Here's some first-rate blogging. Go to Bolo Boffin for an outstanding reconstructed history of the AWOL days of George W. Bush.

Think about it. If he had been fooled by faulty intelligence, if he genuinely believed the CIA or other intelligence agencies just plain screwed the pooch and gave him bad information, you'd think he'd be hopping mad. You'd think he'd want an investigation.

Wouldn't you? Wouldn't any normal (innocent) person?

But we can't have an investigation of the decision processes that led us into war, because it would be politically risky for the President. We can't have a proper investigation into an atrocity that cost the lives of more than 3,000 Americans because it would be politically risky for the President.

To which I say, Mr. President -- if you don't have the guts to be a leader, get the bleep out of the way.

Sooner or later, we will learn the truth. Count on it.

The White House, already embroiled in a public fight over the deadline for an independent commission's investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is refusing to give the panel notes on presidential briefing papers taken by some of its own members, officials said this week.

The standoff has prompted the 10-member commission to consider issuing subpoenas for the notes ... [Dan Eggen, "White House Holding Notes Taken by 9/11 Commission," The Washington Post, January 31, 2004]

he is only permitted to read the most important classified documents concerning 9/11 in a little closet known as a "sensitive compartmented information facility" (or SCIF). He cannot photocopy the documents, and if he takes notes about them, he must leave the notes in the SCIF when he leaves. [Joe Conason, "What's Bush Hiding from 9/11 Commission?" New York Observer, 1/21/2004]

Iron John

Kay was the CIA's chief weapons inspector until he resigned last week. The difference between his report of last fall and his statements of recent days is that he was still on the Bush administration's payroll when he wrote the former and a free agent when he made the latter. It's the difference between obfuscation and clarity—political allegiance and public candor. [Fred Kaplan, "The Art of Camouflage: David Kay Comes Clean, Almost," Slate, January 26, 2004]

David Kay, the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, called for an independent inquiry into intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, but said he did not believe the Bush administration had pressured intelligence analysts to exaggerate the threat.

The White House immediately turned aside the calls from Kay and many Democrats on Wednesday for an immediate outside investigation, seeking to head off any new wide-ranging election-year inquiry that might go beyond reports already being assembled by congressional committees and the Central Intelligence Agency.

This is slick, people, and it's got Karl Rove written all over it. This is just as good as the phony public statements from the Saudis claiming they begged Bush to release the redacted pages from the congressional 9/11 inquiry and clear them from allegations they support terrorism. 

Kay is making a great show of breaking away from the White House and candidly telling the truth about Iraq's WMDs. And I have no reason to think he is not now telling the truth -- that there weren't any to be found. But while playing at whistleblower, Kay's subliminal message is always this was not George W. Bush's fault. And if you watch Kay do the cable news interview circuit, you see the entire exercise is all about pounding home that message and making sure the "pundits" understand it and repeat it.

For example, on January 28 Wolf Blitzer featured Kay and his WMD story on his afternoon CNN news show. This began with a video:

JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, top critics of the war had hoped to make this a very bad day for the administration but David Kay kept the focus on intelligence, not politics.

BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

David Kay's assessment was straightforward on the intelligence that led the U.S. to war.

KAY: I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.

JOHNS: Kay predicted that try as they might, inspectors who remain on the job searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq probably won't find much.

KAY: That it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there.

JOHNS: Still the hearing was frustrating for the Democrats who came prepared to rake the administration over the coals. Kay refused to play.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you give us any explanation why these agencies in retrospect appear to have had it right, and the information that the administration used appeared to have it wrong?

KAY: It's a lot easier after the fact and after you know the truth to be so lucky that you were right.

JOHN: Also helpful to the White House, Kay said there was no attempt to pressure intelligence analysts to reach certain policy conclusions.

KAY: Almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.

JOHNS: The committee's top Democrat, Carl Levin called for an outside investigation of the quality of the intelligence and the way it was used to make the case for war. Levin got an important ally in Republican Senator John McCain, who decided to support an outside probe after raising the issue with Kay.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Do you believe that we need an independent, outside investigation?

JOHNS: Kay suggested it's almost inevitable in order to ensure the quality of future intelligence.

KAY: You will finally determine, that it is going to take an outside inquiry, both to do it and to give yourself and the American people the competence that you have done it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Kay and CNN plant the message that somebody did something wrong, but it wasn't the White House. Then comes the interview with Wolf: 

BLITZER: Let's turn once again to the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. I'm joined once again by Dr. David Kay, the man who, until recently, led that hunt.

Unfortunately, I guess that hunt never materialized, from your perspective. You had access over these nine months, when you led the hunt, to everything in Iraq, Dr. al-Sadi, the chief scientist of the Iraqi regime, the so-called Dr. Germ. You spoke to all of them?

KAY: We did, although, I would say, Wolf, it dead lead to something. We were after the truth. I think we are much closer to understanding the truth today because of that hunt, because of that access than we were in March and April.

BLITZER: Is it possible the Iraqis transferred their chemical and biological weapons to a neighboring country to get rid of them?

KAY: Look, that's a possibility we examined, because we know a lot of things moved, although we don't know what moved. We try to answer that question by going back and saying, did they have the production capability that would have produced it? If they didn't have it, they didn't move it. My conclusion is, there's no sign that they had the production, ongoing capacity, and were producing large amounts of WMDs.

BLITZER: So you don't believe they're being hidden in Syria, let's say?

KAY: I don't believe large numbers. It's perfectly possible that technology documentation and even small amounts might well be hidden in Syria.

BLITZER: The man who is replacing you, Charles Duelfer, is a good man. He knows the subject quite well. Is it possible, when the dust settles, do you think, months from now, a year from now, he'll find weapons of mass destruction?

KAY: Actually, I hope so. And I have the highest regard for Charles Duelfer. The thing is, he is on the record essentially saying the same thing I said, that he doubts that there will be major discoveries.

BLITZER: When all is said and done, though, when you look at situation, was it still worth going to war and removing Saddam Hussein from power?

KAY: Absolutely, and I think not just for the Iraqis, which is clearest. I think the world is far safer.

I actually believe that Saddam and Iraq were becoming more dangerous to us, not less dangerous. It was a society that was breaking up. Yet, it was a stockpile of scientists and technology and actual equipment for producing WMD, while we're in a world where terrorists and others are seeking those weapons. They would have acquired it.

BLITZER: Did you come across evidence, a very controversial subject, of a link, an alleged link, between al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's organization, and Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime?

KAY: We collected evidence about WMD. Occasionally, in that collection, we would collect evidence of terrorism. But I passed that off to others who were leading that hunt.

We collected no evidence that would have tied al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden to WMD. But there clearly were terrorist groups passing through and operating in Iraq.

BLITZER: David Kay, you spent nine months in Iraq. You risked your life for the American people. Thanks very much for joining us.

KAY: Thank you, Wolf. Happy to have been here.

Kay said a lot of things in that exchange a real journalist conducting a real interview would have jumped on, but aside from that -- the casual listener is going to come away from that interview still thinking the invasion of Iraq was entirely reasonable. But here's the best part -- a short time later in the broadcast, Sam Donaldson commented on the interview we just read:

BLITZER: His [Bush's] father, of course, was not reelected. They had looked at that experience. You and I covered that whole experience.

Right now, what do they have to do at the White House to make sure George Bush has a second term?

DONALDSON: Well, steady on the course.

David Kay, your last guest here, did him a great favor. I don't know that he did it for that reason. But of the two choices, that our intelligence was wrong, that's bad. But the worst choice would be that people got to believe that the president manipulated it and said something he knew not to be true.

So, if everyone decides that the president actually was taken in and Colin Powell, the man who doesn't sell out to anyone, was taken in, then that's not so bad. And that helps him out.

And if David Kay doesn't manage to stay on message, Sam Donaldson will help him out.

 

I suspect strongly that David Kay is acting on orders from someone in the White House (and we all know who). David Kay's "disclosures" amounts to Karl Rove's way of packaging the story to keep the White House out of it. 

 

As an antidote to David Kay, please read "Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong," by Kenneth M. Pollack in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly. Pollack says,

The intelligence community did overestimate the scope and progress of Iraq's WMD programs, although not to the extent that many people believe. The Administration stretched those estimates to make a case not only for going to war but for doing so at once, rather than taking the time to build regional and international support for military action.

It's worth reading the entire article for background on the issue of cooked intelligence and Iraq's WMDs. But if you want to know where the Bushies were at fault, skip down to the section called "The Politics of Persuasion."

Throughout the spring and fall of 2002 and well into 2003 I received numerous complaints from friends and colleagues in the intelligence community, and from people in the policy community, about precisely that. According to them, many Administration officials reacted strongly, negatively, and aggressively when presented with information or analysis that contradicted what they already believed about Iraq. Many of these officials believed that Saddam Hussein was the source of virtually all the problems in the Middle East and was an imminent danger to the United States because of his perceived possession of weapons of mass destruction and support of terrorism. Many also believed that CIA analysts tended to be left-leaning cultural relativists who consistently downplayed threats to the United States.

I don't think Pollack is hard enought on the White House. For example, Vice President Cheney said on NBC's Meet the Press on September 14, 2003, "The judgment in the NIE was that if Saddam could acquire fissile material, weapons-grade material, that he would have a nuclear weapon within a few months to a year. That was the judgment of the intelligence community of the United States, and they had a high degree of confidence in it." The NIE had actually said it would take Iraq five to seven years after aquiring fissile material to make a nuclear weapon.

 

Pollack says Cheney's statement was "not untrue"; I say if it wasn't, I'm the next Kentucky Derby winner.

 

Unrelated but not unimportant: Be sure to read what Chris Lydon says about new media versus old media, new politics versus old politics, the successes and failures of the Dean campaign, and the blogging of the revolution -- "After New Hampshire" on BOP News.

Ronald Reagan used his bully pulpit and veto power to shrink such spending by 1.3 percent per year.

But remove him from the equation, and you find that expenditure growth during Democratic administrations during the last 39 years was 2.93 percent -- less than half of the 6.75 percent of Republican presidencies.

Look at it this way: If profligate spending is the proper yardstick, Republicans (except Reagan) have been more liberal than Democrats in the last four decades, with the current Bush being the least frugal. [Don Erler, "Unhappy With Bush," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, January 29, 2004]

Economists like Paul Krugman have been pointing this out for some time, so it's not news. But what's funny about this op ed is that it dissolves into Democrat-bashing -- Bush may be bad, but those Democrats are so much worse. So vote for Bush anyway.

David Corn writes "A Dis-Endorsement of Dean" for The Nation's web site. Howard Dean has been stumping against the powers of corporate lobbyists for months now, but his new campaign manager, Roy Neel, is a long-time corporate lobbyist. 

Neel was part of Washington's insider network--which does not look out for the people Dean claims he wants to empower. In 1999 and 2000, the USTA spent $3.5 million to lobby Congress, according to lobbying reports it filed. (The association probably spent more; not all lobbying activity is reported.) To help the telecoms, Neel recruited other influence peddlers in town, including the lobbying firm of Haley Barbour, who then chaired the Republican National Committee. Other Barbour clients: British American Tobacco, the Edison Electric Institute, Glaxo Wellcome, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Philip Morris. Neel's outfit also retained Wallman Strategic Consulting, which represented General Motors and WorldCom.

To increase the odds that members of Congress would heed the pleas of telecom companies, the U.S. Telecom Association, through its political action committee, donated generously to incumbent legislators. In the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, it doled out $266,000 to members of the House and Senator. Nearly 80 percent of that went to Republicans. GOPers helped by this PAC included Representatives Dick Armey, Bob Barr, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert and Henry Hyde and Senators John Ashcroft, Sam Brownback, Bill Frist, Orrin Hatch and Trent Lott.

Yesterday Josh Marshall commented on this also:

I'm no purist in political matters, but isn't Neel a Washington lobbyist? An insiders' insider? I don't think that makes him a bad guy. But isn't it a little out of tune with the campaign Dean's been running?

Something very weird happened here.

The truth is, Howard Dean never was the flaming leftist his supporters and enemies made him out to be. His record as governor shows him to be a financial conservative with mostly progressive leanings on social issues. Now, I happen to think this may the sort of guy we need in the White House right now; I'm not knocking Dean for this. But last year a lot of people on the leftist edges of the Democratic Party embraced Dean as their Great White Hope and since refused to look at any evidence that he wasn't really as far left as they were. There are a number of Dean supporters I've stopped trying to communicate with because they savage Wesley Clark as a "hard right winger" and corrupt "corporate lobbyist." (The Washington Post today has an article about Clark's corporate career. The Boston Globe has an op ed by Joan Vennochi on the messy relationship between Democrats and corporate fat cats. See also "Dean Goes Bust" in today's Salon.)

Should I be gloating now? It's tempting.

Maybe it's because I'm a jaded old lady, but I've been telling people for years that if you want purity, vote for Jesus. Human beings will fall short of perfection every time.

I see that George Will has an op ed in the Washington Post called "The Politics of Manliness." I am afraid to read it. George Will writing about "manliness" is like Donald Trump writing about "modesty." I provide a link in case you have more guts than I do.

I've run out of time for now, but I want to comment on David Kay and also about the crisis of confidence at the BBC. Later.

Bush in Denial

Bush's Fuzzy Math

Kerry Keeps Overcoming

    Awaiting Answers on Iraq    

Robert Reich: The Dead Center

Ellen Goodman: Wives in the Crossfire

Robert Kuttner: The Privileged Act Worried

     Battle Over 9/11 Panel's Deadline Intensifies   

No poll measures a politician's butch rating, but nearly every voter thinks about it—and Democratic strategists obsess about it. When they talk about electability, manliness is a big part of what they really mean. ...

People don't vote on the basis of gender expectations alone, but the butch factor plays a much larger part in our politics than is usually acknowledged. In the age of Rummy, not to mention the Gropinator, there's no such thing as too much machismo in a pol. So who can blame the Democrats for manning up? For years now, their leaders have been tarred with the wuss brush very effectively by Republicans. If overcoming that liability means channeling the ghost of Evel Knievel, I say bring it on. But why does that seem presidential? Could Franklin Roosevelt compete today with a hunk on a Harley?

Call it a response to 9-11, a reaction to feminism, or show business taking over the world. But the kitsch of masculinity—the studwear, the Clint Eastwood stare, the programmed finger-stabbing dare—has enormous credibility now. We are trusting our very lives to the man who makes the best action figure. ... [Richard Goldstein, "Who the Man?" The Village Voice, January 28, 2004]

What I've been sayin'.

Also in the Village Voice, see James Ridgeway on "Bush's War Record: Missing, Inaction."

Yesterday I quoted from Michelle Goldberg's Salon article about attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference who are disappointed with Bush. There's a subscribers-only online article on the New Republic site that says the same thing. In "Acid Base," posted January 27, Brian Montopoli writes that conservatives are starting to see Dubya not as their champion but as the lesser of two evils.

"People are still going to vote for President Bush, but the question is, will they volunteer?" [Genevieve] Wood wonders. "Will they drag their neighbors to the polls? Down the road, people are going to have to decide if the president is really doing enough to get them involved."

(Genevieve Wood is a spokesperson for the Family Research Council. See also what People for the American Way says about the FRC.)

Regarding electability, here's the very beginning of Montopoli's article:

It's the last day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held this past Thursday through Saturday, and Warrior--formerly The Ultimate Warrior, the World Wrestling Federation champion--is in the middle of a pretty good impression of Howard Dean's Iowa concession speech. "We're going to spread Deanmania like SARS," he screams, WWF style, to wild applause from the campus conservatives in the audience.

First, why is it OK for a fake wrestler to scream but not Howard Dean? Our only clue is that Mr. Warrior screamed "WWF style," which I assume refers to some manly style of screaming that Dr. Dean has not mastered.

But my other concern is that the CPAC minions and fellow travelers have already worked up steam against Howard Dean, and my guts are telling me that of the Final Four, Dean is the Dem candidate most likely to get right-wingers galvanized to support Bush. In truth he is not more "liberal" overall than the rest of the Dems. But I suspect that, for a lot of intangible reasons, he is the candidate most likely to frighten away conservatives who might be tempted to cross party lines to vote against Bush. Therefore, Dean is not the man we should be running against Bush in November. It's a shame, but that's how it is.

News in the News. There's an interesting article called "Mandate or Muddle?" in the Washington Post that I might have added to the "Hot Links" list below, except it's by Howard Kurtz. Please see today's Media Whores Online (no permalinks, sorry) for the scoop on Kurtz. In brief, Kurtz is accused of serious ethics violations, including using his column to promote the financial interests of his wife.

In today's article, Kurtz said the news pundits seemed confused and muddled as they covered the New Hampshire results last night. (Well, of course they did. Those people couldn't find shit in an outhouse.) Further, Kurtz revealed (?) that  many of the television pundits and pollsters who were passed off as objective observers are in fact allied to specific candidates, and their allegiances colored their opinions.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you ...

The Deserter

Dems Are Playing to Win

Baghdad Is Bush's Blue Dress

For Dems, Issues Are Not the Issue

Northeast Chill and Global Warming

9/11 Commission Asks for More Time

Ellen Goodman: What Planet Are We On?

Joe Conason: Bush's War Stories Don't Fly

Georgia Removes Evolution from Curriculum

Jimmy Breslin: All of a Sudden, Kerry's the One

Thomas Oliphant: A Strong Finish, Broad Support

The Press Won't Look at Dubya's Military Record

This year's CPAC, in fact, was more encouraging for liberals than conservatives. Bush's right-wing base is demanding more concessions than he's made so far, but those concessions are likely to erode whatever moderate support the president has. At one of the most fervently Republican gatherings in the country, it wasn't hard to find people who were planning to vote for third-party candidates from the Constitution or Libertarian parties, and a few even confided in whispers that they might vote for Joe Lieberman or John Edwards if given a chance. The mood was like that of liberals in 2000 who saw Al Gore as nothing more than a lesser evil and yearned to send a futile message through Ralph Nader. While the grass-roots left is more motivated and disciplined than it's ever been, the grass-roots right has turned sullen and uncompromising.

"A lot of people here don't care if Bush wins or not," said Rick Shaftan, a right-wing political consultant and pollster based in New Jersey. [Michelle Goldberg, "The Conservatives Are Outraged -- About Bush," Salon, January 27, 2004]

The Conservatives are angry about Bush's runaway spending and the "immigration" proposal. ("The economy sucks and he's letting all the damn wetbacks in.") And they believe the White House takes them and their votes for granted. They're so upset the vendors were marking down Bush baseball caps -- no sales. 

"The only way I'd vote for Bush," said Jeffrey Becker, a 41-year-old engineer from West Virginia, "is if Hillary got in the race."

Electability, people. We have to get some people to switch from Bush to the Dem. We don't want to pick a candidate who will scare them off. Kerry may be a good choice.  

And "electability" is real. For example, see this quotation from an interview of Kevin Philips by Joan Walsh in Salon. Philips is responding to a remark by Walsh that the Bush family is "good at politics."

See, I don't think they're even that good at politics. I think they got a terrific break in 1988: The Democrats picked Michael Dukakis, a Harvard dweeb type of Democrat. Then in 2000, they get Albert Gore. OK, he didn't really claim he invented the Internet, but here's this guy, the son of a senator, he certainly couldn't use the dynasty issue, he couldn't use any of that. So the Democrats have run people against the Bushes who've given the Bushes a fair pass on their issues. [Joan Walsh, "'I couldn't stand to support this d