Monthly Archives: December 2006

Whose Free Speech?

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A disturbing story that came to light last week, courtesy of Think Progress —

Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed today that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration’s refusal to engage Iran.

Leverett’s op-ed has already been cleared by the CIA, where he was a senior analyst. Leverett explained, “I’ve been doing this for three and a half years since leaving government, and I’ve never had to go to the White House to get clearance for something that I was publishing as long as the CIA said, ‘Yeah, you’re not putting classified information.’”

According to Leverett the op-ed was “all based on stuff that Secretary Powell, Secretary Rice, Deputy Secretary Armitage have talked about publicly. It’s been extensively reported in the media.” Leverett says the incident shows “just how low people like Elliot Abrams at the NSC [National Security Council] will stoop to try and limit the dissemination of arguments critical of the administration’s policy.”

In remarks to the New America Foundation, Leverett explained that the op-ed made a case for diplomatic engagement with Iran. He had submitted the op-ed to the CIA to verify that the piece had no classified information. The CIA cleared the op-ed without reservation. But the White House intervened, claiming there was classified information in the piece. Leverett says this was nothing but a bare-assed attempt to squelch debate on President Bush’s Iran policies.

Carol Giacomo of Reuters reported,

Flynt Leverett, a Middle East expert who once worked for Bush’s National Security Council, advocates a “grand bargain,” offering Iran full diplomatic and economic relations and a security guarantee in return for forswearing nuclear weapons.

This was “the best of the available options for American policy,” Leverett, now with the New America Foundation, told a conference hosted by the CATO Institute thinktank. …

… Bush has resisted even the modest step of talking with Tehran about Iraq and has shown no signs of being prepared to consider what Leverett and other analysts call “a grand bargain.”

In a Voice of America report by Barry Wood, Leverett says the Bush Administration needs Iran’s cooperation if there’s to be progress in Iraq.

Former diplomat and Central Intelligence Agency analyst Flynt Leverett says the Bush administration finds itself in the awkward position of needing Iran’s help to bring stability to war-ravaged Iraq. “They (the Iranians) are very well positioned on the ground, right now, to defend their interests in Iraq without our help. We’ve put ourselves in a situation in Iraq where at this point we need them (the Iranians) more than they need us,” he said.

This is what the Bush Administration doesn’t want you to know. And if indeed the op-ed contained no classified material, it is censorship in the purest sense of the word.

Today some rightie bloggers are also up in arms over “a disturbing story for those of us who defend freedom of speech through our blogging,” quoting Captain Ed. Government interference with the right to blog? Not quite.

HostGator has suspended the Right Wing Howler for linking to and excerpting an “editorial” at IMAO, a well-known source of biting (and excellent) political satire. Vilmar’s offending web page has been cached by Google here.

The article in question calls for saving America by killing all Arab children; in other words, it’s one of IMAO’s lead-balloon attempts at wit. There’s no question that it’s a satire, however unfunny. [Update: Actually, there is a legitimate question on this point; see update below.] HostGator suspended the Right Wing Howler account after the Council on American-Islamic Relations complained; IMAO is still online.

I can empathize with Right Wing Howler’s frustration. I lost more than a year of work when Lycos Tripod destroyed the original Mahablog archives without prior notice. Since I didn’t owe them money and had been very careful not to violate Tripod rules — there was no obscenity; I had deleted most of the graphics to stay within byte parameters, etc. — I can only assume that someone had taken offense at the anti-Bush Administration content. Needless to say, I was very angry. Although I had saved a little of it elsewhere, it still frustrates me sometime that I have no record of what I blogged from July 2002 to August 2003 (when I moved Mahablog to a new web host).

So, yeah, it’s frustrating. But it’s not censorship. Tripod doesn’t have the power to keep me from expressing opinions; it just doesn’t want my opinions on their servers.

Further, CAIR says the one li’l satire wasn’t the only problem with Right Wing Howler.

Other entries on the site contain obscene and hate- filled attacks on Islam and Muslims, as well as support for violent actions. One entry states: “It’s bad enough some (expletive deleted) in Minnesota elect a Muslim to Congress but the people in Michigan might have done them one better…Start sticking (sic) up on guns and ammo. The war will start soon.”

Here’s the post quoted above, courtesy of Google cache. It is not satire. However, it is par for the course for a rightie blog. If CAIR tries to shut down every blog publishing anti-Muslim hate speech it’ll have to take on most of the Right Blogosphere. They might as well try to clear the sand off Miami Beach.

But the point is that HostGator and Tripod are not restricting free speech. They are not the government. Tripod is a wholly owned subsidiary of a North South Korean corporation. HostGator is a privately owned company. Neither is under any obligation to host or publish anybody’s rhetoric they don’t want to host or publish. HostGator’s Terms of Service statement clearly says

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Any material that, in our judgment, is obscene or threatening is prohibited and will be removed from our servers with or without notice.

The flaming bigot of Right Wing Howler is free to set up shop at another host and resume spewing out pollution.

Flynt Leverett, on the other hand, is being censored by the government. Even if Leverett does find another venue for his opinion, he (and his publisher) could face serious repercussions from the feds. Do you see the distinction, righties? If so, do you care?

Update: Amanda argues that to call the IMAO piece a “satire” in the style of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, as Captain Ed did, is a slur of Jonathan Swift. She says,

The piece that’s being defended today is at lMAO, and it’s a “satirical” piece suggesting that the best way to handle terrorism is to kill all children of Muslims. Now, to make it very clear, the authors are right wing shills who support killing Muslims, at least under the guise of the Iraq War. This is critically important to understanding why the comparisons to Swift are asinine, besides just quality issues.

My reading — a casual reading, I admit — of the piece is that it is intended to make fun of people who are unconscious bigots. I base that opinion mostly on this bit —

Others object to this as genocide, but only a moron would do that. I’m not saying we should kill all Arabs; I’m just saying we should kill all their children. Think before you speak.

As I said, it’s a lead-balloon attempt at satire. I don’t think it gets anywhere close to being “Swiftian.” But the “Think before you speak” lick lifts the piece to the level of being almost clever. Or maybe that’s just me.

On the other hand, Pandagon commenter DivGuy writes,

As Amanda points out, in theory, this could be Swiftian satire.

Of course, satire always has a point. The point of A Modest Proposal was that the colonial treatment of the Irish was a moral abomination of such great extent that eating Irish babies would be a logical extension of the injustice.

If the IMAO piece is satire, it is one of the most cutting critiques of US policy to be posted to the web at any time, let alone by a wingnut site. The logic of a Swiftian satire of US policy would be, again, that the war was so horribly unjust that the US might at some point start killing Muslim children.

I agree; if it’s supposed to be a “swiftian” satire, as Captain Ed claims, that’s the only reasonable interpretation.

Free at Last

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The Dumbest Trial of the Century has been discharged with a hung jury. Now that I’m free to talk about it, I’m going to vent.

First off, this was a bleeping marijuana possession case. The People contended that a substantial quantity of marijuana that had been found near, not in, the defendant’s apartment had been in the possession of the defendant. The People’s case had holes you could drive a truck through. The detective on whose uncorroborated testimony the prosecution’s entire case was based was caught in several, um, inconsistencies while he was on the witness stand.

Deliberations began yesterday morning. Just over an hour into the deliberations we took a vote — 11 not guilty, 1 guilty.

You can probably guess the rest. The one holdout wouldn’t budge, even though (after two full days of attempting to “deliberate”) he was unable to explain why he was certain the defendant was guilty. The fellow changed his “reasoning” several times over the past two days, but not his guilty verdict. Finally his “reasoning” devolved into guilt by association — drugs were found near (not in, remember) the defendant’s apartment. A Yonkers detective said the drugs belonged to the defendant. Therefore, the defendant was guilty.

And yes, the juror was an elderly white man, and the defendant was black (as was the prevaricating detective). Do I think racism was a factor? Hell, yes. But I suspect stupid was a factor, also — the juror lacked the mental capacity to understand abstract concepts like “burden of proof” or even “evidence.”

I was the jury forepersonlady, so the composition and rhetoric of notes sent to the judge were under my purview. I became so rattled I could barely crank out cohesive sentences, and I guess my last note (of about 4:50 pm today) was unhinged enough the judge took pity on us and declared a hung jury.

And here’s the kicker — as a clump of us jurors hustled out of the courthouse, we encountered the defense attorney. And he guessed without being told which juror was the problem. Apparently his client, the defendant, had been the one to insist that man be seated on the jury over the attorney’s advise otherwise. The defendant had a “feeling” about the juror, the attorney said.

There’s a moral here, somewhere.

And yes, I was terribly disappointed that I didn’t get to stand up in court and announce a verdict. I’ve always wanted to do that. It’s unlikely I’ll get another chance.

I’m going to get tipsy now. Regular blogging resumes tomorrow.

Updating the Updates

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I’m traipsing back to the courthouse today to defend truth, justice, and the American Way. In the meantime —

Overnight news on Senator Tim Johnson is encouraging; or, at least, there’s no change from last night’s news that the Senator is critical but recovering.

Regarding Senator Johnson, I second what Eleanor Clift writes,

Johnson’s illness should inject a sense of urgency into the Democrats’ agenda. No one would have put the robust-looking Johnson on an endangered list. Democrats have plenty of octogenarians and septuagenarians to worry about making it through to the next election. A health crisis that strikes without warning is a reminder of the fragility of the Democratic majority. With the direction of U.S. policy for the next two years riding on Senate control, Democratic leaders can’t afford to sit around figuring out how to position the party for ’08. That doesn’t mean they have to overhaul Social Security, but they should do what’s doable. Don’t delay; raise the minimum wage and try to lock in whatever reform protections they can. Life is ephemeral, and so is control of the Senate. …

… The doctors will soon have their say about Johnson’s prognosis, and assuring him that he remains a U.S. senator could be an important part of his recovery. If that’s the case, however eager the Republicans are to reclaim Senate control, it’s hard to imagine the governor of South Dakota, who is a Republican, wanting to do anything that would jeopardize Johnson’s recovery—like naming a Republican to replace him. That alone should forestall a change in party control. The Senate is a clubby place, and unlike the House, most members have experienced life in both the minority and the majority. With such tiny margins, the health and well-being of every senator becomes paramount. They’re important. They should start acting like it.

Believers might even consider Tim Johnson’s incident to be a memo to the Dems from God. Just a thought.

Following up the last post on the remarkable idiocy of Jonah Goldberg — Dr. Steven Taylor of PoliBlog writes a better criticism of Goldberg than I did.

(Warning: Civil War history buffs with weak hearts may want to skip to the next paragraph.) Yet the idiocy continues — We’ve seen President Bush compared to Truman and Churchill, which is stupid enough. Now John Hinderaker of PowerTools compares Bush to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at Gettysburg. Oh, sure. While we’re at it, let’s conclude that Bush is just like Einstein, Lincoln, Mother Teresa, and Ghandi, too. He also is barely indistinguishable [from] most brands of frozen peas. In fact, this morning as I shoved some bread into the toaster, I thought to myself how much that toaster was like President Bush. The resemblance is uncanny.

Via Chris Bowers at MyDD — Paul Waldman writes that the 1960s culture wars might finally be coming to an end. That’s because we Boomers are getting old and will soon go the way of the dinosaurs. I can’t say I’m completely cheerful about this, but it’s an interesting article nonetheless.

At WaPo, read “A War Bush Wouldn’t Pay For” by E.J. Dionne and “Doing It for the Soldiers” by Dan Froomkin.

Later.

Stupid Is As Stupid Writes

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Speaking of brain impairment, check out Jonah Goldberg’s latest column.

I THINK ALL intelligent, patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. In fact, an Iraqi Pinochet would be even better than an Iraqi Castro.

Both propositions strike me as so self-evident as to require no explanation.

I thought that Iraq had an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. His name was Saddam Hussein. We deposed him, allegedly for being brutal and gassing his own people and such. But if Pinochet is our model, then the brutality part was not the real problem. I guess we deposed Saddam Hussein because he was bad for business. Or maybe he wasn’t Latino.

Anyway, Goldberg doesn’t want Saddam Hussein back …

But these days, there’s a newfound love for precisely this sort of realpolitik. Consider Jonathan Chait, who recently floated a Swiftian proposal

I thought Chait’s column was stupid, but “Swiftian” is a key word here.

that we put Saddam Hussein back in power in Iraq because, given his track record of maintaining stability and recognizing how terrible things could get in Iraq, Hussein might actually represent the least-bad option. Even discounting his sarcasm, this was morally myopic.

No, dear, it was “Swiftian.” That puts it closer to satire, or maybe caricature, than to mere sarcasm. What I am writing right now is sarcasm, but not satire or caricature.

But it seems to me, if you can contemplate reinstalling a Hussein, you’d count yourself lucky to have a Pinochet.

Yes, child, but you’re (note example of sarcasm) a bleeping idiot. Your argument is that Pinochet didn’t kill as many people as Castro; therefore, he wasn’t so bad. Moral relativism, sir?

Apparently the Right has been playing this Castro v. Pinochet game for the past several days. Hey, I can play that game, too — Mao killed a lot more people than Hitler; therefore, Hitler wasn’t so bad. So would Iraq be better off with Hitler? Hitler killed a lot more people than Saddam Hussein, after all. I guess Saddam Hussein want so bad, by Goldberg’s reasoning.

The BooMan explains it all, with sarcasm:

See, contrary to your prejudices, all serious, patriotic, and informed conservative thought revolves around nuance. You see, Pinochet displaced a duly elected official and imposed a brutal dictatorship. Saddam replaced a brutal dictatorship with an even more brutal dictatorship. Therefore, Saddam is worse and unfit for a restoration. That would be morally myopic. But if we could find a guy just a little less brutal and a lot more business friendly, then that would be excellent. …

… But what if unfrozen-reanimated-Iraqi-Pinochet-man found that he couldn’t stabilize Iraq without being every bit the son-of-a-bitch Saddam was? Well? Shit, I guess putting Saddam back in power wouldn’t have been that myopic after all.

I mean, if numbers are all that matters, according to this chart Augusto Pinochet was responsible for more deaths than our old nemesis, the late Al Zarqawi. I guess that means Al Zarqawi wasn’t so bad.

Another Update

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I am sorry to be out of the loop today, but I am still reporting to the courthouse for jury duty. I have to show up again tomorrow.

So I rushed home to catch up on the news. On Memeorandum there was a stack of headlines that seemed to tell a story:

Sen. Johnson in Critical Condition After Surgery

Should Johnson be unable to continue to serve …

Fox News Speculates How Officials Could ‘Declare’ Sen. Johnson ‘Incapacitated’

Sen. Johnson recovering after brain surgery

In a nutshell: Elements of the Righty (notably Faux Nooz) are salivating over the possibility of keeping the Senate, even as they feign shock that anyone is even talking about what might happen if poor Senator Johnson leaves the Senate. And they are dumping on the Left for … well, whatever. For breathing. The usual stuff. Anyway, as I keyboard the most recent news is that Senator Johnson is still critical, but recovering. There won’t be a long-term prognosis for a couple of days.

CNN reported this afternoon that

The Democrats’ slight hold on power in the Senate is largely safe despite South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson’s health scare, Senate Historian Don Richie tells CNN. As stipulated by Senate rules, Johnson could retain his seat even if he is incapacitated, unable to vote, and not even able to show up to work.

Moreover, the Senate does not have the power to forcefully remove Johnson unless he committed a crime.

Such a scenario has even occurred in Johnson’s home state of South Dakota. After South Dakota Sen. Karl Earle Mundt had a stroke in 1969 he remained in office until his term expired in 1973 without casting another vote after the governor refused Mundt’s wish of appointing his wife to the post.

A state governor has the power to appoint a new senator only if the current senator dies in office or resigns his seat.

There is “little or no precedent for forcibly unseating a member of Congress due to illness or other incapacitation,” writes Jonathan Singer at MyDD.

Senator Johnson Update

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Senator Johnson underwent surgery last night, although no one is saying what made him ill. If they’re operating on him, I assume the doctors have a theory.

More on Senator Johnson from today’s New York Times:

An unassuming fourth-generation South Dakotan, Mr. Johnson was first elected to the Senate in 1996, after serving 10 years in the House, where he had replaced Tom Daschle, a fellow Democrat who ran for the Senate and ultimately became the majority leader.

Mr. Johnson faced a tough race in 2002 against John Thune, a Republican. With the state suffering billions of dollars in losses from a severe drought, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Daschle promised $5 billion in drought relief, and Mr. Johnson won narrowly after President Bush visited the state for Mr. Thune and declined to announce that he would support the relief. (Mr. Thune went on to beat Mr. Daschle in 2004.)

Mr. Johnson is up for re-election in 2008. His oldest son, Brooks, served in Afghanistan and is serving in Iraq.

Click here for Senator Johnson’s biography on his web site.

My understanding is that if the Senator survives he is under no obligation to resign from the Senate, even if he is impaired. Back to the New York Times:

He is the second senator known to become ill since the November elections. Senator Craig Thomas of Wyoming, a Republican, is being treated for leukemia, but has been at work.

According to information from the Senate historian cited on CQ.com, at least nine senators have taken extended absences from the Senate for health reasons since 1942. Robert F. Wagner, Democrat of New York, was unable to attend any sessions of the 80th or 81st Congress from 1947 to 1949 because of a heart ailment. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, missed about seven months in 1988 after surgery for a brain aneurysm. And David Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, suffered a heart attack in April 1991 and returned to the Senate in September that year.

The Right has decided it’s indelicate to even mention the significant political consequences of losing Senator Johnson. In fact, posts about Senator Johnson on rightie blogs this morning are so consistently conciliatory about the Senator one wonders if they were all on the same conference call with someone from the RNC.

It is of course quite possible to be genuinely concerned about the Senator as a person and worried about the political consequences of his death or resignation at the same time. This is especially true for those of us who fear that if the Senate stays in Republican control our country will be significantly impaired. Here’s another New York Times story about something that won’t happen if the GOP stays in charge, for example. If it’s indelicate to be gravely concerned about the future of the United States of America, then I will be indelicate.

Don’t Miss

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Gotta go back to the courthouse for jury duty today. Meanwhile —

The Talking Dog interviews Trevor Paglen, the co-author (with A.C. Thompson) of Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA Rendition Flights, the first book to systematically investigate the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. You might also enjoy the Dog’s earlier interview of Michael Bérubé.

Via Avedon —

Lambert has a whole bunch of theocracy outrages:

* In video, military Christianists use uniform to proselytize, admit putting loyalty to country third on the list;
* Military Christianists pull rank to force their beliefs on subordinates;
* In video, Pentagon Christianists say they’d rather study the Bible than do their jobs;
* General in Pentagon Christianist video also abused rank to solicit campaign contributions for Republicans.

You know, this stuff is entirely unconstitutional, but it’s getting to be a habit. But, seriously, these people are a threat to our democracy and should get kicked out pretty damned quick.

See Juan Cole‘s testimony at the Kucinich-Paul Congressional Hearing on Civilian Casualties in Iraq.

Glenn Greenwald expounds on the Washington Post’s affection for Augusto Pinochet.

That should keep you busy! And please add more links you want to share to the comments.

Shopping for Approval

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The President searches diligently for experts who will tell him what he wants to hear, and he may have found them. Michael A. Fletcher and Thomas E. Ricks write in today’s Washington Post (emphasis added) —

President Bush heard a blunt and dismal assessment of his handling of Iraq from a group of military experts yesterday, but the advisers shared the White House’s skeptical view of the recommendations made last week by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, sources said.

The three retired generals and two academics disagreed in particular with the study group’s plans to reduce the number of U.S. combat troops in Iraq and to reach out for help to Iran and Syria, according to sources familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was private….

…White House officials emphasized that although the experts gave a bleak assessment, they still believe the situation in Iraq is “winnable.”

In other words, the ISG report is dead. The study group might has well not have bothered.

During yesterday’s White House meeting, Bush asked all the questions, except for one at the end from Cheney, a source said. But Cheney took copious notes throughout, filling several pages, he said. “They didn’t really reveal their own views” in their questions, said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, one of the five participants.

Bush asked questions? Wow.

As a whole, the group of retired generals and academics who met Bush tend to be skeptical of the Iraq Study Group’s proposals, and so were able to give him additional reasons to reject its recommendations.

Which is why they were selected to speak to Dear Leader.

I think the ISG’s recommendations fall way short of a sensible plan, or else I’d be a lot more upset about the President’s intransigence than I am. If it weren’t for the fact that people are actually dying because of this nonsense, it might even be funny. But the point of the ISG was not so much to recommend the best way out of Iraq, which IMO they didn’t, but to give President Bush a means to correct his mistake in the most face-saving way possible. Bush clearly doesn’t see that that the ISG was trying to do him a favor, which is more proof that the boy has completely slipped his tether.

Fletcher and Ricks’s article gives the names of only four of the five advisers. Just for fun I looked for the names of the Fawning Four in the index of Ricks’s book Fiasco. They are:

Gen. John M. Keane, ret. Keane is the general Rumsfeld wanted to replace Gen. Shinseki as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (p. 69), although Keane declined the offer (p, 169). Shinseki had butted heads with Rumsfeld on a number of issues (pp. 68-69). However, Keane was not keen (heh) on invading Iraq to begin with (p. 33) and he tried to warn Rumsfeld to deal with the growing insurgency before it was too late (p. 172).

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, ret. was critical of Rummy’s invasion plans (p. 119) and was concerned the adventure would turn into another Vietnam (p. 129). Now he is an NBC and MSNBC military analyst, among other things. Since the ISG report was made public, McCaffrey has warned against the ISG’s advice to pull out combat troops from Iraq but leave a large number of “advisers.” “We are setting ourselves up for a potential national disaster in which some Iraqi divisions could flip and take 5,000 Americans hostage, or multiple advisory teams go missing in action,” he said. He could be right about that.

Gen. Wayne A. Downing, ret. Downing allegedly schemed with a staffer of Sen. Jesse Helms to arm Ahmed Chalabi and his followers (p. 23) and also had pushed a plan to invade Iraq with only 10,000 troops (p. 37).

Eliot A. Cohen, an expert in military strategy at Johns Hopkins University, in the past Cohen was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz (p. 16); he may still be, for all I know.

According to The Armchair Generalist, the fifth advisor is Stephen Biddle, Senior Fellow in Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Based on an article by Biddle in Foreign Affairs (“Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon,” March/April 2006) Biddle thinks “Iraqization” is doomed to fail (he makes a good argument on that point) and that America’s only option is to use our military to crack down harder on the Sunnis et al. to make them behave (why that wouldn’t amount to digging the hole we’re in even deeper, Biddle doesn’t say).

More from Fletcher and Ricks:

The White House gathering was part of a series of high-profile meetings Bush is holding to search for “a new way forward” amid the increasing chaos and carnage in Iraq. Earlier in the day, Bush met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other high-ranking officials at the State Department, where he was briefed on reconstruction and regional diplomatic efforts in Iraq. …

… The carefully choreographed meetings are coming on the heels of the release last week of the Iraq Study Group’s report, which pronounced the situation in Iraq “grave” and recommended fundamental shifts in how the Bush administration handles the war. To stem the deteriorating situation in Iraq, the report said, the administration should shift the focus of its military mission from direct combat to training Iraqi troops, while pressing harder for a diplomatic solution by engaging Iran and Syria — something Bush has pointedly refused to do.

Yesterday’s meetings are to be followed today by a videoconference with military commanders before Bush receives Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi at the White House. On Wednesday, Bush is scheduled to meet with his outgoing defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and another group of military experts.

Coming amid growing public discontent with the war and the defeat of his party in last month’s congressional elections, the president’s very public review of his Iraq policy is expected to culminate in a major address in which he will lay out what the administration has billed as a “new way forward” in the nearly four-year-old conflict.

Ooo, wouldn’t it be perfect if he gave that speech in Jackson Square? And does anyone actually think that “the new way forward” will contain anything whatsoever that’s new? And in the outside chance that it does, that Bush will actually follow up and carry through whatever promises he makes and not forget the whole thing in a week or two?

More juicy bits from Fletcher and Ricks:

The military experts met with Bush, Vice President Cheney and about a dozen aides for more than an hour. The visitors told the officials that the situation in Iraq is as dire as the study group had indicated but that alternative approaches must be considered, said one participant in the meeting. In addition, the experts agreed that the president should review his national security team, which several characterized as part of the problem.

“I don’t think there is any doubt in his mind about how bad it is,” the source said. …

… The group suggested the president shake up his national security team. “All of us said they have failed, that you need a new team,” said one participant. That recommendation is likely to fuel Pentagon rumors that Bush and his new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, may decide to replace Marine Gen. Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

See John Aravosis for more snark on the national security team.

H.D.S. Greenway writes in today’s Boston Globe:

The president says he is disappointed at the slow progress of success. But there isn’t going to be a success in Iraq, and the job now is to manage and mitigate failure. The Iraq Study Group understands that, but there is little evidence that Bush does. He has commissioned other internal reviews to lessen the impact of the study group’s conclusions. He apparently finds it difficult to comply with so many distinguished, bipartisan Americans and senior statesmen, several of whom served his father, who understood what would happen if we occupied Iraq.

Essentially, Bush is going to continue to listen to panels and reviews until there is a sufficient body of recommendations that amount to what he wanted to do, anyway; then he’ll cherry pick out those recommendations and claim he is following expert advise. We all know this already. All of the choreographed meetings and advisory panels and even Cheney’s note-taking are just a charade. I don’t know why they bother; they ain’t foolin’ anybody except the Kool-Aiders.

Related to Iraq — there’s some really good commentary by Avedon at the Sideshow — Stephen Biddle could learn a thing or two from Avedon, IMO — Atrios, Digby, and Poputopian that I recommend highly.

Outsource This

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In today’s New York Times, Paul Krugman explains how rightie “privatization” theories are compromising national security, and lots of other stuff.

For example, an article in Saturday’s New York Times describes how the Coast Guard has run a $17 billion modernization program: “Instead of managing the project itself, the Coast Guard hired Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, two of the nation’s largest military contractors, to plan, supervise and deliver the new vessels and helicopters.”

The result? Expensive ships that aren’t seaworthy. The Coast Guard ignored “repeated warnings from its own engineers that the boats and ships were poorly designed and perhaps unsafe,” while “the contractors failed to fulfill their obligation to make sure the government got the best price, frequently steering work to their subsidiaries or business partners instead of competitors.”

Here’s the story Professor Krugman cites. It explains that this screwup has seriously “compromised the Coast Guard’s ability to fulfill its mission, which greatly expanded after the 2001 attacks to include guarding the nation’s shores against terrorists.”

Professor Krugman continues,

In Afghanistan, the job of training a new police force was outsourced to DynCorp International, a private contractor, under very loose supervision: when conducting a recent review, auditors couldn’t even find a copy of DynCorp’s contract to see what it called for. And $1.1 billion later, Afghanistan still doesn’t have an effective police training program.

In July 2004, Government Executive magazine published an article titled “Outsourcing Iraq,” documenting how the U.S. occupation authorities had transferred responsibility for reconstruction to private contractors, with hardly any oversight. “The only plan,” it said, “appears to have been to let the private sector manage nation-building, mostly on their own.” We all know how that turned out.

And then there’s FEMA.

On the home front, the Bush administration outsourced many responsibilities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. For example, the job of evacuating people from disaster areas was given to a trucking logistics firm, Landstar Express America. When Hurricane Katrina struck, Landstar didn’t even know where to get buses. According to Carey Limousine, which was eventually hired, Landstar “found us on the Web site.”

Brilliant. Now, note this:

It’s now clear that there’s a fundamental error in the antigovernment ideology embraced by today’s conservative movement. Conservatives look at the virtues of market competition and leap to the conclusion that private ownership, in itself, is some kind of magic elixir. But there’s no reason to assume that a private company hired to perform a public service will do better than people employed directly by the government.

You know that for years, one of the cornerstones of rightie civic religion is that private is always better than public. The rightie answer to all government problems has been (after cutting taxes) to first deregulate, then privatize. Righties have a pure and abiding faith that public bureaucracies are wasteful and stupid and corrupt, while private companies are efficient and competent and always do the job better, whatever that job is.

Personally, I suspect anyone who’s had a middle management position in any American company for more than ten minutes knows that’s a crock. But let’s go on …

It would be interesting to trace exactly how this bit of dogma came to be so rigidly fixed in the rightie brain. Certainly there’s been an anti-government streak in America since, well, the Revolution. But the traditional anti-government argument has been that government should have strict limits to its functions to keep it from becoming dictatorial, or too intrusive into people’s private business. And, of course, taking on more tasks also leads to more taxes. I postulate that the idea that government shouldn’t do stuff because it isn’t competent to do stuff is relatively recent — dating maybe from the 1960s, when memories of World War II were starting to fade. But by the 1980s St. Ronald’s axiom that government is not the solution, but the problem, was conventional wisdom. Ayn Rand contribution to the “private is better” myth, and the 1990s saw a full-blown “CEO as superman” cult. If anyone has any other ideas of where this nonsense originated, please speak up.

Professor Krugman tells us why some people love privatization:

In fact, the private company will almost surely do a worse job if its political connections insulate it from accountability — which has, of course, consistently been the case under Mr. Bush. The inspectors’ report on Afghanistan’s police conspicuously avoided assessing DynCorp’s performance; even as government auditors found fault with Landstar, the company received a plaque from the Department of Transportation honoring its hurricane relief efforts.

Underlying this lack of accountability are the real motives for turning government functions over to private companies, which have little to do with efficiency. To say the obvious: when you see a story about failed outsourcing, you can be sure that the company in question is a major contributor to the Republican Party, is run by people with strong G.O.P. connections, or both.

Another way that the Bush Administration “outsources” is to invite outside interests into government — for example, making the chief lobbyist of the beef industry chief of staff at the Agriculture Department. Or naming an executive with the National Food Processors Association to head the Food and Drug Administration. Eric Schlosser explains,

Since 2000, the fast-food and meatpacking industries have given about four-fifths of their political donations to Republican candidates for national office. In return, these industries have effectively been given control of the agencies created to regulate them.

Combine this trend with cutbacks in FDA budget and staff — gotta pay for those tax cuts for multimillionaires somehow — and the result a sharp increase in deaths by food poisoning, Schlosser says. See also this story in today’s Washington Post.

Last week the New York Times published a series of articles on the salvage effort that rebuilt the Pacific Fleet after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. These serve as a reminder of what government — transparent government, accountable government — can accomplish. Compare the work at Pearl Harbor one year after the attacks, as reported at the time by Robert Trumbell, to New Orleans today. And weep.

Professor Krugman:

So what happens now? The failure of privatization under the Bush administration offers a target-rich environment to newly empowered Congressional Democrats — and I say, let the subpoenas fly. Bear in mind that we’re not talking just about wasted money: contracting failures in Iraq helped us lose one war, similar failures in Afghanistan may help us lose another, and FEMA’s failures helped us lose a great American city.

And maybe, just maybe, the abject failure of this administration’s efforts to outsource essential functions to the private sector will diminish the antigovernment prejudice created by decades of right-wing propaganda.

I’m not saying the private sector isn’t better than government at some things — production, distribution, and sale of consumer goods, for example. Pitting the public against the private sector is, IMO, another of the false dichotomies to which righties seem susceptible. Public and private sectors should work to support each other, not supplant each other.

In any event, the Right’s antigovernment prejudice clearly isn’t making government better. We need to replace the antigovernment bias with a simple truth: The nation will have as good a government as We, the People, are determined to have.