I was just reading over a few of the articles about the Libby trial and Vice President Cheney's central role in orchestrating the attack on Joe Wilson in order to cover-up Cheney's complicity in and essential authorship of one of the central lies at the core of the Bush administration's case for war. The truth, though, is that we are not really examining the cover-up in this case so much as we are still living within it. Most of the key facts of this episode either remain entirely concealed or buried under a mass of government produced misinformation. The Senate intelligence committee report, authored by Republicans, but shamelessly and with great cowardice okayed by senate Democrats? I've been asked many times why the Democrats signed off on this fraudulent document. I think there are two basic reasons -- or two categories of reasons.
First, as hard as it is to say, shallow and poor staff work on the Democratic side, abetted, caused and hopelessly bound up with senators unwilling to get their noses dirty or their ribs bruised. Second, there was a more specific and complex error. In so many words, the Democrats agreed to let the Republican authors of the report lie and deceive as much as they wanted on the Niger/Uranium and Wilson/Plame fronts in exchange for allowing a semi-revealing look at other instances of flawed Iraq intelligence. For the minority party to bargain for lies in some areas and portions of the truth in others is a tactic with rather inherent drawbacks. But in this case it displayed a telling obliviousness to the political context of that moment.
In this case, the senate Republicans (and the White House officials who were directing their actions) knew what they were doing; the Democrats didn't. The Niger-Wilson-Plame saga had become a singular one in the larger debate over the administration's use of falsified intelligence in driving the country to war. Whether it merited that singular importance on the merits is certainly subject to debate, though I believe there's a good case that it did. But as the debate had evolved it was that singular.
It was the most damaging to the White House and particularly to Vice President Cheney whose bad acts had tracked the evolution of the story from beginning to end. Killing that story or doing it great damage was critical to the White House. Airing the details of this or that technical discussion about aerosolization of chemical agents or precision machine parts, while important in itself, would count for little in the broader public debate. Bargaining one for the other made perfect sense for the White House and senate Republicans. And the Democrats went along with it because at a basic level they were simply in over their heads. In doing this the Democrats failed twice over -- first on the more substantive level of signing of on a fraudulent report and then second in not even grasping the political context or consequences of the report itself.
As long as that report remains the official word on the matter, the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee remain complicit in the web of official lies about the lead up to war.
And what about the law enforcement investigation of the Niger forgeries themselves? Here too the White House has taken effective steps to prevent any real investigation. I've written at length before about the joke which has been the FBI's investigation of the Niger matter. But roughly a year ago, a colleague and I sat down with two federal law enforcement officials with detailed knowledge of the bureau's investigation of the Niger matter. The trail, of course, led to Italy. So any progress in getting to the bottom of the matter would require the Italians to cooperate with US law enforcement to get to the bottom of what happened. Only the Italians didn't want to cooperate. That's not altogether surprising given that Italy's lead intelligence agency was implicated in the fraud. But to get action, the FBI needed the US government to make clear to the Italian government that we desired their cooperation. But the Bush administration simply refused to do this. They had a tacit understanding with the Italian government to stonewall the investigation.
The catalog of official lies in this matter goes on and on.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader EB writes in ...
On TV last night (the WETA show Inside Washington), Charles Krauthammer repeated the claim that Joe Wilson lied about Cheney sending him to Niger. I think he said that was the important thing about the Libbey trial, that Wilson lied. I looked up the Times Op-Ed "What I Didn't Find in Africa". It says "I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions" and "agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response". It does not claim that Cheney sent Wilson. Why does Krauthammer repeat this lie? Why did no one on the panel call him on it?
Does someone know where one can find transcripts for this show. It doesn't surprise me that Krauthammer is still peddling this lie. But it would nice to have the proof in hand.
--Josh Marshall
Garry Wills has a good op-ed in the NYT today on the overuse of the term "commander in chief" as a sign of the militarization of our politics:
When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.
Exactly. A case in point was revealed in yesterday's New York Times in a piece on the extraordinary steps the Justice Department is taking to control legal proceedings with national security implications. As reported by Adam Liptak:
The Bush administration has employed extraordinary secrecy in defending the National Security Agency’s highly classified domestic surveillance program from civil lawsuits. Plaintiffs and judges’ clerks cannot see its secret filings. Judges have to make appointments to review them and are not allowed to keep copies.Judges have even been instructed to use computers provided by the Justice Department to compose their decisions.
Instructed by whom? DOJ? The article suggests judges are only now beginning to resist these "instructions."
But here's the most chilling part:
In ordinary civil suits, the parties’ submissions are sent to their adversaries and are available to the public in open court files. But in several cases challenging the eavesdropping, Justice Department lawyers have been submitting legal papers not by filing them in court but by placing them in a room at the department. They have filed papers, in other words, with themselves.
Congress and the Judiciary have allowed themselves to be steamrolled by the Executive. The mid-term elections forced Congress to change. There is no such external corrective mechanism for the Judiciary, which is at it should be. So judges and justices will have to stand up to defend an independent judiciary. Will they? The record so far is mixed, at best.
--David Kurtz
The president’s approval ratings are at their lowest point in the poll’s history—30 percent—and more than half the country (58 percent) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over . . .Public fatigue over the war in the Iraq is not reflected solely in the president’s numbers, however. Congress is criticized by nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans for not being assertive enough in challenging the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. Even a third (31 percent) of rank-and-file Republicans say the previous Congress, controlled by their party, didn’t do enough to challenge the administration on the war.
The poll also found that 67 percent of respondents believe Bush’s decisions about policy in Iraq and other major areas are influenced more by his personal beliefs regardless of the facts.
--David Kurtz
It turns out Ari Fleischer will be the next witness, once court resumes Monday. (Damn, just missed him!) The defense team wants to note—for the jury's benefit—that Fleischer demanded immunity before he would agree to testify, because this might cast Fleischer's testimony in a different light.And here Fitzgerald makes a nice little chess move: Fine, he says, we can acknowledge that Fleischer sought immunity. As long as we explain why. Turns out Fleischer saw a story in the Washington Post suggesting that anyone who revealed Valerie Plame's identity might be subject to the death penalty. And he freaked.
Via The Plank.
--David Kurtz
Oops. The initial report from the U.S. military about an incident in Karbala last weekend said five U.S. service members were killed repelling an attack by an armed group disguised as an American security team. Today, the AP reported that four of the five were actually abducted and found dead or dying some 25 miles from the compound where they were captured. Larry Johnson has more.
Update: Perhaps some tone deafness on my part. The "Oops" was of course a reference to the inaccurate original report of the attack and the long delay in correcting the account of what actually happened in Karbala, as Larry Johnson lays out. Some readers took it as a callous reference to the deaths of U.S. servicemen, which was certainly not my intent.
--David Kurtz
In following the political debate over the Iraq debacle, it helps to take a step back from time to time and to re-focus on Iraq from a strategic vantage point. Our President isn't able to do that, and for the most part neither is the media nor the Congress. As Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) has repeatedly pointed out, the President's surge is not a new strategy but a new tactic. All the goings-on in Congress over which resolution best expresses disapproval of the surge miss the larger picture. Even congressional defunding of the surge is tinkering at the tactical level.
So go read the written testimony of Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.) given last week to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (the .pdf if here). It is, as you would expect, a sobering read. But rather than a thundering denunciation of the President and his Administration, it is a quiet--though blistering--indictment of our political and military establishment that makes most of the debate about the war and how to move forward from here seem like self-serving, short-sighted exercises in chest-thumping by one side and throat-clearing by the other:
Several critics of the administration show an appreciation of the requirement to regain our allies and others' support, but they do not recognize that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is the sine qua non for achieving their cooperation. It will be forthcoming once that withdrawal begins and looks irreversible. They will then realize that they can no longer sit on the sidelines. The aftermath will be worse for them than for the United States, and they know that without US participation and leadership, they alone cannot restore regional stability. Until we understand this critical point, we cannot design a strategy that can achieve what we can legitimately call a victory.Any new strategy that does realistically promise to achieve regional stability at a cost we can prudently bear, and does not regain the confidence and support of our allies, is doomed to failure. To date, I have seen no awareness that any political leader in this country has gone beyond tactical proposals to offer a different strategic approach to limiting the damage in a war that is turning out to be the greatest strategic disaster in our history.
When the political debate over Iraq is viewed at the strategic level, it becomes much clearer. Silly diversions are revealed for what they are, like the demands from the President and Vice President that opponents of the surge present their own tactical plans for "success" or the defense secretary's claim that the debate itself emboldens the "enemy." (Gates has candidly said that four wars are currently underway in Iraq, so which enemy is emboldened? All of them?)
The Democrats in Congress want to "send a message" with a resolution opposing the surge. That's fine, as far as it goes. But as Odom's testimony makes clear (go read the whole thing), the President has committed strategic errors of monumental proportions. Getting bogged down in a debate with the President over tactics, lets him off the hook for the most egregious of his sins, which are strategic, and makes it more difficult to chart a way out of this strategic disaster.
Late Update: Here's a link to the video of the hearing that included Odom's testimony.
--David Kurtz
McClatchy has more on the recent string of U.S. attorney appointments that have gone to Bush loyalists--a total of nine, by their count.
--David Kurtz
There's your other shoe dropping. Karl Rove and White House 'counselor' Dan Bartlett have both received subpeonas to testify at the Scooter Libby trial. How much do Rove and Bartlett want to testify under oath, in public, as hostile witnesses, on this topic?
--Josh Marshall
Andrew Sullivan, on JFK:
It's worth acknowledging that, whatever his rhetoric, Kennedy wasn't so good at transparency either. And, if anything, he was more reckless in foreign policy than his rich-kid, daddy's boy successor, George W. Bush.
JFK was more reckless in foreign policy than GWB? What is Sullivan talking about? I really don't know.
Yes, the Bay of Pigs was a disaster, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was surely a dangerous confrontation. But can anyone imagine George W., in the same position, agreeing to remove missiles from Turkey? I can hear him saying, "Bring it on!" The possible consequences then--imminent nuclear annihilation--were far more grave than what we face today; giving Sullivan the benefit of the doubt, perhaps you can say it takes less effort to be deemed reckless under a looming nuclear threat. But even the most negative reviews of JFK's foreign policy place it squarely in the mainstream of American post-WWII anti-communism.
Unquestionably, Kennedy deserves significant blame for starting us down the long path to ignominy in Indochina. But, as more than one observer lately has pointed out, the strategic importance of the Middle East today dwarfs that of Southeast Asia in the 1960s, making the regional upheaval, disarray, and instability caused by our Iraq adventure much more of a direct threat to U.S. national interests than the misadventure in Vietnam. Nor am I sure Kennedy's Vietnam policy is fairly called reckless. Misguided, perhaps. But not reckless.
So I'm at a loss as to how anyone could judge JFK to be more reckless in foreign policy than GWB. What am I missing?
--David Kurtz
For those of you who are interested in behind-the-scenes stuff like the efforts by the Presidential campaigns to win over John Kerry's now-freed-up fundraisers and operatives, a Kerry insider tells us that Barack Obama bagged another one of Kerry's top money-men today.
Meanwhile, we've got a list of some of the key Kerry fundraisers and operatives being wooed by other camps here.
--Greg Sargent
TPM Reader SH sees what's happening too ...
It seems like an appropriate analogy for current administration is a Chapter 11 reorganization (like say, oh I don't know, maybe Enron?). In a bankruptcy case, management has every incentive to risk everything it can to save its own hide. If it goes a little (or a lot) further into debt, what's the difference? But if management takes a big risk and it works out, then they look great. The only problem is that it's not in the other stakeholders' interest at a certain point for management to play Russian roulette with the company. The best solution is always to put in new management that can put the bigger picture interests ahead of saving its own hide.
Many, including TPM, have made this analogy to a bankrupt company and corporate malfeasance in general. But this is a key point -- one we've mentioned before: under present circumstances, the interests of the White House are radically disjoined from those of the country. It's a very dangerous situation.
--Josh Marshall
One more time for that ole' Bush magic?
You can see these rolling out the old routine to see if it can work one more time. First there was President Bush telling Congress to shove with his "I'm the decider" line. Then later this afternoon there was Sec Def Bob Gates saying even a non-binding resolution would 'embolden the enemy' as you can see in this clip below ...
Calculated statements like these don't roll off these guys' tongues by chance. It's the old routine from three and four years ago -- talk tough, aggressive and confrontational, when your position is actually quite weak. Break it down and it's really no more than a confidence game.
What the White House is saying is that the United States senate can't do anything does not express full support for President Bush -- even something that only expresses sentiment -- without aiding the enemy. The very exercise of the senate's constitutional authority aides the terrorists.
Having this resolution passed really does worry the White House -- even if it is merely a non-binding, sense-of-the-senate resolution -- because their whole model of political control is based cowing the political opposition. That is the key. Once that spell's broken, for them it's the abyss.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JB has Bush's number ...
Future historians may draw some contrasts between President Bush's declaration that he's the one who decides troop levels in Iraq with his earlier and oft-stated insistence that commanders on the ground were asked what they needed and always got what they asked for.I suppose he just decided to let someone else decide, and now has a new strategy. More likely, of course, he's just insisting now that he'll decide rather than let Congress do it, an easy enough point to hold when Congress doesn't want the job. It shouldn't get it, either; better to forego resolutions in favor of extensive oversight of reconstruction accounts, procurement, O&M, operations and other aspects of the war. The President won't like this either, but will have scant grounds to object.
Incidentally, Josh, you must have noticed that Bush's very expansive claims of executive authority are being made by the first President in our history to delegate to his Vice President anything close to the authority over policy and personnel that he has ceded to Cheney. Back in 1980 the GOP Convention audience was kept amused by an effort to establish a "co-Presidency" with Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, who'd have been given extensive authority if elected. Reagan decided then that it was a stupid idea; he wasn't running to be half a President. And now we have a President weak enough to make the "co-Presidency" a reality.
A weak President claiming vast powers is, if not unique in our history surely unusual.
That really does capture him: a weak and essentially cowardly man with great pretensions of power.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader CS chimes on Kerry ...
I'm a little late to the table on this, but even compared to previous losing nominees Kerry faces a unique hurdle.Kerry made electability the main theme of his 2004 primary campaign. And then he lost in November.
There just no good way to finesse that.
--Josh Marshall
Confused about all the intrigue unfolding in the Senate over escalation? We're trying to making things a bit easier for you.
We've got a rundown of all the different Senate resolutions on the "surge" right here.
And a guide to all the GOP Senators who are facing reelection in 2008 -- and thus are under the most pressure to oppose the "surge" -- is here.
--Greg Sargent
TPM Reader AC on the Decider ...
President Bush has never been very strong on the stuff most of us learned in 7th grade civics--namely, that there are three branches of government that share power. Of course, part of that is because he's always had a rubber-stamp congress. His comment that "I'm the decider" on Iraq shows that view remains. No surprise there. But now there's a congress with a mandate to oppose him. If I were Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, I'd take that as a sign that I have to show SOME sign ˆ any sign ˆ that I have the power to say no. Bush is showing he really doesn't think Dems will take any action ˆ in fact, he's basically daring them to rein him in, even though that's exactly what Americans charged them with doing last November. And you know what the saddest part is? He's probably right. The congressional dems probably won't do anything other than pass non-binding resolutions, which he'll shrug off as meaningless suggestions from folks who don't have any real power, anyway. And sadly, he's kind of right. If you never exercise your power, isn't that the same as being powerless?The whole show is quite pathetic, don't you think?
Yes, I do think.
--Josh Marshall
Publicly rebuking the United States, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will take the extraordinary step of publicly apologizing to Maher Arar today.
The U.S. government continues to insist it did nothing wrong.
--Paul Kiel
Take a look at this video segment about the war on the ground in Baghdad, The Battle for Haifa Street, little more than a mile from the Green Zone. For some reason CBS only ran it on their website. It never saw the light of day on the network news.
--Josh Marshall
Fox News plans to air the controversial scene that was cut out of the anti-Clinton docudrama "Path to 9/11."
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read: the administration looks to "shatter Iran's growing confidence" by stepping up the fight in Iraq.
--Paul Kiel
When will folks with easily identifiable IP addresses realizing that scrubbing their wikipedia entries never turns out well? This time it's the National Institute on Drug Abuse getting dinged.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhhh, it had to happen. As you know, the current US attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas is White House toady Timothy Griffin -- appointed without the benefit of senate confirmation under Arlen Specter's handy provision of the USA Patriot Act. Now an alleged crack cocaine dealer is challenging his appointment.
Even crack dealers care about the constitution.
--Josh Marshall
With John Kerry out, the race for his top donors is on. And Barack Obama has already bagged a big one.
--Paul Kiel
Conservatives who wonder about Mitt Romney's bona fides, take note: Two years before his run against Ted Kennedy as a liberal Republican, Romney was giving money to Democrats.
--Greg Sargent
Senate Democrats are keeping the heat on the White House for firing several U.S. attorneys, a move they suspect could lead to politicizing the ranks of federal prosecutors.
--Paul Kiel
Hard-core winger Duncan Hunter is running for President.
His campaign slogan: "Peace through strength."
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read: The New York Times pokes and prods at the grand White House conspiracy against Scooter Libby.
--Paul Kiel
Very interesting. See former Iraqi Defense Minsiter Ali Allawi's take on what the 'surge' is really about.
Hint: the first three letters are I-R-A and the last one isn't Q.
--Josh Marshall
So we've had a number of emails from TPM Readers asking about the post below on John Kerry and second chances. "But in modern presidential politics (say, going back a hundred years almost) you don't get a second chance and probably shouldn't," I wrote.
A number of you have pointed out that Richard Nixon lost the general election in 1960 and won it in 1968. Adlai Stevenson lost consecutively in 1952 and 1956, both times against President Eisenhower. And others note that many presidential aspirants have run and lost and run again and sometimes even won. Take Ronald Reagan for instance. And then finally there's the implicit question of Al Gore. Can he run again? In 2008 or after? Or is it over for him too?
So let me try to clarify my point and take up these issues in order.
Part of the unclarity was in where I placed the 'almost' -- in a place that qualified the length of years rather than the fixity of the rule. But I like to dig into the deeper issue because I think it's an interesting one.
One of the dimensions of US national politics that has always stood out for me is the light-switch turnabout before and after a presidential election for perceptions of the losing nominee. Nominees almost always turn out to be outsiders to some degree. They aren't leaders of the party going in. They take control of it, at least temporarily, by navigating the primary process. And then there's a collective process each party goes through of psyching itself out, whiping itself up into a stitch of enthusiasm over the marvelousness of the nominee. And then when he loses, if he does, then he's tossed out like yesterday's garbage. Because, heck, we barely knew the guy anyway.
The contempt and derision for losing candidates among members of their own party in American politics is, I think, tied to this shot-gun marriage that takes place between the end of the primary process and the convention -- a fast-food, made-to-order personality cult that doesn't last a day after defeat.
My first real experience of this was with Mike Dukakis and the 1988 election. I have a pretty clear recollection of 1980 and 1984. But Mondale was the heir-apparent insider. So the same terms didn't really apply.
There's nothing in American politics like Neil Kinnock who led the UK Labour party to three successive defeats. Because, they're not party leaders. They're only vehicles for political success and acquisition of the White House. So once they lose, the loss defines them.
So what about the various examples.
The big stand out is Adlai Stevenson. But that was just over half a century ago and is I think the exception that proves the rule. Why exactly did the Dems renominate Adlai in 1956? And remember, he still thought he might get another bite at the apple in 1960. But that's a question for another post.
Richard Nixon is the more intriguing counter-example. The key thing about Nixon, though, in my mind is that he didn't run and win in 1964 but in 1968. The Americas of 1960 and 1968 were worlds apart. So he was, at least in a certain sort of self-presentation, a reborn political figure in a very different era, even if it was only eight years later. More important, though, is that he gave up the pole position as it were. He gave up some of the inside-track advantage that, for instance, the vice president is usually seen to have.
In this sense Gore could be similar. In various ways, he's given up a lot of the trappings of insiderdom. He's taken positions that have taken him at least somewhat outside the mainstream -- ones where subsequent history has vindicated him, particularly on Iraq. And he's let go or turned over to others a lot of the fundraising networks and political patronage ties that equate to modern-day political power. So, if he ran again, in a sense I think he'd be running fresh. It wouldn't be on the coattails of a failed first try.
Of course, to many of us, Gore is unique. Because we don't think he really lost in 2000. The whole Bush presidency was conceived in the original political sin of the stolen 2000 election. And hasn't it turned out well? But that's another story.
So, yes, there have been a couple of exceptions. And significant ones. But they're not recent. And the whole tenor and structure of our national politics militates against the pattern. There are plenty of chances for trial runs -- Gore, Reagan, Scoop Jackson and now McCain potentially being an example. But once one of the great national parties lets you suit up as its nominee for the big contest and you whiff it, pretty much always that's it for you.
Or put it another way. Tell me the last losing major party nominee who members of that party didn't after the election decide was a rotten candidate.
Late Update: TPM Reader SM points out another -- almost overlapping -- example of a succesive nominee -- Thomas Dewey in 1944 and 1948. Stevenson has always stood out to me in this regard. But, I confees, I've totally ignored the Dewey example. SM thinks this invalidates my overall take on the matter. But I respectfully disagree. More intriguingly, in response to my question above about losing nominees always being judged rotten candidates in retrospect, TPM Reader JR answers Hubert Humphrey. And, you know, that's a pretty good answer. A lot of people hated Humphrey for that race and many thought him a tragic figure -- in both cases because of his inability, until very late in the election, to sever the cord connecting him to the Vietnam War. But I'm not sure that people thought he was a bad candidate per se.
Later Update: Thinking this over, I'm intrigued by the fact that the two examples of successive nominations come in four successive elections -- 1944 (Dewey), 1948 (Dewey), 1952 (Stevenson) and 1956 (Stevenson). One of the problems for all theories about the presidency -- veep never succeeds a sitting president, etc. -- is that the sample set just isn't very big. So it's hard to differentiate meaningful patterns from random chance. Still, it's at least notable that this has only happened twice in the last century (unless somone else is going to pull another example out of their hat that I haven't thought of) and both times in one twelve year period. My first thought is that both may be aftershocks or echoes of FDR's unprecedented and (unless the 22nd is stricken from the constitution) unique four-term presidency. I confess I don't know that much of the internal dynamics of the 1944 GOP nomination process. But Dewey did pretty well in 1944 (in the popular if not the electoral vote). So perhaps GOP party regulars figured they'd had a damn good candidate on their hands but that beating FDR as he neared victory in WWII was just too tall an order for any candidate. Thus, another try. Paradoxically, a related reasoning could have buoyed Stevenson in 1956. In 1952 the Democrats had held the White House for an astonishing 20 years. But in four successive elections they'd defended it with incumbent nominees. Perhaps Democrats in 1956 reasoned that Stevenson wasn't a bad candidate -- only that hunger for a change of party control in the White House was just too strong for even a good candidate to overcome after five Democratic terms. Of course, this is just speculation. But I'd be curious to hear from those with more detailed knowledge of the 1948 Republican and 1956 Democratic conventions whether the reasoning I've described played any role.
--Josh Marshall
As you may have heard, commentators and bloggers were abuzz today about GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann, who got a hug from the President last night at the State of the Union -- and refused to let go.
But we've got more: It looks like Bachmann's...feelings...for Bush go back farther than we all thought.
--Greg Sargent
Okay, Wolf Blitzer did an interview with VP Dick Cheney that is being broadcast later today. And it's a doozy. See the transcript here.
--Josh Marshall
A top Kerry supporter sheds some light on the Senator's decision not to embark on another run for President.
--Greg Sargent
Don't miss Sen. Chuck Hagel's (R-NE) speech from this morning's hearing on the Iraq resolution.
"I don't think we've ever had a coherent strategy. In fact, I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night. There is no plan.... There is no strategy. This is a ping-pong game with American lives."
Update: Now we've added a transcript.
--Paul Kiel
So John Kerry is out. I like John Kerry. I think he would have made a good president, though he might have ended up regretting getting saddled with untangling President Bush's disaster in Iraq. And I think he ran a much better campaign than the conventional wisdom now allows. But for all that, I'm very glad to hear he's not going to mount another campaign in 2008.
But in modern presidential politics (say, going back a hundred years almost) you don't get a second chance and probably shouldn't. I think he shouldn't have run because I suspect it would have been next to impossible for him to claim the nomination again -- with the mix of strong opposing candidates, bad feelings from 2004 and the 'botched joke' incident from last campaign. And I'd hate to see him lose like that. Better to remain a long-serving senator and former nominee.
Like a lot of you I suspect, I feel torn in these sorts of situations. I don't want to give in to web of slurs and smears and character assassination that now still clings to Kerry.
But the issue seems best handled at the most practical level.
He wouldn't have been the best candidate so best that he didn't run at all.
--Josh Marshall
Wow, this is quite a sight: Obama aggressively goes after Fox News for spreading lies about him.
--Greg Sargent
Are GOP leaders finally putting Bush on notice? Boehner sets a deadline for success of the "surge."
--Greg Sargent
An update on the administration's purge of U.S. Attorneys: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who had been leading the charge against the administration, has fallen curiously silent on the subject.
--Paul Kiel
Rudy's full campaign dossier -- 140 pages of confidential details about his plan to win the White House -- is now available online. Have at it.
--Greg Sargent
In my little video blurb below I asked readers to send in the text of this one passage of Sen. Jim Webb's speech which I thought was the most powerful language of the evening.
Here it is ...
Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues — those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death — we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm‘s way.
That's the heart of it. It damns George W. Bush in ways that very little else can.
Late Update: I'm told by a source close to Webb that the senator wrote the speech himself.
--Josh Marshall
My thoughts on the president's speech -- and also Jim Webb's.
Want to send us your video response? See the instructions on how to do it here.
And see State of the Union responses from fellow TPM Readers here.
--Josh Marshall
I'll be posting my response after Sen. Webb (D-VA) gives the Democratic response. Send us your video response? See the instructions on the right.
--Josh Marshall
What a strange man. After disarmingly gracious opening remarks about Nancy Pelosi's speakership, the president congratulates the 'Democrat majority' -- words most every Democrat takes as a calculated insult. The prepared remarks say "Democratic majority". But apparently he couldn't help himself.
--Josh Marshall
If you're planning on sending in your video response to the State of the Union, the instructions for what to do are right here.
--Josh Marshall
I don't know if you were watching at home but as the president walked into the House chamber the first Dem to glad hand him and get a word was none other than Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). He seemed to be pressing some point. And President Bush didn't seem too interested.
--Josh Marshall
Can't we all get along?
The headline from MSNBC: "Bush to plead for bipartisanship amid opposition to Iraq 'surge'"
--Josh Marshall
A Republican pal makes a good point sizing up what happened today in the Scooter Libby trial. Contrary to what some have said, I don't think there were any new facts alleged today. The key is that Libby has decided to base his defense in large part on an attack on the White House -- specifically on Karl Rove, almost certainly on other top advisors and conceiveably even on the president himself. The logical inference from that decision is that Libby and his lawyers have decided that President Bush will not pardon their client.
Why the White House would have decided that or why they would have chosen to make that decision clear to Libby is a bit hard to fathom. But it's hard to figure why Libby would have gone so hard against Rove if he thought a pardon were still in the offing? Thoughts?
In a narrow political sense, Rove's guilt wouldn't exculpate Libby. And taking the rap for other guilty parties wouldn't absolve him either. Perhaps they're angling for some sort of politically-tinged jury nullification.
I'll be curious to see what these folks have to say about this parting of the ways.
--Josh Marshall
As you're watching the president's State of the Union address tonight, it'll be handy to have the White House's talking points about the speech in hand to know what you're seeing.
--Paul Kiel
Okay, we've got little more than four hours before the president walks into the House chamber to give the State of the Union address. Are you ready to send us your official video response to the president's speech?
No fancy gizmos required. If you've got a nice video camera, great. If not, the handy webcam will do. Just crank it up and record your response. Here are the instructions for how to upload it. It can be long or short, specific and particular or general and thematic. It's up to you. Just so we can see you and hear your voice.
Don't let Jim Webb have all the fun!
Join us.
--Josh Marshall
It's nice to see the GOP surrogates are doing a little pre-SOTU warm up by spouting a new crop of ridiculous lies and comical rewritings of history.
Here for instance is serial bamboozler and former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie just moments ago on MSNBC waxing poetic about President Bush's plan to balance the budget by 2012 and claiming that the last time the budget was balanced was in 1998.
Unlike the more established Republican tradition of chat show lying, I'm not even sure what it is this goof is trying to hang his hat on with this whopper. Back on planet earth we know that the budget became balanced during the Clinton presidency and remained in balance until he left office in 2001.
According to this October 24th, 2000 article at CNN.com, the 1999 budget surplus was $69.2 billion; 1999 was $124.4 billion; and 2000 was $237 billion.
President Bush oversaw the return to massive deficits.
So really what Gillespie should have said was that it was great that President Bush is considering balancing the budget since that hasn't happened since he became president after there had been three consecutive years of budget surprluses and plunged the country right back into deficits. But when you hear how that sounds I guess I can understand why he just decided to lie instead.
Late Update: Here's a pretty good example of one of those graphs, if a bit too large to squeeze into the TPM post column width.
--Josh Marshall
Nope, John Solomon's not out of the woods just yet. WaPo ombud Deborah Howell plans to address his John Edwards story in her column this week.
--Greg Sargent
Hmmm. The John Solomon online chat turned out to be a pretty sorry affair. Here at TPM we spent the last few minutes trying to figure out what Solomon's now saying Edwards even did wrong. Solomon now seems to be running away from the idea that there was anything wrong or untoward about the transaction itself -- the identity of the buyer, the sale price, issues related to the buyer, etc. -- and focusing on whether Edwards miffed a disclosure requirement. Now MediaMatters says that on this point Solomon's actually misstating federal law.
Let me focus on a few points here. In his response to controversies about this and previous articles, Solomon refers to the blogged-based discussion or controversies surrounding his work. Often he implies that online controversy is simply the natural response to hard-hitting investigative journalism. And that may be true. But Solomon's far too generous with himself. This isn't just chatter from the blogs. Solomon's work is, to put it generously, quite 'controversial' among many of his colleagues as well. It was that way at the AP. And since two of Solomon's new Post colleagues have now publicly questioned the merits of his debut front page piece (the paper's ombudsman being one of the two) I think it's fair to his work is controversial at the new shop too.
Update from G.S.: More on the obvious absurdities of Solomon's pushback here.
--Josh Marshall
Fresh from this morning's Armed Services Committee hearings, see Sen. Lieberman (D-CT) beg fellow senators not to criticize the president's escalation plan. See the video here.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, so tonight's the State of the Union address. And as we discussed yesterday, we want to see your response. Crank up the webcam or videocam or even your cell-phone, and deliver your response. Sen. Webb (D-VA) gets to deliver the official response from the Democrats. But we want to see yours too.
How long should it be? Style? We're going to leave that to you, long or short, detailed and specific on particular points or general and thematic. Respond the way you want to respond. We don't expect professionally quality video -- just so we can see your face and hear your voice clearly.
And here's how to send it into us.
To post a video, just:
1. sign in to YouTube (or make an account if you don't have one, it's very quick),
2. upload your video to your account here: http://youtube.com/my_videos_upload
3. go to the TPM SOTU Group here: http://youtube.com/group/tpmsotu
4. join the group by clicking "Join This Group" to the right of the group title
5. add your video by choosing "Add Videos" to the right of the title, choosing from your videos as clicking "Add to Group"
Your video may not immediately appear. We'll do a quick check just to make sure it's a State of the Union response and not a dog training video or a home marital activity update and then we'll upload it to the group site.
Your video will then be available to view along with other members of the TPM community.
You can then watch each other's videos and we'll make a collection of some of our favorites later tonight.
--Josh Marshall
Guess which Washington Post reporter is taking questions from readers today at 11 A.M.? Our good friend John Solomon.
This might be a good occasion for readers to ask Solomon some of the many outstanding questions about the hit-piece he did last week on John Edwards. The chat will be held here.
We have a list of ideas for questions here.
--Greg Sargent
It's pretty sad when you can catch the bureau chief of a major news magazine in silly errors like this.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read: the Democrats' prospects for passing a bill to slow global warming.
--Paul Kiel
Cheney's Daughter: More Iraq war is the only answer.
Actually, give it a read. Is it just me or does this column read like it was written by someone in junior high?
--Josh Marshall
We're truly entering into anti-Bush valhalla here. Bush at 28% approval in the new CBS poll.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JW chimes in on Obama ...
I was surprised at work the other day when I heard two of my co-workers discussing Obama. One, a right winger, called him "Osama" and said he's a Muslim. I said his name correctly and said he wasn't a Muslim. The other, a hard-core liberal hippie, said something in support, then added, "He is a Muslim, though." This threw me: I was far from an Obama expert, but I remembered Obama being a Christian. Their resoluteness quieted me, though. So, now I check, and of course, he's a Baptist - and I remember how he said the title of his book came from a sermon from his pastor. So, the point is this: the bigger meme is just to make people think Obama's a Muslim. Obviously someone has been putting out this meme even before this new fabrication. Even if people hear that the madrassa he attended wasn't radical, the main sales pitch has been delivered: Obama was at a madrassa because he's a Muslim. Not that it matters to me what his religious affiliation is. But this is the hook, and a lot of people will be driven off from Obama just for this simple deception. His religion, remarkably, needs to be clarified for most people.
Soup to nuts. Or in this case, Greenfield to Fox.
--Josh Marshall
So who will Fox News fire for peddling the Obama hoax? How about the Washington Times? Who will they fire?
--Josh Marshall
You probably know about Maher Arar. He's the apparently-innocent Syrian-born Canadian national who the US sent to Syria to be tortured.
Attorney General Gonzales and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff say they're keeping Arar on the terrorist watch-list.
--Josh Marshall
Again we're shocked. Fox News and the Washington Times get caught peddling a complete fabrication. It's left to CNN to debunk the imbecilic and journalistically depraved Obama-Madrassa story.
--Josh Marshall
So Senators Warner (R), Collins (R), and Nelson (D) have just unveiled their resolution condemning President Bush's escalation plan. It's meant as a softer alternative to the "toughly worded" resolution introduced last week by Senators Hagel (R) and Biden (D). So what are the differences?
From today's Warner-Collins resolution:
...the Senate disagrees with the “plan” to augment our forces by 21,500, and urges the President instead to consider all options and alternatives for achieving the strategic goals set forth below with reduced force levels than proposed...
And here's the corresponding passage from last week's Hagel-Biden resolution:
...it is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq, particularly by escalating the United States military force presence in Iraq...
So "escalate" in the Hagel-Biden resolution became "augment" in today's Warner-Collins one. This key revision is supposed to help make it easier for more Senators to sign on and declare their opposition to an escalation plan that's opposed by roughly 60 percent of the American public in most polls.
Your public servants at work.
You can see the two resolutions here and here in our TPM Document Collection. For more on this unsightly burlesque, click here.
--Greg Sargent
We've already had a good number of TPM Readers telling us they're going to send us their video responses to President Bush's State of the Union address tomorrow evening (see what we're talking about here). And a number of you have asked, how do we send you guys the video? Good question. Check back tomorrow morning on TPM and we'll have all the details about how to get it to us. Stay tuned.
--Josh Marshall
Breaking news out from ABC News: "DOCUMENTS SEIZED IN IRAQ REVEAL INSURGENT PLAN FOR ATTACK IN U.S., ABC NEWS' PIERRE THOMAS HAS LEARNED"
I'm just shocked at the timing of this leak.
--Josh Marshall
Let me hold the floor for a moment for a TPM personnel announcement. Many of you who are regular readers of this site have also become regular readers of TPMmuckraker.com, the site we launched almost a year ago "dedicated to chronicling, explaining and reporting on public corruption, political scandal and abuses of the public trust of all sorts."
Next Wednesday, 
January 31st will be co-Muckraker Justin Rood's last day at TPMmuckraker.com and TPM Media. But you'll still be able to benefit from Justin's muckraking tenacity since he's moving on to a job as a producer for ABC's investigative unit and its blog The Blotter.
Now, needless to say, we're very disappointed to see Justin go. But I'll note a hint of pride that the Muckraking venue that Justin and Paul Kiel have created over this last year was one where Justin's abundant investigative skills could be so visibly on display.
When I raised money for what would become Muckraker back in November and December 2005, I said I wanted to hire a reporter or reporters who could focus on internet-based muckraking full-time. And I took a lot of time picking through all sorts of different resumes looking for people who I thought had not just the knack and flair and persistance and hunger for investigative journalism but people who could also make it work in the blog format. A more difficult combination than it probably seems. And I really don't think I could have found two better people than Justin and Paul, each of whom have brought a unique and complementary set of skills to the project.
Justin has just that mix of fun and feistiness and crankiness and persistence that mark all the great investigative journalists I've known. Justin brought TPMm a wealth of Washington sources that have helped us break numerous stories over the last year. And not just the glitz 'quotable' sources or behind-the-scenes spoon-feeders, not even primarily those, but the less visible ones who lurk in the less glamorous world of document-dumps, earmarks, FOIA hounds and all those sundry subterranean operators, often motivated by better-left-unmentioned beefs, who nevertheless know the real scoops.
So let me thank Justin personally for all his hard work and all he's help us build. We wish him well.
If you'd like to thank Justin, wish him well, or just get on his case, shoot him an email at the comments address up there on the upper right hand of the site.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JB with some advance commentary on the State of the Union address ...
When was the last time you watched a tape of Clinton's SOTU from 1999? I showed sections of it to my Media and Public Opinion class last fall and it's really a mind-blowing contrast to this year. This was right in the middle of impeachment and Clinton delivered a speech that was powerful and angry. He went through a list of accomplishments, of course, but these were actual accomplishments. Economic growth, jobs growth, surplus, peace.... on and on. One forgets. So he delivered this incredible speech to an audience -- the Republicans in Congress -- who clearly did not want to be there and did not want to hear it -- but also the larger American public, who were of course far more receptive to his message. He was clearly angry that, given all of these amazing accomplisments, he was facing impeachment over a petty sex scandal.So, here's my question to you: can you think of one thing between last year's SOTU and this year's SOTU that Bush can claim as an accomplishment? Did even one thing go right for Bush this year? OK, I'll spot him modest job growth, modest economic growth and some stock market growth. I suppose that's something. But how about anything that he actually had anything to do with? On the other hand there's Iraq, North Korea, China, Hamas, etc. etc. So what is he going to talk about?
How 'bout going back six years?
--Josh Marshall
You may remember back during the Foley craziness back in October, FBI sources floated the word that the anti-corruption public advocacy group CREW had received the emails in April rather than July, which is what CREW claimed. Well, the Justice Department Inspector General looked into it and it turns out those FBI sources were lying and CREW was telling the truth.
--Josh Marshall
Thank you! We noted last week that San Diego US Attorney Carol Lam was one of the US Attorneys recently canned by the White House. She's already got Duke Cunningham in jail. And one of his two key bribers, Mitchell Wade, has already pled guilty. But Brent Wilkes, the uber-briber at the heart of the case, has been holding out for ages. Now, though, Lam has reportedly ordered her prosecutors to serve up the Wilkes indictment by February 15th, which happens to be my birthday. So, Carol, thank you.
--Josh Marshall
It's a kinder, gentler resolution. But even Sen. John Warner (R-VA), former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is putting up his own anti-surge resolution.
--Josh Marshall
Lately I've been leafing through Bob Woodward's State of Denial. And here's one choice quote. It's chief weapons inspector David Kay on Condi Rice. "She was probably the worst national security adviser in modern times since the office was created."
--Josh Marshall
You probably know that Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) is slated to give the Dems' official response to President Bush's State of the Union address tomorrow evening. But what about your response? For years at TPM we've been printing emails from TPM Readers. But how about video? With the proliferation of webcams, phone-cams and video cameras, putting together a short video response to the president's State of the Union address is relatively easy to do for a great number and possibly the majority of our readers.
So, watch the State of the Union address tomorrow night and then respond. It can be funny or serious, short or long (though shorter the better), focused on a specific point about the president's speech or about the speech in general. It's up to you.
We won't expect perfect lighting and picture quality. Just so we can see you talking and hear clearly what you're saying.
Game? If you're interested in participating, let us know today.
If you have questions, send them in now.
Later we'll post on how to send submissions in and more details.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. Post ombudsman Deborah Howell wasn't impressed by John Solomon's debut story in the Post either.
From her internal Post blog, reprinted at FishbowlDC ...
More than a dozen readers, both inside the newsroom and outside, were troubled by the John Edwards story on Page today. So was I. Most complainers thought that the story either wasn't worth a story or wasn't worth fronting or both. It was interesting enough to make an item in In the Loop, but not Page 1. I kept looking for the graf that would tell me that the buyers had some history with Edwards, that they were big campaign contributors, that there was some quid pro quo. Nada.
Ouch.
--Josh Marshall
WaPo poll: Public trusts Dem Congress on Iraq over Bush by nearly two to one margin.
Update: And speaking of this poll, it looks like WaPo's editorial writers cherry-picked from its own poll data to bolster its case against Hillary Clinton's electability.
--Greg Sargent
Remember the long-delayed National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that the Bush Administration managed to push off completing until after the election? Well, the Administration has slow-rolled completion of the NIE past the introduction of the surge and the State of the Union address, according to Ken Silverstein at Harper's:
The situation came to a head last week, during a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This committee expected to be briefed on the long-awaited NIE by an official from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates NIEs by gathering input from all of the nation's various intelligence agencies. But the NIC official turned up empty-handed and told the committee that the intelligence community hadn't been able to complete the NIE because of the many demands placed upon it by the Bush Administration to help prepare the new military strategy on Iraq. He then said that not all of the relevant agencies had offered input into the NIE process, and thus it had proven impossible to put together a finished product.
Why, yes, of course. They were too busy rolling out what they're calling a new Iraq policy to prepare the NIE which should inform creation of that new policy. That tells you everything you need to know about the surge.
--David Kurtz
This is precious. Apparently Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is going to go after outgoing Iraq commander Gen. George Casey in his nomination hearings to become the next Chief of Staff of the Army.
Said Sen. McCain: ""I have very serious concerns about General Casey's nomination. I'm concerned about failed leadership, the message that sends to the rest of the military."
'Failed leadership' here, of course, is code for toeing the Bush line for the last two years and then resisting the new effort to dig the US even deeper into the mess of Iraq. In other words, Casey becomes the lamb in whose blood the sins of the Iraq War dead-enders (Bush, McCain, et al.) are washed clean.
Comic, Orwellian, so many possible descriptions.
--Josh Marshall
From TPM Reader TB:
I think you may have touched on this before, but I'd like to reiterate the single biggest mental block that currently makes me think I will not cast my vote for Clinton. It makes my stomach hurt to think that in twenty or thirty years I could look back at a list of presidents that includes "Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton." This country is far too great to have to rely on two families for so much presidential leadership. Think about it: a two-term Hillary would be TWENTY-EIGHT years of Bush and Clinton. It's petty, but like I said it's a mental block, and I'm just not sure how I can get over it.
I wouldn't call it a petty concern.
--David Kurtz
Whoa . . . Steve Clemons calls out presidential candidate Bill Richardson on, um, well, as Clemons phrases it, the "blurring of public responsibilities and 'what should be' private behavior." Man, that didn't take long. Richardson just announced his candidacy today.
--David Kurtz
