's doing.
Having his flacks go out and compare him to great wartime leaders of the past and insult the American people in the process doesn't change that.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, the scandal-hobbled Gov. Ernie Fletcher started this morning banning the site of one of his biggest critics (who's successfully moved the scandal now engulfing his administration). That was the bluegrassreport.org. Then they blocked TPMmuckraker.com and now TPM too. Paul Kiel called the state tech folks and at first they denied it. But now they're not taking any questions.
--Josh Marshall
A New Hampshire congressional candidate turned up in the woods last month, claiming to have been in a serious car crash but exhibiting no bumps or bruises. Perhaps he should use Shirlington Limo? This and more of the day's news in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Is Kentucky's thrice-indicted GOP governor blocking his state's employees from reading a local blog that's been digging into his misdeeds?
--Justin Rood
I'm going to have a bit more about this later today. But you'll remember that Monday we were taking apart White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's witless comments about the Battle of the Bulge. "If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, 'Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?' But you cannot conduct a war based on polls," said Snow.
Well, as I hypothesized, there were polls taken -- right at the time. And they show Snow's all wet.
The American public really can tell the difference between a able president with a plan and one who's just floundering from one failure to the next.
More on this shortly.
--Josh Marshall
Do the Democrats need 'new ideas'? Or are the old ones -- or to put it more evenhandedly, the existing ones -- just fine?
This debate is actually several debates in one. And we're going to try to hash them out this week at TPMCafe. Today, tomorrow and Friday, Ken Baer (go new ideas!) of the new quarterly Democracy is going to debate Jon Chait (existing ideas are cool!) of The New Republic.
Kenny has just posted his first post and Chait will follow this afternoon.
--Josh Marshall
We've been talking a lot over the last two days over where the public is on Iraq and how the Democrats should be approaching the issue as they make their case to voters in the lead up to the election.
As we noted yesterday, Republicans are trying to cow Democrats by making a play of going on the offensive in the Iraq debate. But Bruce Jentleson shows pretty clearly here that all the supposed good news over the last couple weeks has barely registered in the public opinion polls. (Take a look at his break down of the numbers.) And President Bush's handling of Iraq remains overwhelmingly unpopular.
In terms of domestic politics, this isn't that complicated. President Bush wants to stay in Iraq for at least three more years. Members of his party in Congress agree with him. They don't have a plan. That's where to make this argument because very few people in this country think we should keep our troops there for another three years with our current policy.
Moreover, getting suckered into a debate about deadlines for leaving Iraq is foolish, especially when President Bush has said on the record repeatedly that he plans to keep our troops in Iraq for the remainder of his presidency. He wants them there for at least three more years. What happens after that he'll leave to future presidents. This isn't what Democrats claim. This is what he says. He doesn't say he's willing to keep them there to achieve this or that aim. He's committed to keeping them there.
He doesn't have a plan for what to do in Iraq so he wants to keep troops there for the rest of his presidency. That's his plan: stay long enough that it becomes someone else's problem.
--Josh Marshall
House Republicans prevented the minimum wage hike bill from getting an up or down vote and replaced it with a vote on phasing out the estate tax. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who put forward the minimum wage amendment, has more.
--Josh Marshall
So many books have come down the pike about the Bush administration. But most haven't lived up to the hype, even if they were nonetheless well-written and informative. But this new book by Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine, sounds like it may be a sleeper, as it were.
First, full disclosure: I haven't gotten my hands on a copy yet. But from what I've read over the last day or so, I'll probably try to pick up a copy as soon as I can. Check out what's revealed in Bart Gellman's review of Suskind's book in today's Post.
Remember Abu Zubaydah, supposedly al Qaida's 'Chief of Operations' who was nabbed in Pakistan in March 2002?
From Gellman's review ...
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.
...
"I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."
I said he was important. You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?
That's the president.
--Josh Marshall
Is the White House trying to play down the torture killings of two of our soldiers in Iraq?
--Josh Marshall
Jury to Safavian: Don't Play Us For Chumps.
Meanwhile, Justin Rood reports from the courthouse. Justin actually found himself sharing an elevator ride with Safavian shortly after the verdict came down.
--Josh Marshall
"President Bush thinks we should stay in Iraq forever, as far as the eye can see. He's said it himself. He says, 'Getting out of Iraq is up 
to presidents who come after me.' I don't agree. That's too long. I don't know if we'll be able to get our troops out of Iraq in 6 months or even a year. But I want to start working on getting them home as soon as I get into office. And staying in Iraq for at least three more years, like President Bush wants, is too long.
My opponent is with President Bush on this. More of a blank check. I disagree.
We've got too many challenges around the world to keep burning through money and our men and women in uniform just because President Bush can't admit that his policies aren't working."
Who said that?
Actually, no one has, as far as I know. But why can't someone?
There may be other things to say about Iraq on the campaign trail this year. But it seems silly to me for Democrats to allow themselves to get bogged down in discussions of precise timelines or worry overly much if not everyone agrees on just the best way to extricate ourselves from the mess the president has gotten us into (though here they do seem to have come up with a consensus platform).
It's not easy to agree since the mess the president has created is so entrenched that there really are no easy answers. But the president has put out there a tangible and concrete statement that he plans to keep our current deployment of troops in Iraq for three more years. That's wildly out of line with where the country is. And the president's words -- which Republicans in Congress are tied to -- say clearly that it's autopilot from now until 2009. No one wants that.
On substance, the simple truth is that the president has no policy on Iraq. His goal is to keep everything in place until 2009 so he can leave it to someone else. Why should Democrats cower and run from this debate? The debate itself is silly. No one agrees with the president. The point of the 'debate' is to get Democrats to run from the issue itself, thus signalling their lack of 'toughness' on Iraq through their lack of toughness in domestic political debate. The president has given his opponents an albatross to hang about his neck. So why not use it? On this count, Democrats really do have nothing to fear but fear itself.
--Josh Marshall
We have our first verdict of the Abramoff scandal: former administration official David Safavian guilty on four of five counts.
--Paul Kiel
Why is this man smiling?
I missed it when it came out. But it seems the groundwork is now being laid for pardoning Scooter Libby for his alleged crimes relating to the Plame case. How this usually works is a tasked quote-meister like GOP lawyer and uber-insider 
Joe DiGenova is sent out to give quote floating and legitimizing the idea, to normalize it and make it part of respectable debate.
So here we have him telling Newsday over the weekend that "I think ultimately, of course, there are going to be pardons" in the Libby case and that Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of Libby "is the epitome of the criminalization of the political process."
Newsday identifies DiGenova as "a former prosecutor and an old Washington hand who shares that view with many pundits (emphasis added)."
DiGenova says he thinks the president will pardon Libby in January 2009. But other unnamed sources in the article tell Newsday that the president may feel it necessary to pardon Libby before he goes to trial because of how much adverse information could come out about him and I suspect, even more likely, about the vice president.
Needless to say, the White House declined to say whether or not the president plans to pardon Libby.
Presidents do sometimes pardon people who they believe have taken legal hits on their behalf. But this case would be of a different order since the president's pardon would be mainly to prevent a trial which would certainly lead to the airing of highly embarrassing and morally incriminating evidence about senior members of his administration, perhaps including himself.
Make no mistake, this is a trial balloon, an effort to test the waters and prepare the public for Libby's eventual pardon. And you should expect that the president will pardon Libby, perhaps as soon as six months from now, because signals of Libby's impending pardon will raise little concern or controversy in Washington or among name pundits.
Late Update: It was just pointed out to me that that Joe DiGenova first trotted this out back in April. Justin Rood flagged it at the time over at TPMm. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, eh Joe?
--Josh Marshall
The latest ugliness on the Jason Leopold/Rove indictment 'scoop'. "We're suffering from hysteria here. And I don't find that attractive and I don't find it in the best interests of our readers. We are expressly endeavoring to mitigate hysteria," Truthout editor Marc Ash tells TPMmuckraker.com's Justin Rood.
--Josh Marshall
If you've already read the post below about Tony Snow's Battle of the Bulge bamboozlement, be sure to read what Reed Hundt says about it.
--Josh Marshall
It's a minor point, all things considered. But like a number of readers I can't help but flag White House spokesman Tony Snow's witless comparison of 'staying the course' in Iraq to WWII's Battle of the Bulge.
The president understands people's impatience — not impatience but how a war can wear on a nation. He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, 'Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?' But you cannot conduct a war based on polls.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the reference, the Battle of the Bulge took place as the Allies were moving across France and Belgium several months after D-Day. The Germans launched a counter-offensive the strategic objective of which was to force the allies to give up their goal of unconditional German surrender and force them to come to some sort of negotiated peace. The German effort was initially successful, opening up a large salient or 'bulge' within the allied lines. But the allies eventually recovered the lost ground. And I believe the general consensus is that the whole battle greatly accelerated the Nazis' eventual collapse because they lost a lot of armor and other resources in the effort.
In any case, you don't need to know those details to understand one key fact. The Battle of the Bulge began in the middle of December 1944. And it was over by the end of January 1945. So the whole thing lasted less than six weeks. It must have been an eternity for the American and British soldiers in this incredibly hard-fought battle in sub-zero temperatures. But in terms of time, or what Snow terms 'impatience', it's simply not comparable to the last three years in Iraq.
As for polls, I don't know about public polls. But the US government kept very detailed tabs on public opinion and war morale through the war. So I suspect something at least analogous to Snow's hypothetical poll was done. And I'm confident that it showed very few if anyone saying anything like that.
Snow's point isn't just historically silly, it's morally obtuse and cynical. It shows as much contempt for the public as the White House seems to have for our soldiers in the field. For the United States, the situation in Iraq is close to unprecedented in the last century in terms of the duration of time an American president has left a war policy on autopilot while more and more evidence comes in that it's simply not working. Even in Vietnam, for all the mistakes the US made there, Richard Nixon kept escalating the conflict. There's at least some strategic movement on the policy brain scan. I'm not saying that's preferable. And I don't want to get into an argument about bombing Cambodia. But it is at least different from letting a flawed policy grind through money and men for three years because you don't have the moral courage to rethink it or adjust course. It's denial elevated to the level of high principle.
Remember what the president said: getting out of Iraq is something that's going to be up to the next president. He or she can get started in 2009.
--Josh Marshall
What a guy.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on the death of Zarqawi: "There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he’s at. And if there are, they probably all look like [White House correspondent] Helen Thomas.”
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Jerry Lewis' ties to Duke Cunningham's earmarks and Duke's guy Brent Wilkes.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader MA responds on our Iraq policy and our earlier post ...
It is true that the Dems don't agree on what to do but the Dems, all Dems -- except maybe Joe Lieberman and he doesn't count anyway -- agree that the U.S. needs to change course starting with actually having a plan AND a healthy, open debate about what is best for our country.I'm a rare breed of Dem who believes Iraq was a disaster from the start but since we are there we have an obligation to position it for future success and security before we leave. What is happening now is a continuation of the incompetence that has been running the show from the start. If we won the war, we are losing the peace.
Competence in foreign policy seems like a political winner for the Dems. Level with the American people about what is really going on there, put a plan in place to restore order and fix infrustructure, and then get out of there.
TPM Reader RC also shares his views ...
Something in your post this morning really clicked for me, and I'd like you to put a sharper point on it from here on out. I'd like to see the main Democratic talking point become, "Bush will be in Iraq forever. Period. The Democrats will extricate us. Period." And let the administration convince the public otherwise. I think if the Dems just keep saying, over and over, "Republicans want us there forever, that's why we have no timetables, that's why THEY ARE building permanent bases, etc.," this would be a useful evolution of the basic description of the situation.
That is the policy.
Finally, there's TPM Reader TM ...
To further what you said, I think the notion that there has to be a unified Democratic plan on Iraq shows a complete misreading of the political situation. Bush is the President until 2009. The Dems won't have any means of actually implementing any plan they come up with for 2.5 years, at the earliest. Additionally, any plan created now would be done without even knowing who the (hopefully) Democratic President in 2008 would be, or whether he or she would have any support for this hypothetical plan. All of this makes any plan created now worse than useless - not adding value and merely serving as a target for GOP attacks.The 2006 Congressional election should not, and cannot be about the Democrats plan, or lack thereof, for Iraq. Instead, they should be about accountability for the actual actions of the current President and the current Congress. Any attempt to ask Democratic candidates what their plan is for Iraq should be met with a "I am not the President, and won't have the power to implement any such plan if elected, so that is a ridiculous request. What I *can* do, however, is hold this administration accountable for their mistakes. Do you want more Iraqs and disastrous responses to natural disasters? Or do you want a Congress that thinks 'checks and balances' means 'holding the President accountable', not being the President's rubber stamp. Never was the wisdom of our nation's founders more apparant in the need for a Congress as a check on the President, and never has there been a Congress as woefully inadequate in*being* a check on the President".
The question of the Democratic plan for Iraq is something that has to wait until 2008, when it is actually relevant.
--Josh Marshall
Here's an article in the Times describing Rep. John Murtha's swipe back at Karl Rove's speech in which the president's chief political advisor tried to take the political offensive against Democrats on Iraq. The Times quotes Rove assailing "that party's old pattern of cutting and running." And Murtha comes back at Rove: "He's making a political speech. He's sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside saying, 'Stay the course.' That's not a plan."
Then there's this passage ...
Mr. Murtha spoke as the Bush administration pressed ahead with its campaign to seize the political offensive on Iraq — a push that included President Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad early last week.The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, made the rounds on the Sunday morning political programs, saying that President Bush had every intention of sticking with the course he had set in Iraq, even as opinion polls suggested that most Americans were increasingly uneasy about the war.
"The president understands people's impatience — not impatience but how a war can wear on a nation," Mr. Snow said on the CNN program "Late Edition." "He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, 'Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?' But you cannot conduct a war based on polls."
Here is a claim that needs to be blown apart. Get real: the administration isn't trying to seize the offensive on Iraq. The war is dismally unpopular and on that basic judgment opinions are largely congealed and fast congealing. They know that. What the White House is doing is trying to knock the opposition off its stride and scare them out of their own offensive, which is to hold the administration accountable and press for a change of direction on Iraq.
Of course, the White House is going to try to call any change of direction "Cut and Run". That's their angle. That's their card. If you can't stand in the debate in the face of that, far better to leave all foreign policy entirely off the table and contest the election on minimum wage or college loans.
With more apologies in advance for suspect language, this is more of the White House trying to make the opposition into their chumps and bitches. The aim is to scare the opposition out of taking the Iraq debacle to the voters.
Kevin Drum was right a couple days ago when he said that the key problem for Democrats in coming up with a unified message on Iraq is that they're not unified. That's life. And it's not terribly surprising that they're not unified. We've gotten into an incredible fix in Iraq. And extricating a country from a predicament like this isn't easy. We have Democrats who think the whole idea was a disaster from the start and that we should leave immdiately, others who think it was a plausible idea bungled through incompetence, others who speak of timelines for withdrawal.
But the White House is making and has made its stand quite clear -- American troops in Iraq at least through 2009, and probably for the indefinite future; and no reevaluation of the basic concept of why we went in. So, a good idea to start with and we'll stay there more or less forever. (Saying we'll be there until 2009 and then having no plan to leave after that = forever.) That position is so out of sync with where the country is and so disastrous for the country's security and future prosperity, that I don't think anyone should be afraid to go to the country opposing it. The truth is that the president doesn't have any policy beside denial about how we got into this jam.
Democrats need to keep learning from the president's debacle last year on Social Security. They need to learn from how they confronted his gambit. You seldom can win a political debate unless and until you decide you are willing to lose it the right way. On Social Security the Democrats eventually made a decision and took it to the voters. If you want to keep Social Security, choose us. If not, choose the other side. And if we lose, we can live with that. Because we're confident that that's a question we're willing to take to the people.
--Josh Marshall
How much is that Democrat in the window? As the winds of change blow Democrats closer to a majority in the House, corporate interests have decided that Dem lawmakers are the "must-have" accessory for the fall season. Consequently, they're bumping up donations to Democratic candidates, and former GOP-heavy lobby shops are suddenly courting Dems to help fight their battles. This and more of the day's news in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
The results seem to be in, from pretty much every quarter: Congressional Democrats' new theme or campaign program or whatever it is it's supposed to be exactly is just embarrassingly lame. Frank Rich says so. Jo-Ann Mort says so. If you haven't heard, it's A New Direction for America. So you can see what they mean.
In his Sunday Times column, Rich quotes Tony Fabrizio's line from last April: "The good news is Democrats don't have much of a plan. The bad news is they may not need one."
I don't want to pump this line up too much because it plays to this pattern of Democratic hand-wringing that Republicans play up, knowing that it feeds ingrained perceptions of Democratic haplessness, indecisiveness and thus unworthiness to hold office.
But I take some solace from the fact that I think it is largely true, especially in the second clause, though not in just the way Fabrizio thinks.
Political insiders consistently overstate the importance of slogans and programs. Political tides aren't unleashed or weathered because of message discipline or thematic fine-tuning. They come about because of failures or victories abroad, big motions in the economy, or judgments coalescing in the public mind in ways that are as inscrutable in their origins as they can be transparent in their effects.
1994 is a classic example. The Contract with America is now judged a seminal political act whereas in fact, I would say, it had little if anything to do with the result of that watershed election. 1994 happened because Bill Clinton was very unpopular two years into his first term. A new wave of right-wing politics -- bound up with but not limited to talk radio -- had been building steam since the beginning of the Bush years. Clinton's unpopularity both stemmed from that wave and helped crystallize it. Add to these factors the fact that redistricting, a wave of retirements and unified Democratic control in Washington for the first time in a generation all made the South ripe for finally flipping over into the hands of the Republican party at the Congressional level.
In saying this I'm not suggesting that anyone just sit back and let history happen. Politics matters. Organization matters. Message matters. But there's a line from Seneca in which he says, "Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling." And there's a political corollary to this as well. Voters are making a decision about Bush's presidency and the Republican ascendency in Washington. If voters aren't happy with them, Nancy Pelosi's unoriginality or tone deafness won't be able to stop that judgment any more than President Bush's handlers can goose his poll numbers.
So, yes, the new theme is dopey and flaccid. But the only thing worse than that would be getting too upset about it. On the Democratic side, the punch of this election is going to come from individual candidates willing to be fiercely candid with voters and fight Republicans tooth and nail.
Let's be honest. What is this election about?
It's not about the Democrats. 2008 may be about the Democrats. Maybe 2010. Not 2006. 2006 is about George W. Bush and the Republican party. And, specifically, how many people are fed up with what's happened over the last six years and want to make a change? The constitution gives the people only one way to do that in 2006 -- put a hard brake on the president's power by turning one or both houses of Congress over to the opposition party.
That's why Newt Gingrich was so on the mark, ironically, when he suggested the Democrats' slogan should be "Had Enough?" (As a way of understanding Gingrich's particular genius, consider that "Had Enough?" and "A New Direction for America" are actually two ways of saying the exact same thing -- with the first forceful and infectious and the second limp and denatured.) Everything else the election is allegedly about is chatter. The details are so many fine points about making the sale, framing the question. And, yes, those are important. But that is the question. And nothing the geniuses on either side do will change that from being the question.
Here's what Reed Hundt said last week ...
The Republican game plan is emerging. Its three points appear to be: anti gay (save marriage for straights), anti aliens (save America for citizens), and anti troop withdrawal (except when they announce they've secured Iraq).This plan calls out their base. All off-year elections, and many Presidential elections, are won by turn-out, and 2006 promises to be no different.
Democrats running for office in any state need to formulate a three-part challenge, which might be called an attack by the uncharitable, or could be called aggressive by those who know elections are more like boxing than chess.
This is exactly right. Go on the attack. Remind people why they have had enough. The prescription just isn't going to come from the leadership offices on Capitol Hill. It's up to you.
--Josh Marshall
ChiTrib follows up on Speaker Hastert's earmark bonanza.
"The complex structure of a real estate transaction in Kendall County last December left House Speaker Dennis Hastert with a seven-figure profit and in prime position to reap further benefits as the exurban region west of Chicago continues its prairie-fire growth boosted by a Hastert-backed federally funded proposed highway."
--Josh Marshall
