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saturday, july 2, 2005

More Old Business
 
There seems to be some further corroboration that Karl Rove was the leaker in the Valerie Plame case. Greg Mitchell writes for Editor & Publisher:
Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, now claims that at least two authoritative sources have confirmed that one name is top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

This afternoon, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff confirmed that Cooper did indeed talk to Rove for his story, but Rove's lawyer denied he was the key leaker in the case.

"The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House," Isikoff writes on the Newsweek web site. "Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with Newsweek, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove."
Luskin the Lawyer says Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Further, Rove signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him.
 
Might Cooper and Miller have chosen to keep Rove's identity secret even after he had signed a waiver? Seems to me they might have.
 
Via News Hounds, Shepard Smith and Eric Burns discussed  the Rove/Plame connection on Faux Nooz and offered some speculation:

EB: ... did the story do anybody any harm? Yeah, Valerie Plame is no longer a covert operative. We tried to find out what happened to her. The CIA is notoriously unforthcoming. What we believe is she worked there until May. Is she still there? There's no way to know. Is she still a covert operative? Almost certainly not because her cover was blown.

Why would a journalist say 'I have a right to keep private sources which provided information for a story of this nature? I don't understand it. It's why people think journalists are arrogant (except for Fox, do they have journalists?) It's hiding behind a principle, when, in this case, the result of that principle is a story that did no good and some harm. (I think that is called freedom of the press)

SS: Of course, at the root of all of this is -- did the Bush Administration, or one person in the Bush Administration leak this as a gotcha and how dare you say bad things about this president. That's the root of it all.

EB: Yeah, but isn't that another reason why we should know the sources in this case. Not only is, perhaps, Valerie Plame worse off because of this story but there may be some important information about the motives of the leakers.

I mean, you know the journalist's augument here. If we're requested to tell people who our sources are, if we're required to tell a court who our sources are, well, maybe those sources won't talk to us in the future.

There is also some indication that Fitzgerald's investigation is no longer fixed only on who outed Valerie Plame
 

Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has stated in court pleadings that he already knows the identity of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper's sources regarding the senior white house official who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to Robert Novak.

Miller did some reporting for a story but never wrote an article. She has maintained she intends to go to jail rather than reveal her source -- though Fitzgerald has indicated in court filings that he already knows that official's identity.

So, why is it so necessary for them to provide the information?

As the Wapo article suggests, the investigation has moved from one involving the identity of the White House official to one involving perjury - i.e., a cover-up. The source may have been questioned in front of the grand jury and lied.

Digby: "The Iraq Group"

Atrios links to this new E&P scoop that says the Plame Grand Jury just subpoenaed documents from the Iraq Group, which set off some bells. It turns out the Grand Jury has asked for documents from this group before and I wrote about it back in February of '04. (Good to know I haven't completely blown all my brain cells.)

Here's what I
wrote at the time. Looking at it now it takes on some unusual (although likely completely coincidental) significance: ...

Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

The Iraq Group was, essentially, a propaganda arm of the White House. Fitzgerald's investigation may be going beyond Plame and into the whole fabric of lies that got us into the Iraq War. 

See also: Stirling Newberry, "On an Article Hangs Source X."

Update: Josh Marshall writes (emphasis added),

 Mike Isikoff's piece on Rove's role in the Plame case is now up on the Newsweek website. But the picture it paints seems a bit murkier than what Lawrence O'Donnel suggested. ...

...  What's implicit in Isikoff's report, however, and in the Tribune too, is that the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald is after Rove for some felony arising out of the case (perjury after the fact? conspiracy?) but not the immediate and original act of leaking the name.

There's one other point worth noting here. As we've seen, federal law recognizes no reporters' privilege or confidentiality. But if recollection serves, there are DOJ guidelines which say that prosecutors should exercise a great deal of discretion when trying to compel testimony from journalists. They're not supposed to do it just to tie up a few loose ends, but only if there's real and significant crime they're trying to prosecute. And before they do so, they're supposed to have exhausted all other possible ways to get at the information.

5:56 pm | link

Old Business
 
Before plunging into conjecture of which knuckle-dragging troglodyte the President will nominate to replace Justice O'Connor, I'd like to call your attention to a possible breakthrough in the Valerie Plame case. Josh Marshall has the background.
 
This news is a couple of days old, but I want to be sure it isn't completely crushed under Supreme Court nominee conjecture.
 
Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know the name of the White House source who leaked Valerie Plame's name and identity to reporters. O'Donnell says it was Karl Rove, which is what we all suspected. There's always a chance O'Donnell is mistaken, of course, but given the retribution he's likely to face for making an unfounded allegation, I am inclined to think he knows.

Steven C. Day at PopPolitics makes a good argument that reporter privilege doesn't apply in the Plame case.

The attorney-client privilege, for example, has traditionally been one of the most broadly applied privileges, since clients need to feel free to communicate openly with their lawyers -- even about dastardly things. Yet, even this privilege is far from absolute. Of particular relevance here, the privilege (at least in most jurisdictions) doesn’t apply in any case where it is found that the communication in question was made in furtherance of a fraud or crime. In other words, the privilege protects communications about past criminal behavior, but, obviously, cannot properly be used to further the commission of future or ongoing crimes.

Is it so unreasonable to suggest that a similar dynamic applies in the case of the Valerie Plame investigation? The White House bad guy who dished the information about Plame being a covert CIA agent wasn’t merely acting as a source for a reporter, passing on info about a story; no, the bad guy’s contact with the reporters was directly in furtherance of the allegedly criminal plan to publicize Plame’s status in an effort to take political revenge against her husband.

Evidentiary privileges involve a balancing of conflicting interests: On the one hand, there is the interest in keeping the particular communication, in this case between a reporter and a source, confidential; on the other, there is the substantial interest in making relevant information available to the pursuit of truth in judicial proceedings.

What possible public interest is served by granting an absolute privilege to governmental agents to use members of the press to further a criminal enterprise?

Then, of course, there is the enduring mystery of why the Reptile, who is clearly in this up to his overgrown eyebrows, is getting a pass.
 
Postscript: I'm close to the scene of the crime this weekend--Washington, DC. I'll say hi to Karl for everybody.
  
7:39 am | link

friday, july 1, 2005

Prepare for Battle
 
Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement today. The battle over a Supreme Court nominee will soon be upon us.
 
Lock 'n' load, people.
 
Another 4th of July weekend is also upon us. I'm going to be busy, so posting will be sparse unless something significant happens. Sometime this weekend, be sure to eat some barbeque and drink some beer and watch some fireworks. And travel safely.
 
Also, be sure to read "Deja vu in Iraq" by Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe and "America Held Hostage" by Paul Krugman in the New York Times.
  
11:08 am | link

Another Reason to Not Support Hillary
 
This month Senator Clinton will be assuming a "key position" in the Democratic Leadership Council.
 
The woman really is turning into Exhibit A in "What's Wrong With the Democrats."
 
At the Nation, Ari Berman writes,

Clearly, Hillary hopes that by identifying herself with an organization devoted to bashing the Democratic base she can solidify her moderate credentials. "A senior Democratic aide suggested Clinton's involvement with the DLC is just another move toward expanding her political appeal as she ponders a presidential bid," Roll Call reports (subscription only). As recently as last March, Hillary was not listed in the DLC'sNew Democratic Directory of elected officials. Now she is.

For many politicians, joining the DLC offers supposed political cover. "It's the easiest, cheapest way for a politician who wants to be equated with 'different kind of Democrat,'" explains former Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi. (See "Going Nowhere: The DLC Sputters to a Halt.")

We need a "different kind of Democrat," all right. What we don't need are more posturing, calculating, packaged-to-appeal-to-swing-voter Dems like Hillary. We've got way too many of those now. That's why most of the public thinks Democrats have "no core set of convictions or point of view."
 
Be sure not to miss David Sirota's "Why the Public Believes Dems Stand for Nothing." And follow that up with "Democrats: The Party of Losers" by AaronBurrFan at BOP News. Among other points, ABF suggests that progressives stop working with the clueless and corrupt Dem insiders who keep marching the party off a cliff.
[Americans] are willing to accept progressive governance, but they do not consider Democrats a progressive party. Indeed, what has been going on for the past six months is that progressives within the Democratic Party have been fighting tooth and nail, this has hurt Bush, and conservative empty Democrats have taken credit for the victories. And progressives - as seen in their support for Hillary Clinton and Bob Casey - are quite willing to let this happen. The screeching 'we have to wiiiin' whining is drowning out the 'we have to improve the country', and they are different and often mutually exclusive ethos. For instance, the pro-life anti-stem cell Casey will give bipartisan cover to Republicans in the Senate, all the while taking advantage of progressive anti-privatization work to unseat Santorum.
In the comments, ABF asks that we "stop giving money to single-issue groups and Democrats in general elections and dedicate that money to progressives running in primaries." I hope that in 2006 the Left Blogosphere will seek out and promote progressive Dems running in primaries and help turn the party around.
  
6:30 am | link

thursday, june 30, 2005

Not Just Like Vietnam
 
Richard Cohen writes in the Washington Post today that Iraq is becoming more and more like Vietnam.

The similarity is most striking in the language the president used. First came the vast, insulting oversimplifications. The war in Iraq was tied over and over again to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, although that link was nonexistent. The Sept. 11 commission said in plain English that there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Even a line such as we must "defeat them abroad before they attack us at home" had a musty, Vietnam-era sound to it. Whether it's true or not, it is an updated version of the domino theory: if not Saigon then San Francisco.

Second, just as Lyndon Johnson and others referred to communism as if it were a worldwide monolith, so Bush talks about terrorists. He mentioned "terrorists" 23 times, and while he also occasionally employed the word "insurgents," his emphasis was on the wanton murders of the former and not the political aims of the latter. He even cited the terrorist leader and al Qaeda associate "Zarqawi" by name, saying the United States would never "abandon the Iraqi people to men" like him -- strongly suggesting that he was the problem in Iraq. Abu Musab Zarqawi, though, is only part of the problem.

Yesterday, Eric Alterman posted a "Vietnam Preflight Check."

    1. Cabal of oldsters who won’t listen to outside advice? Check.
    2. No understanding of ethnicities of the many locals? Check.
    3. Imposing country boundaries drawn in Europe, not by the locals? Check.
    4. Unshakeable faith in our superior technology? Check.
    5. France secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
    6. Russia secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
    7. China secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
    8. SecDef pushing a conflict the JCS never wanted? Check.
    9. Fear we’ll look bad if we back down now? Check.
    10. Corrupt Texan in the WH? Check.
    11. Land war in Asia? Check.
    12. Right unhappy with outcome of previous war? Check.
    13. Enemy easily moves in/out of neighboring countries? Check.
    14. Soldiers about to be dosed with *our own* chemicals? Check.
    15. Friendly fire problem ignored instead of solved? Check.
    16. Anti-Americanism up sharply in Europe? Check.
    17. B-52 bombers? Check.
    18. Helicopters that clog up on the local dust? Check.
    19. In-fighting among the branches of the military? Check.
    20. Locals that cheer us by day, hate us by night? Check.
    21. Local experts ignored? Check.
    22. Local politicians ignored? Check.
    23. Locals used to conflicts lasting longer than the USA has been a country? Check.
    24. Against advice, Prez won’t raise taxes to pay for war? Check.
    25. Blue water navy ships operating in brown water? Check.
    26. Use of nukes hinted at if things don’t go our way? Check.
    27. Unpopular war? Check.

Yet there are differences, and today on Salon Sidney Blumenthal described the biggest difference:

In his call for "sacrifice," Bush strove to sound somber, but his tone was more gladiatorial than anguished. His speech superficially recalled the Vietnam speeches of Lyndon Johnson, another president who tried to muster public support for a war that increasingly resembled a quagmire. But Johnson's speeches were filled with a sense of the sobriety of the venture and moment. Even as he urged patience, as Bush did, and said the nation was being tested in Vietnam, as Bush did about Iraq, he spoke of moral ambiguities. In his State of the Union address of 1967, for example, Johnson said of the Vietnam War: "No better words could describe our present course than those once spoken by the great Thomas Jefferson: 'It is the melancholy law of human societies to be compelled sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater.'" And Johnson warned the country against "arousing the hatreds and the passions that are ordinarily loosed in time of war."

lbj.jpgJohnson was an anguished president, a reluctant warrior, personally devastated by the loss of life and fully aware of the tragedy of the war to himself, his presidency and the nation. Vietnam was a war he inherited; he had made no single decision to go to war. From the beginning, he knew he presided over a disintegrating policy. He believed that if he withdrew from Vietnam, he would provoke a right-wing backlash as virulent as McCarthyism and sacrifice the Great Society. Johnson grappled with bad and worsening prospects. He was always skeptical about the war and tended toward pessimism. He gathered as much information as he could and reached out to the most informed people he could. He especially sought out senators he respected who had serious reservations, like Richard Russell and Mike Mansfield.

"You can't listen to those tapes of Johnson without hearing a man in utter agony, knowing he's trapped," Leslie Gelb, director of the Pentagon Papers project inside the Defense Department during the Johnson administration, and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, told me. "Bush doesn't think he's trapped. Bush has reduced everything to will. I've never seen any self-doubt or agonizing, or anyone who works with him suggest that."

From the thoroughly favorable political position of national unanimity after 9/11, Bush pursued a war of choice in Iraq, relying on shaky, distorted and false intelligence. Skeptics were driven into a corner and punished. The administration became an echo chamber.

Narcissistic personality disorder, anyone?

8:04 pm | link

Secrets and Lies
 

THERE IS AN assumption that Saddam Hussein's upcoming trial will validate the Iraq war -- but watch out.

The trial -- starting as soon as next month -- may not be great news for the United States. In fact, it may allow the former Iraqi dictator to publicize some obscure but extremely sordid aspects of the US relationship with him and make a very public defense against the validity of the constantly changing reasons for the current Iraq war. The trial could easily backfire and go haywire from the US government's point of view.

The United States has coordinated holding Saddam for over a year and a half with no trial yet. It appears that Iraq wants to start the trial, while we are happy with the delays.

You know that if the Bushies were confident Saddam's trial would make them look good, they would have had it already.

According to Alastair Macdonald of Reuters, the Kurds and Shiites of Iraq are chomping at the bit to try Saddam Hussein--understandably--but the U.S. is hoping for a full-blown war crimes trial.

Sounds like an excuse to me.

I found this Christian Science Monitor article from February saying that war crime trials for SH and 11 cohorts would begin "within the next two to four weeks, according to a US government official who works with the Iraqis." It's, um, been a lot longer than two to four weeks. And it sounds as if the U.S. had been helping get ready for the trial:

Because the building blocks of the case presentation are so crucial, US government officials say the training and evidence-gathering period for the Iraqi judges, prosecutors, and investigators has been long, but vital. Advisers from the US State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) have been working with the Iraqi court since it was launched by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in December 2003. According to the US official working with the operation, they focused on two levels: the hardware and the people.

A special courtroom had to be constructed. Evidence that had been previously documented had to be collated. Evidence seized by the US military had to be examined. Judges, lawyers, investigators, and document experts had to be vetted and trained. "They don't have a real history of doing this kind of thing," says the US official. "The concept of command responsibility is new to them."

But much progress has been made, the US official says. In addition to the legal training by the DOJ staff, led by Greg Kehoe who has had experience with the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the judicial staff has traveled to London, Amsterdam, and Sicily for further training, including mock war-crimes trials.

So how come it's the last day of June and Saddam Hussein hasn't been tried yet? What's the holdup? It was our idea to try SH in Iraq and not in an international court. Now Iraq's Prime Minister is applying pressure to get the trial started.

Much about Saddam's history vis a vis the U.S. is public knowledge, yet not common knowledge, at least among Bush supporters. It's possible, with support for the war lagging, the Bushies have decided this is not the time for the American public to be treated to a review of that history.  

Or, maybe there's more we don't know about.

4:39 pm | link

George W. Bush Is Soft on Terrorism
 
David Neiwert at Orcinus writes another excellent post, saying what needs to be said.
One of the cornerstones of the Republican attack on liberals as "weak on terrorism" -- voiced most notoriously by Karl Rove last week, but really a constant and building theme since 9/11 -- is the notion that the Bush administration has been aggressive and "resolute" in tackling this threat.

Like most Republican themes these days, it is unadulterated bullshit. It pretends that the arrogant imposition of a long-planned policy is the same as resolve, and that the careless use of military power is the same as aggressiveness. It also pretends that all of these, somehow, are an adequate substitute for real competence.

The reality is that the Bush administration has foregone a serious and effective campaign against terrorism by pursuing an unrelated military misadventure that will, in the long run, weaken our national defense -- especially against terrorist attacks.
In today's WaPo, David Ignatius writes,
The war in Iraq has in fact made America's terrorism problem worse. The CIA reached that judgment in a recent report, and any fair-minded person would come to the same conclusion. By toppling the cruelly repressive regime of Saddam Hussein, the United States turned Iraq into a new breeding ground for jihadists.
Bold words. But then Ignatius becomes Exhibit A in "Why We Can't Have an Intelligent National Discussion About Iraq":
That doesn't mean the war was wrong, but it does make it hard to justify as an anti-terrorism stratagem.
That doesn't mean the war was wrong? If a war is suppose to be an antiterrorism measure, but in fact has the result of being a proterrorism measure, why doesn't that make the war wrong? 
We all hope American and Iraqi forces will contain the insurgency there, but what happens then? The answer, unfortunately, is that the terrorists go elsewhere -- as did Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan recruits. I'm told the intelligence community speaks of this problem as "bleed out" -- a graphic metaphor for how terrorist cells would seep into neighboring countries and conduct operations there and, indeed, around the world.
Again we see the words insurgents and terrorists used as synonyms. Iraqis who are fighting because we invaded their country are insurgents. The fact that a lot of those insurgents are now learning the methods of terrorism and joining the larger effort, the jihad against the West, is one of the many truths the Right lacks the moral courage to acknowledge. Per rightie rhetoric, all Muslims fighting the U.S. occupation of Iraq are lifelong members of same group of terrorists who struck the U.S. on 9/11.
 
As they say, it ain't just a river in Egypt.
 
The rest of Ignatius's opinion piece amounts to a big wimping out; he still argues that we have to keep fighting the terrorists/insurgents in Iraq so that they don't come here. But why not? The t/i's are not exactly bottled up. From today's Bob Herbert column:

The administration seems to have learned nothing in the past two years. Dick Cheney, who told us the troops would be "greeted as liberators," now assures us that the insurgency is in its last throes. And the president, who never listened to warnings that he was going to war with too few troops, still refuses to acknowledge that there are not enough U.S. forces deployed to pacify Iraq.

The Times's Richard A. Oppel Jr. wrote an article recently about a tragically common occurrence in Iraq: U.S. forces fight to free cities and towns from the grip of insurgents, and then leave. With insufficient forces left behind to secure the liberated areas, the insurgents return.

"We have a finite number of troops," said Maj. Chris Kennedy of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. "But if you pull out of an area and don't leave security forces in it, all you're going to do is leave the door open for them to come back. This is what our lack of combat power has done to us throughout the country."

If there were a finite number of terrorists in the world, and if we had 'em surrounded in Iraq, the "we have to fight them there so that they won't come here" theory would make sense. But there aren't, we don't, and it doesn't.
 
The attacks of September 11 were carried out by 19 men, not an army. I fail to see why the jihadists won't, sooner or later, peel off a handful of fighters and send them here to kill Americans at home.  What's stopping them?
 
In fact, it's a logical strategic move, no different from the strategy that sent "Crazy Bill" Sherman strolling through Georgia in 1864. It's a wonder to me it hasn't happened already.
 
It's essential that we keep repeating the fact that the Iraq War has nothing to do with September 11. It's also essential to keep repeating that the Iraq War has only tenuous and theoretical antiterrorist applications. The Bushies invaded Iraq because they wanted to invade Iraq.  Keeping Americans safe from terrorism was not the reason, but the excuse.
 
What about September 11? David Neiwert responds to Karl Rove:
The reality: When liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attack, they wanted to prepare an effective, nimble response combining military action with intelligence-gathering and law enforcement, as well as addressing the root causes of terrorism; conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and simply prepared to sell George W. Bush as a "war president."

Turns out they were pretty good at that. But fighting terror? These guys make Larry, Moe and Curly look like icons of competence.
IMO going after something like international terrorism--something liquid and borderless--through conventional warfare makes as much sense as shooting at flies with a shotgun. 
 
On the other hand--and I know some of you will disagree with me on this--the attacks of September 11 required a hard response. A nation cannot afford to let a challenge like that go unanswered. I'm not talking about revenge or retaliation, but demonstration. I certainly wouldn't have saved the shock and awe for Iraq. I would've come down on every Taliban/al Qaeda stronghold in Afghanistan, and I would have come down on them a lot harder and a lot faster than the Bushies (who gave Osama bin Laden ample warning and time to escape) did.
 
Karl Rove said, "In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban." But they didn't unleash that power in Afghanistan; they used only a small part of that power. They held back, saving the shock and awe for Iraq.
 
I say again--it's Bush and his supporters who are soft on terrorism, not liberals.
 
If it had been up to me, and the U.S. had truly unleashed power and might in Afghanistan, when the smoke cleared I would have said, this is what happens when you mess with the United States. But then I would have poured every possible resource into the security and rebuilding of Afghanistan.
 
And, at the same time, I would have increased security at airports, seaports, and major cities in the United States, and pursued anti-American terrorism globally through a mix of special operations, intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomacy. Karl Rove might call that planning to "prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." I call it fighting terrorism smart, not stupid.
 
Instead, the Bushies held back in Afghanistan. They sent minimal troops and special ops to reinforce the Northern Alliance, and relied way too much on Pakistan to close the borders. Even so, many oppressed people were liberated from the Taliban, which was good. But then we all but abandoned Afghanistan to pursue whatever goal Bush thought he was pursuing in Iraq. Today, Carlotta Gaul writes in the New York Times:
The loss of a military helicopter with 17 Americans aboard in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday comes at a time of growing insecurity here. For the first time since the United States overthrew the Taliban government three and a half years ago, Afghans say they are feeling uneasy about the future.

Violence has increased sharply in recent months, with a resurgent Taliban movement mounting daily attacks in southern Afghanistan, gangs kidnapping foreigners here in the capital and radical Islamists orchestrating violent demonstrations against the government and foreign-financed organizations.

The steady stream of violence has dealt a new blow to this still traumatized nation of 25 million. In dozens of interviews conducted in recent weeks around the country, Afghans voiced concern that things were not improving, and that the Taliban and other dangerous players were gaining strength.

I say again--it's Bush and his supporters who are soft on terrorism, not liberals.
 
The only thing BushCo knows how to do is manipulate events for maximum political profit. And that's what they did with 9/11. It should be abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that BushCo has no clue how to actually fight terrorism, and that they are incapable of learning. The fact that so many Americans continue to support the Bush Administration is a testament to the power of cognitive dissonance.
 
7:50 am | link

wednesday, june 29, 2005

Pathetic
 
It's all about rationalization--some on the Right are twisting recent history into pretzels in a pathetic attempt to make a connection between September 11 and Iraq. Andrew McCarthy writes:
It was good to hear the commander-in-chief remind people that this is still the war against terror. Specifically, against Islamo-fascists who slaughtered 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Who spent the eight years before those atrocities murdering and promising to murder Americans — as their leader put it in 1998, all Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world where they could be found.
As several writers explained today in their critique of last night's speech, the Saddam Hussein regime that we invaded in March 2003 had no operational ties to the terrorists who perpetrated September 11. It was not until after we invaded Iraq, and because we invaded Iraq, that Islamic extremists began flocking to Iraq to fight us.
 
But, because we have sunk so much of our attention and resources into Iraq, to the detriment of the effort in Afghanistan, many of the terrorists who really did have some connection to 9/11, like Osama bin Laden, remain free.
 
BTW, if you've never read "Bush's Lost Year" by James Fallows, from the October 2004 Atlantic Monthly, here's your chance. The fact is, the Iraq war is nothing but a distraction from the real antiterrorism efforts the U.S. should have been making, and could have been making, except the Bushies couldn't think of anything else but invading Iraq.
 
And because the United States invaded Iraq, we unwittingly created a place where hotheaded jihadists get the training to effectively commit acts of terrorism anywhere in the world. 
 
Way to go, Junior. The fact is that our war against terror seems to be having the opposite effect-- it's creating more terror.
 
But the righties really don't care about terrorism. They just want to hang on to their delusions about the greatness of George W. Bush. Want to see proof? Go back to McCarthy's article. God help us, he repeats all the old fantasies and rumors the righties floated in 2002 and which later were throroughly and utterly debunked. He even sends Mohammed Atta back to Prague, for pity's sake. And McCarthy is clueless enough to mention Abu Musab Zarqawi, a horrendously dangerous man who owes his life and freedom to George W. Bush's "war on terror." 
NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger. ...
 
...  Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
Clearly, fighting terrorism was not Bush's first priority. Invading Iraq was the first priority; fighting terrorism was just an excuse. September 11 was just an excuse. And the 3,000 dead are just resources to be manipulated. Bush uses their corpses to prop up his sorry excuse for an administration, just as Bush apologists use them to excuse their jingoism and xenophobia. 
 
Here's the difference between righties and the rest of us: Some of us care more about national security and honoring the 9/11 dead than we care about glorifying Prince George. But righties care more about glorifying Prince George than they care about national security and honoring the 9/11 dead.
 
Updates: Bradford Plumer takes on another of Andrew McCarthy's howlers. As the disinformation campaign continues, Steve M correctly calls the "disinformers" proxies. This is how the Rove White House operates; they get stooges to tell the biggest whoppers for them. Eripost at The Left Coaster takes some of the straw out of the Right's straw men.
 
9:12 pm | link

You Won't Believe This
 
Via Steve M.--take a look at the White House Iraq policy web page. Someone in White House web administration is a tad off message.
 
latiniraq.jpg
 
Also:
 
CNN Headline: "Bush Slammed for Iraq Link to 9/11." The public can't be reminded often enough that Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11.
  
11:29 am | link

The Reviews Are In
 
magician.jpgPresident Bush took his magic act on the road last night. Unfortunately, the big finale--where he draws a curtain over September 11, and out pops Iraq--didn't wow everyone.
 
Also last night the President appealed to young people to join up.  "There is no higher calling than service in our Armed Forces," he said. I'm sure this will inspire a generation of young Republicans to write letters to the troops, or at least send postcards, or maybe just think about the troops once in a while. 'Twould be nice.
 
The theater critics weigh in:
 
Bush invoked Sept. 11 five times in his speech and referred to it by implication several more times. Although he has previously agreed with investigators that there is "no evidence" of a link between Saddam Hussein's government and the attacks masterminded by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, he used much of his speech to depict the militants in Iraq as the same breed of Islamic terrorist who struck the United States. The White House titled his remarks a discussion on the "War on Terror," not Iraq.

"This war reached our shores on September 11th, 2001," Bush said. "The terrorists who attacked us -- and the terrorists we face -- murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom." He added that many of the insurgents in Iraq "are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania."

The address continued a shift in the administration's emphasis as it has justified the Iraq war, beginning with the threat posed by Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction, continuing to the need to promote democracy in the Middle East and now suggesting a more seamless link to the attacks on American soil.

"The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11th, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi, and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden," Bush said Tuesday night, referring to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the insurgent leader in Iraq. Bush quoted bin Laden calling the Iraq conflict a "third world war" and added that terrorists "are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September 11th, 2001."

More than two years ago, Bush argued that Saddam Hussein's control over Iraq could make the nation a haven for terrorists. But in his nationally televised speech, Bush asserted that the tumult that has followed Hussein's removal created the same threat. ...
 
... By completing "the mission," Bush declared, "we will prevent Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban — a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends."

That argument drew instant scorn from some Democrats, who argued that Bush was defending the continued military operations on the basis of a threat that did not exist before the invasion. ...

What the president said about 9/11 wasn't false, exactly; White House speechwriters are better than that. The president talked about the war that "reached our shores" on 9/11, the speech that he gave after 9/11, the Americans who died on 9/11, the "lessons" that we learned from 9/11, the way that the terrorists tried to "shake our will" on 9/11 and, once again, the speech that he gave after 9/11.

Bush didn't say Tuesday night that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11, but he didn't have to, either. His administration has spread that phony story so many times before -- sometimes explicitly, more often through the sort of guilt-by-association game the president played at Fort Bragg -- that the president's supporters have long since internalized it.

Ellis Henican, New York Newsday:

In his prime-time talk, the president did finally acknowledge a growing public distaste for his war: "I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it, and it is vital to the future."

But he pinned his defense of the war policy almost entirely on a single, discredited connection, the claim that Iraq was tied to Sept. 11.

He cited the terror attacks repeatedly. He even quoted Osama bin Laden, who had about as much connection to Saddam Hussein's Iraq as Pancho Villa did to Imperial Japan.

"We are fighting against men with blind hatred - and armed with lethal weapons - who are capable of any atrocity," Bush told 750 soldiers and airmen in the base gymnasium. "They are trying to shake our will in Iraq - just as they tried to shake our will on Sept. 11, 2001. They will fail."

They? Well, you know, whomever.

We did not expect Mr. Bush would apologize for the misinformation that helped lead us into this war, or for the catastrophic mistakes his team made in running the military operation. But we had hoped he would resist the temptation to raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks. We had hoped that he would seize the moment to tell the nation how he will define victory, and to give Americans a specific sense of how he intends to reach that goal - beyond repeating the same wishful scenario that he has been describing since the invasion.

Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking.

Editorial, New York Daily News:

The only other arrow in Bush's quiver is the support for his handling of the overall war on terror. That explains why he frequently linked Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks. He didn't come out and say Iraq was directly involved; rather, he said "the only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of Sept.11 - if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi - and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden."

That's a slick phrasing that aims to remind people why they initially supported the war. But the burden now is a litany of fals