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06.02.07 -- 8:00PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

In a post below, Steve Benen noted that the national head of the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), Gary Kurpius, is telling the Marines and the Pentagon to back off their investigation of three former Marines who wore unmarked desert fatigures to an Iraq War protest in Washington, DC. Most of you probably already know this. But it bears noting that the VFW is an extremely conservative organization -- not in the Movement conservative sense, but about as down-the-line as you get in terms of cultural conservatism and reflexive hostility to pretty much any sort of anti-war protest. I give Kurpius credit for taking a principled position on this. But I think this is also a measure of just how unpopular this war and this president have become.

--Josh Marshall

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06.02.07 -- 7:41PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Reading over the reports of this alleged JFK terror plot, I again feel the odd sense of dissonance and contradiction one always gets reading the initial reports of these alleged terror plots. A knowledgeable reader tells me the whole concept of this attack basically doesn't make sense -- in the sense that you could get the sort of chain reaction some folks on tv are talking about. And, indeed, this key fact is tepidly noted in the coverage itself, where DHS officials concede that the plot "was not technically feasible."

The relevant information from this report at CNN suggests that the key plotter, Russell Defreitas, is not a bright man.

Here's part of the transcript of one of his conversations with the FBI ...

"Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow ... they love JFK -- he's like the man. If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It's like you can kill the man twice."

Defreitas also appeared to think that blowing up a gas line at JFK would bring the US economy to its knees: "Even the Twin Towers can't touch it. This can destroy the economy of America for some time."

--Josh Marshall

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06.02.07 -- 7:20PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Punishing war vets for speaking out

Given the circumstances, "a little common sense" sounds like it's desperately needed, but in short supply.

The nation's largest combat veterans group on Friday urged the military to "exercise a little common sense" and call off its investigation of a group of Iraq war veterans who wore their uniforms during anti-war protests.

"Trying to hush up and punish fellow Americans for exercising the same democratic right we're trying to instill in Iraq is not what we're all about," said Gary Kurpius, national commander of the 2.4 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"Someone in the Marine Corps needs to exercise a little common sense and put an end to this matter before it turns into a circus," Kurpius said.

The main controversy surrounds Marine Cpl. Adam Kokesh, who attended a recent Iraq war protest with other veterans. He wore fatigues -- with military insignia removed. Kokesh is no longer on active duty, and he received his honorable discharge after one combat tour in Iraq, though he remains part of the Individual Ready Reserve.

Apparently, his attendance at the protest event was enough to spark a controversy. Kokesh was photographed at the event, and is now under administrative review. If punished, Kokesh could lose out on educational and other benefits he is eligible to receive, and may no longer qualify for job opportunities that require a security clearance.

It's a curious way to support our veterans, isn't it?

--Steve Benen

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06.02.07 -- 5:03PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

JFK plot

The plot was, as the saying goes, "more aspirational than operational," but the arrests of these suspected terrorists are obviously good news.

A suspected terrorist cell planned a "chilling" attack to destroy John F. Kennedy International Airport, kill thousands of people and trigger an economic catastrophe by blowing up a jet fuel artery that runs through populous residential neighborhoods, authorities said Saturday.

Three men were arrested and one was being sought in Trinidad on Saturday. In an indictment charging the four men, one of them is quoted as saying the foiled plot would "cause greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks," destroying the airport, killing several thousand people and destroying parts of Queens, where the line runs underground.

One of the suspects, Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen native to Guyana and former JFK employee, said the airport was a symbol that would put "the whole country in mourning."

With the news just breaking this afternoon, some of the details are still a little sketchy, but there was no plan for an imminent attack -- the plot, the AP noted, "never got past the planning stages." With that in mind, we don't yet know whether this plot was along the lines of the bizarre "Seas of David" cult in Miami, which posed no meaningful threat to anyone, or something more serious.

We also don't know if this is similar to the plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge (which was less serious than advertised), the British hijacking plot (which didn't stand up well to scrutiny), or the plot to attack Los Angeles' Library Tower (which turned out to be far less serious than we'd been led to believe).

That said, given what we know this afternoon, it appears to be a successful law-enforcement/counter-terrorism operation. The officials who were involved with uncovering the plot and arresting the suspects deserve the nation's gratitude.

It's good to know that intelligence gathering and law-enforcement efforts -- the very techniques Bush and his allies have ridiculed as ineffective -- can make a difference.

--Steve Benen

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06.02.07 -- 3:40PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Iran policy divides Bush gang

About a week ago, Steve Clemons raised eyebrows throughout the political world with a report on the "race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy." As Clemons described it, Cheney's team is actively circumventing the president's team in order to instigate a U.S. conflict with Iran.

Clemons' report was bolstered by comments from the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei, who told BBC Radio this week that a war with Iran is a serious possibility because of "new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran.'" He didn't identify the "crazies," but warned of those who "have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force."

Like people in, say, the Vice President's office?

In interviews, people who have spoken with Mr. Cheney's staff have confirmed the broad outlines of the reports, and said that some of the hawkish statements to outsiders had been made by David Wurmser, a former Pentagon official who is now the principal deputy assistant to Mr. Cheney for national security affairs. The accounts were provided by people who expressed alarm about the statements, but refused to be quoted by name.

Yesterday, Condi Rice insisted that the entire Bush gang is on the same page...

"The president of the United States has made it clear that we are on a course that is a diplomatic course," Ms. Rice said here. "That policy is supported by all of the members of the cabinet, and by the vice president of the United States."

...but Rice's deputies apparently aren't convinced.

Ms. Rice's assurance came as senior officials at the State Department were expressing fury over reports that members of Vice President Dick Cheney's staff have told others that Mr. Cheney believes the diplomatic track with Iran is pointless, and is looking for ways to persuade Mr. Bush to confront Iran militarily.

And what might Cheney's office have to say about one of his top national security aides (and one of the administration's most notorious neocons) advocating war with Iran?

[A senior Bush administration official] said, "The vice president is not necessarily responsible for every single thing that comes out of the mouth of every single member of his staff."

First, that's not much on a denial.

Second, as Kevin noted, "I'm sure Wurmser will be fired any day now."

--Steve Benen

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06.02.07 -- 2:33PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Meet Bush's new Surgeon General

I vaguely recall a time when Surgeon General was a big deal. C. Everett Koop became a prominent national figure in the 1980s, and seemed to take the position from honorary title to leading public health official.

Other than Joycelyn Elders, who gained unwelcome notoriety, the position hasn't garnered much attention since. Quick: name the last Surgeon General. If you said, "Richard Carmona," give yourself a prize. If you know that Kenneth Moritsugu has been the acting Surgeon General for the last year, you're probably either a relative or an employee of Dr. Moritsugu.

However, with Bush's new nominee for the job, James Holsinger, we're probably going to hear quite a bit more about the position.

[Holsinger and his wife] founded Hope Springs Community Church in a warehouse at 1109 Versailles Road. Calhoun called it a socially diverse congregation with a "very vital recovery ministry." It serves the homeless and those with addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex; and it has a Spanish-language Hispanic congregation with its own pastor. [...]

Hope Springs also ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian, Calhoun said.

"We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle," he said. "We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle."

Holsinger, in his capacity as a high-ranking official in the United Methodist Church, also opposed allowing a lesbian to be an associate pastor, and backed another pastor who refused to let a gay man join his church.

The Surgeon General needs Senate confirmation. Expect interesting hearings.

--Steve Benen

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06.02.07 -- 12:49PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Biden comes awfully close to the race card

Much of the political world snickered this week when most of the Democratic presidential candidates announced that they will not participate in the Congressional Black Caucus Institute's scheduled debate, because the event will be co-sponsored and aired by the Republicans' Fox News Channel. When the dust settled, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel -- arguably the three candidates with the longest odds at winning the nomination -- were the only hopefuls who had agreed to attend.

This isn't necessarily a surprise. Obviously, candidates who are struggling to break through want as much exposure and publicity as they can get.

But Biden ought to know better than to start going down this road.

"The single most important constituency in the Democratic Party -- African Americans, led by the Black Caucus, which are the leadership of the black community, asked us to show for a debate and we're not going to show up?" he said.

"Let me put it this way -- if the African American community stayed home or voted Republican, we're not going to elect another president."

Kucinich issued a statement this week with similar rhetoric, arguing that Clinton, Edwards, and Obama decided to "snub" the CBC. "This is particularly troublesome because the concerns of African Americans should take precedent over what network is broadcasting the debate," he said.

Obviously, in the midst of a presidential primary fight, candidates are going to throw the occasional elbow, and score cheap points when they can. And in this case, neither Biden nor Kucinich explicitly accused their rivals of not caring about black people -- but they came rather close.

The heart of this flap is whether Democratic candidates, vying for the Democratic nomination, should legitimize the Republicans' news network. Two-thirds of the field has shown the good sense to effectively tell the CBC Institute, "You picked the wrong co-sponsor."

If Biden and/or Kucinich want to make the case that Fox News is a perfectly legitimate, credible news outlet, and that Democrats should have no qualms about appearing at a FNC event, fine. Let them make the case.

But instead, they've chosen to play the race card. Indeed, Biden's response to questions about this focused on the role African-American voters play in national elections, as if this were somehow relevant. It was hardly a subtle message -- to bypass this debate is necessarily to give the African-American community the cold-shoulder. As Biden and Kucinich see it, they care about black people; their rivals care about Fox News' partisanship.

This is cheap and they know it.

--Steve Benen

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06.02.07 -- 12:21PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Dems in disarray? A new study finds that House Democrats are actually showing a record level of voting unity. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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06.02.07 -- 12:08PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Lewis to retire?

Will bamboozler extraordinaire Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) exit stage right next year? According to Bob Novak, he will.

Republican sources on Capitol Hill and in California say Rep. Jerry Lewis, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee who has been criticized on ethical grounds, will not seek a 16th term next year.

Lewis came under fire last year for pouring millions of dollars worth of earmarks into his heavily Republican southern California district. He has not apologized and vigorously defended himself behind closed doors in the House Republican Conference.

Given the evidence, Lewis' lack of apologies is the least of his problems.

--Steve Benen

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06.02.07 -- 11:20AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

A failure to communicate in Milwaukee

What we have in Milwaukee is a failure to communicate.

Apparently, Michael McGee, a Milwaukee alderman, was arrested this week after the FBI recorded him chatting with some acquaintances about an alleged plan to murder someone. McGee's lawyer said this is a big misunderstanding due to federal officials lacking street cred -- McGee's plan to have someone "bust up and beat down" isn't as bad as it sounded.

Will Thomas fleshes out the disturbing details in today's edition of "All Muck is Local."

--Steve Benen

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06.02.07 -- 10:18AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Congress Wants Ashcroft's Testimony

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, come on down.

The Senate and House Intelligence Committees are asking former attorney general John Ashcroft to testify about a March 2004 hospital-room confrontation during which he refused to sign off on a continuation of President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program, according to congressional and administration sources.

The sources, who asked not to identified talking about sensitive matters, said the Senate Intelligence Committee has tentatively scheduled a closed-door hearing for later this month. The panel plans to question Ashcroft, his former chief of staff David Ayres and former deputy attorney general James Comey about a heated dispute with the White House that roiled the Justice Department three years ago. The House committee is also planning a separate closed-door hearing with Ashcroft, according to a spokeswoman for Ashcroft.

The requests for Ashcroft's testimony reflect the mounting frustration on the part of committee leaders in both chambers who feel they have been denied vital information about the wiretapping issue by the Bush administration. Despite having received numerous private briefings from senior administration officials over the last year, members were stunned to learn just how deeply troubled the Justice Department was about aspects of the program -- a glimpse they got only when Comey publicly testified about the program at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month.

Might Ashcroft be willing to accept this invitation? His spokesperson said he is out of town and is unavailable to discuss the matter until next week.

Newsweek added that there will be a meeting on Monday between Senate Intelligence Committee aides and Justice Department officials to discuss the "contours" of the testimony. If Ashcroft declined to cooperate, "the committees could ultimately issue subpoenas."

--Steve Benen

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06.02.07 -- 9:32AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Ingraham 'outspoken'

Maybe I've let my subscription lapse on Far-Right Talking Points Weekly, but at what point did conservatives decide that the word "outspoken" is insulting?

Crooks & Liars posted a surprising video from CNN in which conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham shared her thoughts on the president's immigration policy (she doesn't like it). Before a commercial break CNN's John Roberts told viewers, "Will the new immigration reform bill fix the problem? We'll ask the outspoken Laura Ingraham about that next."

Apparently, that's no longer acceptable in conservative circles.

INGRAHAM: By the way, John, how did you introduce me for this segment before the break. The outspoken Laura Ingraham. Do you guys introduce liberal commentators that way? I'm going to check.

ROBERTS: Yeah, we do actually.

INGRAHAM: OK, I'm going to check that.

ROBERTS: Are you denying that you're outspoken Laura?

INGRAHAM: No, why would you say that?

ROBERTS: I just think that we're appropriately characterizing you.... You're definitely outspoken. You were outspoken about immigration on Wednesday's show.

INGRAHAM: How about radio talk show host and author. That's quite effective.

How does one know that conservative political correctness has gone over the edge? When "outspoken" becomes a point of contention.

Post Script: For what it's worth, Michael Medved and Fox News' Chris Wallace described Ingraham the same way, and she didn't seem to mind.

--Steve Benen

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06.02.07 -- 12:15AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Annals of poorly edited press releases.

This is pretty damn funny. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) was putting out a press release praising first responders. In the process of putting the press release together, the press aide composing it wrote in some editorial comments to the effect that first responders don't really do jack.

Unfortunately those glosses got left in the copy when the thing was released, leaving the senator to say ...

"First responders in Colorado have recently provided critical services in the face of blizzards and tornados," added Allard. "Since I don’t think first responders have really done anything significant in comparison to their counterparts who have dealt with real natural disasters, I have no idea what else to say here..."

Allard isn't running for reelection. Good idea.

--Josh Marshall

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06.02.07 -- 12:10AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Congress wants to talk to Ashcroft about the hospital room showdown.

--Josh Marshall

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06.01.07 -- 10:16PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

When bureaucracy meets bamboozlement, or Where're Pynchon and DeLillo When We Need Them.

According to the Post, despite the fact that even the most confirmed yahoo now concedes that late Saddam-era Iraq had no WMDs, the UN has not and apparently cannot get around to shutting down the office charged with monitoring Saddam's weapons and disarming the now-disheaded Saddam Hussein.

Writes Colum Lynch: "Every weekday, at a secure commercial office building on Manhattan's East Side, a team of 20 U.N. experts on chemical and biological weapons pores over satellite images of former Iraqi weapons sites. They scour the international news media for stories on Hussein's deadly arsenal. They consult foreign intelligence agencies on the status of Iraqi weapons. And they maintain a cadre of about 300 weapons experts from 50 countries and prepare them for inspections in Iraq -- inspections they will almost certainly never conduct, in search of weapons that few believe exist."

The reality of the situation is even more comic and bizarre then the headline. Even I wasn't completely sure I understood it after reading Lynch's article in the Post. But the essence of it seems to be this: the US and the Brits want to shut the thing down, but the Russians say the word has to come from the inspectors themselves. The inspectors, in turn, say they can't definitively say that Saddam/Iraq has been disarmed because they haven't been given access to the records of the Coalition-led Iraq Study Group.

Meanwhile, the current head of the inspectors, a Greek weapons expert named Dimitri Perricos doesn't really seem to want to give up the gig. Indeed, Perricos warns that the Iraqi inspectorate should be kept going because insurgents, terrorists or some new Iraqi government could well reconstitute the weapons at some point in the future. (Hey, where was this guy when Bush and Cheney and Hanity really needed him, right?) Presumably, Martians might also reconstitute the weapons. But he seems not yet to have played this card.

We quote form the Post quoting Perricos ...

"Look, Iraq is not Denmark," he said. "They've made botulin, anthrax, VX, sarin; they've made the whole spectrum of horrifying items, and they've used them. We don't know how things are going to develop in the region, and we want to be sure there are some controls."

Last month, Perricos showed the U.N. commission's board satellite imagery of plundered Iraqi chemical factories that produce chlorine, which has been used by Iraqi insurgents in chlorine-bomb suicide attacks. He warned that insurgents may obtain more deadly chemical weapons on the black market, according to U.N. officials.

You get the sense the Russians are getting a bit of a kick out of this.

--Josh Marshall

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06.01.07 -- 8:28PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

A new poll finds that the American public gives Rudy and Hillary the best odds of winning the nominations of their respective parties. That and more political news of the day in our Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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06.01.07 -- 5:33PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Just a lil' more background on Karl Rove, Alabama and William Canary.

As the article in this morning's Times explains, William Canary -- the guy who allegedly said he'd talked to Rove about getting the DOJ to take care of Don Siegelman -- is the head of something called the Business Council of Alabama.

The BCoA happens to be the GOP group that brought Rove to Alabama in the early 1990s to help flip the state's Supreme Court to the GOP. My old pal Josh Green detailed the relationship in great depth in this November 2004 article in The Atlantic Monthly.

So, we can be quite sure that Canary knows Rove very well.

The article also explains how Rove used the vote fraud bamboozlement and charges that his client's opponent was a pedophile to win a court race. But, that's just a bonus.

--Josh Marshall

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06.01.07 -- 4:26PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Hmmmm. That adds a little spice to the mix. I noted earlier today that attorneys for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D) got an affidavit from a Republican lawyer from Alabama who says she was on a conference call in which the husband of the US Attorney in the case said "his girls" were going to take care of Siegelman. Now Time has the actual affidavit. And it includes this quote ...

Canary said "not to worry — that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman," the Simpson affidavit says.

Now, even for those of us who've been hot on the trail of the Attorney Purge should recognize that there are a lot of legitimately corrupt pols that will try to use the scandal to skate. But this seems like a lot more than smoke or vague allegations.

The affidavit is from Dana Jill Simpson, an apparently respected Republican lawyer from the state. William Canary, is a GOP operative with close ties to Rove, according to the Times. And his wife is the US Attorney in the jurisdiction in question.

If he said he talked to Rove and that Rove said he'd contacted the Department of Justice about pursuing Siegelman, I think this requires a much closer look.

--Josh Marshall

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06.01.07 -- 3:54PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Greg Anrig, Jr. fisks George Will's "Case for Conservatism."

--Andrew Golis

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06.01.07 -- 3:26PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

I think I'm starting to understand part of Fred Thompson's presidential strategy -- to connect himself to as many Bush administration scandals as possible, which is a very canny strategy. As John Dean points out here Thompson is perhaps the most prominent public advocate for a pardon for Scooter Libby as well as a frequent source of false statements about the Libby prosecution. He's also considering hiring Tim Griffin, star player in the US Attorney Purge scandal, as his presidential campaign manager.

Griffin, remember, is the Rove deputy who was appointed US Attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas under the USA Patriot Act. (Another factoid: We haven't reported all the details yet, but it was, ironically, Griffin's loose lips, in a very roundabout way, that played an important role in bringing the scandal to the front pages.)

I assume that Thompson will probably be working to insinuate himself into other Bush administration scandals. So let us know if you find other examples.

Late Update: Thompson has been popping up in so many places preaching the Scooter gospel, I was wondering: did he get hired to represent, advocate, whatever on behalf of getting Scooter a pardon? We contacted Thompson's spokesperson, Mark Corallo (who's also worked for the Scooter fund and Karl Rove), and asked if Thompson has received any cash for his advocacy. Answer: No, says Corallo.

--Josh Marshall

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06.01.07 -- 2:53PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D) was convicted on seven counts of public corruption last year. And he's scheduled to be sentenced on June 26th. The Times today has an article about Siegelman's attempts to stay out of prison and, in particular, the fact that his defense has now come forward with an affidavit from an attorney which arguably places his prosecution into the context of the US Attorney Purge and the larger politicization it was a part of.

The relevant passage of the pieces states ...

Now they have an affidavit from a lawyer who says she heard a top Republican operative in Alabama boast in 2002 that the United States attorneys in Alabama would “take care” of Mr. Siegelman. The operative, William Canary, is married to the United States attorney in Montgomery, Leura G. Canary. Mr. Canary, who heads the Business Council of Alabama, was an informal adviser to Bob Riley, a Republican, who defeated Mr. Siegelman in 2002.

Earlier, Mr. Canary worked in the White House under President Bush’s father and has close ties to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s top political strategist.

In the affidavit, the lawyer, Jill Simpson, said Mr. Canary’s remark was made in a conference call with her and Rob Riley, Governor Riley’s son and campaign manager.

Ms. Simpson said Mr. Canary assured the younger Mr. Riley that “his girls would take care of” Mr. Siegelman before he had a chance to run for the governor’s seat in 2006 and identified “his girls” as Leura Canary and Alice Martin, the United States attorney in Birmingham.

Now, on the other side of the equation is the fact that Canary recused herself from the case in response to Siegelman's complaints and the case was run by a career prosecutor who says he ran the whole show by himself with no input from Canary.

But let's set that aside for a second. Federal prosecutors are asking the judge to sentence Siegelman to 30 years in prison. Thirty years!

Now, given my focus on public corruption in the last few years, far be it from me to call for leniency on crooked pols. But this strikes me as wildly out of line with the sentences I've seen in the last couple years. For some context, Siegelman was acquitted on 25 counts and convicted on seven. With those charges Siegelman didn't pocket any money himself but rather, in the words of the Times, persuaded a wealthy businessman "to pay $500,000 to retire the debt of a political group that had campaigned to win voter approval for a state lottery."

Compare this to Duke Cunningham, perhaps the most brazen and audacious bribetaker in recent decades. Duke to cash payments from multiple federal contractors in exchange for securing defense contracts. Duke got eight years and four months in prison. Duke pleaded out, which probably took some time off his sentence. But nothing Siegelman was convicted of seems even remotely in Duke's league and yet they want to give him a sentence almost four times as long?

What am I missing?

--Josh Marshall

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06.01.07 -- 12:14PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Rudy's latest puzzling attack on Hillary: He hits her for promising to restore peace and prosperity.

--Greg Sargent

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06.01.07 -- 10:21AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Today's Must Read: back in 2001, the U.S. Army looked to the Soviets and Chinese for model interrogation techniques.

--Paul Kiel

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06.01.07 -- 10:20AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Alter on Iraq ...

So why the move to permanent bases in Iraq? For years, I have been reluctant to embrace the oil theory of American policymaking in the Middle East. I’ve subscribed to the notion that oil is only part of a complex set of strategic, political and moral issues animating American interests. I still believe that in the short term. Bush and the few remaining supporters of his policy are motivated by more than oil. They want to avoid a failed state in the middle of a volatile region.

But what does that aim have to do with permanent bases? The only two reasons to station troops in the Middle East for half a century are protecting oil supplies (reflecting a pessimistic view of energy independence) outside the normal channels of trade and diplomacy, and projecting raw military power. These are the imperial aims of an empire. During the cold war, charges of U.S. imperialism in Korea and Vietnam were false. Those wars were about superpower struggles. This time, the “I word" is not a left-wing epithet but a straightforward description of policy aims—yet another difference from those two older wars in Asia.

--Josh Marshall

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06.01.07 -- 9:56AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Conservative Catholics across the country organize to defeat Rudy Giuliani. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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06.01.07 -- 9:12AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Breaking on CNN: White House counselor Dan Bartlett resigning.

Update: More from the AP: he's "resigning to begin a career outside of government."

--Paul Kiel

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06.01.07 -- 12:09AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Fired McCain evangelical outreach campaign aides: Campaign just wanted an easy hook-up, no long term commitment.

--Josh Marshall

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05.31.07 -- 10:48PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

I always come to bash Mort Kondracke far more in sorrow than glee. But the sentiments are so silly and nonsensical that I simply must soldier on. Here in Roll Call (sub.req.) Kondracke explains how President Bush's catastrophic folly in Iraq is equally the fault of Republicans and Democrats.

The headline: "Kondracke: Bush Nears Debacle in Iraq, but Democrats Can’t Be Trusted Either"

Late Update: TPM Reader KD points out you can read the whole thing sans firewall at RealClearPolitics. Let the nonsensical moral equations roll!

--Josh Marshall

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05.31.07 -- 10:05PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

WashTimes:

The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors' rebellion over President Bush's immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, Ralph Z. Hallow will report Friday in The Washington Times.

Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee's chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff last week and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, the fired staffers told The Times.

--Josh Marshall

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05.31.07 -- 6:36PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Democratic Congressional leaders under fire over Iraq have a high-profile defender: Al Gore. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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05.31.07 -- 6:21PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

It's amazing how picky people are nowadays.

A big oil company whose executives have been indicted for bribing multiple Alaska politicians can't even be in charge of renovating the state's senior senator's house without people making it like there's something fishy going on.

Find out about Sen. Stevens (R-AK) latest travails.

--Josh Marshall

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05.31.07 -- 4:22PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Art Brodsky: three cheers for Edwards and Gore for their leadership in the arcane but important world of telecom policy.

--Andrew Golis

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05.31.07 -- 2:34PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) on the newly announced White House policy ...

"The White House announcement that they view South Korea as the model for a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq is further evidence of how dangerously out of touch with reality this administration is.

"On a strictly historical level, the comparison is comical. A high school student could tell you that there are virtually no similarities between the Korea and Iraq. The administration's inept attempts to come up with tortured historical analogies to try to justify a failed policy should be another reminder just how little credibility they have on the issue.

"The frightening truth is that there are obviously people within the Bush administration who believe that it is a good idea to occupy Iraq military on a permanent basis, which is why we have fought so hard in Congress to establish a clear policy to prevent permanent military bases in Iraq.

"The overwhelming majority of Iraqis want an end to the occupation, and for the White House to suggest that it will continue for another fifty years, or perhaps permanently, only fuels the insurgency and further endangers our troops.

"The American people are also calling for an end to the occupation, and the fact that the administration has responded by saying they think the occupation should be permanent just underlines not only how out of touch they are, but how critical it is for Congress to intervene to bring an end to this failed policy."

--Josh Marshall

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05.31.07 -- 2:21PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

U.S. Attorney who was on firing short-list mulls a 2008 challenge to Dem Rep. Chris Carney in Pennsylvania.

--Greg Sargent

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05.31.07 -- 2:12PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

TPM Reader JR writes ...

Re your argument that the quest for oil is a parsimonious explanation for the Iraq war. I have long doubted this proposition. Big Oil may be venal in its pursuit of profit, but it has an intimate knowledge of non-western political structures, and it's far from stupid. These interests would have known from the start that a cobbled together, post-colonial state like Iraq couldn't be invaded without catstrophic consequences. This set me wondering, though. I never did come across any substantial report on what Big Oil actually thought as this loony-tunes adventure popped up in the night. I don't mean the paid mouth-pieces but the power managers within the companies - those advised by anthropologists, political scientists, and other experts who actually have a clue about the workings of the real world.

I think this gets at one of the central confusions of this debate. When you say it's about controlling the oil, that's not the same as saying that the oil companies themselves -- ExxonMobil, Shell, etc. -- want to own the oil in the ground or want more generous concessions from the governments. They probably do. But I don't think this is what that's about. The oil companies, in case you haven't noticed, make a decent amount of money under the current system of working with the local oligarchies and kleptocracies in the countries in question.

This is about the US controlling the region itself, having troops on the ground and structures in place so that none of the nominal governments in the region can act on their own without US assent. That's a whole different question than which companies have the right to pump the stuff out of the ground.

--Josh Marshall

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05.31.07 -- 12:59PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Another voter fraud casualty?

Fingerprints of Republican voter fraud kingpin Mark "Thor" Hearne appear on firing of U.S. Attorney Todd Graves in Kansas City.

--Paul Kiel

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05.31.07 -- 12:45PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

A new poll undermines one of the Rudy campaign's key talking points about the strength he'd have in a general election.

--Greg Sargent

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05.31.07 -- 12:26PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Shock and disappointment seemed to be the prevalent reactions to the recent Democratic compromise on the Iraq funding bill. Whether you agree or disagree with the bill itself, it makes little sense to be surprised when the Democrats were telegraphing the move in advance. We explain in today’s episode of TPMtv ...

Late Update: For a summary of today's episode, click here.

--Ben Craw

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05.31.07 -- 12:12PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

TPM Reader DM chimes in ...

I think saying that our current adventures are all about the oil is only half right. I think that it’s more about political economy broadly speaking, with oil being a necessary factor in the case of the Middle East. Since the dawn of neoliberalism in the 1970s and its takeoff as a grand strategy in the 1980s, a key ideological aim of American policy makers from the Reagan administration through the Clinton administration and up to Bush II has been fostering neoliberal economic policies around the globe: freer trade, rule by law (necessary for the predictability in rules that transnational firms seek), an animus against price fixing, privatization, and anti-import substitution. If a nation or region has had any real potential as trade partner, consumer, and exporter of goods, the US has pushed neoliberal policies on them. Sometimes they have succeeded and sometimes they haven’t. And when the US has succeeded in causing policy changes, the results have been very mixed. The bottom line, though, is that neoliberalism – which is of course amenable to democracy – drives much of American foreign policy.

At any rate, when you look at the Middle East in 2001 (and now, frankly), you see the following: an economically important region whose lone key export industry is run by a cartel of states, not private firms. There is also very little rule of law in the economic sense, and price fixing has long been the order of the day. And a cartel of state-operated industries engaged in rampant price fixing goes against most of the core classical tenets of free trade.

When you look back to the 1990s, the neoliberal agenda acquired the veneer of common sense in the US among both liberals and conservatives. And you could see it pushed everywhere from Eastern Europe to Latin America to South Asia to parts of East Asia (particularly after the 1998 crash). It never penetrated the Middle East, however, despite the fact that unlike Africa (the other region beyond the pale when it came to neoliberal theory), it was economically very important.

So yeah, it’s about oil, but it’s about a much bigger thing as well: fostering a proverbial new world order of democratic capitalism based on neoliberal principles. The vision is hostile to socialism in all its guises, the corporatism that emerged in the interwar years, and to a lesser extent Keynesianism (because it’s harder to attack – Keynesianism’s intellectual and policy hold has remained powerful). Outside of economically unimportant states like Cuba and a host of African countries, Middle Eastern states are the last unreconstructed holdouts to this bold new era. The oil has allowed them to do this, but despite their oil wealth, they are by and large poor countries which outside of oil exports are very poorly integrated into the current global economic system. We want that to change.

Venezuela seems to be going in this direction now too, and our beef with them is about the same set of issues – state control, price fixing, reversing privatization, etc.

Even China has come around a bit, and while the US continues to complain about their economic policies, they’re too big for us to tackle.

This is all true, to an important extent. But let's add on a few more issues. In one sense what we are talking about here is simply US-backed globalization based on neo-liberal economic principles. This is a story we're all familiar with. In a modified form at least it's an agenda I agree with. And part of this broad meta-discussion is the role of US hard power in providing the undergirding of a neoliberal world economic order -- much as pre-WWI free trade era was an ideological and economic construct made possible by the dominance of the British Navy.

Okay, so set all that to one side. And let's get at another part of the question.

I think the perceived need to exercise de facto physical control over these oil resources points to a different goal, a different perception of the kind of world system we're trying to build and where we fit into it. It suggests that we no longer believe we will continue to have the sort of economic and political clout that will allow us to maintain our standards of living and power in the world. So we need to lock down physical control of the oil now with our military power -- the lagging indicator of national decline. In other words, we need to use it before we lose it. It's a very pessimistic vision. And a strategy that's really not panning out so well.

--Josh Marshall

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05.31.07 -- 11:15AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

More bizarre revelations from Democratic strategist and former Edwards/Kerry adviser Bob Shrum, who advised Edwards to vote for the Iraq War.

Turns out he worried that he himself would look left-wing if Edwards voted against the invasion.

--Greg Sargent

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05.31.07 -- 11:05AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Paul Krugman has jumped into this week's TPMCafe Book Club, aka The Rumble in the Econ Department.

If you're just checking into the debate, read a quick summary of what you've missed here.

--Andrew Golis

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05.31.07 -- 10:29AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Today's Must Read: what happens when a U.S. attorney raises the issue of possible discrimination against minority voters with the Justice Department division charged with protecting minority voters? What about when the affected voters are largely Democratic?

--Paul Kiel

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05.31.07 -- 10:14AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Troops ask Lieberman during visit to Iraq when they're going home. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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05.31.07 -- 10:01AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Another TPM Reader chimes in on our running debate ...

Of course oil is the motive, not just oil in iraq but in iran and saudi and kuwait. democracy is the sales pitch; it's not much of one since there's no intent to have democracy in saudi or kuwait but it's the sale pitch. some salesmen believe such pitches. but what follows is a national commitment to dependence on oil and a refusal to reengineer energy to stop global warming. this is perhaps in the long run the single worst aspect of the whole mad crazy cruel plan.

The election of 08 is really about this plan versus some alternative. Hillary unfortunately is pretty much aligned with the bush plan, although she doesnt want to say so. she would not withdraw all the troops and would stay in the region forever.

This really is the big picture. I broach it in today's episode of TPMtv, which will be coming up later this morning. And I'm hoping we'll be able to get into it more in next week's episodes. We're fast approaching the time when the time required to organize an orderly departure from Iraq is longer than the time left in the Bush presidency. I'm not saying we let the dying continue in January 2009 and not try to do anything about it. I'm just trying to focus on the fact that as we try to end the president's disastrous policies now with the very blunt implements of congressional power we need to also be thinking of a broader strategy for what comes after Bush. Because getting out of Iraq is only one part of the puzzle, in some ways not even that big a part. We can't get back to where we were before the invasion. A whole series of dynamics have been let loose that can't be bottled back up just by getting out. Troop deployment in Iraq, combatting terrorism, the organization of our economy are all part of one puzzle. And the reader's right. That's the puzzle that's on the table in 2008. So who's talking about it? Who's addressing the issue at that level?

--Josh Marshall

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05.31.07 -- 12:37AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

One of my first introductions to how aggressively the post-2000 Rove GOP was going to use bogus 'vote fraud' stories to stop minorities from being able to vote came in the extremely close South Dakota senate race back in 2002. That was when Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) barely squeaked out a victory over Jon Thune (R). Thune, of course, came back two years later and defeated South Dakota's senior senator and then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D). If you go back and look through the TPM Search for 'South Dakota Fraud' you'll find a decent cross section of the reporting and writing I did on the subject in the spring and summer of 2002.

It was a riveting and also profoundly disgusting story. The whole rightwing noise machine from Sioux Falls to the Journal OpEd page spreading tales about the rampant vote fraud on the state's Indian reservations. For folks more familiar with how this stuff works in the South it was reminiscent of something from early in the 20th century or late in the 19th. And the aftermath was a lot like the cases we've learned about in the aftermath of the Attorney Purge. Lots of lurid stories and in the end usually it's left to some reasonably honest Republican officeholder to scrutinize the whole thing and have to announce that all the stories were bogus.

In any case, I mention all this because the LA Times has a good article out this evening explaining one of the key reasons that former Minnesota US Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger ended up on the firing list: took too strong a stand in favor of protecting the voting rights of the state's sizeable Native American population.

The state's Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer wanted to use her office to crack down on Native American voting. But apparently Heffelfinger wouldn't play ball.

Remember the Rove/Gonzales motto: Just because there's a 15th Amendment doesn't mean we have to take it lying down.

--Josh Marshall

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05.31.07 -- 12:24AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

TPM Reader WG on Bush, Korea and all the flailing spinmeisters at the White House ginning up more ideas of what the hell it is we're doing ...

I find it hard to believe that people are actually taking Bush's Korean analogy seriously with respect to Iraq. And, so far, the Democratic Congress seems to be giving him a pass on it. The timing was good, of course. He caught Congress with barbeque on their collective chin.

As you noticed, there are some remarkable differences between Korea and Iraq, not the least of which is the fact that there never was a Korean resistance to our occupation of the South or to the Soviet occupation of the North, following the liberation, division and occupation of Korea after World War II. The struggle for unification between the South and the North came down to a rather traditional war and a test of military power between the US on one side and the Soviets and China on the other.

The proper analogy for Iraq is still Vietnam. While the government we created in South Korea was functional and able to control its population, the government we have created in Iraq, like the government we created in South Vietnam, has been largely irrelevant. In Iraq, Shiites and Sunnis are fighting us, our al Maliki government, the Kurds, each other and themselves in a last-man-standing free-for-all. While it's tempting to try to find some method to the madness of the last few years, you won't find it in a 50-year plan to control the oil supply of the Middle East. That's a pipe dream that didn't survive the occupation. By floating the Korean occupation as an analogy for Iraq, Bush has created one more leaky vessel to cling to as his presidency is swept into the backwaters of history. We may be in Afghanistan 50 years from now, but we won't be in Iraq.

To a degree I agree the whole 'control the natural resources of the region' idea didn't survive 'first contact', to paraphrase the US Army line about military planning. But denial is a useful thing. And a lot of the flailing about of recent years, actually most of it, has been an effort to find some way to sustain the original vision.

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 11:39PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

I've gotten a number of responses from TPM Readers to my earlier post arguing that the only credible understanding of the guiding aim of the Iraq adventure -- at this point, with all we've learned -- is long-term domination of strategy natural resources. Or to put it more bluntly, to control the oil.

A few readers say this is too sour an assumption. TPM Reader BH, after outlining a democratizing theory, says ...

If you view the situation through the lens of neo-conservative foreign policy, it becomes clear that ensuring the successful installation of a functioning democracy in Iraq -- which will theoretically spark democratic revolutions across the Middle East, all benefitting the U.S. indirectly -- is the Bush administration's likely justification for maintaining a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq. At present, your logic seems to be: There are only two possible purposes of maintain a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq: nefarious (i.e., securing the world's oil supply), and virtuous (i.e., ensuring democracy for Iraq). Bush is nefarious. Therefore, the purpose of Bush's desire to maintain a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq is to secure the world's oil supply.

I don't find any of this persuasive. In fact, I find the whole bit of reasoning needlessly over-determined. I myself wrote a long article just before the war started, explaining how the grand neo-con plan was to institute an outward unfolding cycle of democratizing and chaos in the region that would ultimately topple almost all the governments in the region.

So is it about democracy after all? Of course, it is. But approaching the matter at this level of soft and vague generality is meaningless. If you're out to control a country, its territory or its resources, of course having the country be stable, respectable and democratic is a great thing. There are always these great tag lines that we want an Iraq that is democratic, is allied to the US in our various endeavors, doesn't threaten its neighbors, fights with us in the war on terror, etc. If nothing else, even the most cynical and militaristic of Americans -- the Dick Cheney type -- wants democracies so long as they are pliant and generate the right policies. But this is only the idealism of laziness, a fuzzy coating for real aims that sometimes the deeply cynical even half believe.

But given the particularities of the situation, the permanent occupation of Iraq simply isn't compatible with the aim of democratizing the country. It's just something that would be nice. And wouldn't it? Look at their words and their actions and you see that what the people in the White House mean by 'democratization' is to keep our troops in the country long enough that they start ordering their affairs peaceably and through orderly processes and decide through those processes that they want us to stay and continue using the country as a base for US power in the region. It's a grand have your cake and eat it too.

Is it all to get hold of the oil? I don't think large groups of people are often able to sustain such crude goals, at least not that baldly stated, even to themselves. But that's the heart of it. Bundled up in their own shallow and lazy thinking, the main actors' idea was that we can take this region where a lot of people really don't seem to like us much and if we just sit on them long enough we can get them to like us, because that's what happened in Germany and Japan, right?

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 8:13PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

The president says so many stupid things about Iraq that it's sort of hard to know which ones to focus on. But in purely political terms if no others I would think the president's critics would want to focus in on what the White House said about how long the president thinks US troops should stay in Iraq.

By saying that Korea is the model for the US military presence in Iraq, the president is saying that he envisions the US military presence in Iraq continuing for many decades into the future.

Or let's put that in more stark terms, for most of you reading this post, the president envisions US troops remaining in Iraq long after you're dead.

Talking about drawdowns in late 2007 or by the end of 2008 is basically a joke, in other words. Countries can really only think on forty or fifty year horizons. So what this means is that the US military presence in Iraq is permanent.

As TPM Reader DS made clear in the email we posted earlier, there's only one goal that makes sense of that strategy. And that is to permanently dominate the cluster of oil fields in southern Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. Nothing to do with democracy, as though that needed saying. But also nothing to do with terrorism. We're permanently occupying Iraq to lock down the world oil supply.

But all that is commentary. The headline is clear enough to get the message out: the president wants US troops in Iraq for decades to come.

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 7:54PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Outta there!

The DOJ has just told the Arkansas congressional delegation that Tim Griffin -- star player in the US Attorney Purge story -- is out as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

His resignation is effective Friday, June 1st.

No word on whether Griffin is taking that job as campaign manager for Fred Thompson's incipient presidential campaign. (No, we kid you not ...)

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 7:02PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson pull out of Fox News/CBC debate, leaving only Biden, Kucinich and Gravel. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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05.30.07 -- 2:39PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

You know things are bad for a lawmaker when you start hearing the "not a target" line.

Which means things are bad for Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK).

--Paul Kiel

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05.30.07 -- 2:32PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

TPM Reader JM with more Asia-Middle East geopolitical speculation ...

I'm not arguing for this, but I can see a scenario where the real-politic crowd may take Bush's desire for permanent presence in Iraq.

The idea of hacking Iraq into 3 regions isn't going anywhere, presumably because it would ignite an even bigger powder keg (although I'm not sure this administration makes such calculations anymore). Still, Bush could easily have his permanent presence in northern Iraq. We've essentially been there since 1991 anyway -- and under western protection the region has rebuilt and thrived. I wouldn't put it past Bush to retreat to the Kurd-dominated north, setting up a defacto 1950's Korea/West Germany style reality.

I can easily imagine future rightwing foreign policy being hung on the frame of 'defending secular Islam from radical extremism...' ala Taiwan, another non-existent,defacto national entity.

If you buy into the terms that TPM Reader DS specs out below, this approach makes a certain amount of sense. With one very big exception: it's not where the oil is, or at least not enough of it. And that's the whole point. Close enough to menace but not to control.

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 1:57PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Fred Thompson confirms it: He's planning to run for President.

--Greg Sargent

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05.30.07 -- 1:33PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

TPM Reader DS follows up on the White House's new Korea/Iraq analogy ...

I have believed, from the beginning – though I have always hoped to be proven wrong – that the Bush White House (i.e. Cheney) has had as its principal goal in Iraq the establishment of a permanent military presence in that country. The neocon dream of transforming the region (from the PNAC manifesto and elsewhere) has always envisaged such a military presence. These people see America’s long-term national interest in terms of (overwhelmingly, though not exclusively) energy security and therefore the control of energy supplies. This means control of the flow of oil from the Middle East. [Relying on a mutual-interest-between-sovereign-states approach, à la western Europe, is considered naïve when it comes to Arab countries.] Everything else – from the initial justifications for the war to the current rhetoric-of-the-day (we have to ensure stability, we have to fight them there or they’ll follow us here, etc.…) – is aimed at making such control, by means of long-term military presence, possible. When 9/11 took Saudi Arabia off the table as a viable base, some other country had to be found – but of significant size. Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, et al. are simply not big enough.

Cheney, in particular, is vicious enough to contemplate a long-term presence at the cost of a daily toll in the dozens or hundreds as well as ongoing domestic opposition. He’s convinced that the US needs to be there to keep an eye on – and always to be in a position to intervene in the affairs of the region, with particular attention to the the Arabian Sea oil fields, but also the Caspian Sea oil and gas fields. Bin Laden was the publicly accepted casus belli for the invasion of Afghanistan; but finding Bin Laden is irrelevant to the true purpose: to be on the ground, to have bases, to be able to project force in the region. [Remember that, within a month or two of 9/11, Bush and his people are known to have talked about going into Iraq in order to control the southern oil fields. This was explicit, and it has been widely reported, through seldom dwelt upon as explanatory of the whole enterprise.] Similarly with Iraq: WMD, democracy, removing a tyrant, fighting Al Qaeda,… all offered for public consumption, but none of any real importance to the White House and all irrelevant to the actual goal. When the public rationales evaporate, or when events make the achievement of any of the rationales still being offered in fact impossible of achievement, the White House will still keep troops on the ground – even when their presence makes the stated goals even harder to achieve (e.g. reconciliation between Iraq’s factions), the White House will find some other justification for staying, no matter how weak. Because staying is itself the objective.

Occam’s Razor supports me in this; the creation and maintenance of a long-term military presence is the only policy objective that unifies, aligns and makes sense of everything Bush has done. If any other goal is posited, his policies and actions are incoherent; but if this goal is posited, they all make sense.

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 1:29PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

As we noted earlier, the Justice Department's internal watchdogs have expanded their probe of the U.S. attorney firings. And as we detail here, it's clear that they're looking far beyond the firings themselves -- or even just what Monica Goodling or Kyle Sampson were up to. The probe will investigate the politicization of the department in a number of other areas.

--Paul Kiel

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05.30.07 -- 1:12PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Much to President Bush's dismay, the US Attorney investigation doesn’t appear to be wrapping up anytime soon. We give you the rundown of what’s to come in the approaching weeks in today’s episode of TPMtv ...

Late Update: For a summary of today's episode, click here.

--Ben Craw

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05.30.07 -- 12:48PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

DOJ's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility notifies Senate Judiciary Committee that the US Attorney firing probe has been expanded to investigate politicized hiring practices.

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 12:10PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

From Reuters ...

President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

The United States has had thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea to guard against a North Korean invasion for 50 years.

Democrats in control of the U.S. Congress have been pressing Bush to agree to a timetable for pulling troops from Iraq, an idea firmly opposed by the president.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush would like to see a U.S. role in Iraq ultimately similar to that in South Korea.

"The Korean model is one in which the United States provides a security presence, but you've had the development of a successful democracy in South Korea over a period of years, and, therefore, the United States is there as a force of stability," Snow told reporters.

It is hard not to take this as another example that the White House is seriously out of touch with both history and reality when it comes to Iraq.

Let's run through a few differences. First, Korea is an ethnically and culturally homogenous state. Iraq, not a culturally or ethnically homogenous state. And needless to say, that has been a point of some real difficulty. Second, Korea a democracy? Well, yes, for about fifteen years. Without going into all the details, South Korea was a military dictatorship for most of the Cold War.

A deeper acquaintance with the last half century of Korean history would suggest that a) a fifty year occupation, b) lack of democracy and c) a hostile neighbor were deeply intertwined. Remove B or C and you probably don't have A, certainly no A if you lose both B and C.

The more telling dissimilarity is the distinction between frontline troops and troops for stability. At least notionally (and largely this was true) US troops have been in South Korea to ward off an invasion from the North. US troops aren't in Iraq to ward off any invasion. Invasion from who? Saudi Arabia? Syria?

No, US troops are in Iraq for domestic security, in so many words, to protect it from itself, or to ensure the continued existence of an elected, pro-US government. That tells you that the US military presence in Iraq will never be as relatively bloodless as the US military presence in Korea since it has no external threat it's counterbalancing against. In a sense that the US deployment in Korea has never quite been, it is a sustained foreign military occupation.

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 10:24AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Fred Thompson edges closer to Presidential run. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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05.30.07 -- 10:21AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Excellent! Attorney star Tim Griffin interviewing to run Fred Thompson's presidential campaign.

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 10:05AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Today's Must Read: for muck and blunders, nobody beats former congressman, investigation subject, and unpopular Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons (R).

--Paul Kiel

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05.30.07 -- 10:04AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

From yesterday's Nelson Report, why Bob Zoellick may not be a complete safe pick for World Bank chief after all ...

There is a potential down side, of course, as with any nomination made in extremis, and in Zoellick's case it's the risk that certain personality traits will carry over, and create problems with his Bank colleagues different than the Wolfowitz debacle, but no less damaging, should they occur.

Recall that Zoellick was forced out of his presidency of CSIS here in Washington, with the official reason being his too-overt politicking for then-Republican nominee George Bush. In reality, veterans of CSIS during that period will tell you, Zoellick had by that time made himself very unpopular with both the Board and his colleagues for some of the same problems which cropped up at USTR:

He has a terrible temper, he is "prone to tirades" - a daily dump on Japan generally, and its trade ministers specifically, came to be something of a ritual at USTR - and he has been known to keep "enemies lists". Probably this Report tonight will get us back on one from which it took us two years to escape. But you do have to wonder the level of joy in Tokyo over his appointment will be tempered by memory of his many public and private condemnations.

It was long a matter of "inside knowledge" that Rice and President Bush respected Zoellick to the point of giving him virtual autonomy in his spheres of operation, but that Zoellick's penchant to lecture, point by point, with little concern for editorial compression, drove them slightly bonkers. A telling story attributed to Condi Rice by a fellow journalist, "Condi let's Bob do whatever he wants, so long as she doesn't have to talk to him about it."

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 9:08AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

In case you missed it yesterday: How the Justice Department got caught politicizing immigration judge appointments.

--Paul Kiel

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05.30.07 -- 12:23AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Very uncomfortable.

"Enhanced interrogation", the Bush administration's preferred newspeak for torture, appears to have been coined by the Nazi Party in 1937.

There are way too many facile comparisons of whatever group or individual we dislike to Nazis. But when the shoe fits.

--Josh Marshall

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05.30.07 -- 12:14AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Six months plus ...

--Josh Marshall

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05.29.07 -- 10:23PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Toledo Newspaper Guild ratifies tentative agreement with the Toledo Blade.

--Josh Marshall

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05.29.07 -- 9:12PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Yesterday I posted a TPM Reader email that has stuck with me, almost as much as any other email I've gotten in the six-plus years I've been writing TPM. The email starts by excerpting and then pillorying a quote from Andrew Sullivan's blog.

This was all from four years ago -- July 2003. Sullivan's position on the war at the time was vastly different. In this case, he was supporting the so-called 'flypaper' theory of the Iraq war. But I didn't publish the letter to revisit an embarrassing quote. I did so only for the purpose of reprinting the email in its entirety -- because the email itself is sort of a touchstone for me.

For what it's worth, Sullivan's is one of a small handful -- perhaps a sub-handful -- of blogs I read every day. Not that I agree with every opinion or observation -- though we're certainly much more in sync than we were a few years ago -- just that I keep coming back. Make of it what you will. I think it makes me a fan.

--Josh Marshall

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05.29.07 -- 7:12PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

For the last couple weeks TPM Readers have been writing in either to express outrage about or ask us to look into something called Presidential National Security Directive 51. The order, released May 9th, deals with how the executive branch should react in response to an array of catastrophic natural or man-made events. And at least on first blush it can read like it takes a rather broad brush approach to the existence of three branches of government, the constitution, etc. The story has been bubbling around the net. So I had the folks at TPMmuckraker look into it. We talked to folks at several of the major advocacy organizations that follow this sort of thing. And this is what we found.

--Josh Marshall

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05.29.07 -- 7:00PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Obama releases his big health care plan -- and the reviews are beginning to trickle in. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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05.29.07 -- 6:59PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Dan Froomkin provides a helpful close reading of the latest Pat Fitzgerald findings to put the Vice President's criminal conduct in perspective.

--Josh Marshall

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05.29.07 -- 5:03PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

One of the key charges made by Timesmen Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta in their much-talked-about new book on Hillary's lifelong ambitions is that way back in the early nineties, she and Bill were already plotting two terms in the White House for her, too.

But we've just received our copy of legendary reporter Carl Bernstein's forthcoming book on Hillary -- and his reporting appears to directly contradict this key allegation made by Gerth and Van Natta.

Who's right?

--Greg Sargent

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05.29.07 -- 2:00PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Dissent in the ranks of Milton's army.

We're breaking the rules a bit with this week's TPMCafe Book Club. We've assembling a distinguished group of economists to discuss Christopher Hayes' feature Nation article "Hip Heterodoxy."

James Galbraith, Tyler Cowen, Max Sawicky, David Warsh, Diane Coyle, Thomas Palley and Paul Krugman will be joining Hayes to discuss his argument that the field of economics is policed by a neoclassical mafia that creates taboos and enforces boundaries.

Blood will be drawn.

--Andrew Golis

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05.29.07 -- 1:35PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Uh oh. Alaskan federal corruption investigation finally touches Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK).

--Paul Kiel

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05.29.07 -- 1:15PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Will the media and pundits cede Rudy the appearance of having national security experience based on nothing more than the fact that he was Mayor of New York City on 9/11?

Sure looks that way, if this from The Politico and this from MSNBC are any indication.

--Greg Sargent

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05.29.07 -- 12:29PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

What the other side eats ...

From the start of a promotional email from HumanEventsOnline.com ...

Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a Muslim muezzin. Millions of Europeans already do.

And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength" -- while Talibanic enforcers cruise our cities burning books and barber shops... the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state" ... and the Hollywood Left gives up gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy.

If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious and brilliant Mark Steyn -- the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world -- shows to devastating effect in his New York Times bestseller, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.

--Josh Marshall

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05.29.07 -- 12:24PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

A lot of TPMtv viewers have been wondering about those curious logos at the beginning and end of each show: Veracifier and nextnewnetworks. We tell you what they're all about, and do our best to explain just what exactly that made-up word "veracifier" really means, in today's episode of TPMtv ...

--Ben Craw

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05.29.07 -- 12:03PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Democrats continue to hold off on call for special prosecutor in U.S. attorney probe.

--Paul Kiel

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05.29.07 -- 11:17AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

"Just the facts, Ma'am."

Scott Winship sits down at TPMCafe's Table for One to discuss empiricism in progressive politics.

--Andrew Golis

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05.29.07 -- 10:44AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

The Romney camp struggles to adjust to the surprisingly good poll numbers he's been enjoying of late. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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05.29.07 -- 10:34AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

I guess I'm an interloper on the Republicans' presidential primary debate, but I can't help noticing that they've again alighted on the question of whether we should examine the role that our own foreign policy played in setting the stage for the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, whether our foreign policy played any role whatsoever in setting the stage for the attacks.

This is a silly debate in which two entirely distinct questions are intentionally conflated. First, did our pre-9/11 foreign policy play a role in creating 9/11? Of course, it did. Does anyone imagine that 9/11 would have taken place if the US were not the dominant military power in the Middle East? Into that catch-all one can add in the Persian Gulf War, US bases in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, US support for Israel, US support for Egypt. Ron Paul is saying that had we pursued a Taftian isolationist foreign policy that 9/11 might well not have happened. And again, that seems undeniable.

This only gets us to the question of whether these were wise policies in the first place and whether they were worth their apparent costs. There's a big difference between assigning blame and recognizing some cause and effect relationships from our actions in the world. To do otherwise is simply to put more kinds of discussion off limits and fasten us more tightly to our own failed policies. And this is particularly relevant to how we unwind the trap we've created in Iraq, with our own presence in the country and to an extent the situation we've created quite apart from our presence, becoming a factory of terror for export around the world.

--Josh Marshall

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05.29.07 -- 10:30AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Today's Must Read: President Bush polls from his gut and finds "most Americans" support his policies.

--Paul Kiel

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05.29.07 -- 10:03AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen makes the rather creative case that Bush is a "sentimental softie" and a "neo-liberal."

--Greg Sargent

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05.28.07 -- 9:17PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

There's a very troubling, but not very surprising article in today's Times about the outward flow of jihadists from Iraq into neighboring countries. Lebanon, Jordan are cited as examples. But one could likely list all the neighboring states and Europe and the United States as destinations for fighters either trained in the Iraqi insurgency or wielding methods honed there against American troops.

On its face it is almost a storyline you might expect war supporters to embrace -- Iraq as the central front in the 'War on Terror', a breeding ground of terrorism now spreading to other countries. Again we see the leitmotif of the president's war on terror -- evidence of the abject failure of his policies marshaled as evidence of the necessity of pursuing them.

We're so far deep into this mess that sometimes I believe we're past the point of argument. You look at the evidence and you either see it or you don't. Or perhaps more agnostically, you look at the evidence and one of two completely contradictory narratives makes sense. Whichever is right, the assumptions brought to the issue are so divergent as almost to defy argument or debate.

At moments like this, a thought, actually an email, comes back into my head. I've referred to it a couple times over the years. But it was one TPM Reader TR sent in back on July 27th 2003, almost four years ago and only about four months after the war. This was back when what was then called the 'flypaper' theory of the Iraq War was first kicking into gear in the right-wing press.

From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To:
Subject:
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 18:28:22 -0600
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Being based in Iraq helps us not only because of actual bases; but because the American presence there diverts terrorist attention away from elsewhere. By confronting them directly in Iraq, we get to engage them in a military setting that plays to our strengths rather than to theirs'. Continued conflict in Iraq, in other words, needn't always be bad news. It may be a sign that we are drawing the terrorists out of the woodwork and tackling them in the open.--Andrew Sullivan

Now that's extraordinary. Kind of like saying "by having a dirty hospital, we fight germs on our terms," or something ridiculous. Its not as if there's a finite number of "terrorists"--chances are anyone fighting us in Iraq never would've thought twice about attacking us elsewhere before we invaded--we're breeding germs is all. Part of the reason Saddam was so brutal was because he had plenty of people as brutal as he going after him all the time--now we've unleashed those forces against our troops. Has there yet been any sign that our real nemesis, Osama and al Qaeda, are in Iraq? No. What we're really doing is diverting our resources while al Qaeda sits back and reaps the windfall of our distraction and formulates their next attack. What horrible logic to rationalize the continuing deaths of American soldiers caught up in a situation that had nothing to with al Qaeda, nuclear weapons, or anything else of significance.

TR, as you can see, starts by clipping a passage from Andrew Sullivan's site. And Andrew's moved a long way on these points over the last four years. I only include this now for the sake of completeness, to share with you the email in its entirety.

Of course, give it time, give it time. This was only four months into the war. And, as you know, eventually some folks in Iraq adopted the name al Qaida, namely al Qaida in Mesopotamia. So now we can say it's al Qaida. And of course al Qaida, or whoever still owns the rights to the franchise, is happy to call it that too since it puffs up their own organizational profile.

TR's point isn't one that others haven't made. But at the time I got his note it struck me as so hilarious and bitingly on point, hilarious because it stated in this unvarnished fashion, in disbelief, the essential ridiculousness of the premise of the entire fight. And while it seems obvious, the argument he was attacking really is still the central one animating our policy in Iraq.

--Josh Marshall

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05.28.07 -- 12:18PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Former John Kerry adviser Jim Jordan allegedly told him in 2002 that he would "never be President" unless he voted for the Iraq War. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Memorial Day Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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05.28.07 -- 10:43AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Today's Must Read: checking in with the soldiers in Iraq on Memorial Day. What do they think of the war?

--Paul Kiel

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05.27.07 -- 10:10PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Sessions is feeling antsy

For all of the talk from war supporters about lowering expectations for September -- John McCain has been at it, as has Gen. Petraeus -- it appears the train has already left the station. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who no one would describe as anything but a very conservative Bush loyalist, appears to have climbed aboard.

[Sessions] indicated Sunday that Republicans will be ready by September to look at bipartisan efforts to draw down the troops that were part of the surge to help secure Baghdad.

"We have to be realistic," Sessions said on CBS's Face the Nation. "We have to know that we can't achieve everything we'd like to achieve. We have a limited number of men and women we can send to Iraq, and we can't overburden them."

The senator added that, when General David Petraeus is reporting back on the progress of the surge in September, "I think most of the people in Congress believe, unless something extraordinary occurs, that we should be on a move to draw those surge numbers down." [...]

"I don't think we need to be an occupying power," said Sessions, who hopes that bipartisan solutions can be found on Iraq. "This is a fine line we've walked, and this surge has got to be temporary.... We cannot sustain this level, in my opinion, in Iraq and Afghanistan much longer."

When Chuck Hagel makes comments like these, it's expected. When Jeff Sessions makes them, it's unusual.

In addition to Sessions, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) recently said he "won't be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq" by September. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said he'll need to see "significant changes" by September. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) wants a change if the policy isn't working "by the time we get to September." Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) said, "There is a sense that by September, you've got to see real action on the part of Iraqis. I think everybody knows that, I really do."

We'll see. Anyone who has ever bet on congressional Republicans bucking the White House on war policy has lost money. Either way, whether war supporters like it or not, September is circled on DC's calendar.

--Steve Benen

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05.27.07 -- 8:07PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Talking to Iran

Let's look back to Jan. 11, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat at the witness table in Hearing Room 106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building explaining why "those who talk about engagement with Syria and Iran" are all wet. "That's not diplomacy -- that's extortion," she said.

The administration has already reversed course on its policy towards Syria, with Rice having engaged in direct, bilateral talks with Syria' foreign minister a few weeks ago. But direct discussions with Iran were always considered far more controversial. As far as the Bush gang is concerned, Iran needs to be isolated, not engaged. To talk to Iran is to "reward bad behavior." We've gone a quarter-century without talking to Iran, and Bush wasn't about to strike up a conversation, especially given the Ahmadinejad regime.

At least, that was the policy.

U.S. diplomats said Monday's scheduled talks with Iran will be limited to discussions about Iraq's security, and not about the unresolved issues of detained Americans in Iran or the country's nuclear program.

The meeting in Baghdad will be the first public and formal meeting between U.S. and Iranian representatives since the United States cut off diplomatic relations 27 years ago.

"The issue at hand in the meeting between [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq] Ryan Crocker and the Iranian representative ... is going to be focused on Iraq and stabilizing Iraq," U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last week.

I don't disagree with the diplomatic decision, but it's worth noting that after years of saying talks with Iran would be reckless and irresponsible, the Bush gang is grudgingly accepting the reality that Dems have been pushing for quite a while.

Would it be rude to point out how often this has happened of late? Dems said Bush should talk directly to Syria; Bush said Dems were weak to even suggest it; and Bush eventually came around. Dems said Bush should talk to North Korea and use Clinton's Agreed Framework as a model for negotiations; Bush said this was out of the question; and Bush eventually came around. Dems said Bush should increase the size of the U.S. military; Bush said this was unnecessary; and Bush eventually came around.

And Dems said Bush should engage Iran in direct talks, particularly on Iraq. It took a while, but the president came around on this, too.

For years, all we've heard from the right is that Bush is a bold visionary when it comes to foreign policy, and Dems are weak and clueless. And yet, here we are, watching the White House embrace the Dems' approach on most of the nation's major foreign policy challenges.

Now, if Bush could just bring himself to accept the Democratic line on Iraq, too, we'd really see some progress.

--Steve Benen

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05.27.07 -- 7:08PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

War in Iraq vs. Anna Nicole Smith

There’s ample evidence that Fox News viewers tend to be surprisingly uninformed about current events. We’re starting to get a better sense as to why that is.

What’s more important: Iraq or Anna Nicole Smith? Depends on which network you’re watching.

According to [the Project for Excellence in Journalism's] first quarter News Coverage Index, “MSNBC and CNN were much more consumed with the war in Iraq than was Fox.”

In daytime, FNC devoted 6 percent of its time to Iraq, and 17 percent of its time to Anna Nicole. For CNN, the mix was 20 percent Iraq, 5 percent Anna; for MSNBC, the mix was 18 percent Iraq, 10 percent Anna.

“Fox also stood out for its lack of coverage on the firings of the U.S. attorneys, compared with the other channels. The story, which gained real momentum in mid March, consumed a mere 2% of Fox’s total airtime. CNN devoted twice that percent (4%) and MSNBC four times (8%).”

Keep in mind, in February, Fox News personality John Gibson accused journalists of “news-guy snobbery” over their war coverage. Mocking CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Gibson said, “Oh, ‘There’s a war on! There’s a war on!’ Maybe, just maybe, people are a little weary, Mr. Cooper, of your war coverage, and they’d like a little something else.”

Why does the network even bother to put “news” in its name?

--Steve Benen

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05.27.07 -- 4:18PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

GOP rivals embrace unproven Iraq-9/11 tie

Today's must-read story comes by way of the Boston Globe's Peter Canellos, who reports on the highly misleading, if not downright false, rhetoric coming from the Republican presidential candidates on Iraq, al Qaeda, and the terrorist threat.

In defending the Iraq war, leading Republican presidential contenders are increasingly echoing words and phrases used by President Bush in the run-up to the war that reinforce the misleading impression that Iraq was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In the May 15 Republican debate in South Carolina, Senator John McCain of Arizona suggested that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would "follow us home" from Iraq -- a comment some viewers may have taken to mean that bin Laden was in Iraq, which he is not.

Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani asserted, in response to a question about Iraq, that "these people want to follow us here and they have followed us here. Fort Dix happened a week ago." However, none of the six people arrested for allegedly plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were from Iraq.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney identified numerous groups that he said have "come together" to try to bring down the United States, though specialists say few of the groups Romney cited have worked together and only some have threatened the United States.

"They want to bring down the West, particularly us," Romney declared. "And they've come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, with that intent."

It's a very strong piece. Canellos treads ground that may be familiar to those who follow the issue closely, but he details what the leading GOP candidates are saying and contrasts it with the truth. Not surprisingly, Rudy McRomney has been playing fast and loose with the facts, hoping that audiences won't recognize their carelessness. Somewhat surprisingly, Canellos notes that these three have been willing to go even further than the Bush White House, which isn't exactly known for its veracity on the issue.

Judith Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst, told the Globe, "There's a tendency to exaggerate in a debate. You push the envelope as far as you can."

The GOP's top tier, at this point, is pushing that envelope to the breaking point.

--Steve Benen

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05.27.07 -- 2:51PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Blackwater Contractors Open Fire in Baghdad

Once in a while, the ambiguous legal, political, and practical implications of Blackwater's private security forces in Iraq create problems that are, to put it mildly, awkward.

Employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm under contract to the State Department, opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days last week, and one of the incidents provoked a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

A Blackwater guard shot and killed an Iraqi driver Thursday near the Interior Ministry, according to three U.S. officials and one Iraqi official who were briefed on the incident but spoke on condition of anonymity because of a pending investigation. On Wednesday, a Blackwater-protected convoy was ambushed in downtown Baghdad, triggering a furious battle in which the security contractors, U.S. and Iraqi troops and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters were firing in a congested area.

Blackwater confirmed that its employees were involved in two shootings but could neither confirm nor deny that there had been any casualties, according to a company official who declined to be identified because of the firm's policy of not addressing incidents publicly.

As Steve Fainaru and Saad al-Izzi concede in their report, details about the incidents "remained sketchy." Apparently, an Iraqi driver got too close to a Blackwater convoy. Was there a mistake? Who's responsible? Who knows: "The Blackwater employees refused to divulge their names or details of the incident to Iraqi authorities.... Anne Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said the company did not discuss specific incidents."

As a result, as with most incidents involving private security firms operating in Iraq, we don't know exactly what happened and why. We do know, however, that Blackwater employees have vague legal standing in Iraq, little oversight, and the firepower necessary to do some damage.

In this case, we also know how ugly it got.

The officials described a tense standoff that ensued between the Blackwater guards and Interior Ministry forces -- both sides armed with assault rifles -- until a passing U.S. military convoy intervened.

As if the dynamic of the conflict wasn't complex enough, U.S. troops are now interceding in a gunfight between Iraqi Interior Ministry forces and employees of U.S. private security firm.

Great.

--Steve Benen

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05.27.07 -- 1:08PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Internal Hillary campaign memo lays out strategy for dealing with new, upended primary schedule. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Sunday Roundup.

--Greg Sargent

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05.27.07 -- 1:07PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Murtha isn't DeLay

The Washington Post editorial board apparently believes Tom DeLay's style of ruthless corruption is still around -- because Jack Murtha picked up where "The Hammer" left off.

The action unfolded on the Republican side of the House floor May 17. That's where Mr. Murtha, chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, laced into Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) for trying to stop a $23 million earmark for a drug intelligence center in Mr. Murtha's district. According to Mr. Rogers, Mr. Murtha threatened him in an explosive tirade complete with a slew of F-bombs and a barnyard expletive here and there. The ultimate Murtha message: "You will not get any earmarks now and forever." As a result, Mr. Rogers tried to get the BMOC of House Democrats reprimanded for such bald intimidation. That bid, unfortunately but not surprisingly, failed Tuesday. [...]

Camp Murtha wasn't inclined to respond to our inquiries about the Rogers confrontation. "He's just not going to comment on it," a spokesman said. But Mr. Murtha did reach out to Mr. Rogers on Wednesday. In a handwritten note, Mr. Murtha said he was sorry if his outburst offended Mr. Rogers.

For this incident, the Post describes Murtha as "Mr. Delay's Democratic Party pork-barrel twin."

To be sure, Murtha's earmark threat was inappropriate, and he's apologized. That style of politics has been common on the Hill for, say, a couple of centuries now, but the new Dem majority vowed to change the process.

But there's a key detail the Post editorial neglected to mention -- Murtha's threat was entirely hollow. As Dana Milbank explained this week, "By tacit agreement between the parties, Murtha controls only the Democratic earmarks and lets the ranking Republican on the committee, Bill Young of Florida, handle GOP earmarks." Murtha wasn't in a position to punish Rogers, even if he wanted to.

When DeLay threatened a House colleague, he or she knew DeLay would follow through. Murtha's threat was largely meaningless.

Comparing anyone to DeLay is a pretty low blow, but in Murtha's case, it's pretty silly.

--Steve Benen

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05.27.07 -- 12:22PM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

'This was a showdown'

There are a lot of interesting insights in Michael Isikoff's and Evan Thomas' Newsweek piece on what they call "The Gonzales Mess," but the follow-up to James Comey's hospital-room story stood out.

Back at the Justice Department, there is an equally extraordinary scene. Appalled by the White House's heavy-handed attempt to coerce the gravely ill attorney general, virtually the entire top leadership of the Justice Department is threatening to resign. The group includes the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum and the chief of the Criminal Division, Chris Wray. Some of them gather in the conference room of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who describes Ashcroft's bravely turning away the president's men from his hospital bed. The mood that night in the conference room was tense -- and sober.

"This was a showdown," says a former senior Justice Department official who was there. "Everybody understood the choice they were making and the gravity of the situation. Everybody knew what the stakes were." A different source estimated that as many as 30 top DOJ officials would have resigned.

I seem to recall Alberto Gonzales testifying under oath that wasn't any "serious disagreement about the program" at the Justice Department. Is that still operative?

--Steve Benen

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05.27.07 -- 11:06AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Dowd on Bush reasoning

A nice summary of the White House's Iraq reasoning from Maureen Dowd:

The president said an intelligence report (which turned out to be two years old) showed that Osama had been trying to send Qaeda terrorists in Iraq to attack America. So clearly, Osama is capable of multitasking: Order the killers in Iraq to go after American soldiers there and American civilians here. There AND here. Get it, W.?

The president is on a continuous loop of sophistry: We have to push on in Iraq because Al Qaeda is there, even though Al Qaeda is there because we pushed into Iraq. Our troops have to keep dying there because our troops have been dying there. We have to stay so the enemy doesn’t know we’re leaving. Osama hasn’t been found because he’s hiding.

The terrorists moved into George Bush’s Iraq, not Saddam Hussein’s. W.’s ranting about Al Qaeda there is like planting fleurs du mal and then complaining your garden is toxic.

--Steve Benen

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05.27.07 -- 9:40AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Cheney on Geneva Conventions

Dick Cheney, yesterday, at the United States Military Academy Commencement at West Point:

"As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away."

At the risk of sounding picky, is it too much to ask the Vice President to refer to the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States as good things? Perhaps protections that he's proud of?

--Steve Benen

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05.27.07 -- 8:34AM // link | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)

Wanted: U.S. Attorneys

Last week, we learned that prosecutor purge scandal had wreaked so much havoc at the Justice Department that no one wants to apply to replace Paul McNulty as the Deputy Attorney General. ("I'd rather trade places with Jose Padilla," joked Viet Dinh, a former senior Justice official under then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.)

This week, we learn that no one wants to be a Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney, either.

The Bush administration's decision to fire nine U.S. attorneys last year has created a new problem for the White House: The controversy appears to be discouraging applications for some of the 22 prosecutor posts that President Bush needs to fill. [...]

In Florida, the panel that's evaluating candidates and making recommendations to the White House has received only two applicants for the vacancy left by U.S. Attorney Paul Perez in Tampa - even after it extended the May 3 deadline to apply. Perez, who resigned in March, left for a private-sector job. He's said that he wasn't forced out.

"I personally was disappointed we didn't have more," said Michael J. Grindstaff, the chairman of the Florida Federal Judicial Nominating Commission. "I was wondering if there was a way to attract more applicants."

Some other states where Congress is investigating prosecutors' ousters also have gotten fewer responses than the administration hoped for.

Asked for a response to the problem, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, "It has nothing to do with recent events."

I didn't see Fratto make the comment, but one wonders if he was able to say it with a straight face.

--Steve Benen