Caught in Amber
Late last week, I returned to one of the my old hobby horses, New Bridge Strategies, the 'make big money in Iraq' consultancy that big GOP lobbying outfit Barbour Griffith & Rogers set up with Bush crony and former FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh. BGR, you'll remember, is now in the news as the outfit that got the contract from Iyad Allawi to help him boot Prime Minster Maliki and take over as Prime Minister again.
As I mentioned yesterday, the New Bridge Strategies website has since disappeared into oblivion. But TPM Reader DR managed to find the last sign of the site at the Way Back Machine Internet library from 2006.
And I just had to reproduce the frontpage intro paragraph which you can read here.
New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Its activities will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the United States Government. The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that companies seeking to work in that environment must have the very best advice and guidance available. The New Bridge Strategies team has been carefully constructed to fill that need.
It seemed pretty ridiculous when I first checked out the site back in September 2003. But not quite for the same reasons as now. And not quite as jarring.
It's all there, the hubris, arrogance, the hot house imperialism of the post-9/11 euphoria.
--Josh Marshall
Remember, it's a "library," not a "war room."
Shaping the Bush administration's message on the Iraq war has taken on new fervor, just as anticipation is building for the September progress report from top military advisers.
For the Pentagon, getting out Iraq information will now include a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week Iraq Communications Desk that will pump out data from Baghdad -- serving as what could be considered a campaign war room.
According to a memo circulated Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, is looking for personnel for what he called the high-priority effort to distribute Defense Department information on Iraq. [...]
The Pentagon dismissed suggestions that the communications desk will be a message machine or propaganda tool, and instead said it is being set up to gather and distribute information from eight time zones away in a more efficient and timely manner.
When White House Press Secretary Tony Snow started pushing the "surge of facts" talking point last month, he was presumably referring to something like this.
The Defense Department insists it simply wants to disseminate reliable information quickly and efficiently, and this has nothing to do with serving any political agenda. Fine. Here's a fairly straightforward test: will the "Iraq Communications Desk" be just as diligent in publicizing discouraging news as it is putting a positive spin on developments on the ground? Will it back up assertions with data that is open to public scrutiny? Will it steer clear of White House-approved political rhetoric?
If the answer is "yes," it's a helpful public resource. If "no," it's a propaganda tool. Time well tell.
--Steve Benen
We've all heard the expression "no good deed goes unpunished," but this is ridiculous.
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted. Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.
He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.
The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co. "It was a Wal-Mart for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."
So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.
For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.
Why has waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption flourished over the last several years in Iraq? This might have something to do with it.
Of particular interest, the AP noted that whistleblowers are offered an avenue under the federal False Claims Act to file what's called a "qui tam" lawsuit, which allows private citizens to sue on the government's behalf. (The policy was developed under Lincoln to help root out corrupt contractors selling defective products to the Union Army.)
The Justice Department has the option of signing onto these lawsuits, 12 of which have been filed dealing with alleged Iraq reconstruction abuse since 2004. To date, how many qui tam suits have the Bush administration endorsed? Zero.
--Steve Benen
O'Hanlon strikes back
Brookings' Michael O'Hanlon's support for the war in Iraq came under quite a bit of scrutiny a month ago with the publication of his now-infamous NYT op-ed, and today he tries to defend himself with a follow-up in the Washington Post.
There's not much to it, I'm afraid. O'Hanlon noted that he and Ken Pollack did leave the Green Zone, despite several assertions to the contrary. He added that his perspective on the war is not based just on "dog-and-pony shows," but rather "observations," "years of study," and solid military sources.
As for the one of the more controversial assertions in his original piece, on the alleged decline in Iraqi civilian fatalities, O'Hanlon argues today that the Pentagon "showed us data illustrating that overall death tallies from all forms of sectarian violence were down about one-third from last winter's average."
That, like the rest of today's piece, is not particularly persuasive. As Matt Yglesias explained, O'Hanlon sidesteps some of the underlying criticism (seasonal adjustments) and points to data that the Pentagon won't subject to public scrutiny. "Does it seem plausible that the Department of Defense has really solid, favorable data about its own activities that it's keeping hidden from public scrutiny?" Yglesias asks. "Not to me."
Kevin Drum was even less forgiving, noting that O'Hanlon has generally avoided arguments pertaining to measurable improvements in Iraq, both in today's op-ed and in his latest Brookings report. "O'Hanlon and Pollack cite only two concrete security metrics, and of those, one appears to be flatly wrong and the other is unsubsantiated and highly doubtful," Kevin noted. "Instead we get phrases like 'signs of progress,' 'appear to be reducing,' and 'our observations suggest.' Is it any wonder that a lot of us are unimpressed?
Kevin concluded:
Given all that, O'Hanlon's entreaty in the Post today that we should believe him because "Our assessments are based on our observations as well as on years of study" -- well, that's pretty weak tea, isn't it? Considering how disastrous the political situation is, how poorly the infrastructure and the economy are doing, and the fact that most security metrics indicate that Iraq is doing worse this summer than last, I think it's fair to ask O'Hanlon and Pollack for more evidence of progress than just regurgitation of Pentagon talking points. Whining about how unfairly they're being treated is a poor substitute.
--Steve Benen
Reading William Kristol's latest screed in the Weekly Standard, one is tempted to pause and double-check the source. Is the content from a random right-wing blog, some nutty talk-radio show, or a leading DC establishment player in one of the most widely-read conservative political magazines in the country?
I naively thought I could no longer be surprised by Kristol's columns, but his latest gem pushes the envelope to new depths. Did you know, for example, that American liberals were not only responsible for Khmer Rouge's crimes, but our withdrawal from Vietnam also created the conditions for the Islamist revolution in Iran in 1979?
Kristol concludes:
[A]ll honor to George W. Bush for following in Reagan's footsteps, grasping the nettle, and confronting the real lessons and consequences of Vietnam. The liberal media and the PC academics are horrified. All the better.
As the left shudders, Bush leads.
There isn't even an argument to refute here; it's just childish cheerleading and empty sloganeering.
A couple of months ago, Kevin Drum noted, "The Bill Kristol phenomenon is a stellar example of what a nice suit and a sober tone of voice can do for you.... [H]e's smart enough to talk in more soothing tones. As a result, he gets columns in Time magazine, edits his own widely-read magazine, and shows up constantly on television."
But with columns like these, Kristol's penchant for "soothing tones" is gone. He's just a sycophant, blithely touting a dangerous policy that doesn't work, and bashing those who dare to disagree.
Does Kristol actually believe his own fluff? I'm inclined to think so, but as Jonathan Chait explained this week, it may not matter: "Kristol's good standing in the Washington establishment depends on the wink-and-nod awareness that he's too smart to believe his own agitprop. Perhaps so. But, in the end, a fake thug is not much better than the real thing."
--Steve Benen
A solution in search of a problem
We learned this week that former Sen. Sam Nunn, a conservative Democrat from Georgia who voluntarily left politics more than a decade ago, is considering teaming up with Unity08 as a way of returning to the national stage. "My own thinking is, it may be a time for the country to say, 'Timeout. The two-party system has served us well, historically, but it's not serving us now,'" Nunn said.
OK, so what would this third party offer the voters? TNR's Britt Peterson sat down with the long-time Washington insiders behind the project to hear their pitch about the problems with Washington insiders. Their vision for a party is surprisingly thin.
Anyone looking for larger ideas than a return to civility won't get much from Unity '08, however. In our conversation, [Douglas Bailey, a former media advisor to Gerald Ford] and [Gerald Rafshoon, a former media advisor to Jimmy Carter] wouldn't take any policy stands, deflecting questions until after a candidate has been chosen in a "Virtual Convention" slated for next summer. "We're not interested in spelling out or even having the delegates spell out a precise platform, where, by God, you must meet these tests or we don't want you to run," Bailey tells me. "That doesn't make much sense." Doing so, he says, would repel candidates, not attract them. Rafshoon, too, focuses on process and ethics, rather than issues. "Campaigns are run on the negatives," he tells me. "That's the promise they make to the people: 'He's no good, vote for me!'"
But the issues they do discuss don't even seem that compatible. Bailey mentions three times the only Unity '08 issue that's historically a Republican idée fixe: entitlements and the deficit. "Has there been an effort by a single candidate in either party to talk seriously about the deficit and entitlements?" he asks me. On the other side of the table, Rafshoon does seem sympathetic to the idea of a candidate focusing on the deficit (he mentions in passing that one of Ross Perot's successes was to help set Clinton's budget-balancing agenda). But balance this issue with Unity '08's other, admittedly spare, stated concerns, and the whole thing begins to look a little contradictory: cutting down on entitlements while also expanding health care, reducing income inequality, and cleaning up the environment? How well can a platform built on flimsy, mismatched legs stand?
Actually, it can't.
Third parties, if they hope to compete, have to offer voters some kind of policy positions. Unity08, on the other hand, is a policy-free gimmick. It's a "party" that will "nominate" a bipartisan ticket in '08, simply for the sake of bipartisanship. What does the party think about the war? It doesn't have a position. Culture war issues? Nada. Trade? Domestic security? The environment? Nothing but a blank page.
The party, apparently, believes that politicians should be more "civil." Leaders should be more open to "compromise." There should be less negative campaigning and more solution-oriented discussions.
It all sounds perfectly pleasant, just so long as you over look how vacuous and incoherent the whole undertaking is. It may be inconvenient, but Americans have substantive policy disagreements. Those differences matter. If Unity08's leaders and enthusiasts want to join in that debate, terrific; the more the merrier.
But running a presidential campaign that intentionally prefers process and politeness over substance and policy isn't going to do anyone any favors.
--Steve Benen
Let the games begin! Candidates scramble to position themselves for runs at seats being vacated by retiring House Republicans in Arizona and Illinois. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
The Serial Exaggerator strikes again
One of the principal flaws in Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign is that he's running, counter intuitively, on a platform based on subjects he knows nothing about -- foreign policy and national security.
But just as importantly, Giuliani keeps undermining his own credibility on all policy issues by exaggerating to the point of comedy. He can't just say he spent time at Ground Zero; he has to exaggerate to say he spent as much time (if not more) than the rescue, recovery, and cleanup workers who spent a year sifting through human remains and rubble. He can't just say he's interested in counter-terrorism; he has to exaggerate to say he's been "studying Islamic terrorism for 30 years." He can't just say he's committed to promoting adoption over abortion; he has to exaggerate his record as mayor. He can't just he cut taxes in NYC; he has to exaggerate his record to include tax cuts he opposed (he even counted one cut twice). The guy can't even release a list of congressional endorsements without exaggerating the numbers.
When it comes to Giuliani's record on budget surpluses, it's more of the same.
Rudolph W. Giuliani has been broadcasting radio advertisements in Iowa and other states far from the city he once led stating that as mayor of New York, he "turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus."
The assertion, which Mr. Giuliani has repeated on the trail as he has promoted his fiscal conservatism, is somewhat misleading, independent fiscal monitors said. In fact, Mr. Giuliani left his successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, with a bigger deficit than the one Mr. Giuliani had to deal with when he arrived in 1994. And that deficit would have been large even if the city had not been attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
"He inherited a gap, and he left a gap for his successor," Ronnie Lowenstein, the director of the city's Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that monitors the city budget, said of Mr. Giuliani. "The city was budgeting as though the good times were not going to end, but sooner or later they always do."
In an amusing response, the Giuliani campaign told the NYT that the former mayor's claims are technically true because he claims to have created a surplus, not that he was able to maintain one.
Reporters labeled Al Gore a "serial exaggerator" in 2000 on a whole lot less than this.
--Steve Benen
Last weekend, the NYT published an op-ed from seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division, who will soon be returning home frustrated and jaded. The piece, "The War as We Saw It," was a sweeping condemnation of everything we've heard of late from the Kristol-McCain-Lieberman-O'Hanlon-Pollack crowd. For reasons that I still don't understand, most news outlets treated the striking op-ed with a collective yawn.
Among those war supporters who deigned to respond to the piece, the most common refrain was that these seven troops are unusual in their discontent. Most of the men and women serving in Iraq, conservatives said, are committed to the still-vague mission and are filled with confidence.
There are ample reasons to believe otherwise.
In the dining hall of a U.S. Army post south of Baghdad, President Bush was on the wide-screen TV, giving a speech about the war in Iraq. The soldiers didn't look up from their chicken and mashed potatoes.
As military and political leaders prepare to deliver a progress report on the conflict to Congress next month, many soldiers are increasingly disdainful of the happy talk that they say commanders on the ground and White House officials are using in their discussions about the war.
And they're becoming vocal about their frustration over longer deployments and a taxing mission that keeps many living in dangerous and uncomfortably austere conditions. Some say two wars are being fought here: the one the enlisted men see, and the one that senior officers and politicians want the world to see.
"I don't see any progress. Just us getting killed," said Spc. Yvenson Tertulien, one of those in the dining hall in Yousifiya, 10 miles south of Baghdad, as Bush's speech aired last month. "I don't want to be here anymore."
The problem becomes even more painful when one considers that the Army's suicide rate is now at its highest level in 23 years. What's more, in a series of mental health surveys, released in May, 45% of troops ranked morale in their unit as low or very low, as compared to seven percent who ranked it high or very high.
--Steve Benen
The Guardian's Ewen MacAskill had a good piece the other day about the president's VFW speech, and included an anecdote in passing that caught my eye.
The speech was aimed primarily at what White House officials privately describe as the "defeatocrats", the Democratic Congressmen trying to push Mr Bush into an early withdrawal.
In private, presidential aides walk around the White House referring to "defeatocrats"? Seriously? West Wing conversations now resemble Free Republic threads?
I vaguely recall a time in which the political establishment perceived Bush's election as the return of the "grown ups." It's rather amusing, in retrospect.
--Steve Benen
By any reasonable measure, Sen. John Warner's (R-Va.) call this week for a slight reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq was pretty weak tea. Warner "suggested" to the White House -- he opposes any congressional mandates -- that the president bring home 5,000 troops by Christmas. As withdrawal plans go, Warner's recommendation was little more than a symbolic gesture -- he's talking about a 2% drawdown.
But that didn't stop former Bush aide Bradley Blakeman, president and CEO of Freedom's Watch (a far-right MoveOn.org knockoff), from blasting Warner last night on PBS. (Transcript, Video)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Does something like the announcement by Senator John Warner yesterday, the veteran Republican senator, urging the president to begin to pull troops out this fall, does that hurt your cause?
BRADLEY BLAKEMAN: Well, it hurts the cause of freedom and giving the Iraqis the opportunity to stand on their feet.
Blakeman went on to accuse war critics of using "scare tactics." (Freedom Watch's ads argue that we have to stay in Iraq because "they attacked us," and insist withdrawal will lead to another 9/11.)
I'm curious; if Blakeman and other GOP attack dogs are going to blast Warner for "hurting the cause of freedom," what are they going to do about Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, who are expected to urge the president to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq by almost half?
Let me guess; they're enemies of freedom, too.
--Steve Benen
Put on Notice
Mailbag ...
Soooo tired of bloggers jumping on the bash Clinton bandwagon.A loser...?
If you'd stop for a moment, you would be exposed to the reality that Clinton is dominating the debates, dominating the polls. On the ground here in California, she has in place a growing organization that I guarantee you will crush any opposition - Democratic primary, or general election against the Repugs.
It's time the blogosphere, and people like you, began to clean up your act. Stop acting so reactively. And perhaps realize that your unique hits aren't necessarily a measure of your credibility.
And there's more ...
I am one of your very early contributor and I kicked in a buck here and there whenever I can but you disgusted me today.Calling Hillary Clinton a loser ? The woman has been through the RW grinder for years and she is still thriving. I understand your opposition to have another Clinton in the WH but you should have looked at your actions and words carefully.
From today on, your site is off my fav links and I will make sure that my friends will do the same.
You are pathetic and despicable.
Didn't actually realize that I'd called anybody a loser. But I will try harder to censor inappropriate thoughts.
--Josh Marshall
The other Democratic candidates are piling on Hillary Clinton over her remarks about the GOP benefitting from a hypothetical new terrorist attack. That and other news in today's Happy Hour Roundup.
--Eric Kleefeld
Representing Iraq
So which DC lobbying firms have been hired by what different Iraqi militia and factions? Here's the scoop.
--Josh Marshall
Summer Lovin'
White House to Warner: Give us Some Love.
Warner to White House: No Love.
--Josh Marshall
Could the CW Be Completely Wrong? Perish the Thought.
Take a look at this: Are the modest security gains in Iraq due to perceived inevitability of US withdrawal?
--Josh Marshall
BGR Gets Results!
Boss Allawi to appear this weekend on CNN's Late Edition.
I'm actually curious, when you're considering fomenting a coup to overthrow the government in Iraq, do you need to form an exploratory committee?
Late Update: Did the lobbying work on Wolf? Take a look ...
--Josh Marshall
Ghost of Abramoffs Past
Longtime backer and GOP bigwig withdraws support from Rep. Doolittle (R-CA).
--Josh Marshall
Special TPM Bonus Muck
It's appropriate in a way that BGR (see post below) should be representing Iyad Allawi in his quest to retake the mantle of power in Iraq as BGR early set itself up as a go-to DC lobby shop for finding love and riches in Iraq.
It was BGR, you'll no doubt remember, which set up former Bush FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh with his own Iraq rainmaking outfit, New Bridge Strategies ("your bridge to success in Iraq").
Perhaps not surprisingly the New Bridge Strategies website seems to have shaken off this mortal coil like so many other Iraqi ventures and people since we last checked in with them back in 2004.
But other profit centers have opened up. So I'm sure they're on to other promising leads.
--Josh Marshall
Allawi's Inside Track?
At TPMmuckraker today we've been explaining the 'boomlet', if that's the word for a manufactured boomlet, to return longtime CIA asset Iyad Allawi to power in Iraq as the successor to Prime Minister Maliki. He's signed on a big ticket GOP lobbying firm to make his case, Barbour Griffith & Rogers. And his account at BGR is being handled by Robert Blackwill, who until recently was the Iraq coordinator at the White House. So he probably gets his calls returned.
But here's something else that'll probably come in handy. The Iraqi National Intelligence Service turns out not to be funded by the Iraqi national government but rather by the Central Intelligence Agency. Go figure.
And the INIS, in turn, is run by Allawi's longtime pal Hazem Shaalan.
I confess that I have a much greater tolerance for these sorts of creative approaches to national sovereignty and democratic change when I have any confidence the puppeteers have a clue what they're doing. But, that said, it would seem Mr. Allawi may be the coming man to continue Iraq's democratic revolution.
--Josh Marshall
Interesting
Dennis Ross advising Obama on Middle East policy.
(ed.note: The site I linked to, JTA.org, appears to be temporarily unavailable.)
--Josh Marshall
George's Amazing Technicolor Surgecoat
It is uncanny how, even now, a few iffy columns and questionable news stories can completely upend the conventional wisdom in Washington, even in the face of vast amounts of contradictory evidence. What's even more amazing is how many Democrats actually start to believe it. I don't think it is too much to say that the conventional wisdom is now that unexpected success from the surge may possibly leave the Democrats off balance in September rather than the Republicans. Sure, political progress is still non-existent, the thinking goes, but no one can deny the success of the surge in purely military terms. I think I must have seen at least a half a dozen major news stories in the last week or so following this story line.
But is any of this true? Setting aside strategic progress are we even making tactical progress? Are we even reducing the rates of violence which the theory at least said should open the door to political progress?
Kevin Drum broke down the numbers from the Brookings Iraq Index and the answer seems to be pretty clearly, No. One key decision Kevin made was to make a seasonal comparison -- not how were June and July compared to March and April but how does June/July 2007 stack up against June/July 2006. The answer? Not well. As Al Gore once put it about a different topic, all the numbers that you want to be up are down and vice versa. Or just about all of them.
--Josh Marshall
Bold Leader
Max Boot: Ditching consensus view of Vietnam as a policy failure is "bold .. skillful bit of political jujitsu" from President Bush.
--Josh Marshall
We Suck (Don't Tell Anybody)
I agree with Matt on this one. It is extremely important for the Democrats to nominate someone who doesn't think like a loser. And assuming that any failure of the president's anti-terrorism policies will automatically be a political boon for the Republican party means thinking like a loser.
It also signals a lack of confidence either in your own policies or the American people's reasoning powers. And quite possibly both. And whether or not your policies make sense and whether or not the American people know jack you just can't be an effective advocate of those policies unless you think average Americans can be persuaded that they make sense.
Otherwise, you are permanently off balance, ill-prepared and incoherent.
--Josh Marshall
Scranton, PA US Attorney bites the dust over ties to organized crime figure.
Late Update: A quick discussion with my crack US Attorney reporting team suggests that the article linked above may be a bit misleading about the reasons for Marino's departure and that US Attorney Thomas Marino may have been preparing to cash in his chips for other non-muck-related reasons.
--Josh Marshall
Mitt Romney will unveil a health plan today — and following up on his success in signing a health plan in liberal Massachusetts, this new one will be almost nothing like it. That and other news in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read
Now that he's been fired, surge supporter Gen. Peter Pace, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will recommend withdrawing almost half of U.S. combat forces in Iraq by 2008.
--Spencer Ackerman
Hoagland, Not Whacked
Perhaps there's something wrong with me. But Jim Hoagland's column in Friday's Post seems remarkably lucid and well-reasoned. I'd quibble with a few points. 
There are a few others where I don't know the details well enough to judge. But on the main outlines I think he's got it right on the president's speech comparing Iraq to America's mid-20th century wars in Asia.
I was going to excerpt this or that portion. But there's too much. It's worth reading the whole thing -- especially as a riposte to the farcical column by Charles Krauthammer, who argues that the stars are now aligned for a grand bargain, in which war critics confess to the military success of the surge and warmongers blame everything that has gone wrong on Mr. Maliki.
And another word on Mr. Maliki. Hoagland writes ...
The need to protect the White House, the Pentagon and both major political parties from greater Iraq fallout explains much of the blame being dumped on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at this late date -- even though his deficiencies and close links to Iran and Syria were clearly visible when the administration helped install him in the job in 2006.
That sounds about right, though I suspect the problem runs much deeper. There have been three post-war Iraqi Prime Ministers (though under different degrees of sovereignty and foreign rule): Allawi, Jafaari and Maliki. Do we really believe the problem here is Maliki? We've just got the wrong technocrat? The man lacks true leadership stature?
Judged from the outside at least it looks clear that the problem is the fractured nature of the Iraqi state, if you can even call it a state. No mystery here -- all the basic divisions we hear about. And his government exists at the sufferance of factional leaders who see his generally impotent administration as a convenient holding pattern under which to secure or expand their own control over regions of the country or sectors of the population.
Along these lines let me give in and quote three of Hoagland's paragraphs. By using his Vietnam analogy ...
Bush has called attention to the elephant that will be sitting in the room when his administration makes its politically vital report on Iraq to the nation next month. For Americans, the most important comparison will be this one: As Vietnam did, Iraq has become a failure even on its own terms -- whatever those terms are at any given moment.That is, the administration has constantly shifted its goals in Iraq to avoid accepting failure and blame -- only to see the new goals drift beyond reach each time. Liberation of Iraqis became occupation by Americans, democracy became an unattainable centralized "national unity" government and this year's military surge has become a device for achieving political reconciliation among people who do not want to reconcile.
Bush's appeal to Americans to turn away from "the allure of retreat" centered on the indisputably horrific consequences for the people of Vietnam and Cambodia of defeat in 1975. But his analogy also summons the historical reality that U.S. involvement in Indochina became untenable when that engagement itself became a threat to America's social fabric and national cohesion -- and then to the very institutions that had responsibility for the war, the U.S. military and intelligence services, as well as the presidency and Congress.
And here I think we get back to the root of the matter: We are bigger than Iraq.
By that I do not mean we, as America, are bigger or better than Iraq as a country. I mean that that sum of our national existence is not bound up in what happens there. The country will go on. Whatever happens, we'll recover from it. And whatever might happen, there are things that matter much more to this country's future -- like whether we have a functioning military any more, whether our economy is wrecked, whether this country tears itself apart over this catastrophe. But we'll go on and look back at this and judge what happened.
Not so for the president. For him, this is it. He's not bigger than this. His entire legacy as president is bound up in Iraq. Which is another way of saying that his legacy is pretty clearly an irrecoverable shambles. That is why, as the folly of the enterprise becomes more clear, he must continually puff it up into more and more melodramatic and world-historical dimensions. A century long ideological struggle and the like. For the president a one in a thousand shot at some better outcome is well worth it, no matter what the cost. Because at least that's a one in a thousand shot at not ending his presidency with the crushing verdict history now has in store. It's also worth just letting things keep on going as they are forever because, like Micawber, something better might turn up. Going double or nothing by expanding the war into Iran might be worth it too for the same reason. For him, how can it get worse?
And when you boil all this down what it comes down to is that the president now has very different interests than the country he purports to lead.
--Josh Marshall
Did What We Shared Mean Nothing?
We've been talking a lot lately about Mitt Romney's personal history revisionism, and today we've got yet another example for you. Romney on Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), with whom he worked closely as Massachusetts Governor to pass the state's 2006 health care bill: friend... or foe? Let's go to the video tape!
Late Update: Election Central has more, including a response from the Romney camp.
--Ben Craw
The dream of a Biden-Kucinich-Gravel debate slips through our fingertips. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Ben Craw
For It Before They Were Against It
Recently Barack Obama caught hell from across the political spectrum when he said he'd authorize attacks on high-level terrorists in Pakistan even without approval from the Pakistani government. But now, according to documents obtained by the AP, it seems rules of engagement from 2004 authorized Army Rangers units to undertake cross-border raids into Pakistan in pursuit of suspected terrorists.
--Josh Marshall
McCain Locking Down Bermudan Electoral Votes
Here's a rather bizarre little snippet from Bermuda's Royal Gazette newspaper ...
US Republican Presidential candidate John McCain has pledged to protect Bermuda's international businesses if he is successful in his White House bid. The Arizona Senator, who spent three days on the Island this week meeting business and political leaders, said he understood the concerns of the insurance and reinsurance sectors about draft legislation proposing a clampdown on US business operations in so-called tax havens.
I understand the US political market has not been working out to well. But he's campaigning in Bermuda? To help protect their tax haven status?
--Josh Marshall
Potential Problem for the Dems
From Pew ...
Sen. Hillary Clinton is by far the most popular presidential candidate among her own party’s voters, but has among the lowest overall favorable ratings of the leading candidates. In sharp contrast, the front-running Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, evokes relatively modest enthusiasm from the GOP base, but is as broadly popular with all voters as any candidate in either party.The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Aug. 1-18 among 3,002 adults, finds that 55% of voters who offer an opinion of Clinton express a favorable view of her, while 45% have an unfavorable opinion. Other leading presidential candidates, including Clinton’s Democratic rival Barack Obama (64%), have much higher overall favorability ratings.
Yet Clinton is highly popular with her own Democratic base. Nearly nine-in-ten Democratic voters (88%) who offered an opinion of Clinton express a positive view – with 38% saying they have a very favorable opinion. That is the highest percentage that any of the seven 2008 candidates tested – Democrats or Republicans – receives from their parties’ voters.
Giuliani finds himself in a very different position than Clinton. His overall favorability rating is 10 points greater than Clinton’s (65%). But he lags behind Clinton – and his GOP rival Fred Thompson – in popularity among his own party’s voters: 84% of Republican voters have a positive impression of Giuliani, but just 21% say they have a very favorable opinion.
--Josh Marshall
Fox News
Fox News signs on to plan to help the GOP steal electoral votes in California.
--Josh Marshall
Militarism and Anti-Democracy, Now in a Country Near You
I've spoken to a number of people and thought a lot about President Bush's recent round of analogies about the Iraq War -- the latest of course being to the Korean and Vietnam Wars (see video of the key passages from the president's speech yesterday). To get a grasp on an argument, to support it or take it apart, requires that it have some grounding in reality or actual fact. But like so much else that comes out of the White House (and has in recent years) what we have here are arguments which either completely disregard most of the relevant facts or just as often build points on the basis of ridiculous strawman arguments.
Like for instance, all those war critics who think that if only US troops would leave Iraq, all the killing would stop.
Have you met these people? You can find people who think the Earth is flat. Heck, you can even find people who don't believe in evolution. Most of them seem to be running for president as Republicans. But I don't think I know anyone who thinks all would be swell in Iraq if only US troops would leave. Indeed, the premise of most current criticism of the war is that we're occupying a country that is in the midst of a slow-motion civil war and that there's nothing we can do to stop it and that we should stop trying.
All that aside though what I find most telling about the current round of arguments is the president's increasingly explicit use of 'stab in the back' rhetoric as the new basis of his policy.
Our troops are seeing the progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here's my answer: We'll support our troops, we'll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed.
I guess 'pull[ing] the rug' is a kinder, gentler Americanized version of 'stab in the back'. But the core message is the same. There are the troops on the one hand and their domestic enemies at home. And who will win? Andrew Sullivan has a good post on this today. Also look at Jon Chait's piece in The New Republic on Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard.
Militarism and proto-fascist thinking isn't just something to be studied about the 1920s and 1930s. You can see it today as a growing part of our political discourse, even as the support for it in absolute terms diminishes. It is all of a piece. You cannot separate the bogus war for democracy abroad from the war against democracy and the rule of law at home.
--Josh Marshall
Edwards ratchets up attacks on Clintons with speech targeting "corporate Democrats." That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read
If you're trying to get the U.S. to support you in a parliamentary scheme to topple Iraq's prime minister, it helps to have a high-powered GOP lobbying firm on your side.
--Spencer Ackerman
Everybody Must Get Stoned
So just to bring everyone up to date, Roger Stone, GOP dirty trickster, has denied making the threatening phone call to Pops Spitzer. He has also apparently been fired from his job representing New York State Republicans in their investigation of alleged dirty tricks done on behalf of Gov. Spitzer (D), which seems reasonable enough when you think about it.
So what of Stone's accusation that the owner of his apartment building, who is also a Spitzer contributor, arranged for Spitzer operatives to break into Stone's New York City apartment, use his phone and impersonate his voice, in order to set him up to look like he made the call?
In this morning's Times, State Senator George Winner (R), who chairs the committee now investigating Spitzer and his deputies, suggested that Stone's improbable claims might in fact be true and that the technology Stone refers to does in fact exist. In an interview with the Times, "Mr. Winner also noted that technology is available that makes it possible to mimic another person’s phone number on a caller identification machine."
So we're now trying to find out whether Sen. Winner believes Stone may have been the victim of a break-in by Sptizer forces and whether he plans to have his committee investigate the alleged break in.
We'll bring you our findings shortly.
Late Update: One of the NYT's blogs has a run-down of earlier literary interpretations of Mr. Stone and his career of dirty tricks, bamboozlement and sundry antics. Fun morsel: at 19 Stone was apparently the youngest of the Watergate dirty-tricksters.
--Josh Marshall
Henry's Got His Work Cut Out For Him
On Tuesday House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent out a request for information to 19 different government agencies, all of which apparently took part in a sprawling scheme by Karl Rove to use agency officials and resources to help Republican politicians win elections, a possible violation of the Hatch Act. In today's episode of TPMtv we take a look back at some of the past testimony by government officials about these political briefings to try to figure out how such a surefire scheme yielded such poor results in the 2006 elections, and just how much work Henry Waxman has ahead of him.
--Ben Craw
Alan J. Cohen, 1938-2006
This is a post of remembrance for my father who died one year ago today. You can learn more about him here.
--Josh Marshall
The Korea Analogy
TPM Reader KS hits it out of the park ...
I think if people want to make the Korean War analogy, they should do it right. Bush sees the Korean War as a symbol of our commitment to fight aggression and lay the groundwork for development and, eventually, democracy, in South Korea. But we had achieved the liberation of South Korea by October 1950, mere months after the war began. We then made the disastrous decision to push into North Korea in an effort to topple the communist government there. That triggered Chinese intervention, and the war developed into a stalemate that dragged on for three more years. The eventual ceasefire returned things essentially to the status quo ante, an outcome we could have achieved at much lower cost had we not chosen to expand the war.So, yes, the Korean War analogy is quite apt. Just not in the way Bush means it. The decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 looks a lot like the ultimately futile decision to invade North Korea in October 1950.
There's also the little matter of a US Army General whose names starts with an M. But that's another matter.
--Josh Marshall
Stoned on Tape!
Courtesy of a link from Elizabeth Benjamin at her Daily News blog, we can now bring you links to audio files of that message left on Gov. Spitzer's voice mail. And it ain't looking good for Roger Stone.
Here's the call.
And here's a recording of Stone from a recent TV appearance.
As we explained last night, Stone is claiming that unnamed Spitzer operatives broke into his New York City apartment, presumably with a voice impersonator, and placed the threatening message to Spitzer's father from Stone's phone.
As Benjamin also notes, this is an interesting defense as it appears to closely mimic the defense Stone proferred during his last scandal. Back in 1996 the National Enquirer claimed that Stone (then a Bob Dole spokesman) and his wife Nydia (whose phone it appears to have been that placed the offending phone call) were practitioners of what I guess as Republicans they would call the 'swinger' alternative lifestyle and routinely placed ads looking for "muscular, well hung, single men" to join them in expanding the bounds of traditional marriage.
Stone denied the reports and claimed that a disgruntled domestic employee had stolen photographs, sexual descriptions and checkbook information to mimic the Stones and set up impersonating them as a wife-swapping sock-puppet in Swinger publications up and down the East Coast.
Meanwhile, we're interested to know whether Stone has or plans to contact the NYPD to commence an investigation into the alleged break in to his New York City apartment. We've contacted Stone for a statement and we are eagerly awaiting the response.
--Josh Marshall
Stoned!
Didn't take long. Roger Stone denies making the phone call. But he's resigning because his continued work for the New York state Republicans would be "a distraction from the real issues."
(ed.note: It also seems the Daily News -- linked above -- has picked up Elizabeth Benjamin who was formerly covering New York state politics for the Albany Times-Union. Good get.)
--Josh Marshall
Worst President Ever
We'll have more shortly on the president's speech today. At the moment though I'm listening to the president comparing his war to the Korean War.
Really, the president flatters himself. As he has so many times.
This is little different from those claims back in 2003 and 2004 that post-war Germany was rife with 'insurgents' fighting against US occupation troops.
We can debate the ways to fix things. But let's not deny that Bush's folly was an unforced error, a foreign policy catastrophe of truly unique proportions in the annals of American history.
--Josh Marshall
Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) to make a public appearance next week, his first since his near-fatal brain hemorrhage this past December. That and other news in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read
It must be sort of like Christmas in August for the Bush Administration. Department of Justice lawyers determine that a White House office that had been busily processing FOIA requests for the past six years is actually not subject to FOIA.
--Paul Kiel
Osama is My Shepherd I Shall Not Want
According to advance reports, President Bush will tomorrow invoke the specter of Vietnam in defense of his failed Iraq policy.
But isn't this quite possibly the worst argument for his Iraq policy?
Going forty years on, it is not too much to say that virtually none of the predicted negative repercussions of our departure from Vietnam ever came to pass.
Asia didn't go Communist. Our Asian allies didn't abandon us. Rather, the Vietnamese began to fall out with her Communist allies. With the Cold War over, in strategic terms at least, it's almost hard to remember what the whole fight was about. If anything, the clearest lesson of Vietnam would seem to be that there can be a vast hue and cry about the catastrophic effects of disengagement from a failed policy and it can turn out that none of them are true.
Even more interesting is another argument President Bush is poised to make: namely, that Vietnam is more than just an analogy. He will argue that the terrorist threat we face today is in some measure the result of our withdrawal from Vietnam, as it emboldened the terrorists to attack us.
The president will also make the argument that withdrawing from Vietnam emboldened today's terrorists by compromising U.S. credibility, citing a quote from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that the American people would rise against the Iraq war the same way they rose against the war in Vietnam, according to the excerpts.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a better example of President Bush's comically inept strategic thinking. Actually, lack of strategic thinking. I'm sure you've noticed how, as the president's policies go further and further down the drain, he more and more often cites the authority of Osama bin Laden as the rationale for his policies. In this case, we must stay in Iraq forever wasting money and lives and destroying our position in the world because if we don't we'll have proved Osama bin Laden right.
It's like a very sad version of a sixty year old falling for that dingbat head fake ten year olds used to play when I was a kid in elementary school in which Kid A says he wants the football, Kid B says, 'Fine, but if you take the football, you're gay.' And then Kid A stalks off hopelessly bamboozled and unable to parry this paralyzing riddle.
Apparently we have permanently ceded our foreign policy to the whim of Osama bin Laden's taunts.
And finally there's more.
"Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields,' " the president will say.
The story of the 'boat people' is unquestionably tragic. And there's little doubt that there are many Iraqis who will pay either with their lives or nationality for aiding us in various ways during our occupation of the country. But to govern our policy on this basis is simply to buy into a classic sunk cost fallacy. A far better -- and really quite necessary -- policy would be to give asylum to a lot of these people rather than continuing to get more of them into the same position in advance of our inevitable departure.
More concretely though, didn't the killing fields happen in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge rather than Vietnam? So doesn't that complicate the analogy a bit? And didn't that genocide actually come to an end when the Communist Vietnamese invaded in 1979 and overthrow the Khmer Rouge regime? The Vietnamese Communists may have been no great shakes. But can we get through one of these boneheaded historical analogies while keeping at least some of the facts intact?
Please?
--Josh Marshall
Ya Got the Stone(s)?
I'm lucky I live in New York. Because if national politics ever settles down I'll have New York politics to keep me entertained. I think of it as sort of an occupational insurance policy.
A short while ago, aides to Gov. Spitzer (D) got caught in some dirty trick shenanigans employed against one of the governor's rivals, state GOP kingpin Joe Bruno. The stunts appear to have fallen short of illegality. But they've been more than enough to take some of the luster off Spitzer's good guy crusading image. Republicans in Albany are investigating what happened and possibly other stuff earlier in Spitzer's career. And they must really feel like spicing things up because they've hired none other than ubiquitous GOP operative-cum-yakmeister Roger Stone to help out in whatever way in knocking Spitzer around.
Now, you've got to have some sense of Stone's background to get the full flavor of this story. Suffice it to say that Roger Stone must be awfully friggin' good at being an operative because only that explains how he keeps getting hired notwithstanding a series entertaining press stories about Stone in his own right. (To get your own research started, try googling 'roger stone and swinger'.) He actually did play a key role in shutting down the Florida Recount in 2000. So I guess you could say he is pretty good at what he does. Needless to say, Stone has his own website, the aptly named StoneZone.
In any case, as I said, Stone is working for state Republicans and apparently the Empire State GOPers are considering looking into Spitzer's dad's finances too. But it appears Stone got a little hot under the collar in his pursuit of the anti-Spitzer jihad, apparently going so far as to leave an unhinged message on Pop Spitzer's answering machine.
Here we pick up the story from the sedate pages of the hometown paper ...
The message, left at Bernard Spitzer’s Manhattan office just before 10 p.m. on Aug. 6, says that Mr. Spitzer, 83, a wealthy real estate developer, would be “compelled by the Senate sergeant at arms” to testify about “shady campaign loans” he made to his son during Eliot Spitzer’s unsuccessful campaign for attorney general in 1994.Mr. Winner’s committee has been holding hearings into a scheme by some of Governor Spitzer’s top aides to use the State Police to embarrass the Senate Republican leader, Joseph L. Bruno. Senate Republicans have said they were considering reviewing Bernard Spitzer’s 1994 loans to his son.
“If you resist this subpoena, you will be arrested and brought to Albany,” the message says, according to a transcript. The message also calls Governor Spitzer a “phony” and a “psycho.”
That led Spitzer's dad to hire a private security agency which ... well, back to the Grey Lady ...
Bernard Spitzer’s lawyers hired Kroll Associates, the private investigative firm, to trace the message, and their report was included with the letter to Mr. Winner. The firm traced the number that appeared on Mr. Spitzer’s caller identification system, linking it to listings under the name of Mr. Stone’s wife, Nydia.“The review of publicly available records,” the report says, “strongly suggests that the number is controlled by Roger Stone.”
Digital recordings were also sent to Mr. Winner, including the audio of the voice mail message and “a sample of Roger Stone’s voice from a broadcast interview” to allow for comparison. The Times was given a copy of both recordings, but was unable to draw any conclusions about whether Mr. Stone’s voice was on Mr. Spitzer’s phone message.
In the message, the caller says, referring to a potential subpoena: “There is not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-shit son can do about it. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you. You will be forced to tell the truth and the fact that your son’s a pathological liar will be known to all.”
Now, Stone concedes the phone is his. But Stone, who's known as a consumate dirty-trickster alleges what perhaps might be considered the ultimate dirty trick as his exculpatory theory. Stone points out that his apartment building is owned by a prominent Spitzer fundraiser and that it would be no difficult matter for him to let Spitzer operatives in to his apartment for a set-up job.
Said Stone to the Times: “They have unfettered access to my apartment. I am on television constantly. As Gore Vidal said, never pass up the chance to have sex or be on television. Putting together a voice tape that sounds like me wouldn’t be hard to do.”
You almost get the sense that Stone is letting projection get the better of him in this little tear. And those apropos of nothing references to tv and sex, I'm not sure what to make of those other than I'm pretty sure the Times reporter got a pretty big kick out of including them in Stone's denial.
In any case, I guess the rule of thumb is that if you get a harassing phone call and it's traced back to the phone of one of your political enemies and the voice on the phone sounds like your enemy, then Occam's Razor says you must have broken into the guy's apartment with Rich Little and set him up. I'm going to keep checking in at the StoneZone for the latest.
--Josh Marshall
Romney: Life Begins at Pick Up Line
From the Baltimore Sun ...
But for those trained to hear the subtleties, Mr. Romney was acknowledging something more. He implied an opposition to the birth control pill and a willingness to join in their efforts to scale back access to contraception. There are code phrases to listen for - and for those keeping score, Mr. Romney nailed each one.One code phrase is: "I fought to define life as beginning at conception rather than at the time of implantation." The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines pregnancy as starting at implantation, the first moment a pregnancy can be known. Anti-abortion advocates want pregnancy to start at the unknown moment sperm and egg meet: fertilization. They'd also like you to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that the birth control pill prevents that fertilized egg from implanting in the womb.
Mr. Romney's code, deciphered, meant, "I, like you, hope to reclassify the most commonly used forms of contraceptives as abortions." In fact, he told the crowd, he already had some practice redefining contraception: "I vetoed a so-called emergency contraception bill that gave young girls abortive drugs without prescription or parental consent."
--Josh Marshall
Hold on tight! Mike Huckabee rides the Iowa Straw Poll bump. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Ben Craw
The Toll
From an interview with Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani scholar and expert on the connection between the Pakistani military and Muslim extremist groups ...
Until Bush came into office, Ahmed thought his words mattered to America. In the 1980s, he discussed Taliban resistance with ambassadors over tea. In the 1990s, he collaborated with policymakers to raise Afghanistan's profile in the Clinton White House. But during the Bush administration, he feels his risky research has been for naught.The administration has "actively rejected expertise and embraced ignorance," Ahmed told me inside his fortress. Soon after the Taliban fled Kabul in late 2001, Ahmed visited Washington DC's policy elite as “the flavor of the month.” His bestseller Taliban had come out just the year before. The State Department, USAID, the National Security Council and the White House all asked him to present lectures on how to stabilize post-war Afghanistan.
Ahmed traversed the city’s bureaucracies and think tanks repeating “one common sense line”: In Afghanistan you have a “population on its knees, with nothing there, absolutely livid with the Taliban and the Arabs of Al Qaeda . . . willing to take anything.” The U.S. could "rebuild Afghanistan very quickly, very cheaply and make it a showcase in the Muslim world that says ‘Look U.S. intervention is not all about killing and bombing; it’s also about rebuilding and reconstruction…about American goodness and largesse.”
Many lifelong bureaucrats specializing in the region shared Ahmed's enthusiasm, and they agreed that after decades of violence, America could finally turn Afghanistan around through aid. But the biggest players in Bush's government, Ahmed says, had already shifted their attention to Iraq "abandoning Afghanistan at its moment of need."
The claim that President Bush took his eyes off the ball in Afghanistan so he could rush into disaster in Iraq has been repeated so many times that it is almost a cliche. A true cliche. But something like a cliche nonetheless. It becomes shocking again, however, when you look at it up close. The most charged issue in the US -- at least at the headline level -- is the failure to bag bin Laden. But that's not the only issue, in some ways not even the most important one because actually transforming Afghanistan (if that was possible, which I won't pretend to know the answer to) would at least arguably have been of more consequence that killing or capturing this one man.
And as long as we're on the subject, let's track back to our earlier discussion of President Bush's bogus 'democracy promotion agenda.' Remember, US policy makers have always been happy to push democracy on enemy states or among friends where there were no potential adverse policy consequences. The rub is always balancing support for democracy and the rule of law with more immediate policy needs.
So who are our main allied states in the War on Terror and the Muslim Middle East generally? The answer? Unquestionably, I think, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- one military dictatorship (if one with semi-constitutional and parliamentary attributes), with a military with a long history of ties to radical Islamists and another hereditary despotism riddled with sympathizers with radical Islamists.
--Josh Marshall
Breaking: Obama Not Whacked on Cuba
Another outbreak of sanity from Obama sure too raise profound questions about whether he's ready to be president.
From the AP ...
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is leaping into the long-running Cuba debate by calling for the United States to ease restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit the island or send money home.Obama’s campaign said Monday that, if elected, the Illinois senator would lift restrictions imposed by the Bush administration and allow Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives more frequently, as well as ease limits on the amount of money they can send to their families.
--Josh Marshall
Claptrap All the Way Down
A TPM Reader responds ...
But there's a reason for all these post-mortems: President Bush made the promotion of democracy abroad a centerpiece of his rhetoric, a touchstone of his public pronouncements. This administration has a genius for packaging its policies to appeal to ideals that the public cherishes, especially when its actions diverge most sharply from those ideals. That's why when we aligned ourselves with odious and repressive regimes around the world in our war on terror we did so under the guise of spreading freedom. "Promoting Democracy" turns out to have been of a piece with the "Clean Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives; asking what has happened to the "freedom agenda" is like asking what has happened to the president's defense of the environment. He hasn't just given us more of the same, he has covered the fact that he was making things worse by loudly proclaiming that he was making them better.
I take this point. There needs to be an accounting and Baker's article in the Post provides it. I guess all I'm saying is that it's worth keeping in mind that this wasn't a bold initiative that fell short for whatever reasons. It was, to paraphrase Bertrand Russell's famous interlocutor, claptrap all the way down.
--Josh Marshall
Fred Thompson: The US military is in trouble and it's Bill Clinton's fault.
--Josh Marshall
Law & Order
Election law and FEC regs are so routinely flouted these days that it's hard to imagine anyone actually getting in serious trouble over them. But might Fred Thompson's 'I'm not running even though I'm already running and have even run through three campaign managers' bamboozle actually land him in some trouble? Maybe so.
--Josh Marshall
Rudy Sics Aerial Drones on Illegals
Join us as we take a fearless look behind the scenes of Rudy's illegal immigration flip-flop in today's episode of TPMtv. Not for the faint of heart. But if you're man enough and Rudy enough, take a look ...
--Josh Marshall
"I Shall Be Released"
With President Bush these days, often there's nothing left to do but laugh. As when we learn that in a conversation with Egyptian democracy activist Saad Ibrahim, the president said, "You're not the only dissident. I too am a dissident in Washington." As Eric Kleefeld told me yesterday, President Bush seems confused. Dissidents are the ones who get tortured and wiretapped. Not the ones who do it. I guess that's one of those sentence structure mistakes.
In any case, it's not a simple matter disentangling the president's vainglory from his narcissism. So for today let me just focus on the former.
As in the Post article from which that quote above comes, we are today frequently called on to see the president's wrecked 'democracy promotion agenda' as an example of some sort of failed though laudable, even tragic, idealism. The president appears to think his plans have been sabotaged by an army of mediocrities running the State Department. If only he could steamroll them like the intelligence community!
But the whole story, like so much else from the Bush White House, is press and pomp with no substance. What's remarkable is how little questioning there's been about whether such an agenda ever existed at all -- even from many who are normally the president's critics. If the president wants kudos for speaking up for democracy at the level of rhetoric and looking the other way when it's in the United States' strategic interests, he can get in line -- behind Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Bill Clinton and actually pretty much every other president of the post-war era. Indeed, pretty much every president in American history.
As many critics have argued, the substance of America's role as a democracy-promoter may be debatable, but surely the claim or the conceit is nothing that began with this president. Indeed, the claim contrasted with the reality -- sometimes sizing up well and other times not so well -- is also beyond a cliche in the post-World War II era. Had the president taken any steps to push for democratization in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or anywhere in Central Asia, perhaps there'd be something to discuss. But of course nothing like that has happened.
Yes, there've been a number of elections in Afghanistan and Iraq. But that's only because this administration has overthrown more governments on its watch. In recent decades pushing for anything short of some level of popular sovereignty has just been deemed unacceptable. Just the same happened in Central America and the Balkans, indeed, by most measures more successfully in the Balkans.
So let's just stop the talk about what's happened to the president's 'freedom agenda'. There just never was one. It's really that simple.
--Josh Marshall
Prostitute-patron and Senator David Vitter has 66% approval rating in home state of Louisiana. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Fighting for Principle
When you're stuck down at 30% approval and down to your last 18 months in office, an administration really has to pick and choose its battles. Only real matters of principle are worth a fight. And the Bush administration has found one -- resisting state efforts to expand the Children's Health Insurance Program to more middle income families.
--Josh Marshall
Connecticut 2006 redux? Ned Lamont goes to Maine to campaign for Tom Allen, the Dem foe of GOP Senator and Lieberman ally Susan Collins. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Family Feud
When members of the Kontogiannis family go to war about who's more crooked, it's bound to be an ugly affair.
On Friday, Thomas Kontogiannis' nephew, John Michael, accused of laundering money in the Duke Cunningham scandal, urged that Judge Larry Burns either dismiss charges against him or exclude testimony from his uncle -- whom he called "nothing short of a remorseless and manipulative sociopath." Among the allegations made by Michael's motion: the federal government allowed Kontogiannis, who in February pleaded guilty to a money-laundering charge, to profit from illicit financing schemes in exchange for testimony against Michael -- among them the purchase of a home of one of the uncles of a federal prosecutor on the case.
It doesn't stop there. Michael's motion accuses Kontogiannis of committing identity theft for small-time profit while on probation for a visa-fraud conviction. And it takes a look back to that visa-fraud case to highlight a constant of Tommy K's numerous convictions: when caught, start snitching to avoid getting locked up.
--Spencer Ackerman
Exclusive: Schlozman out at DOJ
Arch-'Vote Fraud' bamboozler Bradley Schlozman is out at DOJ.
Who'll be left to turn out the lights?
--Josh Marshall
September: Contempt of Congress Month
In this installment of the Congress-administration ongoing subpoena drama, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) says that the White House hasn't responded to his committee's subpoena for documents relating to the warrantless surveillance program, and that if that doesn't change by September, then a contempt of Congress citation may be coming their way.
--Paul Kiel
Iowa Dem Debate Round-Up
Miss yesterday's Dem debate? We've got all the highlights in today's Debate Roundup episode of TPMtv ...
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
The FBI takes a look at Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) Constitution-shredding, fat-cat-benefiting earmark.
--Paul Kiel
Fox News spokesman justifies Sean Hannity's fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani as follows: "Sean is not a journalist." That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Annals of Reporting
For a variety of reasons I try to stay out of the debates over blogs as such, what they're good or bad at and the rest. But this morning I was alerted to an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times by Michael Skube, a journalism professor at Elon University. The sum of the piece is that the blogosphere is as rife with disputation as it is thin on information, or more specifically, reporting, writing that demands "time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, perseverance."
Now, fair enough. There's certainly no end of blog pontificating fueled by puffed-up self-assertion rather than facts. But Skube's piece reads with a vagueness that suggests he has less than a passing familiarity with the topic at issue. And I will confess to you that what really caught my attention was that in a column bewailing how blogs don't do any real reporting one of the four bloggers he mentioned was me.
Now, whether we do any quality reporting at TPM is a matter of opinion. And everyone is entitled to theirs. So against my better judgment, I sent Skube an email telling him that I found it hard to believe he was very familiar with TPM if he was including us as examples in a column about the dearth of original reporting in the blogosphere.
Now, I get criticized plenty. And that's fair since I do plenty of criticizing. And I wouldn't raise any of this here if it weren't for what came up in Skube's response.
Not long after I wrote I got a reply: "I didn't put your name into the piece and haven't spent any time on your site. So to that extent I'm happy to give you benefit of the doubt ..."
This seemed more than a little odd since, as I said, he certainly does use me as an example -- along with Sullivan, Matt Yglesias and Kos. So I followed up noting my surprise that he didn't seem to remember what he'd written in his own opinion column on the very day it appeared and that in any case it cut against his credibility somewhat that he wrote about sites he admits he'd never read.
To which I got this response: "I said I did not refer to you in the original. Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples ... "
And this is from someone who teaches journalism?
Perhaps I'm naive. But it surprises me a great deal that a professor of journalism freely admits that he allows to appear under his own name claims about a publication he concedes he's never read.
Actually, if you look at what he says, it seems Skube's editor at the Times oped page didn't think he had enough specific examples in his article decrying our culture of free-wheeling assertion bereft of factual backing. Or perhaps any examples. So the editor came up with a few blogs to mention and Skube signed off. And Skube was happy to sign off on the addition even though he didn't know anything about them.
I grant you that the blogosphere needs better bloggers. But, as usual, the need for better critics seems even more acute.
--Josh Marshall
Giving new meaning to the 'permanent campaign'
As a helpful companion piece to the McClatchy article from yesterday, the Washington Post moves the ball forward today on Rove & Co.'s legally dubious, partisan political briefings, with an informative front-page piece.
With a few details we haven't seen before, the Post explained that Rove established an "asset deployment" team in the White House early in Bush's first term that was responsible for coordinating official announcements, high-visibility administration trips, and declarations of federal grants based on Republican congressional candidates in need of a boost.
Investigators, however, said the scale of Rove's effort is far broader than previously revealed; they say that Rove's team gave more than 100 such briefings during the seven years of the Bush administration. The political sessions touched nearly all of the Cabinet departments and a handful of smaller agencies that often had major roles in providing grants, such as the White House office of drug policy and the State Department's Agency for International Development.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel and the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee are investigating whether any of the meetings violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from using federal resources for election activities. They also want to know whether any Bush appointees pressured government for favorable actions such as grants to help GOP electoral chances.
"What we are seeing is the tip of a whole effort to make the federal government a subsidiary of the Republican Party. It was all politics, all the time," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the oversight committee, said last week.
Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), the 2002 chairman of the NRCC's efforts, said Rove "didn't do these things half-baked. It was total commitment." Davis added, "We knew history was against us [in '02], and he helped coordinate all of the accoutrements of the executive branch to help with the campaign, within the legal limits." It was good of Davis to add those last four words, wasn't it?
The Gavel has more on this today.
--Steve Benen
Given that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' ongoing trouble with the truth made headlines again this week, and his record for dishonesty can now be summarized into an impressive list, the NYT's Adam Cohen broaches a subject first raised by the Times' editorial board last month: impeaching the Attorney General.
Impeachment of Mr. Gonzales would fit comfortably into the founders' framework. No one could charge this Congress with believing that executive branch members serve at the "pleasure of the Senate" or the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated that impeachment of President Bush is "off the table," and there has been little talk of impeaching Vice President Dick Cheney or others in the administration.
Congress has heard extensive testimony about how Mr. Gonzales's Justice Department has become an arm of a political party, choosing lawyers for nonpartisan positions based on politics, and bringing cases -- including prosecutions that have put people in jail -- to help Republicans win elections.
Mr. Gonzales's repeated false and misleading statements to Congress are also impeachable conduct. James Iredell, whom George Washington would later appoint to the Supreme Court, told North Carolina's ratification convention that "giving false information to the Senate" was the sort of act "of great injury to the community" that warranted impeachment.
The United States attorneys scandal is also the sort of abuse the founders worried about. Top prosecutors, most with sterling records, were apparently fired because they refused to let partisan politics guide their decisions about whether to prosecute. Madison, the father of the Constitution, noted in a speech to the first Congress that "wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject" an official to impeachment.
By the way, for those keeping score at home, Rep. Jay Inslee's (D-Wash.) House resolution on Gonzales' impeachment has an underwhelming 27 co-sponsors.
Cohen's piece makes a compelling case that the remedy is legitimate in Gonzales' case, but if there's little political will for impeaching the AG, it's largely an academic exercise.
--Steve Benen
In the Dem debate in Iowa this morning, Hillary stuck by her foreign policy criticism of Obama, Edwards vowed to eliminate nukes from the planet, and Obama revealed that he prepared for the debate by riding bumper cars at a local state fair. Those and other items in our Election Central Debate Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Karl Rove, this morning:
"What I did say to one reporter was, I've heard that, too. And what I said to another reporter, off the record, was, in essence, I don't think you ought to be writing about this."
Matt Cooper, shortly thereafter:
"I think [Rove] was dissembling to put it charitably. To imply that he didn't know about [Plame's identity], or that he heard it in some rumor out in the hallways, is nonsense."
Rove? Dissemble? About leaking the identity of an undercover CIA agent? You don't say.
--Steve Benen
Anyone who's seen Fox News knows its on-air personalities offer Republicans in-kind contributions with practically every broadcast. Once in a while, though, they drop the pretense and make the support more direct.
It's no secret that Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News commentator, has helped to raise Rudy Giuliani's profile - but now he's helped the former mayor raise money, too.
In a little noticed event this month, Hannity -- co-host of Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" and host of a popular WABC radio show -- introduced the Republican front-runner at a closed-door, $250-per-head fund-raiser Aug. 9 in Cincinnati, campaign officials acknowledge.
In so doing, some believe that Hannity -- while clearly a commentator paid to express his opinions -- crossed the line from punditry into financial rainmaking for a presidential candidate whose bottom line is now better for it.
Atrios' joke about calling a bloggers' ethics panel comes to mind....
I can appreciate the fact that Fox News exists to blur the line between reporting and advocacy, but this seems over the top, even by the network's standards. Indeed, when Dan Rather's daughter organized and hosted a Democratic Party fundraiser in Texas in 2001, and the then-CBS anchor made an appearance, Bill O'Reilly blasted the ethical impropriety.
"Now Rather gave a speech at a fundraiser, so money changed hands," O'Reilly said on the air. "I mean, I wouldn't do that."
--Steve Benen
It's been a discouraging weekend for the Lieberman-Kristol-McCain contingent. Yesterday, Jonathan Finer explained that their visits to Baghdad -- after which they boast of widespread "progress" -- are scripted, largely "ceremonial" visits. Their "epiphanies" aren't based on much, and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Today, champions of the Bush administration's Iraq policy suffered another indignity with a powerful NYT op-ed from seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division, who will soon be returning home frustrated and jaded.
Joe Klein said the troops' piece "puts to shame -- and shame is the appropriate word -- all the Kristol, McCain, Lieberman, Pollack and O'Hanlon etc etc cheerleading of the past two months." I think that's exactly right. From the op-ed:
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. [...]
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side. [...]
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal.
Read the whole thing, but keep a couple of things in mind. First, these seven members of the 82nd Airborne are showing courage on the battlefield, but they're also showing political courage in writing this piece while serving on active duty. This isn't an op-ed that is going to be well received at the White House, so kudos to all of them.
Second, like John Cole, I can't help but wonder how the right will respond to something like this. I suppose there will be a temptation to kick the Smear Machine into high gear, but it's probably more likely that conservatives will simply pretend the op-ed doesn't exist. It would be far easier than challenging the piece's conclusions.
--Steve Benen
Following up on an item from last night, the NYT reported that Congress, by changing the meaning of "electronic surveillance" under FISA, inadvertently gave the Bush administration more powers that lawmakers even realized.
But just as striking as the sloppy lawmaking was the administration's response.
...Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.
At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, "is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president's Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence."
That's the important thing to remember: the White House considers the legislation "just advisory," so it doesn't much matter whether or not lawmakers gave up too much authority to the president. He's going to do what he wants to do.
--Steve Benen
Depending on what part of the country you live in, the latest in a series of debates for Democratic presidential candidates is about to get underway in Iowa. ABC News' George Stephanopoulos will moderate the event, which will be the eighth Democratic debate of the campaign thus far.
And if Barack Obama's campaign has anything to do with it, there won't be too many more.
Tired of trudging from one debate to the next, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is saying "Enough." A Web posting Saturday by his campaign manager said that the schedule of unceasing debates and forums in the Democratic presidential campaign was proving a distraction.
Obama will decline new debate invitations until mid-December, the posting said, and after that, he will consider requests case by case. [...]
"We simply cannot continue to hopscotch from forum to forum and run a campaign true to the bottom-up movement for change that propelled Barack into this race," campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in the posting on the campaign website's blog.
Like Matt Yglesias, I feel a certain selfishness in applauding Obama's decision. I watch all of these debates, in the hopes of catching something newsworthy, and routinely end up disappointed. Not only is the same ground is covered over and over again, but with eight candidates, even thoughtful answers are cut short by time constraints. I end up watching the events a bit like some NASCAR fans watch car races -- waiting for a stunning victory or a spectacular crash. In reality, both are pretty rare.
As far as I can tell, Obama's campaign isn't exactly shutting down the debate calendar. There have been seven debates and 19 candidate forums thus far. Based on the statement from the campaign yesterday, Obama will have participated in 15 debates by mid-December, so it's not as if voters won't have a chance to measure his, or any other candidate's, debating skills.
Any chance other candidates will follow Obama's lead on this?
--Steve Benen
