The Hillary Disease

Nothing makes blindly partisan Republicans swoon with dizziness and irrationality more than Hillary Clinton. Entire academic disciplines could be sustained just by studying the incomparably intoxicating effect she has on so many of our otherwise sensible (and not so sensible) fellow citizens.

Yesterday, Hillary issued a typically Clintonian statement which purported to state her position on the war in Iraq but which actually staked out every position, and therefore, no position at all. Of course, the fact that she even has to issue a statement in order for us to know her position on this somewhat prominent issue says a lot in itself. Well-orchestrated maneuvers like these show why, in the mold of her husband, she is simultaneously the most formidable and the most soul-less Democratic politician around.

John Rocket at Powerline knows he has to say something about Hillary's Iraq statement and he knows it can't be anything good. That presents a real problem for our intrepid Power pundit because Hillary's statement has an overwhelmingly pro-war odor to it, which, among other things, refuses to repudiate her pro-war vote or to advocate troop withdraw. As intended, this makes it exceedingly difficult for Bush-worshipers to use the statement to attack her.

But John does not disappoint. He reaches deep down into the Hillary insult cliche barrel and digs this out:

There is a certain sourness in the position Clinton has staked out: the war was a mistake which I voted to authorize only because I didn't know the facts; ever since, it has been bungled horribly; nevertheless, we have no choice but to see the mistake through to the bitter end. It smacks, somehow, of the purse-lipped, take-your-medicine feminist First Lady of the early days of Bill Clinton's presidency.

If there is a Non-Sequitur of the Year contest somewhere, Rocket John should start planning his victory party now. John (who uses a Rocket as his symbol, placed above his buddy who calls himself "Big Trunk") cannot escape the piercing image of Hillary as power-hungry feminist. He sees this Hillary everywhere, so that even her rather standard, hawkish prescription for Iraq -- which, as John notes, almost completely mirrors Bush's views -- "somehow" becomes a reflection of her evil, emasculating feminism.

It's only 2005. The level of madness that Hillary's candidacy will inspire once she actually announces that she's running is truly scary to contemplate.

The pro-torture contingent unmasks itself

The volatile debate over torture has evolved significantly. It began as an argument over whether the United States has been systematically torturing people, with Administration critics insisting that it has done so, while Administration defenders outrageously objected to the very suggestion that the U.S. would do such a terrible thing.

As the evidence of torture mounted, it became inescapably clear that torture has indeed played some role in the Administration's policies for interrogating (at the very least) suspected terrorists. That has forced some Administration defenders, for whom criticizing the Administration is never an option, to abandon their denial of American torture and, instead, embrace a defense of it. That means that we now have a substantial and growing portion of the population that actually espouses a pro-torture viewpoint, i.e., they believe that the U.S. should torture people as part of its war on terrorism.

For compelling proof that the pro-torture advocates are now unabashedly embracing their position, and for a glimpse of how the pro-torture argument is to be advocated, there is this post from "Ace" at Ace of Spades, who proudly enunciates the virtues of torture. Ace's post -- which is driven by outrage over the anti-torture objections of Andrew Sullivan to a particularly vile exploitation of John McCain's torture experience -- foreshadows some of the rhetorical techniques to be used by those who are pro-torture as they bravely unmask themselves more and more:

(1) Those who think torture is wrong are simply hysterical and overemotional. The term Ace uses for the anti-torture contingent is "torture hysterics," as featured in this sentence:

"One of the lies the torture hysterics have been peddling for years is that torture never works. "

He also labels Sullivan a "shrieking hysteric," "Saint Andrew of the Scared Heart-Ache," and the "Shrill Shill." People who are opposed to torture just need to get a hold of their emotions, stop being such pussies, and butch up.

(2) Anyone who accepts reality must acknowledge that torture works. It is an important and powerful tool to be used against terrorists. Thus, Ace pronounces the notion that torture does not work to be "one of the lies of torture hysterics." With respect to the widespread view of intelligence and interrogation experts that torture is an ineffective interrogation tool (for instance, CIA Director Porter Goss yesterday: "We want accurate information . . . and we do it in a way that does not involve torture because torture is counterproductive"), Ace tells us: "It's untrue and it always has been."

With the argument being advanced that torture is an effective tool against terrorists, it can't be that far off for us to start hearing that anyone who opposes torture is pro-terrorist.

Oh, wait-- we already have heard that, from big tough warrior Paul Mirgenoff at Powerline, who accused John McCain of being "pro-terrorist rights" because McCain, like the subversive wuss that he is, favors legislation to ban torture.

Once the premise is advanced that "torture works," equating those who oppose torture with the surrender-happy terrorist-lovers who want Osama bin Laden to win is inevitable and imminent.

(3) Strip anyone who opposes torture of their status as hero and patriot. The heroism of John McCain's past can't be impugned, but it can surely be pointed out how long ago and obsolete that heroism is:

So Newsmax offers the genuine martial and moral hero (at least he was such some time ago) of John McCain as yet another strong, committed, patriotic man ultimately broken down by torture.

If the new line is that torture works because it broke down John McCain and the North Vietnamese made him sign statements against his country, how far off are we from the pro-torture advocates finally getting it off their chests and accusing McCain of being a traitorous coward? Ace claims he doesn't believe that, but as the torture debate heats up even more, and McCain continues to be the face of the anti-torture contingent, can that final and ultimate attack on McCain's character really be suppressed much longer? We'll see.

The fact that we are even having a real torture debate now -- not over whether we do it, but whether our doing it is justifiable -- is rather significant in itself. Even the existence of the terms "pro-torture" and "anti-torture" position is by itself striking. The taboo against torture is gone, irreversibly, and one can now proudly and in (sort of) good company declare oneself to be pro-torture and attack those who are "anti-torture" as being weak and irrational.

It used to be unnecessary to even express opposition to the American Government torturing people, since its doing so was beyond the pale of debate. It no longer is. In fact, to believe that torture should be off-limits to the Government is to reveal yourself as a "torture hysteric," and, sooner rather than later, a pro-terrorist, surrender-happy traitor.

If things like torture, not to mention the indefinite incarceration of American citizens, aren't off-limits to the American government, what is?

Giuliani's business success may harm his political ambitions

Ever since his tenure as New York City's Mayor came to an end in late 2001, Rudy Giuliani has been on a money-making splurge. Beyond just his exorbitant speaking fees, his firm, Giuliani Partners, and its related affiliates, have their multiple tentacles in countless industries and highly lucrative transactions. That Giuliani wants to cash in on the 9/11 fame and admiration he earned is understandable after a couple of decades of living on a government salary, but that pursuit may end up sabotaging his Presidential ambitions.

At least in terms of his integrity -- one of the principal selling points for the former federal prosecutor’s candidacy -- Giuliani’s career has been unmarred. But any substantial venture into the private sector usually entails associations with less-than-pure individuals and transactions which, at the very least, can be cast in a negative light. If nothing else, Giuliani's extensive and diverse business activities are sure to provide ample fodder for opposition research on the part of any campaign looking to undermine his sterling image.

The starting point for Giuliani's troubles will, of course, be Bernie Kerik, one of Giuliani's closet friends and associates both during his tenure as Mayor (when he rapidly promoted Kerik to Police Commissioner) and afterwards (when he and Kerik were partners in Giuliani-Kerik LLC, an affiliate of Giuliani Partners). After enduring a painfully humiliating week during his doomed nomination for Homeland Security Secretary, which saw one seemingly credible accusation after the next against Kerik ranging from bribery solicitation to substantial mob ties, he was back in the news last week with accusations from New Jersey officials that Kerik, when he was NYC Corrections Commissioner (appointed by Giuliani), accepted kickbacks from a company connected to organized crime in exchange for municipal contracts. That same year, Giuliani made Kerik his Police Commissioner.

But Bernie Kerik is just the starting point, albeit a large one, for Giuliani’s problems. The New York Sun yesterday published an article detailing a failed Giuliani venture in Boca Raton, Florida, where Giuliani's firm was to oversee a much-hyped project to decontaminate the building formerly occupied by The National Enquirer, one of the targets of the 2001 anthrax attack. The project was a failure, and Giuliani’s company was replaced and then ended up in a messy dispute entailing the loss of millions of dollars in fees.

This is hardly a significant scandal, but it illustrates the hazards of Giuliani’s business ventures. As the New York Sun article put it:

[T]he ensuing contract dispute, and the fact that Bio-One has never been paid for its efforts, could contribute to questions about Mr. Giuliani's management of his business endeavors since leaving office at the end of 2001. If Mr. Giuliani goes ahead with a possible bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, his business ventures, which are far flung and include legal and consulting work, are likely to come under increased scrutiny. Already, he has drawn critical press attention for his consulting work on anti-crime initiatives in Mexico City and his ties to a for-profit vocational college in Kentucky that recently shut down due to financial difficulties.

Giuliani made the choice to be out of the spotlight pursuing these business ventures while potential rivals like John McCain and George Allen are prominently inserting themselves in the news and will continue to do so. That is a disadvantage which the very well-known Giuliani could likely overcome. But for a politician whose biggest selling points are his integrity and attributes of leadership and management, close ties with intensely corrupt individuals like Bernie Kerik and a growing list of failed, messy business disputes would seem to pose some very serious problems for his candidacy.

How to apologize and express remorse

Most apologies from public officials are of the disingenuous non-apology apology sort -- where the person pretends to apologize but is really doing nothing but offering excuses, justifications and defenses for their behavior. To the extent there is an "apology" at all, it's to express regret about how other people (unjustifiably) reacted to the behavior -- i.e., "I apologize if someone got hurt, was misled, was offended, as a result of (the completely justifiable) action I took." For a recent example of this ignoble and ugly genre, see this fake non-apology from Bob Woodward.

An authentic apology -- where the person admits wrongdoing without dilution or justification and expresses real remorse -- is very rare. It takes more courage and conviction than most people can muster in order to offer such an apology, particularly to do so publicly.

That's why the statement from Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (.pdf, via TPM) is so impressive. Cunningham pled guilty yesterday to some pretty despicable acts -- as a long-standing defense hawk in the middle of a war, he took substantial bribes in order to pressure the Defense Dept. to award contracts to the parties bribing him. He also lied repeatedly about his actions once they began to be exposed. And he will pay a heavy price for his crimes -- substantial fines, relinquishment of property, loss of his Congressional seat, destruction of his reputation, and prison, all at the age of 65.

But the statement which Cunningham issued yesterday is a model of candor, courage and authenticity. His political career was permanently destroyed yesterday, and -- other than the fact that he meant it -- he had no motive at all for issuing such a statement. That makes what he did that much more commendable:

I am resigning from the House of Representatives because I’ve compromised the trust of my constituents.

When I announced several months ago that I would not seek re-election, I publicly declared my innocence because I was not strong enough to face the truth. So, I misled my family, staff, friends, colleagues, the public -- even myself. For all of this, I am deeply sorry.

The truth is -- I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my high office. I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions, and most importantly, the trust of my friends and family.

Some time ago, I asked my lawyers to inform the U.S. Attorney Carol Lam that I would like to plead guilty and begin serving a prison term. Today is the culmination of that process. I will continue to cooperate with the government’s ongoing investigation to the best of my ability.

In my life, I have known great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame. I learned in Viet Nam that the true measure of a man is how he responds to adversity. I cannot undo what I have done. But I can atone. I am now almost 65 years old and, as I enter the twilight of my life, I intend to use the remaining time that God grants me to make amends.

The first step in that journey is to admit fault and apologize. The next step is to face the consequences of my actions like a man. Today, I have taken the first step and, with God’s grace, I will soon take the second.

Thank you.

Remember Cunningham's genuine apology the next time someone wants to pretend to apologize while doing nothing but making excuses for themselves.

UPDATE: Lest there be any confusion, I believe Duke Cunningham has behaved reprehensibly over the course of many years, for the reasons amply set forth by Digby here and for other reasons as well. And, independently, he deserves all the punishment he gets for these crimes.

But even reprehensible people are capable of honorable, commendable acts and of feeling authentic remorse. My praise is strictly confined to the refreshingly unabashed and candid apology which Cunningham publicly issued for his behavior.

Rove has the same problem which sunk Libby

In the multiple Plamegate articles in Time which were written or contributed to by Viveca Novak, there exist substantial clues as to the likely reason why Patrick Fitzgerald wants to depose her.

These articles strongly suggest that the topic which Fitzgerald is most interested in discussing with Novak is the same issue which led to Lewis Libby's indictment -- namely, whether Rove first learned of Plame's CIA employment from reporters (as he claimed) or whether, like Libby, he learned of it from governmental sources. Novak clearly discussed this issue numerous times with Rove lawyer Robert Luskin. And the Time articles themselves strongly suggest that it is this issue -- whether Rove lied about how he first learned about Plame's CIA employment -- which remains Rove's most pressing danger for being indicted as part of Fitzgerald's investigation.

Typically, when the potential of a perjury charge against Rove is discussed, the focus is on his initial failure to disclose to the Grand Jury his July, 2003 conversation with Time’s Matt Cooper. The issue there is simple enough: Rove claims that he simply forgot about the conversation until Luskin found an e-mail which reminded him of it, while a perjury charge would contend that Rove deliberately concealed the conversation from the Grand Jury.

The issue of Rove’s failure to remember his conversation with Cooper seems to be the issue which Luskin himself is trying to hype as Rove’s primary problem (perhaps because it's easy to dismiss away as being nothing more than a memory failure). Here is what Viveca Novak, likely prompted by Luskin, said about that issue in an October 24, 2005 article written with Mike Allen (subscription required):

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald appears to be seriously weighing a perjury charge for Rove's failure to tell grand jurors that he talked to TIME correspondent Matthew Cooper about Plame, according to a person close to Rove. Rove corrected himself in a later grand jury session. If charged with perjury, he will maintain he simply didn't recall the conversation with Cooper and told Fitzgerald as soon as he did.

But Rove's claim that he first learned about Plame's employment through reporters, although discussed far less, seems much more of a threat to him than the this mere failure to remember the Cooper conversation. This is the precise issue which lays at the heart of the Lewis Libby indictment, and at least part of the perjury charge that Fitzgerald is still clearly mulling against Rove almost certainly involves this same question – i.e., whether Rove, like Libby, lied to the Grand Jury when he claimed he first learned of Plame’s CIA employment only from reporters.

This issue appears over and over again in Time articles which Novak either wrote or to which she contributed reporting (the latter circumstance occurring when the focus of the article was principally about some other Plamegate issue, but also contained quotes or information expressly attributed to, or almost certainly obtained anonymously from, Luskin). Clearly, Novak was discussing with Luskin over this period of time the issue of how Rove learned of Plame’s CIA identity – surely a focus of Fitzgerald’s perjury contemplations.

An August 8, 2005 Time article by Massimo Calabresi (with Novak credited as having contributed reporting) says this:

As the investigation tightens into the leak of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, sources tell TIME some White House officials may have learned she was married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson weeks before his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed piece criticizing the Administration.

That prospect increases the chances that White House official Karl Rove and others learned about Plame from within the Administration rather than from media contacts. Rove has told investigators he believes he learned of her directly or indirectly from reporters, according to his lawyer.

And here is a July 25, 2005 article by Nancy Gibbs, for which Novak is again credited as having contributed reporting. The primary thrust of the article is Gibbs’ interview with Plame and Wilson at their home, but it also contains very interesting information and claims about Rove’s defenses, some of which is attributed to Luskin and some of which appears to have come on background from Luskin via Novak:

And all the while, Rove's defenders were artfully pivoting from saying he hadn't done anything to saying he hadn't done anything wrong, that Plame wasn't really a secret agent anyway, or if she was, Rove didn't know that, or if he did, he only brought her up because he was trying to keep reporters from writing a bad story based on Wilson's false charges, and besides, it was a reporter who blew Plame's cover to him in the first place and not the other way around.

Rove had long insisted that he didn't know Valerie Plame's name or leak it and was cooperating fully with the probe. By last week, that denial had come to seem Clintonian in its legal precision. It's true Rove didn't tell Cooper her name but rather referred to her as Wilson's wife. On the other hand, a simple Google search of Ambassador Wilson turned up her name but not her affiliation. The evolving explanation of Rove's role was enough to let Democrats dream that they might have snared him at long last, while Republicans retorted that, far from incriminating Rove, the latest evidence exonerated him

According to sources close to the investigation, Fitzgerald seemed most interested in whether officials who stayed at the White House while the President was in Africa also had the memo that week, when the first known calls to reporters took place. Details of the memo, if not the memo itself, may have been shared with one or more White House officials well before Wilson's article appeared. Rove and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have told prosecutors they had never seen the document, according to sources familiar with their statements.

But Rove had learned Plame's identity from someone: a source who has been briefed on Rove's account to Fitzgerald, says Novak called Rove the next day, July 8, and mentioned to him that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. According to the source, Rove replied, "I've heard that too," and told Fitzgerald that he had heard it from a reporter--or perhaps from someone else in the Administration who said he got it from a reporter--Rove just couldn't be certain or remember which one.

The same article recognizes that the central issue for Rove is how he learned about Plame’s CIA employment:

What does it matter who put Plame's identity in play? That reporters may have been part of a loop of information, not just receivers of it, has for some time been one of the hypotheses in the case. The Washington Post reported that Libby, who has been interviewed by the grand jury three times, learned Plame's name from a reporter too. NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert spoke with Fitzgerald under oath in August about a call from Libby, who gave Russert clearance to testify about their talk. Russert says he told Fitzgerald that he was not Libby's source.

From legal and political angles, it looks better if Administration officials were leakees, not leakers. If the blame for blowing the cover of a CIA officer can be spread around, so much the better. And it suggests the challenge that Fitzgerald may face in building a case. It is one thing if Rove happened to hear from a reporter that Plame was a CIA officer, casually confirmed that he had already heard that to another reporter (Novak) and incidentally spread the word to a third (Cooper). It's perhaps something else if Administration officials made an effort to gather information on Wilson, discovered that his wife was a CIA officer and carried out a strategy to discredit Wilson that included outing his wife to a number of reporters. It is still another thing to do the second and pretend, under oath, that you had done the first.

As the Libby Indictment demonstrates, Fitzgerald has long focused on the question of how White House officials first learned of Plame’s CIA employment. He obviously concluded that Libby lied about this very issue when Libby testified that he first learned of it from reporters (or that he thought he had when he spoke with reporters in June and July). Fitzgerald's Grand Jury indicted Libby based on the numerous and documented ways that Libby learned of Plame’s CIA employment from government channels long before he ever spoke to any reporter about Plame.

Is it any more believable that Rove – who hardly fits the role of an uninformed outsider kept in the dark and having to wait around for reporters to tell him something about a White House enemy – never caught wind of Plame’s CIA employment during the multiple sessions which enabled Libby to learn about that employment? At the very least, Fitzgerald has to be monumentally skeptical of Rove’s claims in this regard, and – according to the Time articles – he has been.

As is demonstrated by the now famous and not-very-cryptic reference to "Official A" in Paragraph 21 of Libby’s Indictment, Rove and Libby did discuss Plame’s CIA employment prior to the publication of Novak’s article. Fitzgerald must be very interested in trying to find out whether Rove learned of that employment from any of the numerous government sources which Libby used to find out this information, or from Libby himself.

These facts seem to suggest quite strongly that the most likely topic causing Fitzgerald to want to speak with Novak is the question of how and why Rove learned about Plame’s CIA involvement. Novak plainly had multiple conversations with Luskin about that topic, and it is almost certainly be at the forefront of any ongoing interest Fitzgerald has in perjury charges against Rove.

None of this explains why Fitzgerald waited until now to explore Luskin’s conversations with Novak (it very well could be that Fitzgerald focused on Luskin’s conversations with Novak only when Luskin tried to use those conversations in some way as part of his desperate, eleventh-hour plea not to indict Rove), but it is hard to believe that Rove’s claims as to when he first learned of Plame’s CIA employment is not one of the main topics, if not the main topic, to be featured in Novak's imminent testimony before Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald's likely pressure on Robert Luskin

In light of the rather unjournalistic silence by Time and Viveca Novak regarding the circumstances surrounding Novak's agreement to testify before Patrick Fitzgerlad about her conversations with Rove lawyer Robert Luskin, all one can do is speculate as to how and why she agreed to testify. (UPDATE: Substantially more advanced and documented speculation, arising from an exhaustive review of Novak's Plamegate articles in Time, is found here).

Tom Maguire wonders whether Time and Novak are simply violating their confidentiality pledge to Luskin, leading him to ask: “Does TIME Magazine still protect their sources?”

More charitably, he speculates that the oddly rapid agreement by Time and Novak to comply with Fitzgerald’s request suggests that perhaps Fitzgerald is interested only in what Novak told Luskin (which would not be covered by any confidentiality obligation), rather than what Luskin told Novak. Jeralyn at Talk Left suggests the same: “Perhaps Fitzgerald wants to know what Novak told Luskin about Time and Cooper's intentions and the substance of Cooper's conversations with Rove -- as opposed to merely what Luskin told Novak.”

Even if one assumes that Luskin spoke to Novak under an anonymous source agreement (something that is not clear at all since, as Maguire notes, Luskin spoke on the record to Novak), speculation that Novak is testifying only by burning her source or that Fitzgerald is interested only in Novak’s statements to Luskin (but not in Luskin's responses), seems misplaced.

If Novak had pledged confidentiality to Luskin with respect to the conversations Fitzgerald wants to know about, it seems extremely likely that Fitzgerald would simply have asked Luskin to release Novak from any such pledges -- just as Luskin's client did with Matt Cooper and Lewis Libby finally did with Judy Miller. And, under the circumstances, isn't it virtually certain that in response to such a request from Fitzgerald, Luskin would have agreed to do so almost immediately?

With Rove's fate still hanging in the balance, and with that fate still resting firmly in Fitzgerald’s palm, the last thing Luskin would want to do is appear to be obstructing Fitzgerald’s investigation by single-handedly preventing Fitzgerald from learning what he wants to know from Novak.

It is worth remembering that Fitzgerald previously "encouraged" Libby to release Judy Miller from her confidentiality obligations in his September 12, 2005 letter to Libby’s counsel to Libby’s counsel, Joseph Tate. If Fitzgerald wanted to know about Luskin’s conversations with Novak, and Novak told Fitzgerald that she couldn’t disclose the content of those conversations unless Luskin agreed, it would be highly surprising if Fitzgerald did not put the same pressure on Luskin that he put on Libby to release the journalist from her confidentiality obligation.

And it would be even more surprising if Luskin, faced with a such a request from Fitzgerald, did anything but immediately and fully comply.

After all, Luskin has long recognized the basic principle that whatever else he does, he should not make Fitzgerald think that he is impeding the investigation. Here is National Review’s Byron York recounting a converation back in July with Luskin in which Luskin emphasized the paramounce of cooperating with Fitzgerald:

During a conversation with Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's lawyer, last July, Luskin said, "Rule number one is cooperate with Fitzgerald, and there is no rule number two." It was a standard defense attorney line; the last thing one would want to do is to alienate Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor who controls every aspect of the CIA leak investigation.

And, independent of the desire to protect Rove’s interests by cooperating with Fitzgerald, it is possible that Luskin himself could have some legal exposure of his own. If, as Redd Hedd and Emptywheel have both speculated, Luskin said things to Novak which prove that Rove not only was making false statements to the Grand Jury, but knew that they were false at the time, wouldn't that put Luskin in jeopardy as well? The attorney-client privilege does not permit a lawyer to suborn his client's perjury -- which is exactly what may have occurred if Luskin said things to Novak which proved that Rove's Grand Jury testimony (of which Luskin was obviously aware) was knowingly false.

All of this is to suggest that it is impossible to imagine Luskin enforcing Novak’s confidentiality obligation in the face of Fitzgerald's request that he release her from that obligation. Given what is known about Fitzgerald's investigative practices and Luskin's recognized imperative to cooperate, the most likely scenario accounting for Novak's testimony seems to be that Luskin released Novak from her confidentiality obligation, and did so quite quickly, after receiving a request from Fitzgerald that he do so.

At the very least, that scenario seems much more plausible than Novak whimsically violating her confidentiality commitment to Luskin. And Luskin's release of Novak also seems far more likely than imagining that Fitzgerald would be interested only in learning about Novak's statements to Luskin, but not Luskin's statements to Novak, and, even more implausibly, that Fitzgerald would agree in advance to restrict his questioning to Novak’s side of that conversation.

The War on Drugs silently gets dumber and more invasive

Issues like Iraq and terrorism so overwhelm the limited attention of the media and the public that other critically important matters, such as illegal immigration and the nation's ongoing "War on Drugs," go all but ignored.

For that reason, it's always nice to have periodic reminders of the utter wastefulness, oppressiveness and naked stupidity which continue to fuel the Drug War.

Bush v. The Washington Media

Whatever else one might say about George Bush, it is hard to dispute that he steadfastly believes in and adheres to the decisions he makes like virtually no other American political figure we have seen. And whatever it is that accounts for this refusal to change course in response to even the most intense political pressure -- whether it's personality traits, or a genuine set of principles, or messianic religious convictions about his actions and/or himself -- he is largely immune to the weapons which the Washington establishment, and particularly its press corps, have long wielded in order to force political officials to change course.

This steadfastness and refusal to play by the long-standing rules of the Washington establishment is almost certainly the attribute which most accounts for the increasingly intense dislike of the Bush Administration by the Washington press corps. This trait harshly denies the Washington media an entitlement which they have long held and which they believe is rightfully theirs: to be listened to, respected as holders of elevated wisdom, and to be given the power to force change even among the country's highest political officials.

They have never had and still do not have those powers with the Bush Administration, and they are quite unhappy about it. Seymour Hersch appeared last night on CNN with Wolf Blitzer (via Daily Kos) in order to advance even further the cartoon image of Bush as the Boy in the Bubble -- a borderline insane religious freak who believes that he and his actions are divinely mandated, and who is therefore immune from criticism and thus allows his aides to keep him shielded from any "facts" which might undermine his God-inspired certainty.

Hersch reveals the real source of his frustration when he complains to Blitzer about how wrong and scary it is that they -- Hersh and Blitzer and the rest of the vitally important Washington media drones -- have been denied their rightful role in Presidential palace decision-making:

BLITZER: Here's what you write. You write, "Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the president remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding. "Those are incredibly strong words, that the president basically doesn't want to hear alternative analysis of what is going on.

HERSH: You know, Wolf, there is people I've been talking to -- I've been a critic of the war very early in the New Yorker, and there were people talking to me in the last few months that have talked to me for four years that are suddenly saying something much more alarming. They're beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago. . . .

And so it's a little alarming because that means that my (sic) and my colleagues in the press corps, we can't get to him maybe with our views. You and you can't get to him maybe with your interviews. How do you get to a guy to convince him that perhaps he's not going the right way?

So Hersh thinks it's "alarming" that he's been writing anti-war articles for several years now and Bush still hasn't caved in his support for the war. We're supposed to be scared and outraged because Bush doesn't watch Wolf Blitzer interviews and then change his mind afterwards, or that Bush still supports the war even after Hersh writes another article based on anonymous officials who have come to him in order to attack Bush's policies.

And when Hersh complains that Bush is inured to "facts," what he plainly means is that Bush doesn't accept Hersh's view of Iraq. In sum, Bush is supposed to know that he has to listen when the Washington press elite speaks, and his refusal to do so means that he is either pathologically stubborn, certifiably crazy, or a religious fanatic beyond any reason. Certain elements on the Left hungrily eat up this cheap and easy caricature.

Ever since he took office, Bush has refused to play by many of the long-standing rules of the Washington game. He doesn't fire his cabinet secretaries and aides when editorial boards and other politicians demand that he do so. The appearance of as-yet-unproven scandals doesn't cause him to dump whomever is said to be associated with them. He doesn't abandon or soften his positions when polls begin to show an increasing public unrest with those positions or when pundits begin insinuating that weakening political support makes those positions untenable.

And, most significantly, he doesn't go out of his way, Clinton-like, to make sure that reporters -- or anyone else -- feel that their opinions are listened to and cherished. If anything, the opposite is true: Bush has never tried to hide that he has very little regard for the opinions of the Washington media establishment; that he could not care any less about winning their approval; and that the tried-and-true pressure tactics which they have used for decades to force White Houses to change course have no effect on Bush, unless it's to make him dig in even deeper.

The New York Daily News, in an article today that is largely critical of the White House, makes exactly this point:

Even as his poll numbers tank, however, Bush is described by aides as still determined to stay the course. He resists advice from Republicans who fear disaster in next year's congressional elections, and rejects criticism from a media establishment he disdains.

"The President has always been willing to make changes," the senior aide said, "but not because someone in this town tells him to - NEVER!"

For better or for worse, Bush arrived in Washington with a firmly entrenched set of convictions about himself and the world, and the self-important permanent Washington media establishment has not been able to shake those convictions no matter how hard they try. They thus feel irrelevant and impotent and they are not happy about it. They put up with it after 9/11 when a combination of Bush's towering popularity and their own fear-driven worship of Bush's cowboy swagger kept those resentments in check. But as 9/11 fades further into the distant past along with the aura of Bush's invulnerability, these resentments are blooming in plain sight.

Steadfastness or stuborness, like Clinton's eagerness to accomodate the positions of others, can be a good or a bad trait in a President. But for the preening, hubristic, status-obsessed Washington media elite, what matters is the influence and power they have, and in this respect, Bush's refusal to grant them their rightful place is nothing but a source of anger.

The media sees shifting public opinion in Iraq as their big chance to show that their power has not waned. They are committed to milking public discomfort over Iraq in order to show the Administration that they still rule Washington. And the longer Bush refuses to adhere to their demands -- or, as Hersch revealingly complained, the longer they "can't get to him maybe with (their) views" -- the angrier and more frustrated they are going to become.

Midge Decter: The Mother Sheehan of the Right

A couple of months ago, a Daily Kos diarist wrote a post urging his fellow anti-war activists to refer to Cindy Sheehan only with the creepy, cult-like title of "Mother Sheehan." His reasoning was almost as disturbing as the suggestion itself:

She is not a person now, she is a mother, which is not an expression of her individuality, but rather the expression of her eternal character: the mother, the bringer of life who has been wronged by state power.

Unsurprisingly, this post was the source of much derision on the Right, where she is still invariably referred to by that title.

It seems, though, that trying to bestow onto a political figure some sainted Mother image is ridiculous and funny only when someone on the Left does it. When the Right does it, it is profoundly moving and insightful.

Bruce Kesler over at Democracy Project has written a Thanksgiving love letter to neoconservative mistress Midge Decter, entitled "Thanksgiving for Midge Decter: Thanks Mom." Kesler shows that he is quite serious about considering Midge his mother, and really lays on the motherhood dribble much thicker than anyone ever did for Mother Sheehan:

Unbeknownst to Midge Decter, until last year, although having children of her own to raise, she has been my spiritual mother since I was 20. Midge Decter’s writings, on the nexus of culture and politics, the guide of the values we have at home to those we practice in the world, are rooted in the life experiences and concerns of a Jewish mother for the survival and success of her family. America is Midge Decter’s extended family. . . .

It was then, through a mutual friend I was graced to meet during the campaign, that I sent Midge Decter an email about her quote from 1968 and its effect on my life. She responded, overgraciously, but only as a proud mother can, that my contribution saved the country. A son was never prouder. . . .

Midge Decter felt responsible for what had happened to America, as only a mother can . . .

In May 2004, Midge Decter updated her maternal reflections . . .

This mother of sense, mine for almost 40-years, now extends her apron of motherly blessing and lessons to the next generation of America’s defenders. Just as those who served extend our faith, solidarity and hands to them.

With Midge Decter as their spiritual mother, a latter day lady of liberty, how can they go wrong! Thanks Mom.

Really, this borders on the disturbed. At least the Kos diarist wanted to use the "Mother Sheehan" title as a symbol. Kesler appears to have really come to think of Decter as his mom.

And what does the Right think of this emotionally twisted transformation of a political activist into a symbol of surrogate Motherhood? They must be mocking and scorning it the way they did when the Daily Kos diarist did the same thing to Cindy Sheehan, right?

Uh, no. They are celebrating and even drippily expounding upon Kesler's love note, and are recommending it to all.

I am sure that Mother Decter is very proud to have so many adoring, grateful little neocon boys who are appropriately appreciative of everything their mother did for them. What Mother wouldn't be?

The Tough-Guy Warriors are Going Soft

When the U.S. needed a nice, compliant puppet to run Iraq once Paul Bremer stepped down as its ruler, it chose old CIA asset Iyad Allawi. Allawi was then promptly turned out of office once the Iraqis were able to choose their own government, in no small part due to Allawi's long-standing, close ties to the U.S. and to the CIA.

For that reason, Allawi's comments yesterday -- in which he said that the magnitude of human rights abuses in Iraq today is comparable to what they were under Saddam's regime -- are extremely serious, and cannot be snidely dismissed as some sort of anti-U.S. propaganda from someone who wants to sabotage our mission and make us look bad. Allawi is a U.S. ally and long-standing Saddam enemy who supported our invasion and occupation, and this is what he said about the state of things in Iraq:

Abuse of human rights in Iraq is as bad now as it was under Saddam Hussein, if not worse, former prime minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published on Sunday.

"People are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein's time and worse. It is an appropriate comparison," Allawi told British newspaper The Observer.

"People are remembering the days of Saddam," said Allawi, a secular Shi'ite and former Baathist who is standing in elections scheduled for Dec. 15. "These are the precise reasons why we fought Saddam Hussein and now we are seeing the same things.

"We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated," said Allawi in an apparent reference to the discovery of a bunker at the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry where 170 men were held prisoner, beaten, half-starved and in some cases tortured.

"A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations."

Allawi said the Interior Ministry, which has tried to brush off the scandal over the bunker, was afflicted by a "disease".

If it is not cured, he said, it "will become contagious and spread to all ministries and structures of Iraq's government".

London's Observer similarly reported:

'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.'

Someone needs to tell Allawi that he only thinks things are awful in Iraq because the MSM suppresses the stories about U.S. troops handing out sweets to Iraqi children and helping to clean the chalkboards in Kurdish schools. Then again, Allawi is in Iraq and it's doubtful that his view of what is going on there is a by-product of the MSM's propaganda. So maybe what he is saying is accurate and there is no good way to attack his motives or biases no matter how much we want to find a way to disbelieve his report because it contains bad news.

It may very well be the case that, if we stay long enough, spend enough money, and endure enough casualties, we will be able to create a relatively stable, decent Iraq, such that we can at least claim with a straight face that our invasion actually improved the Middle East by replacing a murderous, psychopathic dictator with a reasonably representative, human rights-respecting government in the heart of that region.

But as Allawi's report and so many others conclusively demonstrate, we are far, far away from that point. It is questionable whether we have made any progress at all towards reducing the levels of instability, violence and chaos in that country, and it is unquestionable that if we have made any such progress, it is a small fraction of what is necessary to leave with any confidence that those improvements will be substantial, let alone that they will endure once our 150,000 troops are gone.

Even if one disagrees with their desire for an ongoing military presence in Iraq, one can at least respect the intellectual honesty and principled stand of those pro-war advocates who acknowledge that we are far from ready to leave Iraq right now, and that achieving the original goals will require an ongoing, sustained commitment to a prolonged occupation. Having supported this war and subsequent invasion on the ground that U.S. national security will be improved if we create a stable, democratic government in Iraq, they commendably insist on staying and trying to "finish" what is so clearly an unfinished job, notwithstanding the fact that a prolonged occupation will subject Republicans to serious political difficulties, to put it mildly.

By depressing contrast, the increasingly populous group which supported this war but now wants to pretend that Iraq is ready for us to leave -- all because they want to minimize political damage to Republicans and to Bush -- are really acting reprehensibly. Here is the rationale of one of them, Don Surber, in his candid and illuminating post, entitled "We Won. Let's Go Home":

I listened carefully to the lengthy House debate on the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The idea failed 403-3. Such a withdrawal is a surrender.

But as a supporter of the war, I opined that we have won this war in part. We need to bring the troops home from the secured areas (End The Mission Creep: Bring Them Home). Every day, sites such as Argghhh! and Mudville Gazette say how swell things are going. My argument was in light of all these good-things-MSM-doesn't-report posts from all over, why are they still there? Building schools is not the job of the Army. The idea of trying to win the hearts and minds is ridiculous. We want them independent, not some sort of American protectorate. . . .

America has done what it set out to do: Stopped Saddam from developing more WMD, stopped Saddam's support of terrorism and stopped Saddam. Time to turn Iraq over to Iraqis.

Leave aside the obvious question of why Democratic calls for withdraw constitute "surrender" while GOP calls for the same thing do not. Beyond that, isn't it the case that by Surber's reasoning --that all we ever wanted to do in Iraq was get rid of Saddam -- we could have left Iraq two years ago when we drove Saddam from power and captured or killed the Baathist hierarchy. But there were no calls from the pro-war hawks then to withdraw. Even once we captured Saddam, we were continuously and stridently told that there was so much left for us to do in Iraq.

It is only now that the war has become so unpopular and there are looming mid-term elections are we suddenly hearing that there's nothing left for us to do in Iraq and it's fine if we leave before there is anything resembling a stable society and decent, self-sufficient government there.

This GOP version of the "situational hawk," as those position-shifting Senate Democrats have been derisively called, embodies the worst of both worlds: having insisted upon an invasion and occupation which entailed an expenditure of resources far greater than what was imagined and which has seen one rationale after the next evaporate, they now want to abandon their project and leave Iraq in shambles -- filled with sectarian war, Al Qaeda operatives, human rights abuses on a massive scale, and pervasive, unrelenting violence. Can anyone claim that an Iraq bubbling over with these problems is an improvement to U.S national security?

And there is a dirty little irony plaguing this group as well. They are the ones who have been swarming in attack mode on those unprincipled, cowardly Senate Democrats who originally supported the war when the war was politically popular but have now turned against the war now that public opinion has, too. We are told that these mind-changing Democrats are craven opportunists who care more about political advantage than they do about U.S national security, and that they are willing to surrender to terrorists if doing so can help their domestic political prospects.

And how, exactly, does that now-reviled group of spineless, politically-motivated Senate Democrats differ any from the previously zealous Iraq warriors who -- now that public opinion has turned so decisively against their war -- are hyping the transparent charade that Iraq is, in any sense, sufficiently improved to have made our invasion worthwhile, let alone ready for us to abandon it? Aren't they guilty of exactly the crimes of which they accuse these shifting, soul-less Senate Democrats -- namely, having supported a war when it was easy to do so but now wanting to prematurely withdraw because the political winds have shifted?

It seems as though the accusations which the pro-war Right has been so viciously launching against anti-war critics are starting to fit quite comfortably on them. If we leave Iraq now, haven't our troops died in vain? Don't we owe it to them to complete our mission and not cut and run in time for November, 2006? And won't our patently premature withdraw be seen as the exact type of surrender which we have been hearing is what emboldens terrorists and weakens our country? These previously chest-beating hawks, who are transforming into meek little doves right before our eyes, are willing to endure all of that just in order to protect some GOP Congressional candidates from having to defend an increasingly unpopular war?

If the only difference between anti-war Democrats and softening pro-war Republicans is that the former wants to leave and say the whole thing was a mistake, while the latter wants to leave and pretend that we won, that isn't much of a difference to crow about. And if all we did in Iraq was get rid of Saddam in order to replace him with a new dictator, one whose human rights abuses are comparable or, worse, who will be a reliable ally of the U.S.-hating Iranian mullahs, it's hard to imagine anyone claiming that this war has been worthwhile. Nothing will have been improved -- not U.S. national security, not our image around the world, and not the plight of the Iraqi people.

The propaganda pretending that "we won" will be loud and relentless if we do leave prematurely, but the reality of what is happening in Iraq is almost sure to render it ineffective. If we leave now, it will be clear to most everyone that we were driven out by a combination of the insurgency and growing domestic opposition to the occupation, and that we did not "win" anything. If we truly want to have a chance to "win" in Iraq in any meaningful sense, the 2006 elections cannot be a factor, let alone the driving factor, in determining when we leave.

The Pro-War Right v. 2006 Elections

There is much discussion today of The Los Angeles Times article detailing the multiple signs that the Bush Administration is laying the groundwork for a significant troop reduction from Iraq. This article has again triggered speculation that the Administration is committing itself to a substantial withdraw from Iraq, regardless of the conditions there, in time to save GOP candidates in the November, 2006 elections from being saddled with an increasingly unpopular war.

But as I documented last week, the Administration will not be able to prematurely withdraw from Iraq without provoking a huge backlash from the formidable segment of the pro-war Right which cares more about their ideological goals and beliefs than they do about the short-term political considerations of either the Republican Party or George Bush.

With the Harriet Miers triumph, the Right convincingly demonstrated that it will no longer blindly fall into line behind George Bush’s decrees if they perceive that their ideological principles are being abandoned. And, as Bush becomes more unpopular and gets even closer to full-on "lame duck" status, the Right will not hesitate to wage war on him again – particularly if they think that he is selling out the chance for glorious U.S. victory in Iraq merely in order to preserve some GOP Congressional seats in a garden-variety mid-term election.

One of the leaders of the anti-withdraw charge is sure to be Bill Kristol, who, as I noted last week, clearly expects U.S. troops to remain in Iraq for a long, long time to come. Here is Kristol, along with Robert Kagan, in their Weekly Standard article last week revealingly entitled "Abandoning Iraq":

Victory is in fact possible, though it will require a longer war than anyone would like, but not so long a war as to be intolerable. What would be intolerable would be to lose to the terrorists in Iraq.

I think it's safe to say that Bill Kristol isn't on board with this oh-so-clever November, 2006 withdraw idea.

A preview of the war from the Right which is sure to waged if premature withdraw from Iraq is attempted, is found in this well-reasoned and anticipatorily angry objection from the intellectually honest, pro-war conservative blogger John Cole:

While drawing down 40k of 160k troops over the next year is certainly not cutting and running, I think it is pretty clear this decision is being based on domestic political considerations rather than facts on the ground.

Which, of course, makes this administration no better than the cynical Democrats who have been using this issue for their own political reasons. Worse, some might argue, since this administration led us into this war, and now seems unwilling to win it.

This is exactly the kind of thing we’re going to hear more of – with a lot more intensity and aggression – if the pro-war Right perceives that Bush is attempting premature troop reductions based on craven political calculations centering on the November, 2006 elections.

Bush, and Rove, may very well want to effectuate this withdraw, or at least make it look like we’re withdrawing, to avoid having the Iraq occupation be a fatal albatross around the necks of the GOP 2006 candidates. But as they found out with the Harriet Miers nomination, this isn’t 2002 any more, and they can’t have whatever they want.

Particularly since it will almost certainly risk infuriating -- again -- the only friends they have left, the Administration may not be able to stage this politically-motivated troop reduction even if, as increasingly appears to be the case, they are eager to do so.

The irrational attacks on ex-supporters of the war

The Seattle Times reports this morning on another “Defense Hawk,” Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wa.), who has turned against the war in Iraq. Dicks voted for the 2002 war resolution and vocally supported the war effort, but:

Dicks now says it was all a mistake -- his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war.

While he disagrees with Murtha's conclusion that U.S. troops should be withdrawn within six months, Dicks said, "He may well be right if this insurgency goes much further."

"The insurgency has gotten worse and worse," he said. "That's where Murtha's rationale is pretty strong — we're talking a lot of casualties with no success in sight. The American people obviously know that this war is a mistake."

Usually, nobody much cares about a particular Congressman’s views on anything. There are 435 of them, and outside of the very few who comprise the House leadership, the influence any one of them singularly wields is minuscule.

But there is a reason why the conversions of the previously pro-war Rep. John Murtha, and now Rep. Dicks, have resonated so strongly, both among war critics who are quick to embrace them, and among war proponents who feel compelled to attack and discredit them.

The reason is this: Guys like Jack Murtha and Norm Dicks cannot be caricatured as anti-American hippy socialist cowards, and they thus give the lie -- viscerally and undeniably -- to the recently intensified attacks on not just the judgment, but the motives and patriotism, of anyone who is a critic of the war and/or a critic of the Bush Administration’s pre-war advocacy.

There is a growing tendency on the part of pro-war advocates to ascribe qualities of weakness, spinelessness, cowardice, hysteria, and anti-American subversiveness -- not to mention being “small hollow men [who] are the equivalent of those grubby little Nazis” -- to anyone who is against the war in Iraq or who favors an end to our occupation there sooner rather than later.

The new and improved line of attack is to dichotomize war opponents by, first, issuing the most back-handed of compliments to those who were anti-war all along – the unthreatening, marginalized “Michael Moore crowd.” They, we are told, are at least “principled” and "consistent" (though horribly misguided and dangerous in their consistent, principled stance).

The real villains now are those who have changed their minds about the war – the ones who went from being war supporters to war opponents. It is not just their judgment which is deficient, but their character, bravery and patriotism. It is this group that war supporters are now targeting as cowardly, unprincipled, implicit enemies of the United States who subversively care more about politically undermining the Commander-in-Chief than they do about winning the war. As they so often do, the Powerline boys most accurately illustrate this irrational rhetorical excess: "The only war the Democrats really have their heart in is the war to undermine the Bush administration."

There are, to be sure, a group of quite unprincipled U.S. Senators who originally supported the war simply because they were too afraid not to, and now that it is safe to do so, they want to change their minds and blame others, particularly the White House, for their vote. And there is also a small, marginalized segment of the anti-war contingent which is simply pacifistic and/or which believes that the U.S. is inherently evil, and that all measures taken to project American power should be opposed as a reflection and promotion of this evil. They would oppose any war, or almost any other action initiated by the U.S., and certainly those favored by George Bush.

But there is also a crowd in the pro-war camp comprised of people who favor the war because they believe we should eradicate and/or conquer Muslims, or who want to battle against Islam itself by spreading Christianity or simply killing or subjugating adherents of Islam. They would favor any U.S. war, or almost any other hostile action, initiated by the U.S. against Muslim countries, especially those favored by George Bush.

But just as the pro-war position can’t be reasonably attacked by citing the fact that some who subscribe to it do so for venal or intellectually corrupt reasons, the anti-war position cannot be attacked by pointing to the subset of anti-war critics who are motivated by less than noble objectives. Large numbers of war supporters– likely the vast majority – do not favor the war because they want to invade Muslim countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity, just as the vast majority of war opponents do not believe that the U.S. is an imperialistic, blood-thirsty force of evil which ought to "surrender to terrorists" and turn to pacifism.

That’s what Jack Murtha and Norm Dicks prove so conclusively – that there is an honorable, patriotic, good faith ground for converting from supporter of the war to an opponent. And Murtha, in particular, has become such a lighting rod for intense emotion and debate precisely because war opponents are so eager to demonstrate the existence of such an honorable anti-war conversion, while war supporters are equally eager to deny that such a thing is even possible.

Huge numbers of people who question the war and who oppose the Administration’s fighting of it -- including those who originally supported the war but now have changed their mind -- know that they are not motivated by hostility towards their country, or a cowardly “fear of fighting,” or some subversive pro-terrorist agenda. Like Murtha and Dicks, their conversion to anti-war opponent has been gradual and is a strictly pragmatic conversion: they no longer believe that the project is constructive, but instead, has become counter-productive and destructive, and therefore ought to be terminated.

Assume that one invests in a new business based upon certain optimistic assumptions about the market, the demand for the product to be sold by the business, the ability to contain costs. After pouring substantial capital into the business, the investor realizes that the initial assumptions were wildly inaccurate. He also realizes that the individuals he hired to manage the business made some critical, irreparable mistakes in operating the business at the outset. As a result, the investor has concluded that the business is almost certain to fail, and can never achieve meaningful profitability.

He is thus faced with only two options: (a) accept the fact that the ongoing costs of the business will outweigh the benefits and therefore search for the least harmful way to abandon it, or (b) continue to pour resources into the project simply because he does not want to change his mind and admit error, i.e., the “throwing good money after bad” behavior.

It can hardly be said to be a sign of cowardice or “fecklessness” if, under those circumstances, the investor decides to abandon the project rather than continue to pour money into it until he has no money left. Indeed, the decision, one way or the other, cannot possibly be seen as a function of how courageous or principled he is (unless one wants to argue that it actually requires courage to admit error and change one’s mind as a result). Instead, the decision is a strictly pragmatic one – based on an assessment of the facts of the business as they developed and a recognition of the disparity between the initial predictions and the realities as they evolved.

This is exactly what led Rep. Murtha, Rep. Dicks, and scores and scores of previously pro-war individuals to change their mind about the desirability of our occupation of Iraq. Here is Rep. Murtha explaining the rationale leading to his conversion:

The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.

General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing, “the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.” General Abizaid said on the same date, “Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy.”
. . .
I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won “militarily.” I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.

Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.

That argument amounts to nothing more than a practical assessment that our continued occupation in Iraq undermines, rather than promotes, the objectives that caused us to begin the war. It is driven by a cost-benefit analysis that the benefits which the U.S. can reasonably expect to derive from ongoing occupation are vastly outweighed by the costs. If a person has come to that conclusion, then his love of his country and his opposition to terrorism would compel, rather than prevent, his conversion from war supporter to war opponent.

That is why whatever else can be said about pro-war and anti-war advocates, for the vast majority of individuals on both sides, their viewpoints are not a function of bravery or cowardice, a desire to fight rather than surrender to terrorists, or a love of the U.S. versus a hatred for it. Favoring a war that you don’t have to fight in does not require courage, and opposing a war that you won’t have to fight in cannot even remotely be construed as a sign of “cowardice.”

For these reasons, these patriotism and "cowardice" attacks on anti-war converters are patent non-sequiturs. They are designed to smear, not to engage or to debate, and they are based on the false assumption that there is something inherently courageous and patriotic about favoring a prolonged U.S. military occupation and something inherently cowardly and unpatriotic about favoring a withdraw.

But changing one's mind about the desirability of this war based upon a rational conclusion that it is producing more harm than good for America is not a sign of cowardice nor evidence of a hatred for the U.S. It is a sign of precisely the opposite.

Iraq Pop Quiz

When you read things like the following report from Edward Wong in today's New York Times, reporting from Baghdad, do you:

(a) marvel at the utter chaos and worsening violence which our invasion has spawned;

(b) find the notion absurd that we are anywhere even remotely near being able to turn over Iraq to Iraqis;

(c) wonder about how Iraq is ever going to be sufficiently peaceful and stable for us to leave without it looking like retreat and defeat; or,

(d) all of the above.

A suicide car bomb exploded Thursday near an American convoy at the entrance to the main hospital in the volatile town of Mahmudiya, killing at least 30 Iraqis and wounding dozens of others in a burst of fire and shrapnel.

At least 15 other Iraqis died Thursday, including the police commander of Mahmudiya, while 5 American soldiers were reported killed in three separate incidents over the last two days.

Even by the violent standards of this war, the bombing in Mahmudiya was particularly vicious, taking place outside a hospital as visitors and the sick were coming and going. The blast flung bystanders and body parts through the air and shattered the facades of buildings for blocks around. Policemen and Iraqi Army soldiers quickly sealed off the town's main streets while American helicopters circled the scene of carnage. . . .

Mahmudiya lies in a restive part of the Euphrates River valley south of Baghdad that is commonly called the Triangle of Death, because of the frequency of ambushes by guerrillas and bandits there. The American military has often tried sweeps of towns and villages there, only to find that the residents had cleared out well before the operations began.

Some of the worst sectarian violence of the post-Saddam Hussein era has taken place in the area, as Sunni Arabs and Shiites struggle for control of the towns and of the major arteries leading south from the capital to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Shiite pilgrims traveling to those cities have often turned up dead alongside the main road, known as the Highway of Death. The executions have incited so much fury that Shiites in the south have announced the creation of vengeance-seeking militias in response to the slayings.

The sectarian nature of Iraq's low-level civil war is evident in virtually every major attack that takes place now. A surge in such assaults has roiled the country in the last week and tested the limits of Shiite patience.

Last Friday, a pair of suicide bombers attacked two Shiite mosques in the Kurdish town of Khanaqin, killing at least 70. A car bombing at a Shiite funeral the next day killed at least 30. By the end of the weekend, at least 155 Iraqis and 8 American and British soldiers had been killed over a three-day period.

In violence elsewhere on Thursday, a car bombing in the southern town of Hilla killed at least 3 people and wounded at least 14, the Interior Ministry official said. Gunmen in southern Baghdad opened fire on a convoy carrying the minister of industry, killing at least three guards and wounding a civilian, and an adviser to Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister and a candidate for Parliament, was shot dead in his car in the evening.

An Iraqi Army major, a police officer and an Iraqi commando were gunned down in separate incidents in Baghdad. A roadside bomb explosion in the Baghdad suburb of Doura killed one policeman and wounded two, while a police colonel and his son were killed when guerrillas sprayed their house with gunfire. A girl was killed when "unknown explosive ordnance" detonated near an engineering convoy in Diwaniya, the American military said.

The American military said a soldier died Wednesday of a gunshot wound in central Baghdad, and two died the same day of gunshot wounds southwest of the capital. Two other soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb explosion on Thursday, also southwest of Baghdad. At least 2,104 American troops have died in the war.

The recent spate of suicide bombings has called into question the American military's assertions that it has effectively clamped down on such attacks. The American command says suicide bombings dipped somewhat from early summer to late summer, and officers attribute the decline to operations in the desert regions of western Anbar Province, near the Syrian border. These operations were aimed at disrupting the flow of foreign fighters and munitions, the officers say.

I choose (d). A country with places of active killing referred as the "Triangle of Death" and "Highway of Death," and plagued with sectarian violence that is increasing in hatred, intensity and slaughter, doesn't sound like a place on its way to stability and prosperity.

The Myth of International Wisdom

In his column this morning, entitled "Replant the American Dream," Washington Post columnist David Ignatius dramatically laments America’s plummeting popularity around the world, and does so with the standard, now-cliched sentiments which are dutifully trotted out whenever this topic is raised. People in other countries no longer like or respect Americans. They think we’re hypocritical war-mongers who preach standards for other countries which we routinely violate. They despise George Bush and disbelieve everything that he says. They no longer see us as exceptional or different. Accordingly, he patronizingly tells us:

When I lived abroad, Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday. It was a chance to scrounge up a turkey, gather foreign and American friends, and celebrate what America represented to the world. . . .

I don't think Americans realize how much we have tarnished those ideals in the eyes of the rest of the world these past few years. The public opinion polls tell us that America isn't just disliked or feared overseas -- it is reviled. We are seen as hypocrites who boast of our democratic values but who behave lawlessly and with contempt for others. I hate this America-bashing, but when I try to defend the United States and its values in my travels abroad, I find foreigners increasingly are dismissive.

And, as is almost always the case for those who read from this laundry list to demonstrate rising anti-American sentiment among people in other countries, Ignatius’ assumption is that they are right. If people around the world believe that the U.S. has shed its values and has become a dangerous threat to the world, then, so goes this reasoning, that is powerful proof that the U.S. is on the wrong track. And, they reason, both the prevalence and wisdom of these anti-American sentiments around the world compel the U.S. to change its course in order to once again become popular in the world.

This is corrupt and dangerous reasoning. All of Ignatius’ assertions regarding rising American unpopularity may be (and likely are) true, but they are also completely besides the point, if not downright irrelevant, when it comes to debating what measures the U.S. ought to pursue and is justified in pursuing in order to defend its national security and protect its national interests.

That America faces real dangers in the world is beyond dispute for rational people, but -- just as Americans care more about the dangers threatening them than they care about dangers which threaten other countries -- the dangers facing America will naturally be under-appreciated and under-valued by people in countries for whom those dangers pose no threat.

The important corollary to this principle is that measures which Americans believe are appropriate and justified in order to confront these threats will be viewed as excessive and unwarranted by people in other countries, who view those threats as less significant and alarming than Americans do. For that reason, among others, the popularity or lack thereof of America’s foreign policy in other countries should not be used as a metric for determining the rightness of America’s actions.

The country in which I have now lived for a year, Brazil, is by far the largest and most populous country in South America, and Brazilians had, prior to the war in Iraq, an overwhelmingly favorable view of the United States. One would expect that to be the case. The U.S. is Brazil's largest trading partner, more tourists visit Brazil from America than anywhere else, the U.S. provides substantial aid to this country, and Brazil is now a full-fledged, healthy free market democracy which makes it a natural U.S. ally in South America. And all of those factors did, indeed, result in strong pro-U.S. sentiment among Brazilians.

That has all changed, and, beginning with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it changed dramatically. Newspapers are now routinely filled with anti-U.S. diatribes; the population almost universally reviles the Bush Administration; virtually nobody views the U.S. war in Iraq as anything other than oil-motivated, blood-thirsty imperialism; and when asked who the biggest threat is to world peace (as well as environmental sustainability), Brazilians will now almost always point to the Bush-led U.S. rather than to, say, Osama bin Laden, North Korea, or Iranian mullahs.

While such trends may be upsetting to some, they cannot reasonably be used to argue that American foreign policy is misguided. Any nation would be acting foolishly, and self-destructively, if it allowed its foreign policy to be guided by the threat perceptions of people in other countries. When it comes to facing the profound threat posed to American interests by Islamic extremism, it is naturally the case that people in other countries will view the danger posed by that threat as being less serious and important than Americans perceive it to be.

Americans, justifiably and understandably, consider the 9/11 attacks to be a profound and intolerable assault on U.S. national security, an event so threatening and jarring that it justifies measures which would have previously been considered to be too extreme. But here in Brazil, and in most other countries in the world, Islamic terrorism is a virtually non-existent threat, and, for those countries, 9/11 is no different than any other event occurring in any other country which results in lots of tragic deaths -- such as, say, a massive earthquake or an outbreak of a deadly virus.

The population of most every country on the planet does not perceive the threat of radical Islam to be what Americans perceive it to be – and rightfully so, because the threat which this extremism poses to America is far greater and more serious than it is to most other countries. Brazilians wake up worrying about violent crime in their cities or the massive poverty which causes it, but they -- like so many people outside the U.S. -- don’t wake up worrying about Muslim terrorism because it is not a threat to them. But it is a threat to Americans.

This fundamental difference in interests is critical, as it illustrates the utter folly, and irrationality, of using the perceptions of other countries to judge America’s foreign policy. When it comes to the U.S. deciding what it needs to do and should do in response to the threats which gave rise to 9/11 and similar attacks, it is the American perception of the severity and importance of those threats – and not the perception of other countries – which ought to determine America’s response.

There are ample grounds to criticize, and even be horrified by, America’s actions under the Bush Administration. One can quite rationally argue that the U.S.’s systematic polices of torture, or its abducting and detaining people and holding them in secret prisons, or its decision to wage war based on claims concerning the Iraqi threat which were false and inaccurate, are destructive and indefensible. But this is the case not because these actions are unpopular in other countries, but because these actions are harmful to America, because they are contrary to America’s values, and because they undermine the liberties and securities of its citizens. In short, those actions are good or bad on their merits, regardless of what the citizens of other countries think of them.

International unpopularity may be the result of an undesirable or unwarranted foreign policy, but such unpopularity may just as easily flow from the U.S. doing exactly what it ought to do to protect its interests. International public opinion of America’s foreign policy is not evidence, one way or the other, of the merit of those policies.

Contrary to the annoying and childish assumption of so many, other governments and the populations of other countries are judging America’s actions not based upon some universal standard of morality or from some elevated perch of wisdom and goodness, such that their disapproval is proof that America is wrong. Whether they admit it or not, these other populations are judging America’s foreign policy based on their perception of the impact which America’s actions have on their country’s interests.

If the population of Brazil, or the Government of France, or anyone else in the world, believed that America’s invasion of Iraq would have promoted rather than undermined their national interests, they would have supported the invasion. They are opposed to the war and to America’s aggressive foreign policy generally not because they are Good and Virtuous and therefore oppose all Bad things, but because they perceive that the war and America’s actions are harmful to their interests, which are not the same as America’s interests.

Perhaps they perceive that America’s foreign policy harms their interests because it creates an overly-powerful America, or leads to excessive American influence in that region, or causes Middle Eastern instability, or exposes their Government’s sordid dealings with Saddam’s regime, or re-enforces an international order based on military might and the unilateral will of a singular super-power which is not their country. But whatever it is that is driving their views, their desire to promote the interests of their country is the engine.

Americans are entitled to, and ought to, use this same standard for deciding what America should do in the international arena. If Ignatius wants to argue that America is engaged in evil and counter-productive acts, or that it now employs the tools of totalitarian repression which it used to fight against, then he should say so, and should object to the policies which he opposes on their merits. There are lots of substantive grounds for making those arguments.

But advancing the argument that America’s actions are wrong by hiding behind how things look "in the eyes of the rest of the world these past few years" displays both illogic and intellectual cowardice. Contrary to Ignatius’ unstated assumption, an unpopular U.S. foreign policy is not the same as a misguided or evil U.S. foreign policy, and indeed, the former is not even evidence of the latter.

It may be beneficial to U.S. interests to have other countries like what we are doing, but being popular in other countries is not an end in itself. The U.S. can and should pursue whatever measures it deems appropriate to protect its national interests. The fact that the populations or governments of other countries perceive those measures to be excessive or unwarranted is to be expected because those countries have different threat perceptions and divergent interests. And, for exactly that reason, their approval or disapproval cannot be used to assess the rightness of, let alone to dictate, American foreign policy.

The NYT keeps granting anonymity to spinning Administration officials

Why does The New York Times continue to allow the Bush Administration to publicly defend itself while hiding behind a journalistically indefensible and misleading shield of anonymity?

Controversy exists over the proper standards for determining when granting anonymity to sources is justifiable, but it seems that virtually everyone agrees on two propositions:

(i) Reporters rely too much on anonymous sources, particularly where anonymity serves no important journalistic end; and,

(ii) Anonymity should not be granted to government officials who are disseminating pro-government spin.

In a column published just last week, Times Public Editor Byron Calame lambasted the Times for its excessive and unwarranted use of anonymity, and particularly cited the impropriety of anonymity when it is granted to Government sources who want to defend the Government:

While many sources have long sought anonymity to disparage an opponent or enemy, the current White House can be found praising the president's decision-making anonymously. In a July 6 Times article about the year's first Supreme Court vacancy, "a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity because most staff members are not authorized to speak about the vacancy" said that "at the end of the day, the president is going to decide this based on those principles, not from any pressure from the groups."

"What possible reason related to news can justify running this quote?" Jay Ackroyd of New York asked me in an e-mail message. "It's just spin." It also makes me feel uneasy. Puffery with the protection of anonymity can be used in pursuit of ends as devious as those sought through unattributed negative comments.

Calame, in recommending that reporters be required to explain why they affirmatively "granted" anonymity to their sources, made clear that anonymity is justified only in a narrow range of circumstances:

This would help limit confidential sourcing to the kinds of coverage where it's vital: national security, intelligence, investigative articles and classic whistle-blower projects.

This morning, The Times has an important, apparently exclusive article reporting on the reasons why the Bush Administration, in finally indicting Jose Padilla after 3 years of holding him captive in a military prison, failed to indict him for the two crimes which it publicly cited over and over in support of its claim that Padilla was so dangerous and important: namely, that he was an attempted "dirty bomber" who tried to smuggle and detonate a radiological bomb in the U.S., and that he plotted to blow up apartment buildings which have natural gas pipelines. The Times article is comprised almost exclusively of one quote after the next from anonymous Governmental sources.

In one sense, this article provides an outstanding illustration of the narrow circumstances in which anonymous sources play a critically important journalistic role. The article reveals that the two witnesses who provided the incriminating information about Padilla, including the "dirty bomb" allegation, were subject by the CIA to "harsh interrogation," including the torture practice known as "waterboarding." As a result, the Government did not want to and could not bring charges based on information obtained from these sources, because the "harsh treatment" to which they were subjected made whatever information they provided highly suspect.

These revelations are based upon statements by anonymous "officials" as well as internal CIA reviews (it is unclear if the Times reporters read those reports or were told about them). These anonymous sources enabled the Times to report that these CIA reviews "raised questions about the[] treatment and credibility" of the two Padilla accusers.

It is easy to see why anonymity would be granted here in order to obtain this vitally important information. That the Padilla accusers' statements are unreliable because they were obtained by torture is information which the Administration clearly would not want disseminated but which is of obvious public importance. This is information which would almost certainly remain concealed if the sources could not pass it along anonymously, and it is therefore a perfect journalistic use of anonymous sourcing.

Beyond that revelation, however, the article grants anonymity to what appear to be several Administration officials whose statements have no purpose other than to defend the Justice Department's behavior in the Padilla matter. We thus "learn" from anonymous sources the following pro-Administration spin:

(1) Despite refusing to make any public statements about the accusations not charged in the indictment, the Administration still stands behind the "dirty bomb" and apartment bombing allegations:

The officials spoke a day after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales repeatedly refused at to address questions a news conference about why the government had not brought criminal charges related to the most serious accusations. The officials, from several agencies, sought to emphasize that the government was not backing off its initial assertions about the seriousness of Mr. Padilla's actions.

(2) Ample evidence exists to prove Padilla's involvement in terrorist cells:

Officials said they had considered bringing criminal charges against Mr. Padilla in the case and releasing him from military custody as early as last spring, after intercepted communications pointed to his role in the cell. But officials faced time pressures in bringing the criminal case, and when the Florida judge delayed proceedings against the men already charged, the administration decided to hold off charging Mr. Padilla.

(3) There is still reason to fear that Padilla was trying to blow up apartment buildings which use natural gas:

In the interviews on Wednesday, American officials from several agencies said they still regarded those accusations as serious, particularly the one described by Mr. Mohammed. Officials said they were deeply concerned about reports that Mr. Padilla, trained by a Qaeda bomb maker who is at large, might seek to rig an explosive to the natural gas system of an apartment building in New York, officials said.

(4) The Government justifiably didn't indict Padilla for the dirty bomb and natural gas allegations because they were afraid that important classified information would be disclosed at trial:

They said any effort to introduce testimony by Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Zubaydah against Mr. Padilla could have opened the way for defense lawyers to expose details about their detention and interrogation in secret jails that the Central Intelligence Agency has worked hard to keep out of public light.

(5) And, again, the Government still believes Padilla tried to bomb apartment buildings:

A senior American official said, "There has been no reason to doubt that the accusations against Padilla in relation to the bombing plot were genuine."

Transparently, these quotes are being purposely fed to the Times by an Administration which does not want to defend itself publicly. But by being able to advance these defenses anonymously, the Administration can bestow upon them an aura of credibility they don't deserve (since it's often assumed that anonymous sources are whistle-blowers bravely speaking the truth), and worse, it allows the Administration to advance these self-defenses without accountability, since they can't be questioned about them.

There is no journalistic rationale at all for shielding these quotes with the protective armor of anonymity. If the Administration wants to defend its conduct in the Padilla case, it can and should do so on the record. The Times should not grant anonymity to Administration officials who have been so plainly sent not to blow whistles, but to parrot the pro-Administration spin in response to this story.

The rationale provided by the Times for granting this anonymity is nothing short of silly:

"The officials were granted anonymity, saying to be identified by name would subject them to reprisals for addressing questions that Mr. Gonzales had declined to answer."

These anonymous sources are defending the Justice Department by claiming that the evidentiary case against Padilla which was trumpeted all along is still strong, and by denying the central claim of the article, that Padilla was not indicted on these crimes because the primary witnesses for the allegations were tortured. The idea that these officials need to be given protection from their boss, Attorney General Gonzalez, when they are providing uniformly and indisputably pro-Gonazalez spin, is an insult to readers of the article.

It goes without saying that the Times should always endeavor to publish the response of the Administration to any stories it is publishing which reflect poorly on the Administration. But there is absolutely no reason to allow the Administration to provide such a response anonymously, and in doing so, this article simultaneously illustrates the irreplaceable journalistic benefits of anonymity as well as its now-commonplace abuses.

Padilla & Torture: Just when you thought it couldn't get worse

Q. What is worse than having the U.S. Government imprison one of its citizens indefinitely -- without any charges being brought, without any due process of any kind, and solely on the unchecked decree of the President -- while the Government has its top officials simultaneously accuse that citizen in press conferences of trying to detonate a radiological bomb inside the country?

A. Having that indefinite, lawless imprisonment and those public accusations be based upon information which was highly suspect all along, because it was obtained by the U.S. Government through the torture of the "witnesses" who provided it.

The vague indictment finally brought against U.S. citizen Jose Padilla on Tuesday contained neither of the two charges which the Administration had previously accused Padilla of in order to justify incarcerating him indefinitely: i.e., that he was a "dirty bomber" trying to smuggle and detonate a radiological bomb in the U.S., and that he was plotting to blow up U.S. apartment buildings with natural gas pipelines. The Padilla indictment is here, in .pdf form.

This gaping omission leads to a rather glaring and pressing question which, until the publication of the Times article this morning, had been unanswered. After hyping these flamboyant but unproven crimes for 3 years in order to argue that Padilla was such a unique menace that he had to be imprisoned without even minimal due process, why did the Justice Department not actually accuse him of those crimes when it finally brought charges against him?

The unbelievable now-expected though still highly disturbing answer? Because the information obtained by the Bush Administration on which those accusations were based is likely false and certainly far too unreliable to be used to convict someone of a crime, because it was obtained only by torturing the two sources who provided it:

The Bush administration decided to charge Jose Padilla with less serious crimes because it was unwilling to allow testimony from two senior members of Al Qaeda who had been subjected to harsh questioning, current and former government officials said Wednesday.

The two senior members were the main sources linking Mr. Padilla to a plot to bomb targets in the United States, the officials said

One review, completed in spring 2004 by the C.I.A. inspector general, found that Mr. Mohammed had been subjected to excessive use of a technique involving near drowning in the first months after his capture, American intelligence officials said.

Another review, completed in April 2003 by American intelligence agencies shortly after Mr. Mohammed's capture, assessed the quality of his information from initial questioning as "Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies." . . . .

The fact that the C.I.A. inspector general's report criticized as excessive the use of interrogation techniques on Mr. Mohammed had not previously been disclosed.

So, the U.S. Government -- at the very least -- apparently wrapped the head of these two sources in cellophane and then poured water on their faces in order to induce their gag reflex and make them wallow in the terrorizing fear that they were about to drown to death. In order to make this torture stop, the sources told their interrogators whatever they wanted to hear -- in this case, that Jose Padilla was trying to detonate a dirty bomb and blow up natural gas pipelines in the U.S.

Based on this plainly tainted, highly suspect, torture-induced information, and on it alone, the U.S. Government then arrested Padilla, threw him into a dark hole by himself in a military prison, refused to let him meet with lawyers until being ordered by a federal court to do so, refused for 3 years to charge him or release him, and branded him the "Dirty Bomber" in front of the world.

And now, apparently, not only has the Government concluded that its torture-induced "witness statements" regarding the "dirty bomb" allegation against Padilla cannot possibly withstand the scrutiny of a judicial proceeding, but the Government also has substantial doubts about the truth of the accusation:

It was Mr. Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002, who provided his questioners with the information about a plan to use a radiological weapon often called a "dirty bomb" that led to Mr. Padilla's arrest in Chicago less than two months later, the officials said.

It was Mr. Mohammed, who was captured in March 2003, who linked Mr. Padilla to a plot to use natural gas lines to bomb American apartment buildings, the officials said.

In the interviews on Wednesday, American officials from several agencies said they still regarded those accusations as serious, particularly the one [about the bombing of natural gas pipelines] described by Mr. Mohammed.

So the Government now says that it takes the natural gas bombing accusations against Padilla "particularly" seriously when compared to the "dirty bomb" accusation, which is tantamount to saying that it takes the "dirty bomb" accusation less seriously. We're talking about a radiological bomb. There is only one reason for the Government to take that accusation less "seriously" than some other accusation: because the Government has serious doubts about whether it's true.

Given John Ashcroft's unequivocal press conference declaration that Padilla was a "dirty bomber" -- not to mention the indefinite incarceration of Padilla over the last 3 years based on this charge -- it is truly remarkable that the Government has now come to conclude that the whole thing may have just been untrue all along, the sad and ugly by-product of its (non-existent) torture practices.

Last week, Atrios posted about a New York Times article reporting that Al Qaeda captive Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi had provided substantial amounts of information regarding an Al Qadea-Iraq link which the Administration knew was almost certainly fabricated but which it nonetheless publicized prior to the war in order to convince the public of that linkage. Al-Libi fabricated this information because his CIA interrogators, who wanted to find evidence of such linkage, were subjecting him to the same "waterboarding" techniques to which Padilla's accusers were subject, and so al-Libi told them what they wanted to hear in order to make it stop.

As Atrios summarized, with depressing accuracy:

Just to recap. Bush administration needs evidence to support their war. They use torture techniqes designed to extract false confessions to obtain that "evidence," which they then use to sell the war despite knowing full well of the lack of reliability of the information.

The "recap" in the Padilla matter is no less jarring: The U.S. Government arrests a U.S. citizen and throws him into solitary confinement in a military prison, denies him access to lawyers, refuses to even charge him with a crime, and then announces to the world with great fanfare in a news conference that he was trying to smuggle a radiological bomb into the U.S. and detonate it.

The only information which they have to support this accusation and this indefinite imprisonment is obtained via torture techniques which are notorious for inducing false and unreliable information -- information which the Government has now concluded has so little reliability that they could not even charge Padilla with this crime, let alone convict him of it.

It is certainly worth emphasizing again: the reason that the Government is not supposed to -- and is not Constitutionally permitted to -- imprison people without telling them why they're being imprisoned and without giving them a trial to disprove the accusations is precisely because the Founders of this country did not trust the Government to act responsibly or honestly if its imprisonment powers were unchecked by the scrutinizing instrument of a jury trial.

That constitutional prohibition would be a critical protection against government tyranny if we had a Government which actually abided by the prohibition. Because we don't have that, we instead have U.S. citizens being throw into prison without a trial based upon information which the Government knows is likely to be inaccurate because they tortured it out of someone.

It still does not cease to amaze when one writes a post like this -- featuring torture, indefinite imprisonments, wholesale and deliberate denial of due process -- and then focuses on the fact that what is described is actually happening in the United States.

UPDATE: A good round-up of commentary on this story is found in this Christian Science Monitor article.

The Right not to be imprisoned without a trial

Supplementing my post on the Bush Administration's unilateral and indefinite imprisonment of U.S. citizens without a trial, following is additional documentation demonstrating the irreplaceable role the right to be free of such imprisonment plays in the preservation of liberty:

As Justice Cardozo explained in one of the Supreme Court’s most important opinions addressing the contours of constitutional liberty: "Fundamental . . . in the concept of due process, and so in that of liberty, is the thought that condemnation shall be rendered only after trial." Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 327 (1937) (citations omitted).

"Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint."
Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 533 (1953) (Jackson, J.) (conc. op.).

"The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume." --Thomas Jefferson to A. H. Rowan, 1798. ME 10:61
"Freedom of the person under the protection of the habeas corpus I deem [one of the] essential principles of our government." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801. ME 3:322.

Patrick Henry warned us well in advance about Government officials who would seek to claim the right to imprison citizens without a trial:

"Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings--give us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else! ...Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel."

True Tyranny Defined: Bush Admin. v. Jose Padilla

Of the many abuses of power by the Bush Administration, the most disturbing, dangerous, and under-publicized one is the fact that the Administration has arrogated unto itself the power to single out U.S. citizens and unilaterally imprison them indefinitely and without a trial of any kind. The Administration has brought to life and is now defending what is literally the worst totalitarian nightmare: being locked away by your own Government indefinitely -- without being charged with a crime, without a trial, and without any recourse to challenge your imprisonment.

And, the decision yesterday by the Administration to finally bring charges against U.S. citizen Jose Padilla -- who has been kept incarcerated in a military prison for three years solely on George Bush’s order, in solitary confinement and indefinitely -- was done not in order to signal a retreat by the Administration with regard to its claimed right to imprison U.S. citizens without any judicial processes, but instead, to protect and solidify that power by ensuring that its patent unconstitutionality cannot be ruled upon by the U.S. Supreme Court in the pending Padilla case. Almost certainly, the Administration wants to have its claimed power to unilaterally and indefinitely imprison U.S. citizens endorsed by the Supreme Court only once the highly deferential Sam Alito has replaced Sandra Day O’Connor, and the Court is safely comprised of a majority of justices with an almost absolutist reverence for unchecked Executive power.

It is long overdue for there to be a serious uprising against the Administration – by the media and by American citizens – as a result of its reprehensible and dangerous attempt to claim this power for itself. Anger over this pure abuse of governmental power should transcend ideological lines. And, for multiple reasons, now is the perfect time for this issue to be highlighted and used as a catalyst to demonstrate just how extreme and literally tyrannical this Administration has become with regard to individual liberties. (And see UPDATE below)

Critically, the Administration has not just decreed that they have the power to imprison U.S. citizens without due process, but they are actively exercising this power. No matter how many times one says it, it never ceases to amaze and disgust: There are two U.S. citizens (that we know of) -- Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi – who spent years languishing in military prisons, put there by a U.S. Federal Government which has refused to even charge them with a crime. They have been kept in solitary confinement and, worse, imprisoned indefinitely, for months even denied the right to speak with any lawyers.

In short, these citizens have been living a totalitarian nightmare which truly does define "tyranny." That word is often overused as political hyperbole, but if it means anything, it applies to a Government that has the power -- and which uses that power -- to imprison its citizens indefinitely without having to prove that they committed any crime. Having the President have the unchecked power to order the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens without any of these protections simply is the surest sign that the Government is acting tyrannically. If that isn’t definitive proof of tyranny, what is?

There is currently debate taking place -- spawned by the odious Amendment sponsored by Sen. Lindsay Graham -- as to whether non-citizen battlefield combatants who are imprisoned by the U.S. Government at Guantanamo and elsewhere ought to have the right to access to our federal courts in order to bring habeas corpus petitions asking to be freed on the ground that they have been wrongfully imprisoned. And many have noted the profound dangers of denying any individuals, including non-citizen combatants, this critical right to challenge their incarceration in a judicial forum.

But in the Padilla case, and in the case of Hamdi, we are talking about American citizens who have been imprisoned for years now by the U.S. government without any due process of any kind. This should be beyond the pale of debate. It should be unthinkable in the United States for this to occur, and the fact that it is not just occurring, but has the support of the Administration and its slavish enablers, shows just how far we’ve traveled – or, more accurately, how far we’ve fallen – with regard to our individual liberties under this Administration.

We are not talking about new or modern or exotic liberties here. The right not to be imprisoned in the absence of due process is a right that was not just recognized upon the Founding of the country, but was one of the first liberties established by 13th Century England when British subjects rejected the notion that the King had absolute, unlimited powers and forced King John to accept the Magna Carta. That 13th Century liberty is what has been abrogated by this Administration.

As Justice Jackson wrote in his concurring opinion in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 533 (1953):

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.

And while it is the case that some of the liberties protected by the U.S. Constitution were vigorously debated and subject to all sorts of compromises among the Founders, the right not to be imprisoned by the Federal Government without due process wasn’t one of those controversies.

It was indisputably clear to the Founders – and, really, is clear to anyone – that liberty cannot exist if the Government is empowered to imprison its citizens without charging them with a crime, without allowing them the opportunity to defend themselves against the crime, and without the Government having to prove that they committed a crime.

"I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." --Thomas
Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789. ME 7:408, Papers 15:269.

Similar, additional documentation demonstrating how basic and paramount this right is to any conception of meaningful liberty is set forth here.

Disputes over constitutional liberties are often characterized by esoteric and abstract arguments which only constitutional lawyers can really decipher. That is not the case for the right not to be imprisoned by George Bush without a trial. The rights provided by the Founders which protect us against that could not be clearer and require no real debate.

The Fifth Amendment provides:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury . . . nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

And the Sixth Amendment guarantees:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall . . . be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation. . .

It is critical to realize, and to make clear, that the Administration has not relented in pressing its power to unilaterally imprison citizens without any recourse. The contrary is true: they are continuously taking steps to preserve for themselves this unilateral imprisonment power.

The decision to finally bring charges against Jose Padilla and to allow him his day in court does not, at all, signal a reversal by the Bush Administration with respect to its truly deranged view that the President can imprison citizens indefinitely and without due process. To the contrary, the Government charged Padilla with a crime only in order to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from deciding whether the U.S. Constitution prohibits the President from whimsically and unilaterally ordering the indefinite imprisonment of U.S. citizens (just as the Government finally released Hamdi to Saudi Arabia after stripping him of his citizenship but charging him with no crime).

The Government's cynical manuver is as transparent as it is corrupt:

The decision to remove Mr. Padilla from military custody and charge him in the civilian system averts what had threatened to be a constitutional showdown over the president's authority to detain him and other American citizens as enemy combatants without formal charges. The administration had faced a deadline next Monday to file its legal arguments with the Supreme Court in the Padilla case, which the Justice Department said it now considers "moot."

In addition to the obvious danger which these abuses, on their face, entail, there are two compelling reasons why now is such a uniquely opportune time for this issue to be aired and to trigger an all-out attack on the Administration's attempt to wield this incomparably dangerous power:

(1) Americans’ trust in Bush has plummeted.

Previously, the fact that the Administration was imprisoning U.S. citizens without a trial did not move a significant portion of Americans to anger or outrage. That was likely because a majority were willing to blindly trust a President during what they perceived to be a time of war, where they became convinced by a toxic mix of unrelenting propaganda and potent fear-mongering that Bush was an honest, forthright leader protecting the country against an unparalleled evil. As a result, it is hardly surprising that Americans were largely indifferent to his use of the ultimate tyrannical power -- imprisoning citizens indefinitely without a trial -- because they trusted that he would use it only against an enemy that was demonized like no other.

But that landscape has radically shifted. Invoking 9/11 in order to justify unchecked Presidential power is a well that the Bush Administration has gone to far too often, and it is now almost entirely dry. More importantly, the public simply no longer trusts Bush as a person or as a President, and with regard to this issue, at least, that will make all the difference in the world.

In light of the mistrust with which Americans now regard Bush and his Administration, it is inconceivable that they would be comfortable with him having the authoritarian power to imprison U.S. citizens indefinitely and merely on his say-so. As the public’s distrust of Bush has increased massively, so, too, has the ability to use the Administration’s severe abuses of imprisonment power to make the public see even more clearly the true dangers posed by this Administration.

(2) This should be a central issue in the Alito confirmation hearings.

Because of the central role which abortion and privacy rights play in the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominees, the willingness of these nominees to defer to the Executive Branch is often overlooked. Especially with the Alito nomination, it should not be. In light of the Administration’s ongoing attempts to preserve and use the power of unilateral imprisonment, that issue should play a central role in the battle over this nomination. Bush is attempting to pack the Court with a majority of Justices who will allow the Executive branch truly unchecked power, and this issue must be emphasized in the Alito hearings.

At least as much as their regressive views on social issues, Bush’s Supreme Court (and lower court) nominees are characterized by their slavish, uncritical deference to assertions of power by the Executive Branch, especially in times of ostensible "war." Indeed, John Roberts was selected by the White House to be the Supreme Court nominee while he was in the middle of hearing arguments in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which Roberts decided in favor of the Administration’s position and allowed the use of "military tribunals" at Guantanamo.

In opposing Roberts' nomination, the People for the American Way emphasized Roberts’ deference to executive power at least as much as his restrictive view of privacy rights:

In his limited time as a federal appeals court judge, Roberts has shown enormous deference to the executive branch, with a broad and expansive view of presidential power that threatens the system of checks and balances.

When it comes to worshiping at the altar of unchecked executive power, Sam Alito is even more zealous than Roberts. Even conservative Bush ally and Roberts admirer Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute has warned that Alito is far more deferential to Executive power than even Roberts is. As Steve Clemons of The Washington Note put it: Ornstein’s Op-Ed shows that Alito "is a spear-carrier for expansive Executive Branch authority and looks at both Congress and the Judiciary as junior players in government."

Whereas Roberts replaced Executive Branch defender William Rehnquist, Alito is nominated to replace the much more Executive-scrutinizing Sandra Day O’Connor, which will alter the balance of the Court fundamentally, and certainly with regard to issues of Executive branch power.

It is therefore not hyperbole to warn that Alito’s ascension to the Court could very well mean the disappearance of the last chance for some limitation to be placed on the dangerous powers which the Bush Administration is claiming for itself. It is difficult to imagine anything more important at stake in Alito’s hearings.

If the Bush Administration has the power to lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely without a trial, what power does it not have? And if Americans are willing to allow the Administration to claim this power and use it against U.S. citizens, what would they be unwilling to have the Government do?

Now that most Americans have weaned themselves off of the 9/11 drug of putting blind faith in George Bush, it seems clear that most would be truly alarmed by these extreme abuses. Americans know instinctively that one of the very few things that has truly distinguished their country from the places of tyranny and authoritarianism around the world is that things like this don’t happen in America. American citizens don’t get thrown into a dark hole to wither there indefinitely on a President’s whim. And the fact that this is now actually happening, and – unless stopped now – will continue and intensify, should be sufficient to jar all but the most partisan hacks into being appropriately alarmed.

The situation that has arisen is, amazingly but unsurprisingly, exactly as Thomas Jefferson foresaw in "Notes on the State of Virginia", Query 17, p. 161, 1784:

"Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless... the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is [now] while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."

(UPDATE: Just when it seemed that the Government's behavior in the Padilla matter could not be any more disturbing, we now learn that the only information which the Government had to support its "dirty bomb" accusations against Padilla was obtained by torture techniques such as "waterboarding," and therefore was highly suspect all along, which is why the Government still has not indicted him for that crime).

Multilingual Subversion at the State Department

Diplaying the tenacious investigative reporting skills for which he has become so admired, John HindRocket at Powerline today uncovers some truly disturbing subversive influences in our nation's State Department.

John references a New York Sun editorial which complains that the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs is Nicholas Burns. The Sun is deeply upset about this appointment because Burns is a "Kerry-ite." Burns is guilty of this because Richard Holbrooke apparently once said that he, Holbrooke, would become Secretary of State if John Kerry became President and he hoped to appoint Burns to the position he now occupies.

John, while admitting that he knows nothing about Burns and therefore can't say if he's truly a "Kerry-ite," nonetheless complains as follows:

Is it really fair to call Burns a Kerry-ite? I've never met the man and know nothing about him, but this (quoting the Sun) is depressing:

"Mr. Burns has impeccable credentials for a Kerry administration official. He studied in France, earning the Certificat Pratique de Langue Francaise from the Sorbonne, and speaks French, Arabic, and Greek. He did a stint as spokesman for President Clinton's first-term secretary of state, Warren Christopher, where his service included criticizing Mayor Giuliani for kicking Yasser Arafat out of a concert at Lincoln Center, saying that Mr. Arafat deserved to be treated with 'respect, dignity, and hospitality.'"

The bit about Arafat and Warren Christopher is one thing, but the Sun and the Rocket both evidently think that it is grounds for suspicion and depression for a diplomat to have studied in another country and to speak other languages.

This makes sense, and really is quite disturbing, because anyone who has studied at the Sorbonne and who has learned other languages, especially Arabic, has no business working in America's foreign policy apparatus, especially not in its diplomatic corps. What's next? Trained scientists working at the FDA? Degreed people working at the Department of Education? Generals employed at the Pentagon?

Do you think the MSM is going to report on John's disturbing discovery of multilingual subversion lurking in the State Department? Yeah, right.

Bob Woodward, Esq. - Counsel for the Administration

The transformation of our most prominent journalists from reporters into Administration lawyers and spokespersons took a giant leap forward again last night with Bob Woodward’s appearance on Larry King. One quick and easy way to know if someone is really disseminating falsehoods is if they can’t even answer Larry King’s questions without falling into all sorts of internal inconsistencies and incoherent claims.

It is most ironic to listen to Woodward insist that he has not become too cozy with the Bush Administration as a result of the unique and lucrative access they give to him, while he simultaneously sounds exactly like an Administration defense lawyer shamelessly and vigorously defending both himself and Administration officials from every conceivable charge of wrongdoing concerning the Plame scandal. If Scott McClellan or Lewis Libby's lawyers had answered the same questions from King, it's hard to see a single answer which would have been different.

Ever since Woodward’s involvement in the scandal was revealed, Atrios has identified multiple Woodward claims which make absolutely no sense – either because they flatly contradict other Woodward statements or because his actions negate the truth of those statements. To that list, I add these observations:

(1) Woodward is selectively revealing the substance of his conversations with his source even though he claims that he is still bound by confidentiality.

Woodward’s self-defense for why he concealed over the last two years not just the identity of his source, but also the content of the conversation he had with the source regarding Plame's employment, is that his agreement with that source precluded him from disclosing anything at all about the conversation. And he claims that he has been under the same obligation all along -- and that he still is -- and therefore can't publicly reveal what was told to him.

But when it suits him -- and when he wants to show that the Bush Administration did absolutely nothing wrong by disclosing Plame’s employment -- he freely discloses carefully selected parts of the conversation he had with this source:

KING: OK. Your source, did the source indicate whether Mrs. Plame was an undercover agent or a desk analyst?

WOODWARD: Good question. And specifically said that -- the source did -- that she was a WMD, weapons of mass destruction, analyst. Now, I've been covering the CIA for over three decades, and analysts, except -- in fact, I don't even know of a case. Maybe there are cases. But they're not undercover. They are people who take other information and analyze it.

And so -- and if you were there at this moment in mid-June when this was said, there was no suggestion that it was sensitive, that it was secret.

KING: How did it even come up?

WOODWARD: Came up because I asked about Joe Wilson, because a few days before, my colleague at the "Washington Post," Walter Pincus, had a front page, saying there was an unnamed envoy -- there was no name given -- who had gone to Niger the year before to investigate for the CIA if there was some Niger-Iraq uranium deal or yellow cake deal.I learned that that ambassador's name was Joe Wilson, which was, you know, Wilson eventually surfaced...

KING: I see.

WOODWARD: ... I guess a few weeks later. So I said to this source, long substantive interview about the road to war. You know, at the end of an interview like this, after you do an interview on television, you might just shoot the breeze for a little while. And so, I asked about Wilson, and he said this.

KING: I see.

Woodward claims that his source still won’t allow him to disclose anything publicly about their conversation. But, here, Woodward is disclosing quite extensive information about the substance of his conversations with his source, which should mean -- since his source has not agreed to modify their confidentiality agreement in any way with regard to what Woodward can tell the public -- that he could have, and should have, told us this information all along. If he can tell us this now, why couldn't he have told us this for the last two years?

Woodward is plainly doing what his heroes in the Administration did with pre-war intelligence -- he is selectively releasing the information which bolsters his (and the Administration's) case, while invoking oh-so-lofty confidentiality principles in order to conceal the information which hurts his (and the Administration's) case. That's what lawyers, or PR flacks, are supposed to do – not reporters.

(2) Woodward can’t keep his Administration-protecting stories straight.

Last night, Woodward refused to say if he even interviewed Cheney at all when writing Plan of Attack, because whether he even spoke with Cheney or not is a big state secret which Woodward still can’t reveal:

KING: Did you meet with Cheney?

WOODWARD: Not in this period.

KING: Did you meet with him for the other book, though? It wasn't just rigid questions, or was it?

WOODWARD: The people who are on record for the second book, for "Plan of Attack," are the president and Rumsfeld, the secretary of Defense. All the other interviews are on background. So again, I'm not going to go parading a list of people I talked to.

But Woodward previously said that he did interview Cheney for that book, and the White House has said so, too:

GWEN IFILL: Let's talk about the relationships of all these people who are decision-makers who are on the cover of this book. Rate them for us in terms of influence, starting with the president and working your way down.

BOB WOODWARD: Well, one of the things that is clear to me from the reporting and discussions with the president, where I was able to go in for hours and ask him literally hundreds of questions -- kind of unprecedented, something his father would never let a reporter do, something, certainly, Bill Clinton would never let....

GWEN IFILL: And something Vice President Dick Cheney did not agree to.

BOB WOODWARD: Something Vice President Cheney was worried about, but now the White House has publicly said that I did interview Vice President Cheney for this.

Woodward -- like a good lawyer should be -- is now in a mode of protecting the White House so zealously that he just instinctively invokes confidentiality obligations in order to avoid having to tell us even innocuous information about the Administration, including things that both he and the White House have disclosed previously.

(3) Woodward’s over-arching confidentiality agreement with the Administration makes him a Government spokesman or lawyer, not a journalist.

The inconsistency at the crux of Woodward’s story is so glaring and fundamental that it defies belief that he can deliver it with a straight face. He cannot simultaneously claim that he had a rigid agreement with his source to maintain the absolute confidentiality of what he was told concerning Plame’s identity, but then simultaneously claim that the source gave him this information in such a breezy, casual, off-handed way that Woodward never even gave it a second thought and, to this day, can’t imagine that information which was so obviously unimportant could have been disseminated as part of some coordinated White House conspiracy.

Despite the obvious inconsistency, this is exactly what Woodward is claiming:

KING: Last week, the "Post" ombudsman, Deborah Howell, said, "Last week we found out that he (Woodward) kept the kind of information from Downie, the editor, that is a deeply serious sin not to disclose to a boss, that kind that can get a good reporter in the doghouse for a long time."

Why didn't you tell him?

WOODWARD: Because I was focused on getting the book done. You know, the significance of this is yet to be determined. And what's the good news in all of this is, when it all comes out -- and hopefully it will come out -- people will see how casual and off-hand this was. Remember the investigation and the allegations that people have printed about this story is that there's some vast conspiracy to slime Joe Wilson and his wife, really attack him in an ugly way that is outside of the boundaries of political hardball.

The evidence I had first-hand, a small piece of the puzzle I acknowledge, is that that was not the case. So I'm trying to find out and focus on immense questions about, are we going to go to war in Iraq? How are we going to do it? What is the nature of Powell's position? What did Cheney do? What was the CIA's role? How good was
the intelligence on all of this?

As others have pointed out, if, on the one hand, Woodward learned of Plame’s CIA employment in the casual, off-handed way that he claims, the source would not have, on the other hand, simultaneously insisted on an absolute, "deep background" confidentiality agreement with regard to that off-handed, unimportant information . . . unless . . .

Woodward, as appears to be the case, believes that he has a permanent, over-arching and on-going agreement of confidentiality with the Administration, whereby the unstated, universal presumption is that everything they tell him -- at all times, with regard to every topic, including even unimportant "gossip" -- will be kept secret from the public by Woodward, and he will not be permitted to disclose it, unless the Administration specifically and expressly permits him to disclose certain bits of information which the Administration wants Woodward to release, in which case Woodward then publishes it.

But if that is Woodward’s relationship with the Administration -- namely, that he is privy to all of their secrets but only publishes what they tell him to publish -- isn’t that even a worse reflection on Woodward’s relationship with the Administration than almost anything else? That arrangement describes precisely the relationship between a client and a lawyer, or a political official and a spokesman, but not a Government and a journalist. Or at least it never used to before Bob Woodward realized that he could make huge sums of money and generate lots of attention for himself by entering into exactly such a relationship.

Bob Woodward's own description of his relationship with the Bush Administration -- that they shared with him classified information, he agreed to keep everything a secret, and he would report whatever information they told him to report and only that information -- demonstrates as compellingly as can be imagined that Woodward and The Washington Post have been willingly serving as an in-house media and propaganda organ for the Administration. To anyone following our media's behavior over the last several years, that isn't a surprise, but it is nonetheless notable to see it so starkly and undeniably revealed.

Lower and lower . . . Ralph Peters speaks in the NY Post

Ralph Peters has a vile little column in the New York Post today which makes Jean Schmitt's screeching House speech seem like elegant diplomacy. The gist of Peters' column is that those who think we should look for ways to end our military occupation in Iraq want America to lose, want the terrorists to win, and want our soldiers to die (because the soliders aren't Ivy League graduates and would vote Republican). No, really - those are his points, and he (commendably) makes them expressly, instead of with the standard innuendo.

Unsurprisingly, Peters' filth is all the rage today in the predictable war-crazed circles, where no accusation against those who speak ill of the war is too reprehensible or scurrilous to be celebrated. Here are just a few of the more reprehensible excerpts:

Increasingly, quitting looks like the new American Way of War. No matter how great your team, you can't win the game if you walk off the field at half-time. That's precisely what the Democratic Party wants America to do in Iraq.

Planning to leave a country after we've occupied it for 2 1/2 years is no different than a football team that walks off the field at half-time. Both are quitters. How many more years do we have to stay for Peters to think that we've completed the fourth quarter?

Forget the fact that we've made remarkable progress under daunting conditions:

He's right that we've made remarkable progress -- towards the goals of bringing chaos and anarchy to Iraq, provoking dangerous regional instability and sectarian strife, and providing Al Qaeda with a brand new Afghanistan where they can operate with impunity. Isn't that enough progress for one war?

The Dems are looking to throw the game just to embarrass the Bush administration.

Does it ever occur to people who argue this way that it's possible for other people to think, reason and analyze in good faith and still reach a different conclusion? Does Peters really believe that things are going so swimmingly in Iraq that no person in good faith can think that our military presence there is doing more harm than good - both to Iraq and, more importantly, to U.S. national security?

For instance, something like this: (via Firedoglake)

As friends describe it, Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania had been searching his soul for months, seeking guidance on what to do in Congress about Iraq. "I think he was going through what we Catholics call a 'long night of the soul'," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. In 1974, Democrat Murtha had become the first Vietnam veteran elected to the House. A decorated Marine from the mountainous "Deer Hunter" country east of Pittsburgh, he had always been a down-the-line hawk and a favorite of the Pentagon generals....Murtha was the one-man tipping point.

Initially a strong supporter of the conflict, he had voted for it and the money to pay for it. But on his last trip to Iraq, he had become convinced not only that the war was unwinnable, but that the continued American military presence was making matters far worse. "We're the target, we're part of the problem," he told NEWSWEEK. Back in Washington, he resumed his weekly pilgrimage to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, visiting severely wounded casualties in rehab and agonizing over what he saw there. "I think those visits affected him deeply," said DeLauro. In a long chat with an Irish colleague, he talked about his congressional hero and mentor, another blue-collar Irishman, Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill. No liberal on defense, in 1967 O'Neill had stunned President Lyndon B. Johnson by telling him that the Vietnam War had become a lost cause. Now, Murtha mused, it was his turn to confront a president with harsh truths.

Now back to the Peters smear:

Forget about our dead soldiers, whose sacrifice is nothing but a political club for Democrats to wave in front of the media.

Personally, I think it's stupid and disgusting for either side to claim that the other side doesn't value the lives of our troops. But if one side really shouldn't be claiming this, isn't it the side that sent the troops to their deaths?

While we're at it, let's just print up recruiting posters for the terrorists, informing the youth of the Middle East that Americans are cowards who can be attacked with impunity.

A person could really choke to death on the odorous, suffocating intellectual dishonesty in this argument. So pulling troops out of Iraq would help Al Qaeda's recruiting efforts, would it? And what has violently invading and then occupying the oldest and one of the most symbolically important Muslim countries in the Middle East for 2 1/2 years done to Al Qaeda's recruiting efforts?

Whatever you do, don't talk about any possible consequences. Focus on the moment — and the next round of U.S. elections. Just make political points. After all, those dead American soldiers and Marines don't matter — they didn't go to Ivy League schools. (Besides, most would've voted Republican had they lived.)

What's there to add to that, except to note the pitiful irony of someone who favored sending troops to their death accusing those who were against doing that of not sufficiently valuing the lives of the troops. Say what you will about opponents of the war, but the undeniable reality is that if they had their way, 2,100 troops who are now dead and another 10,000 or so seriously wounded for life would, instead, be alive and healthy.

There are sometimes very compelling reasons to wage war, and the fact that someone favors a war that results in the death of soliders is by no means evidence that the person does not value the lives of those soldiers. But that person really ought to refrain from accusing others -- especially those who opposed such wars -- of not caring about the lives of soliders.

What do the Democrats fear? An American success in Iraq. They need us to fail, and they're going to make us fail, no matter the cost. They need to declare defeat before the 2006 mid-term elections and ensure a real debacle before 2008 — a bloody mess they'll blame on Bush, even though they made it themselves.

Translation: The reason that things aren't going as well as we promised is because of the Democrats (who have no power over any branch of government). Things are a disaster with the war we desperately wanted -- but not because of anything we did, but because of the Democrats.

Many have predicted that war proponents would attempt this trick once they were finally forced to admit that their scheme to create Iraq in their own image failed. I guess this is what we now see being trotted out by the self-proclaimed Beacons of Personal Responsibility.

If we run away from our enemies overseas, our enemies will make their way to us. Quit Iraq, and far more than 2,000 Americans are going to die.

Yes, you see - Al Qaeda would be over in the U.S. blowing things up, but they are all busy right now in Iraq. But if we leave Iraq, their schedules will be freed up and they'll start looking for other things to do and then they'll come to the U.S. and kill Americans.

Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer.

So is Wes Clark. And Jack Murtha is a retired Marine. And John Kerry is a decorated veteran. But that apparently doesn't immunize them from being accused of wanting to surrender to terrorists in order to ensure that the U.S. is defeated, because they don't care about the lives of lowly soldiers and would love to see the U.S. lose to Al Qaeda if it means they can pick up a few House seats.

The new Pro-War Justification is Unveiled

We have seen in the past couple of weeks a brand new excuse unveiled for why we must prolong our occupation of Iraq. The most zealous of the pro-Iraq-war fanatics in this country have always had as their express goal in invading Iraq the establishment of a compliant, pro-U.S. (and pro-Israel) Iraqi government which would serve as the anchor for American domination of the Middle East. They have waited a long time to get their hands on Iraq, and no matter how disastrous our occupation becomes, they have no intention of allowing the U.S. to leave Iraq until that dream is fulfilled.

But with virtually all of their pre-war justifications for the invasion now wholly discredited -- there were no WMDs, we are not more popular or less hated among Middle Eastern Muslims, democracy has not spread like wildfire throughout the region, the region is not more stable -- they are in desperate search for some good reason to continue to pursue and even intensify what has been a relentlessly self-destructive enterprise.

The new rationale they have now embraced for insisting that the U.S. cannot leave Iraq for a long, long time is as shameless as it is ironic, and those who want to see an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq any time soon must highlight and attack it.

The pro-war zealots’ new justification for prolonging our occupation of Iraq indefinitely goes like this:

Back in 2002, we mocked and ridiculed anti-war critics who warned that our invasion of Iraq would spawn chaos and anarchy in that country, would allow Al Qaeda to operate freely, would trigger dangerous regional instability among Iraq’s neighbors, and would unleash vicious sectarian tensions and lead to endless, violent civil wars.

As it turns out, the war critics were right about this and we were wrong. Even though we were snidely dismissive of these concerns before the war, this is exactly what our invasion has spawned. Just as they predicted – and just as we vehemently denied would occur – Iraq is a mess, a dangerous, unpredictable disaster.

For these reasons, we cannot leave Iraq any time soon and, instead, have to re- double our occupation and resign ourselves to being in Iraq for a long, long time.

Although they ought to be deeply embarrassed by this rationale – as it literally amounts to a bizarre declaration that they were entirely wrong about what would happen in Iraq if we invaded, and therefore we must keep following their path and re-commit ourselves to a prolonged and intensified occupation – they are unabashedly trumpeting exactly this reasoning.

Here is the leading pro-war pundit Bill Kristol, along with Robert Kagan, in The Weekly Standard yesterday, announcing their demand that the U.S. remain in Iraq for a long time:

Victory is in fact possible, though it will require a longer war than anyone would like but not so long a war as to be intolerable. What would be intolerable would be to lose to the terrorists in Iraq.

It's quite clear that Bill Kristol has no intention of leaving Iraq any time soon. And why must we resign ourselves to having our troops remain in Iraq into the foreseeable future? Here is Kristol and Kagan telling us why in the same article, as they sternly lecture Rep. Jack Murtha about geopolitical and military realities in Iraq:

[Murtha] knows perfectly well that the Iraqi people are not yet capable of defending themselves against the monsters in their midst and that, therefore, a U.S. withdrawal would likely lead to carnage on a scale that would dwarf what is now occurring in Iraq.

But that would be just the beginning. If U.S. troops were withdrawn and the Iraqi people were not able to defeat the terrorists and Saddam loyalists, what would happen? What if Zarqawi and his al Qaeda allies were able to make common cause with the Baathists to turn Iraq into a terrorist state or to provide a haven for terrorists, complete with an oil supply to finance their global activities? And what of Iraq's neighbors, which include Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia? They would likely decide that they could not afford to let a vacuum develop in Iraq or allow their adversaries to establish a base there. All these nations would contemplate militaryintervention in Iraq, directly or indirectly through the arming of allies.

The possibility of a regional conflict erupting among any or all of these powers could not be excluded. Is this is a tolerable outcome for the United States?

In other words, the pro-war Right, amazingly, is now telling us: "what is happening in Iraq now is exactly what anti-war critics said would occur if we invaded and what we vehemently insisted would never happen, and as a result, you have to keep following our pro-war path because, given the utterly heinous mess we made in Iraq, we cannot possibly leave now."

This is exactly what they insisted would not happen when they were selling us this war. Listen to Vice President Cheney speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August, 2002, as he mocks the pre-war concerns of anti-war critics by insisting that the invasion would not lead to the chaos and violent anarchy which now, in fact, plagues every corner of that country:

Another argument holds that opposing Saddam Hussein would cause even greater troubles in that part of the world, and interfere with the larger war against terror. I believe the opposite is true. Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. When the gravest of threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab "street," the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are "sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans." Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of Jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart.

This is the same speech where Vice President Cheney told us:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors -- confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.

Could the irony be more intense, or more tragic? These pro-war True Believers are now pointing to the very disasters in Iraq which they promised would never occur (and which they caused) as the principal reason we must continue to follow their war-crazed schemes and remain in Iraq indefinitely.

But it is now clear to all but the most wild-eyed fanatics that the same people peddling this new rationale have been wrong about everything thus far -- literally -– when it comes to Iraq. They have not only been radically wrong in their snide, self-assured predictions as to what would happen in Iraq if we invaded, but far worse, they are the ones whose policies have caused the unparalleled and dangerous chaos that now reigns in that country. They are the last people whose predictions and prescriptions ought to be listened to.

The situation in Iraq which they created is so undeniably disastrous that scores of the most prominent and vocal pre-war advocates of the invasion have been forced to confess that their assumptions about the war and its likely results were mistaken. Everyone can see that Iraq is a complete disaster, that we have transformed a previously stable (albeit internally oppressive) country into a cesspool of anarchy, violence, sectarian strife bordering on civil war, and worst of all, a new Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda thrives, operates freely and recruits easily. In short, Iraq has become exactly what pre-war opponents of the war -- who were mocked and laughed at by the media and politicians alike -- warned that it would be if we invaded.

Having the people who led us down this self-destructive path now insist that we must keep following them, and in doing so, watching them point to the mess they have created as the reasons why we should, is confounding -- and shameless -- beyond belief. But despite the facial absurdity of these claims, this is a quite formidable political force which will be a serious impediment to any efforts to withdraw from Iraq any time soon, even if the Bush Administration decides it wants to do so in order cynically to help Republican Congressional candidates be free of this unpopular war in time for the 2006 mid-term elections.

The new rationale the pro-war Right has concocted and which it is now assertively hawking for why we must remain in Iraq indefinitely can and should be used against them. Having been forced by undeniable reality to acknowledge the unparalleled dangers which their policies have created in Iraq, they cannot be permitted to use those dangers to justify remaining on the path which has proven so disastrous for every aspect of our national security.

From the moment we invaded Iraq until the present, the presence of American troops has caused increased violence, regional instability, and terrorist threats -- exactly the opposite of what these pro-war advocates insisted would occur. There is absolutely no reason to believe that this causal relationship between our occupation, on the one hand, and increased violence and instability, on the other, is going to be reversed any time soon. And there is even less reason for listening to the people who are trying to make us believe that it will.

Bush's Problem of Premature Withdraw - from Iraq

President Bush's response to growing unrest with the ongoing war in Iraq has been to announce that America will "stand down as Iraqi security forces stand up." This response has led to speculation that his "exit strategey" is an election year withdraw: anything that will ensure American troops will be largely out of Iraq, or concretely on their way out, in time to prevent the complete demolition of GOP Congressional candidates in November, 2006 as a result of this increasingly unpopular war. And this "pre-election withdraw" theory seems to have been bolstered by the fact that the Pentagon has now prepared a plan detailing the mechanics of precisely such a pullout.

Although most of Bush's anti-war critics will be pleased the moment Bush decides that he wants to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, he is likely to run into all sorts of difficulties from the hard-core, pro-war supporters on whom he depends for so much. David Broder has a fawning profile today in The Washington Post of John McCain, where Broder contends that a successful outcome in Iraq is more important to the vigorously pro-war McCain's political future than it is to anyone else's. And as Broder's column admiringly notes, McCain has been extremely vocal in the past whenever he sensed that the Administration was insufficiently committed to winning the war.

As Bush's popularity plummets and he gets closer to full-on "lame duck" status, these pro-war stalwarts will aggressively ramp up their opposition to any efforts by Bush to pull away from Iraq in order to salvage the 2006 elections. Undoubtedly, there will be loud and insistent attacks on Bush from his right flank -- comprised of the likes of McCain, Bill Kristol, and some of the hard-core "pro-Israel" evangelical fanatics -- who will be ranting and screeching in protest if he attempts what they deem to be premature and/or politically motivated withdraw from Iraq.

Witness the withering rhetorical assault which Kristol launched on Republicans last week -- in an article concisely entitled "Pathetic" -- all because they dared to request periodic updates from the Administration in the hopes of getting closer to the goal of withdrawing American troops. That tongue-lashing is a miniscule fraction of what which will be unleashed on Bush from the pro-war Right if he tries to withdraw from Iraq before they think it's time to do so.

Here is Kristol, along with Robert Kagan, in the Weekly Standard today announcing their expectation that we will be in Iraq for a long time:

Victory is in fact possible, though it will require a longer war than anyone would like, but not so long a war as to be intolerable. What would be intolerable would be to lose to the terrorists in Iraq.

It doesn't sound like Bill Kristol is planning on being out of Iraq any time soon, and certainly not before the 2006 elections, now less than a year away.

The forces comprising this group care far more about their dream of dominating the Middle East and creating a compliant, pro-U.S. (and pro-Israel) Iraq than they care about GOP Congressional candidates in some run-of-the-mill midterm election. They have waited a long time to get their hands on Iraq and they are not going to give it up until they are convinced that the "job is really done."

And while the Bush Administration will be eager to be out of Iraq no matter what in order to preserve Republican domination of the Congress, this Iraq-uber-alle group will not tolerate any departure from Iraq before their dream is fulfilled.

Staying in Iraq and throwing the GOP candidates in 2006 to an angry electorate which will hate the war even more than they do now is not a viable option for Bush. But trying to "cut and run," as it were, even while pretending to leave only because the U.S. has won, is going to provoke a vicious war of its own with the only friends which Bush has left.

Add this to the ever-growing list of reasons why it is not fun to be George W. Bush right about now.

Why isn't Bush being forced to disclose the identity of Woodward's leaker?

There are now unconfirmed reports that the Bush Administration official who leaked Valerie Plame’s CIA employment to Bob Woodward is National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. But Hadley this week issued a coy non-denial denial, and thus far only anonymous sources, which have been wrong in the past with regard to this scandal, have claimed that it is Hadley. For that reason, this should still be viewed as an unconfirmed (although likely) possibility.

But why do we have to endure endless speculation and be forced to try to piece together pieces of this puzzle? It is not hard to find out if Stephen Hadley was the one who leaked Valerie Plame’s CIA employment to Bob Woodward. In fact, it would be very easy to find out. President Bush can simply call Hadley into his office and ask him, and then he can tell us whether Hadley is the leaker.

Why is President Bush being allowed to get away with this absurd game of pretending that he wants to get to the bottom of this leak while simultaneously avoiding taking the steps which would easily and quickly uncover this information? While the public does not yet know for certain who Woodward’s leaker is, publicly disclosed information has enabled the list of potential leakers to be narrowed down to a handful of officials. Shouldn’t Bush simply speak to each one of them, beginning with Hadley, and demand to know if they leaked this information to Woodward?

It is worth remembering that Bush long ago vowed that he wanted to find out who the leaker was, and he also vowed he would fire anyone involved in the dissemination of classified information (which unquestionably includes Plame's employment with the CIA). These statements ought to compel him to take affirmative steps to find out who it is in his Administration who leaked this information. And he ought to be compelled to follow through on his promise to fire them.

Bush long ago claimed he wanted to know the identity of the leaker(s) because leaking classified information is, in his view, "a bad thing."

"If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. "If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.

"I welcome the investigation. I am absolutely confident the Justice Department will do a good job.

"I want to know the truth," the president continued. "Leaks of classified information are bad things." He added that he did not know of "anybody in my administration who leaked classified information."

Bush also claims to have directed everyone in his Administration involved in the leak to cooperate with the investigation and come forward and admit their involvement:

Bush said he has told his administration to cooperate fully with the investigation and asked anyone with knowledge of the case to come forward.

And, Bush vowed to fire anyone responsible for the leak. Here’s his White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, announcing this vow on September 29, 2003:

McCLELLAN: The president has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the leaking of Plame's identity], they would no longer be in this administration. [...]

Q: You continue to talk about the severity of this and if anyone has any information they should go forward to the Justice Department. But can you tell us, since it's so severe, would someone or a group of persons, lose their job in the White House?

McCLELLAN: At a minimum.

Q: At a minimum?

McCLELLAN: At a minimum.

Regardless of whether he committed a crime when doing so, we already know – because he testified to it – that Karl Rove disclosed Valerie Plame’s CIA employment to Time’s Matt Cooper. Doesn’t Bush’s vow to fire anyone involved in the leaking compel that he fire Rove?

And it would have been extremely easy over the last 2 years for Bush to have found out that Lewis Libby also leaked this information. He simply could have asked him. Did Bush ever ask Libby about this? Did Bush know from any other sources that Libby was a leaker in the Plame matter? If he did know this, why was Libby permitted to stay employed for two years at the White House in the face of Bush’s vows to fire anyone involved in these leaks?

And even more so, don’t Bush’s claims that he is eager to find out who did the leaking compel him to call Stephen Hadley into his office and simply ask him, and then tell Americans whether or not Hadley did this?

These questions are particularly compelling in light of the fact that whoever is Woodward’s original source concealed this information from the Special Prosecutor for two years while the investigation proceeded – in obvious defiance of Bush’s supposed order to everyone in his Administration to come forward and share with the Prosecutor what they know. Wouldn’t Bush especially want to know the identity of the officials who defied his orders to cooperate with the Special Prosecutor and to come forward with any information they have?

The media has been inexcusably lax in not pressing the Administration for these answers. Regardless of one’s view of the relative importance of these leaks, Bush has publicly claimed on multiple occasions to take the investigation seriously and to be committed to finding out who is responsible for the leaking.

But he has not followed through on those commitments because he has been permitted to ignore them. The Administration has no valid excuse for refusing to find out -- and to tell us -- whether Stephen Hadley is Woodward’s leaker, and then to find out on its own -- and to disclose -- whatever else it can about how and why this leak occurred.

Sen. Graham shows that the American people, not Sen. Rockefeller, were misled about the Iraqi threat

The principal spokesman in the media for previously pro-war Senate Democrats who now want to retract their vote and blame the Administration for it has been Sen. Jay Rockefeller, now the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. As I argued last week, Senate Democrats who voted for the war are in the worst position to voice the complaint that the Bush Administration misled the nation into war by virtue of its pre-war manipulation of intelligence, because those Senators – especially Senators such as Rockefeller who were members of the Intelligence Committee – had access before they voted to most, if not all, of the intelligence which they are now pointing to as evidence to show that there was substantial doubt about the Administration’s alarmist claims about Iraq.

While the American people were not told about the intelligence which strongly, and in some cases indisputably, contradicted the pre-war Administration claims about the various Iraqi threats, Senate Democrats like Sen. Rockefeller were aware of it, and thus have no basis for blaming the Administration for their pro-war vote. The reality is that these now-recanting Senate Democrats voted for the war despite these doubts about WMD intelligence because -- in the intense climate of war and in the face of a highly popular President in 2002 -- they were simply afraid not to support Bush’s war.

Former Sen. Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, in his excellent Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post, provides the proof that both of these notions are true -- namely, that Sen. Rockefeller has no grounds for complaining that he was misled, but the American people have ample grounds for this complaint.

Entitled "What I Knew Before the Invasion," Graham explains that while he began with the premise that the Administration’s claims about the Iraqi threat should be trusted, his exposure to pre-war intelligence cast serious doubt on those claims, and these doubts caused him to ultimately vote against the war:

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document [the National Intelligence Estimate produced by the CIA]. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.

From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

This is the case that needs to be made against the Administration, but this case cannot be made by Sen. Rockefeller or any other Senate Democrat with pre-war access to this intelligence. Graham's narrative shows that Senate Democrats who received the NIE were in a position to know that the Administration’s claims were exaggerated or false, but this information was kept from the American people as the result of the Administration's highly selective, and misleading, exploitation of its classification powers, whereby Bush officials publicly disclosed -- and hyped -- the intelligence supporting its alarmist claims, but kept classified (and therefore concealed from the American people) the intelligence which so strongly undermined those claims.

Sen. Graham used his access to this classified information to determine back then that the Administration was exaggerating the Iraqi threat. What is Sen. Rockefeller’s excuse for not having done the same? Sen. Rockefeller has admitted that he had the same NIE which contained these dissents as well as the underlying evidence which undermined the Administration’s pre-war claims, and yet he still voted to give the President authority to wage war. Now, Rockefeller wants to point to these same dissents and this same evidence – which, like Graham, he had before he voted – in order to claim that he was tricked by the Administration into supporting the war.

Sen. Rockefeller's duplicity is as breathtaking as it is self-evident, and for that reason, having him and those who had similar access be the public faces for the complaints about the Bush Administration's pre-war deceit is undermining the potency of that complaint. If Sen. Rockefeller regrets his vote and believes he erred in his judgment when he supported it, he should say so. And if he supported the war because he was intimidated to do so by the political climate at the time, or because he thought Americans should stand behind the President no matter what in the then-still-recent aftermath of 9/11, he should admit that, too.

But Senators like Sen. Rockefeller are in exactly the worst position possible to blame the Administration for their pro-war votes because they actually did – to use the Bush defenders’ favorite phrase – have access to essentially the same intelligence on Iraq as the Administration did and yet reached the same conclusion as the Administration did, i.e., that war against Iraq was necessary. By stark contrast, Sen. Graham was able, by virtue of his access to this same intelligence, to conclude that there were serious grounds for doubting the accuracy of the Administration’s pre-war claims on Iraq. Sen. Rockefeller could have, and should have, done the same thing.

Particularly in times of national security crises, Americans look to their President for leadership and they trust that what they are told is truthful and accurate. But Americans now realize that this trust in the Administration’s pre-war claims was misplaced -- not necessarily because the White House knew with certainty that the WMD claims it was making were false, but because the White House pretended that they knew these things for certain while concealing the ample evidence casting grave doubt on their accuracy, thus depriving Americans of making an informed choice as to whether the supposed threat posed by Iraq really did justify war. It is for that reason that Americans thus have every right to be angry that they were misled by the Bush Administration with regard to the nature and magnitude of the threat posed by Saddam’s regime.

But now-recanting pro-war Senate Democrats, having access to classified information that American citizens outside the Senate did not, do not have this same ground for complaint. They failed in their duty to serve as a loyal but vigorous opposition to the Administration, as they were too afraid to stand up to the President’s war desires. And in order to excuse their mistakes, they are now seeking to pretend that they were victimized by a deceitful Administration in the same way the American people were.

This is what is allowing Bush defenders the easy out against complaints about the accuracy of the Administration’s pre-war WMD claims. Republicans focus on the hypocrisy and duplicity of this complaint when it is voiced by previously pro-war Senate Democrats by pointing out -- correctly -- that these Senate Democrats had access to much of (not all, but much of) the same intelligence back then. But while the Senate Democrats did have such access, the American people did not, and for that reason, these Senate Democrats should not be the spokespersons for the complaint that the Administration misled the nation into war.

As Sen. Graham’s Op-Ed shows, Senate Democrats such as Sen. Rockefeller failed in their duty to stand up to the Administration prior to the war, and their failures are partially responsible for the fact that the Administration was able to mislead Americans with respect to the Iraqi threat. It is the American people, not Senate Democrats looking for an excuse for their vote, who should be voicing this plainly justifiable complaint that they were misled by the Administration.

The GOP fights itself on Illegal Immigration

To the rapidly expanding list of throbbing internal problems in the Republican Party, one can add, and it should really be placed near the top of the list, the dilemma of illegal immigration. And today’s Op-Ed in the Washington Post by GOP strategist and former White House official Leslie Sanchez, in which she cynically and baselessly blames the loss of the GOP Virginia gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore on his fervent opposition to illegal immigration, illustrates why the GOP has been so passive and fearful when it comes to dealing with this problem.

And yet few problems are more pressing. Over the past several years, illegal immigrants have poured into the United States by the millions. The wave of illegals entering the country is steadily increasing. The people living in the border states of California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico know this flow has to be drastically slowed and then halted. The situation is so dire in that region that the Democratic Governors of Arizona and New Mexico were forced to declare States of Emergency as a result of the flow of illegals into their states and the resulting, massive problems which it brings.

The parade of evils caused by illegal immigration is widely known, and it gets worse every day. In short, illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone. Few people dispute this, and yet nothing is done.

A substantial part of the GOP base urgently wants Republicans, who now control the entire Federal Government, to take the lead in enforcing our nation’s immigration laws. And yet the GOP, despite its unchallenged control, does virtually nothing, infuriating this sector of its party. The White House does worse than nothing; to the extent it acts on this issue at all, it is to introduce legislation designed to sanction and approve of illegal immigration through its “guest worker” program, a first cousin of all-out amnesty for illegal immigrants.

GOP inaction when it comes to illegal immigration is at once mystifying and easily explainable. There is a wing of the party – the Wall St. Journal/multinational corporation wing – which loves illegal immigration because of its use as a source of cheap labor. And while that wing of the party is important because of the financial support it provides, it is a distinct minority when it comes to electoral power.

The real reason Republicans treat the need to address the illegal immigration problem like a trip to the dentist -- as something they want to avoid at all costs -- is because they have been convinced that adopting an aggressive stance on illegal immigration will cost them too many votes among the nation’s ethnic minorities and legal immigrants. And that is what brings us to Sanchez’s Op-Ed, which illustrates just how unconvincing and baseless that alarmist view really is.

With absolutely no hard data or even evidentiary inferences of any kind, Sanchez emphatically announces that the reason GOP candidate Jerry Kilgore lost the election in Virginia is because he was too strident about the evils of illegal immigration. And she warns other GOP candidates that they will face a similar fate unless they modulate their tone and soften their position. Here is the crux of Sanchez's warning:

Republicans nationally should draw a number of lessons from the party's unsuccessful effort to take back the Virginia governor's mansion this month. . .

When it comes to immigration, dropping the word "illegal" into any anti-immigration proposal is not likely to work electoral magic. . . . Republicans embrace anti-immigrant fervor at their peril. The party is perilously close to adopting as its immigration policy the hanging of a "closed" sign on the border. To do so would be a gross mistake that would oversimplify the problem and set back all the efforts of President Bush to build bridges to America's growing population of Hispanics while finding a workable solution to a complex problem, one with far-ranging political consequences for the party over the long run.

The “substance” of this claim is facially ludicrous and easily dismissed. There already is a “closed sign on the border” when it comes to illegal immigration. It’s called the law. The problem is that the “closed sign” isn’t being enforced because the Federal Government, which has its interfering, power-hungry hands in virtually everything else, has abdicated its duty in one of the very few areas where it was actually meant to be: border security.

While her policy argument is easily dismissed, Sanchez’s political analysis is odious in the extreme, as this line of thinking is what has brainwashed countless spineless Republicans to steer clear of illegal immigration, even while the crises intensifies every day. But the political warnings Sanchez issues is without substance, and for years has been misleading Republicans into a self-destructive fear to tackle this problem.

To “support” her warning to Republicans to back away from illegal immigration (is it even possible for most Republicans to go back any further? What is less than zero?), Sanchez asserts, without a shred of evidence, that large numbers of Hispanic and Muslim suburban voters in Virginia were turned off by Kilgore’s use of the term “illegal immigration”:

Substantial numbers of immigrants (not to mention their children and grandchildren, too) hear attacks on "illegal" immigration as attacks on them -- so that a discussion of, say, day laborers can quickly turn into an anti-Hispanic free-for-all. . . Ham-fisted attacks by Kilgore and others on illegal immigrants, while political red meat for some, cause many in our coalition -- particularly Hispanics and suburban women -- to recoil.

To support her evidence-free claim that Kilgore’s use of the term “illegal immigration” was to blame for his loss, Sanchez engages in this bit of rank speculation:

Kilgore lost reliably Republican and conservative Prince William and Loudoun counties -- places where he issued a strong call for a "crackdown" on illegal immigration. Why? One reason may be that close to 15,000 Muslims -- many of them immigrants -- live in those counties, and, according to some post-election survey data, they supported Democrats by close to 30 to 1.

This is as close to “evidence” as Sanchez gets in her entire Op-Ed -- from the premise that Virginia’s immigrant Muslims voted against Kilgore, she takes the flying leap to the conclusion that Kilgore's stance on illegal immigration is what is to blame for the loss of their votes (as though Muslim immigrants reliably vote Republican in the first place, and, more absurdly, as though there are no other issues which might be important to Muslim voters and which might have turned them away from the GOP . . . hmmm. . . what other issues might those be?).

Having reached this pre-ordained destination -- where she asserts that Kilgore lost because voters didn't like his strong stance against illegal immigration -- Sanchez concludes her article by urging Republicans not to talk of the problem of “illegal immigration” at all and, instead, confine themselves to tepid references to specific policy reforms.

But one of the most disturbing and destructive aspects of illegal immigration is that it is illegal. Indeed, that is the precise attribute which separates good immigration from bad immigration. Why should Republicans, or anyone, shy away from pointing out that illegal immigration, among its many evils, is “illegal”? That is just absurd. Moreover, it is precisely the fact that illegal immigrants enter the country illegally that spawns justifiable resentment, not only among large clusters of middle-of-the-road voters, but also among the very legal immigrant population about which Sanchez is so concerned. Emphasizing the "illegal" part of this problem is what Republicans need to do more of, not less.

And beyond these cynical electoral considerations, what is the point of getting elected if the price for entrance is running away from the country’s most pressing problems? Listening to the type of advice doled out by Sanchez turns both political parties into the vague, shapeless, stagnant puddles which have been clogging up Congress for years. Fear-driven political advice like this is the last thing anyone needs more of.

The real irony here is that the problem of illegal immigration is actually one of the very few of the ever-dwindling number of issues that has the opportunity to forge common ground among factions of voters which are, these days, engaged in a ceaseless war with each other. Being worried, and outraged, about illegal immigration is not confined to the extreme precincts of conservatism. Middle-class suburban voters whose primary concerns are local and pragmatic, rather than ideological, know the danger which illegal immigration poses to their communities and to their states, and they want something done about it.

The rather extreme actions against illegal immigration taken by the Democratic governors in New Mexico and Arizona illustrate that point conclusively. The notion that our nation's laws ought to be enforced and that law-breakers should not be rewarded are not controversial ideas among most voters. The politicians of either party who show fortitude and leadership on this issue will inspire affection among this substantial and non-ideological segment of the voting population. And, not incidentally, they will have acted to alleviate one of the country's most serious and far-reaching problems. To do so, political candidates have to reject the self-defeating and cowardly advice of the Leslie Sanchez's of the world and take a strong, principled stance on this issue.

Blogosphere groupies

It's hard to know what to even say about this, because every sentence mocks itself so enthusiastically and thoroughly that it leaves no room for added ridicule. But it's also too extreme not to post about, so I think it's best to just pass it along.

It's a drooling report from a young woman named Karol at AlarmingNews.com. She apparently attended the blogger bash celebrating the launch of that new, monumentally revolutionary site, Open Source Media, and she is simply besides herself at having met all of her favorite blogging stars.

Here is an excerpt of Karol, bubbling over with a truly toxic mix of glee and awe:

Obviously, everyone there wanted to meet Glenn Reynolds.

He was talking to Evan when I came over to introduce myself. It's been said before, but Glenn Reynolds is a man of men.

While I'm just getting around to blogging at like 2pm because I woke up really hung-over after all that free Ketel One, Glenn has already blogged a week's worth of news, and, I believe, is traveling back to Tennessee. Also, while I'm a big fan of myself, I realize I'm a virtual nobody in the blogosphere. My thousand or so hits a day is what Glenn gets in around 10 minutes.

And he actually knew my site, which is unbelievable and just proves how much he is able to store in that big brain of his. Evan was saying that he sees Glenn as a bellwether of American politics, since he's not a partisan and seems to call things as he sees them.

I noted that I love him and my super liberal 'friend' loves him so I can see Evan's comment being quite true. During the conversation, Glenn said to me 'you know, I hope you don't mind me saying so but you're a lot younger and cuter than I thought you be.' I took it as a great compliment (Instapundit thinks I'm young and cute! Instapundit thinks I'm young and cute!) but it did get me thinking that conservatism is just so often associated with stodginess.

I try to mix it up by throwing in hip-hop or debaucherous tales from previous nights, but I still come off as old. Even more alarmingly, I seemingly come off as not cute. How does one fix that?

It is too pure to add anything to. It deserves to stand alone, as a monument to so many things.

UPDATE: OK, so I broke down and did add something - I bolded my favorite, favorite parts. They are just too good not to.

Still more cries for help from campus conservatives

Last week, National Review published an unbelievably petty and vapid article about a faux controversy at Thomas Jefferson Law School in San Diego, where a bunch of Federalist Society law students are trying to turn themselves into victims because they invited a conservative author to give a speech, and the law school’s Dean and other students criticized the author's views. Nobody sought to suppress the students’ views or prevent their guest from speaking. Instead, the students were upset, and National Review apparently thought it was a newsworthy instance of campus repression, all because other students and the Dean expressed disagreement with the conservative viewpoint.

As I pointed out in response to that article, campus conservatives have become the new PC whiners, equating mere exposure to divergent views with some sort of oppressive assault and diversity-snuffing tyranny. If faculty members, administrators or other students condemn – not suppress, but simply condemn – the views of conservative students, they start screeching that they have been treated unfairly. Such complaints are as tiresome to listen to as they are incoherent.

Not to be outdone, this week’s entry in this increasingly competitive genre of self-absorbed, contrived campus controversies is offered up by Weekly Standard, which published an article recounting the tragic plight of Kate Thornton Buzicky. Mr. Buzicky is an Army First Lieutenant and also a Harvard Law student, studying for a career in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. Ms. Buzicky feels that she is treated unfairly by her peers because she is in the military and many of them have negative views about the military.

The article is ominously entitled "The limits of liberal tolerance at Harvard Law School".

Now, based on this title, and based on the fact that the editors thought there was something here worth discussing, you would think Ms. Buzicky would tell the tale of how she was disciplined in some way, or banned from expressing her views, or shouted down in the classroom, or forced to leave the military if she wanted to stay at Harvard, or physically assaulted, or otherwise impeded from exercising all of the rights which the liberals students at Harvard Law enjoy, right?

Well, you would be wrong. Nothing of the sort happened to her.

All she offers is what campus conservatives these days have decided constitutes sufficient evidence to declare themselves victims and cry for help. It seems other people at Harvard Law don’t like the military, and far worse, they actually express this opinion to her. Here is one illustrative, traumatizing encounter she bravely recounts for us:

At places like Harvard, the military is a rarity on campus. One January morning last year, I was sitting outside a classroom with some classmates waiting for our Civil Procedure exam to begin. A male student stopped to greet us. He was wearing a puffy vest over what looked like an old version of the Army physical training sweatshirt--the oatmeal gray cotton zip-up. I asked him if it was an Army sweatshirt (the vest covered his chest where the "ARMY" logo would be). "No way," he scoffed. "I would never wear that. I hate the Army."

"Oh," I replied, "I am in the Army." He looked at me as if I had announced I had three legs and was born on Neptune. "You? In the Army?" He started to laugh, as if I were making a joke. But when I offered to show him my military ID card as proof he finally seemed to believe me.

Can you even fathom this repression? Is this really America? A student on one of our nation’s campuses has to be exposed to negative views about the military? Why, the horror.

This is the sort of thing which the conservative press – searching in every corner for reasons to feel aggrieved – now routinely churns out as proof of anti-conservative oppression. Stories about campus conservatives who are forced to hear opinions which diverge from their own are now portrayed as victims of the liberal hegemony which rules the nation’s academic institutions with an iron fist, mercilessly mowing down conservative students wherever they are found and consigning them to college gulags. And, like clockwork, the most predictable parrots have lamented the gross unfairness of what is "going on" at Harvard Law and have commended this proud woman for her courageous stand.

What I said about the contrived National Review controversy at Thomas Jefferson Law School applies even more strongly here, where the author is not even pretending to have had anything happen to her other than hearing other students' views with which she disagrees:

This campus "controversy," and similar ones being promoted by conservatives, illustrate a disturbing role-reversal driven by an increasingly strident mindset on the part of conservatives (students and professors alike) in academia. Legitimate complaints about free speech suppression at the hands of left-wing censors in academia have morphed into a petulant insistence that -- like their PC counterparts on the Left who preceded them -- they have the right not just to free expression of their opinion, but also the right to an environment that does not criticize, insult or offend them as a result of the opinions they express.

Campus conservatives now complain – loudly, shrilly and often – not just when they are prohibited from expressing their views, but also when their viewpoints are criticized or condemned, whether by other students, professors, or by academic administrators. In short, campus conservatives and the complaints they are manufacturing are now based upon the same noxious sense of entitlement to a criticism-free environment which the PC warriors on the left for so long demanded be accorded to them. . . . .

There should be no doubt that the Federalist Society law students at Thomas Jefferson had very hurt feelings when they learned that the Dean of their law school condemned the ideas of the speaker they had invited. But as conservatives persuasively preached for so long, one is not entitled -- especially in an academic setting -- to be shielded from ideas which may be "hurtful" or with which one disagrees.

And, notwithstanding (author Jason) Mattera's cries of censorship on behalf of these poor Federalist Society members, having others disagree with your opinions is not evidence that you are a free-speech victim needing protection.To the contrary, if campus conservatives are free to express their ideas and others are free to criticize them, even vigorously, that is exactly the state of affairs for which proponent of campus free speech should be striving. Equating disagreement with oppression is no more appealing coming from the Right than it was when it came from the Left.

Given that she says she intends to pursue a career in the military, one certainly hopes that Ms. Buzicky develops a thicker skin. Although being exposed to other people’s opinion passes these days as some grievous trauma among the effete, whiny conservative press which is always vigilantly searching for a reason to feel slighted, such an occurrence in the military – and even the non-military world beyond Harvard Law – is called "discussion and debate." and being exposed to such a thing is unlikely to generate much sympathy, let alone an entire magazine article decrying what has occurred.

Conservatives control the White House, the Senate and the U.S. House. They dominate cable news television and talk radio. They are free to express their views in all facets of the media and even academic institutions without discipline or penalty. Is there anything that can ween them off of this unseemly addiction many of them have developed to parading themselves around as perpetual victims who are treated unfairly by the world?

Washington Post reporters unintentionally satirize themselves

The little peak we got yesterday into the inner sanctum of the online bulletin board used by Washington Post reporters to chat amongst themselves and about themselves is at once fascinating, revealing, and quite hilarious. It is all of these things not because of anything substantive the reporters said about the Bob Woodward scandal-- what they said largely alternated between pompous clichés about “journalistic ethics” and obsequious genuflecting to the journalistic deity known as Bob Woodward, and was as boring as it was uninformative.

The valuable and amusing part of being able to spy on their chatter was seeing the intense outrage they expressed once they learned that someone had leaked their precious bulletin board discussions to the New York Times. In doing so, they displayed almost every single attribute which has made our national media so contemptible, and so worthless.

Indeed, one of the most revealing, and enjoyable, side benefits of the Plame scandal is that so many of these pious jouranlists are central participants in the wrongdoing. As a result, we get to watch them desperately resort to the exact stonewalling and evasion tactics which are routinely used against them by the government officials and others from whom they are trying to extract information, and as a result, their true character is being starkly revealed.

When they are caught up in controversies and scandals, reporters now issue stilted, vetted written statements plainly designed to obfuscate rather than inform. They refuse to comment. They evade questions about their conduct. They express earnest outrage that their documents and conversations, which they intended to be kept from the public, have been leaked. They concoct plainly false excuses or, worse, send others to do so on their behalf.

Reporters instinctively treat such tactics as signs of impropriety or dishonesty when used by others, but they see no contradiction at all when they use these same tactics on their own behalf. That’s because they think that the word “journalist,” by itself, bestows onto all of those whom it describes both a nobility of purpose and an unparalleled societal importance, such that anything which “journalists” do in pursuit of their “journalistic objectives” -- whatever any of that means -- is, by definition, important, elevated and just.

Just listen to Post reporter Jonathan Yardley whine about the fact that his secret little bulletin board messages about Bob Woodward’s Plame disclosures have been leaked to the New York Times:

The comment of mine two paragraphs above has been leaked, presumably by someone in the newsroom, to the New York Times. Katharine Seelye called me an hour ago pressing for further comment. I declined, stressing that this is a confidential internal critique written solely for the news staff of TWP and refusing to authorize her to quote from it. She called back half an hour later to say that her editor had told her to go ahead and quote from the comment anyway. I told her I expected her to make plain that this is a confidential internal document and that she is quoting from it over the objections of the person who wrote it. She said she would. We'll see.

Could Yardley really have written this without appreciating the irony, and without realizing how completely ridiculous he sounds? It’s hard to believe he is not purposely satirizing himself here.

After all, we have been lectured over and over since the beginning of the Plame scandal that the enterprise of journalism is driven by the courageous disclosure of confidential information in order to enable intrepid, truth-seeking journalists to inform the public as to matters of grave public concern. And invariably accompanying that lecture is some drippy paean to the sanctity of confidential leaking -- how the whole of the very Republic owes its ongoing existence and prosperity to the receipt by journalists of confidential information from courageous secret sources.

Oddly, though, the outraged foot-stompers at the Post sure don’t seem to have much affection for the leaking process when they are the targets of the leaks rather than the beneficiaries of them. When used against rather than by these reporters, confidential leaking is radically and immediately transformed from being an act of unparalleled courage, something which is absolutely indispensable in maintaining ordered liberty and which must be preserved at all costs for the good of the Republic, into an act of cowardly, dastardly betrayal.

Here is Yardley again, actually complaining that the act of leaking tragically destroys the ability of important people (i.e., Post reporters) to talk about important matters (i.e., the Post reporters’ opinions about the actions of Post reporters), because they cannot do so with confidence that they can keep it all secret from the public:

I hardly see any point in having critiques and comments if they are to be publicized outside the paper. How can we write candidly when candor merely invites violations of confidentiality? Many readers say they distrust us. Well, now I find myself wondering if we can trust each other.

Isn’t that the same exact rationale which George Bush invokes when he wants to withhold internal White House discussions which the media and others demands that he release?

Why yes, it is:

Q. Following up on that. For ten years you've been on the receiving end of paperwork from Harriet Miers, but the rest of the American people haven't seen either her command of constitutional issues or her philosophy. Will you release some of her, or the bulk of her White House legal work, and not claim executive privilege?

THE PRESIDENT: Listen, there is a -- there is a lot of -- first of all, this is part of the Roberts debate. People talked about executive privilege and documents. Secondly, it is important that we maintain executive privilege in the White House. That's part of the deliberative process. That's how I'm able to get good, sound opinions from people. . . .

But we -- this part of the process was part of the Roberts process. We handled this issue, and I just can't tell you how important it is for us to guard executive privilege in order for there to be crisp decision-making in the White House.

And isn’t Yardley’s insistence on the importance of maintaining the secrecy of internal discussions the same argument which Richard Nixon made when he sought to prevent the disclosure of his taped internal White House conversations which the Post, among others, was seeking to compel?

I believe it is:

Then in July, came a critical break and a shocking disclosure. President Nixon had installed recording devices in the Oval Office so that historians could study his presidency. Congress said the White House had to turn over the tapes, but President Nixon refused, citing executive privilege. A constitutional confrontation had begun.

Apparently, the same Washington Post which fought tirelessly to defeat this claim and to compel disclosure of these secret “internal discussions” at the White House is now filled with reporters who invoke this Nixonian claim on their own behalf.

And it is also the same Washington Post which hungrily published exactly such leaks as part of its endless, lurid coverage of the Monica Lewinsky “scandal” and then used that leaked information to decree what a serious Presidential scandal that was, but which now seems to believe that leaking confidential discussions is just wrong and harmful -- so very, very wrong and harmful.

So, the very same people who, every day, work to obtain and publicly disclose other peoples’ confidential communications -- and who never cease to lecture us on the importance and goodness of such disclosures -- are furious and scandalized that someone would dare disclose their secret talks about the central role played by one of the nation’s most important newspapers in one of the nation's most significant governmental corruption scandals.

Behold Post reporter Glenn Kessler -- whose entire career is based on publishing on the front page of the Post leaked confidential information which other people desperately wanted to keep secret -- throwing a petulant fit of outrage that someone would leak the sacred words which the civic denizens in the pantheon known as the Washington Post wanted to keep secret:

Glenn Kessler: I think it is outrageous that someone gave Yardley's comments to the New York Times. If this person had the courage of their convictions, he/she would have allowed themselves to be quoted on the record to The Times (why hide behind Yardley's private comments if you believe them to be correct?) and he/she should have no qualms about revealing themselves as the source.

I view this chatboard as the written equivalent of conversations around the water cooler. How many people would we quote thirdhand in the newspaper unless we got those quotes confirmed from the source? Granted, in this case, the comments were written, which allowed the Times to decide they had enough confirmation to use the comments even though Yardley refused to talk about them. But that fact gives every one of us an even greater obligation to keep this chatter among ourselves. Obviously, we all try to report on what was said behind closed doors. But the extensive use of written electronic communication has created a new world.

The Times was very upset when the Post once quoted from a private email from Judy Miller to one of her colleagues. A WSJ reporter in Iraq once got in huge trouble when one of her emails was shared to the world.

Ever since the Plame scandal began, reporters have been running around pompously preening as they tell us how vitally important it is to ensure that robust reporting and confidential leaking continue, while at the same time expressing profound offense that these same truth-exposing tools have been applied to them in order to uncover the unseemly, sordid role so many of them played in this affair.

Reporters who instinctively cheer when politicians are dragged before Grand Juries to be interrogated are simultaneously offended and horrified when they are compelled to do the same. And while they obnoxiously hound other people who refuse to comment or who issue worthless statements which raise more questions than they answer, these reporters do precisely that the minute they are the target of the questions.

Surely the way in which reporters have been exposed by this scandal will be one of the most consequential and enduring results of the Plame affair. That the White House would use classified information to attack a political opponent should surprise nobody. But the utter emptiness, pomposity and corruption of the nation’s journalistic class has been revealed for all to see. And the more we hear from these reporters on their own behalf, the uglier the picture becomes.

Response to Jonah Goldberg's tantrum

Jonah Goldberg, writing in National Review's Corner, purported to reply to the post I wrote at Daily Kos which discussed, in part, Goldberg's fear and anger over a speech given by Anti-Defamation League Director Abraham Foxman.

In that speech, given last week, Foxman warned of the serious danger posed by religious extremists in America, who, according to Foxman, are seeking to "Christianize" the Government and eliminate the church-state separation. Goldberg melodramatically labeled the speech a "horrible, horrible mistake" because it was going to make the Christian Right angry at Jews, something which really scares Goldberg. I wrote the Kos diary to discuss (OK, to celebrate) the growing split among religious conservatives, on the one hand, and the other Republican constituencies on the other, and used Goldberg's reaction to the ADL speech (as well as George Will's potent warning today about the Religious Right) as an illustrative example of this fracturing.

Goldberg's "reply" to my post is characterized by both his obvious anger at what was written and his corresponding attempt to show how indifferent he is:

Some guy named Glenn Greenwald at Daily Kos thinks he's pierced my soul.

Some guy named Jonah Goldberg just wrote three full paragraphs in the Corner full of vitriol as part of a strenuous effort to show how unbothered he was about that post. Looks like the symptoms of a pierced soul to me.

In a very long and silly post, Greenwald claims I write based on fear, blah, blah, blah. I generally find people who offer up these sort of theories are imposing their own mental states on others. But who knows?

The irony here is that Goldberg labeled Foxman's speech an act of "cowardice," even though it was Foxman who bravely stood up to the most powerful political group in the country, the Christian Right, while Goldberg was hiding under his bed, pleading with Foxman -- for the "sake of Jews" -- not to make them angry. If there was "cowardice" anywhere, it was clearly with Goldberg's actions, not with Foxman's.

Or, to put it another way using Goldberg's words, Goldberg's calling Foxman's speech an act of "cowardice" might be an example of someone "who offers up these sorts of theories (and is) imposing their own mental states on others." But who knows?

I'm probably going to write a column about this next week -- about the ADL, not this Greenwald guy -- but for the record I don't think Foxman's being a fool for risking the wrath of Christian conservatives. I think he's being a fool because guys who think like Greenwald make up the ADL's donor base and they want to hear this nonsense from Foxman.

This makes no sense. Why would Foxman be a fool for expressing views which his membership wants to hear? Isn't that what a Director of an advocacy organization is supposed to do?

Goldberg just invented this theory of why he criticized Foxman in order to deny, apparently out of embarrassment, that he said in his original post that Foxman's speech was such a "horrible, horrible mistake" because it would make the Christian Right think that Jews were attacking Christians and that would be a bad thing for Jews. But after denying that this was his meaning, Goldberg proceeds to make the same exact point all over again:

My concern is that Foxman's effort will contribute to the idea that the secular-liberal war on Christianity is in some significant way a "Jewish" attack as well. That's not good for the Jews, not good for America, not good for anybody.

Can't you smell the fear oozing from every word? Goldberg is petrified that the Christian theocrats -- with whom he thinks he can maintain an alliance in order to be protected -- will be angry if their theocratic agenda is pointed out and criticized. So Goldberg, driven by this fear, wants everyone -- and especially Jews -- to keep quiet about it and just lay low, lest the Christian Right's anger spills over to Goldberg, too.

It's fine if Goldberg believes all that, but he really ought not to be running around calling other people cowards while he expresses these fears. The contradictions are really too transparent to conceal from anyone.

What is really motivating this vitriol is the fact that the GOP knows that its dirty little secret is being revealed -- namely, that Republicans have consolidated political power only through an extremely unholy alliance with a crusading movement that is anything but conservative in its desire to impose religious rule on virtually every aspect of American law and culture. Social conservatives are now demanding more and more to be fed, and their demands are -- finally -- starting to be too much for many of the non-theocrats in the Party, who, to their shame, overlooked and excused the excesses of this fanatical group for far too long but now seem finally to have had enough.

Jonah Goldberg pleads: Don't make the theocrats angry

Driven by the deep personal fear which characterizes virtually everything that he thinks and writes, Jonah Goldberg today attacks the Anti-Defamation League and its Director, Abraham Foxman, for warning of the obvious but alarming threat posed by religious extremists, who are exerting more and more influence every day over America's political institutions and are doing so with the goal of whittling away and ultimately eliminating the church-state separation.

The ADL's Foxman gave a speech last week "directly attacking several prominent religious right groups and challenging their motives, which he said include nothing less than 'Christianizing America.'" He identified the odious Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council as two of the leading crusaders in this plainly theocratic movement.

The compelling urgency of this problem is self-evident, as the polling data cited by Foxman in his speech makes conclusively clear:

According to the survey, 70 percent of weekly churchgoers and 76 percent of self-described Evangelicals agreed that “Christianity is under attack” in this country — a conclusion that is hard to square with their growing influence in Congress, the White House and the courts, he said.

Sixty-nine percent of Evangelicals and 60 percent of weekly churchgoers said there should be “organized” prayer in public schools, according to the survey, and 89 percent of Evangelicals agreed that religious symbols “like the Ten Commandments” should be displayed in public buildings. More ominously, only 26 percent of
Evangelicals and 31 percent of weekly churchgoers agreed that “courts should protect church-state separation.”

We are talking here about a group of religious fanatics which, despite its extremism, is gaining more and more power over America's domestic policies and is shaping federal law in almost every sector to comport with their religious dogma. The fact that only a small minority of this movement believes that the church-state separation should be preserved says all one needs to know about their ultimate goals -- goals which they are closer than ever to achieving, with 3 years still remaining in the Administration which is giving them a virtual free run at shaping domestic policy.

But Goldberg is petrified that the ADL, by criticizing this theocratic movement, will make them angry. He thus melodramatically laments that the ADL "is making a horrible, horrible mistake." He then launches this telling, name-calling criticism of the ADL's stance:

Indeed, it strikes me as a form of cowardice to turn your energies against philo-Semtic (sic) Christian conservatives at a moment when real anti-Semitism is thriving in so many other quarters. Liberalism isn't Judaism and Judaism isn't liberalism. He'd be well advised to keep that in mind, for the sake of Jews and liberals alike.

Goldberg apparently thinks that, "for the sake of Jews," the ADL should avoid criticizing "Christian conservatives" because to do so is to associate itself with liberalism, which can only endanger Jews. He argues that the theocratic longings of Christian conservatism ought to be ignored by the ADL because the group's energies are better directed towards fighting what he calls "real anti-Semitism thriving in so many other quarters."

What powerful forces exhibiting "real anti-Semitism" does Goldberg think the ADL should be condemning instead of the church-state attacks being launched by the American Religious Right? Where are these threatening circles of "real anti-Semitism" which the ADL can do anything about? Goldberg doesn't say. Is it found among impotent, powerless Ward Churchill-type academicians? Among Muslim rioters in the French slums? Among clownish neo-Nazi groups with membership lists in the hundreds?

In case Goldberg hasn't noticed, Christian conservatives are the dominant political force in the United States. They control the White House, the Senate Leadership and the House. Virtually no domestic political decision of any significance is made without their prior approval.

The notion that it is cowardly to stand up to this powerful group, but would be somehow brave to castigate some fringe neo-Nazi group or International A.N.S.W.E.R. rally of 20 people, is exactly backwards. The ADL's decision to finally denounce this genuine, significant threat to religious and political freedom took courage precisely because doing so required Foxman to condemn the most powerful political group in the United States.

Indeed, the ADL's courage is starkly illustrated precisely by contrasting it with Goldberg's rather pathetic fears. It is the warrior Goldberg who, unsurprisingly, is the coward here. He is counseling that the Christian conservatives not be criticized because they will get angry and provoking that reaction should be avoided for "the sake of Jews." By admirable contrast, Foxman is alerting people to a threat posed by this group notwithstanding its power and undeterred by the prospect that they will not like him for it. "Cowardice" is what is driving Goldberg, not Foxman. And, as is so often the case, Goldberg knows that he is driven by fear, which is what causes him to label others as "cowards."

With George Will's column this week warning of the threat of social conservativism and the ADL's condemnation of this same threat, it is becoming increasingly clear that people are finally awakening to the severity of the threat posed by these thinly disguised theocrats. For the last 4 years, the same fear which is still causing Goldberg to wet himself has deterred all but a few from publicly warning of the agenda of this movement, but as Bush's popularity whittles away, so, too, is this fear. And finally, the true agenda -- and rapidly increasing power -- of these religious extremists is being recognized.

UPDATE: Goldberg's petulant, substance-less reply to this post, published in the Corner, is here. My response to his reply, to the extent a response is possible in the face of whiny, incoherent anger, is here.

The War begins: Social conservatives v. mainstream Republicans

The first four years of the Bush Administration, particularly after 9/11, were characterized by a highly unusual, and at times downright creepy, uniformity of opinion. It was almost impossible to find a Republican anywhere expressing any criticism of George Bush -- on any issue, ever. And other than a few humiliating attacks launched by the party's most extreme elements against so-called GOP moderates made for the purpose of showing who was Boss in the GOP, Republicans almost never spoke ill of one another either, despite glaring differences in their views on a whole host of critically important issues.

In many ways, over this time period, the GOP more closely resembled a cult than a political party, and the cohesiveness of the cult was centered around Personality -- a glorification of, and blind reverence for, George W. Bush.

With Bush's plummeting approval ratings -- and with the Administration's competence and integrity being assaulted on all fronts -- this is all changing now, and it is changing rapidly and dramatically. As it becomes unavoidably clear just how insatiable and extreme the social conservatives' appetite is for using unlimited governmental power to impose their religious agenda on all aspects of U.S. foreign and domestic policy, many mainstream conservatives are waking up -- finally -- and realizing how incompatible that agenda is with true conservatism.

In what is sure to be a potent bellwether of the imminent war, George Will uses his column this week to expressly accuse the "social conservative" wing of the GOP of being decidedly un-conservative in its objectives and ideology, and all but warns that the GOP will be destroyed by the continued ascendancy of this sector of the Republican Party. Using the truly embarrassing (but quite illustrative) decision of a Kansas school board to literally re-define science in order to permit the teaching of warmed-over creationism in the public schools, Will warns:

"It does me no injury," said Thomas Jefferson, "for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." But it is injurious, and unneighborly, when zealots try to compel public education to infuse theism into scientific education.

The conservative coalition, which is coming unglued for many reasons, will rapidly disintegrate if limited-government conservatives become convinced that social conservatives are unwilling to concentrate their character-building and soul-saving energies on the private institutions that mediate between individuals and government, and instead try to conscript government into sectarian crusades.

There is not and has never been anything remotely conservative about these religious extremists. They do not favor limited government in any way. They believe so faithfully in the righteousness of their political agenda that they see any means to achieve their objectives as justifiable -- including exploiting and increasing the powers of all 3 branches of the federal government in order to achieve them.

But Will's dire warnings are too late. The GOP is already hopelessly dependent upon the enthusiastic support of this strident, power-hungry minority. And these social conservatives are tired of waiting. They believe that their time for true power has arrived and they are not going to modify their demands or be satisfied with token gestures. They believe that they twice delivered the Presidency to George Bush and that the GOP needs them if the party is to stay in power. These beliefs have made them drunk with power and they are insisting upon carte blanche to control the areas of federal policy they care about. And they have been given that control by a captive Administration which has no choice.

Almost nothing happens of any domestic significance without the prior consultation and approval of the James Dobson's of the world, and entire sectors of federal law are being shaped to comport with their highly intrusive vision. There is nothing conservative about it, but by operating in the bureaucratic crevices of Washington where little attention is paid, they are slowly but inexorably re-creating almost every sector of federal law and administrative agency regulations in their own image.

Mainstream conservatives were willing to tolerate these creeping theocratic intrusions because they, like almost everyone else, were cowed into submission by the Bush Administration's cynical post-9/11 exploitation of war and patriotism rhetoric, and because they thought they would get the things they cared about (reduced federal spending, enforcement of immigration laws, a reduction in the scope and reach of the federal government) in exchange for a few token, tolerable crumbs symbolically being thrown to the social conservative crowd in order to placate them.

But, as it turns out, the joke is on the mainstream conservatives. It is they who have been placated with token crumbs as they watch federal power and federal spending explode, often in order to promote the fundamentals of the social conservative agenda. With Bush now becoming weaker and weaker, they are magically re-discovering their beliefs and their courage and are beginning to crawl out of their cages and survey what is taking place. And they aren't happy about it.

Like Yugoslavia when it was ruled by Tito, these simmering conflicts among the GOP constituencies have been suppressed and prohibited by the unchallenged rule of George Bush, but the conflicts were never truly eliminated. They lurked under the homogenized surface. And as Bush's hegemonic rule over his party disintegrates, so, too, does his ability to suppress these disagreements. Without the unifying authority behind which they all obediently followed, these conflicts are bubbling to the surface again, ready to explode.

It is about time. The social conservatives have bought into their own PR, and have been aided by a dumb, uncritical media which, almost immediately after Bush's re-election, got collectively bullied into reading the 2004 election as some unmistakable sign that the true face of the American populace is James Dobson. That is not true and never was. Social conservatives are a loud and organized minority, but a minority to be sure. And their liberty-restricting, regressive agenda is plainly anathema to the majority of Americans, and even the majority of Republicans, who enjoy their individual liberties and freedoms as much as anyone else and do not want the Federal Government annexed by a crusading crowd which wants to use and radically expand Federal power in order to dictate how Americans live and die.

This war has been a long time coming and it is long past the time that it plays out. But better late than never. It is the mainstream conservatives like Will who permitted this takeover of the GOP by these religious extremists, and it is their responsibility to clean up the mess they made.

Cheney & Woodward: Working together in the past

Amidst all of the speculation about the identity of the Senior Administration Official who is Bob Woodward's original source, it is worth noting that Woodward did extensive interviews with Dick Cheney as part of Woodward's Bush-glorifying book, Plan of Attack.

Here's Woodward being interviewed by Gwen Ifell about that book:

GWEN IFILL: Let's talk about the relationships of all these people who are decision-makers who are on the cover of this book. Rate them for us in terms of influence, starting with the president and working your way down.

BOB WOODWARD: Well, one of the things that is clear to me from the reporting and discussions with the president, where I was able to go in for hours and ask him literally hundreds of questions -- kind of unprecedented, something his father would never let a reporter do, something, certainly, Bill Clinton would never let....

GWEN IFILL: And something Vice President Dick Cheney did not agree to.

BOB WOODWARD: Something Vice President Cheney was worried about, but now the White House has publicly said that I did interview Vice President Cheney for this.

So the president is the decision-maker and he ... weapons of mass destruction, important, but when you dig into the why -- you know, why did you do this -- he said, explicitly, he believes we have a duty to free people, to liberate people.

And I asked him directly, I said, "Is this not kind of a dangerous paternalism where people are going to say, now, wait a minute, where's the United States coming in and liberating us?"

And he said, quite directly, he said, "that's an elite view," and that people who are liberated are delighted and happy with it. And he wants to fix things. I think it is a moral determination which we've not seen in the White House maybe in 100 years.

Bob Woodward has built his entire post-Watergate career based on his unique access to Government officials at the highest levels. Whoever his Plame source was, he was very senior. That's where Woodward gets his information. He obviously has a prior relationship with Cheney and is one of the Administration's favorite journalists for planting information. Shouldn't Cheney's office be asked immediately if it was someone in Cheney's office, or Cheney himself, who leaked to Woodward?

Apparently all the buzz in Washington right now is that Dick Cheney, variously called "The Prince of Darkness" and "Darth Vader" by his enemies (and even some friends, anonymously), may well be enlisted to run for President on the Republican ticket in 2008. If true, it means that the man who started all the buzz--journalist Bob Woodward, who in a recent speech speculated the current Vice-President, despite his protestations, would indeed run for the Oval Office.

UPDATE: When the Administration wanted to get word out that George Tenet supposedly told Bush prior to the war that it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam had WMDs -- a fact which has become the favorite tool for Bush defenders to use in defending him against charges of pre-war lying -- whom did they choose to disseminate this nugget? Their favorite in-house Kremlin propagandist well-respected journalist, Bob Woodward:

About two weeks before deciding to invade Iraq, President Bush was told by CIA Director George Tenet there was a "slam dunk case" that dictator Saddam Hussein had unconventional weapons, according to a new book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward.

That declaration was "very important" in his decision making, according to "Plan of Attack," which is being excerpted this week in The Post.

And let's not forget Woodward's speech awhile back, which generated a fair amount of press, in which Woodward pumped up Cheney as a serious contender for the 2008 presdiency.

Finally, here is an excellent compilation of the countless ways in which Woodward is inextricably in bed with the Administration on which he ostensibly reports.

The Woodward disclosure is a disaster for the White House (UPDATED)

The primary focus in the aftermath of Bob Woodward’s Plame bombshell seems to be on the deserved destruction of Woodward’s last bits of credibility as a journalist.

But the most glaring and far more important question raised by the new revelation is this: What can possibly account for the fact that Patrick Fitzgerald is only learning of this central fact now – after more than 2 years of a sweeping, comprehensive investigation that entailed subpoenas to every significant and not-so-significant figure in this story? The White House clearly knows who Woodward’s source is -- or can find out with little effort -- or should at least be forced to genuinely try to find out -- and the White House cannot possibly be permitted to withhold this information from the public.

It is almost certainly the case that whoever the Senior Administration Official is who first told Woodward about Plame, he testified at some point before Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury. The bulk of the speculation among some of the most obsessive and knowledgeable of the Internet Plameologists centers around names which have long been at the center of this story: David Wursmer, John Hannah or Fred Fleitz (are these really SAOs?). While some have speculated that perhaps the original leaker was never called to testify, it seems highly improbable that Fitzgerald would have simply overlooked someone who: (a) is a SAO; (b) learned of Plame's employment very early on and (c) leaked it to Bob Woodward. All of the potential officials who originally leaked to Woodward testified before the Grand Jury, as did all of the other even remote possible Woodward leakers (Ari Fleisher, John Bolton, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney).

Thus, unless Fitzgerald was unconscionably sloppy in simply neglecting to ask the witness the right questions which would have provoked disclosure of the Woodward conversation -- a possibility everyone, admirers and critics alike, believe is extremely improbable -- then the following facts are necessarily true:

(1) Another WH senior official committed perjury and obstruction

This is yet another Senior Bush Administration Official who failed to testify truthfully before the Grand Jury on a central issue in this investigation. Whoever the official is obviously remembers the Woodward conversation, since the Post article reports that Woodward’s testimony before Fitzgerald was prompted by this official notifying Fitzgerald about the conversation.

The "I-forgot-and-then-remembered" defense which Libby is now forced into invoking would be even less credible for this SAO than it is for Libby. The conversation with Woodward occurred in June. Intense controversy arose a mere one month later over the Plame matter in the aftermath of the publication of Bob Novak’s column. The Justice Department began investigating the CIA criminal referral in September. It is simply ludicrous to think that the SAO who first disclosed the information that sparked the controversy– by disclosing the information to Bob Woodward, no less – would have forgotten that fact as this controversy unfolded. And once the controversy turned into a full-fledged scandal with the referral by the CIA to the Justice Department, it goes without saying that the SAO who started the whole thing would not have forgotten the central role he played in it.

Moreover, nothing credible could account for the SAO talking to Woodward, then temporarily forgetting that he did so, then suddenly remembering again more than two years later. That would be like some sort of Repressed Memory Defense which nobody could attempt with a straight face. It has to be the case that whoever this SAO is, simply failed to testify about his disclosure of Plame’s employment to Bob Woodward when testifying before the Grand Jury.

This has to be another case of perjury and obstruction on the part of an SAO – something that would preclude Administration defenders from continuing to cast this scandal as the by-product of Lone Wolf Lewis Libby. And if this is so, it begins to smell a lot more like a real, concerted cover-up than simply one lone official who was overcome by a bout of uncharacteristic irrationality.

(UPDATE) At the very least, here we have here a Senior Administration official who sat on this self-evidently critical information for two years -- withholding it from the Prosecutor all this time -- even after the President claims to have instructed his entire staff to cooperate fully with the investigation. For that reason alone, one would think the White House would immediately disclose the identity of this official and fire him for so flagrantly defying the instruction to cooperate with the investigation.

(2) There is no justification for the WH to conceal the identity of this SAO

The White House cannot possibly be allowed to keep the identity of this SAO a secret. According to Woodward, his agreement with his source allowed him to disclose the source’s identity to Fitzgerald, but not publicly. That’s all well and good for Woodward, but the White House cannot possibly justify concealing the identity of this SAO for even one day.

It has been apparent since the Plame disclosure came to light that the President could have easily discovered, had he been inclined to do so, the identity of those officials responsible for the Plame leak. He could have rounded up the obvious suspects one by one and demanded to know what part, if any, they played in the leak. He either did not do this because he did not want to know; or he did do this and officials (including those, such as Rove, who continue to work at the White House) simply lied to him; or he did learn of who did it, but, contrary to his public vows on this issue, did nothing about it. None of those options reflect particularly well on the President.

But that was then and this is now. Now we have one SAO indicted. The Prosecutor has spoken about this case at length on national television. The White House claims to take this all very seriously and to recognize that it is a matter of serious public concern.

Under these circumstances, there is simply no excuse at all – none – for allowing the White House to withhold the identity of the SAO who leaked to Woodward. The White House has to be hounded relentlessly to reveal not just the identity of the SAO, but also the facts and circumstances which prompted the concealment all this time of the Woodward leak, and the disclosure of it only now. What accounts for that?

Somewhere in the Bush Administration, there is a senior official who disclosed Plame’s employment to a reporter before Libby ever did, and then – for whatever reasons – failed to tell Patrick Fitzgerald about it until now. There is no excuse whatsoever for keeping the identity of that official from the public.

Does Bush know who it is? Does Karl Rove? If they do not know, what have they done or will they do to find out the identity of this official? Until we know this information, this has to become the most pressing demand put to the White House.

(3) Could this new SAO leaker be the VP?

Just as an aside, is there anything which precludes Dick Cheney from being the SAO who first leaked Plame’s identity to Woodward? We know that Cheney knew about Plame’s CIA employment even before Libby did. Woodward certainly has access to everyone at the White House when working on his Administration-glorifying books. Bob Woodward does not really waste his time with low-level officials. Is it definite that this is not Dick Cheney who leaked? He should at least be asked.

UPDATE -- See here for some evidence of Cheney's prior involvement with Woodward.

(4) Woodward's attempt to minimize the leak makes no sense.

One last point -- about Woodward and his claim that the disclosure to him of Plame’s employment "seemed casual and off-hand" and that "it did not appear to (him) to be classified or sensitive." That is surely the claim that will be seized upon by Administration’s defenders in an ongoing effort to minimize, even mock, the importance of the Plame leak. But Woodward’s claim makes little sense.

If, as he incredibly claims, he believed that there was nothing at all secret about Plame’s employment as a CIA analyst working on WMDs, and if it is the case – as Administration officials continue to insist – that Plame’s CIA employment was highly relevant to Joe Wilson’s credibility, why would Woodward not have published a story reporting on Plame’s employment long before Novak did?

Woodward himself says that he was aware that the reports about an anonymous envoy traveling to Niger were referring to Joe Wilson. Even before Joe Wilson’s identity was known, Wilson’s claims about what he found (or did not find) on his Niger trip were circulating around town as a brewing news story. What could possibly justify Woodward not writing about Plame’s CIA employment (or even telling his editors or other reporters to write about it) if, as he and Bush officials claim: (a) there was nothing secret at all about Plame’s employment, but (b) the fact of Plame's CIA employment was highly newsworthy because it cast the true light on the motives and reliability behind Wilson’s trip to Niger?

Isn't the much more likely explanation that Woodward – like Judy Miller before him – has a highly personal interest in protecting the Administration and minimizing this whole affair because of the critical role he played in it? He has spent the last two years minimizing the controversy without revealing the role he played. Now that we know that Woodward was the original reporter to whom Plame’s employment was leaked and that he kept this fact from everyone, isn’t it highly likely that Woodward’s pretending that he thought the Plame disclosure was no big deal is simply the latest effort on his part to minimize the scandal in which he played a starring role?

How ironic, and sad, to see the arc of Woodward’s journalism career -- which began by his courageously exposing a scandal of corruption at the highest levels of the White House, and appears to be ending with his not only defending, but also playing a starring role in perpetuating, similar White House corruption.

It is not sad in any sense for Woodward, but for the country. In many ways, Woodward’s personal transformation over three decades from outside-journalist-watchdog (who opposes the Government and subjects its claims to skeptical scrutiny) to insider-government-tool (whose goal is to become ingratiated with the Government and be the well-liked propaganda instrument of its officials) is quite emblematic of the transformation generally over this same time period of the nation’s mass media.

UPDATE: Woodward has now proferred to his editors at the Post what the Post is calling an "apology" for Woodward's having failed to disclose the fact that he was the recipient of this leak more than two years ago. Notably, the "apology" is issued to his editors at the Post, but not to his readers and/or the television audiences who heard him, over and over, minimize (and even mock) the importance of this scandal. They are owed an apology at least as much as the Post editors, since it was from the public that Woodward hid the fact that he was himself a central participant in this scandal, thereby leading people to believe (falsely) that they were hearing an objective journalistic assessment from him, rather than what it really was: the self-interested excuse-making of a prime actor in the leak.

I put the word "apology" here in quotation marks because what Woodward offered is one in name only. What he actually offered is that most disingenuous type of "apology" where you say that you regret that you had to do something, but then give a whole slew of reasons why you did it:

"I apologized because I should have told him about this much sooner," Woodward said in an interview. "I explained in detail that I was trying to protect my sources. That's Job No. 1 in a case like this. . . .

"I hunkered down. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed."

That's not an apology for what he did; it's a justification.

Woodward is one of those journalists - and there are so many - who believes that anything he does is noble and elevated and beyond reproach. That is why he was so snide and aggressive in attacking Fitzgerald for daring to involve (said with whispered reverence) journalists in this scandal.

Fitzgerald's refusal to allow journalists to serve as accomplices to this Government crime was, to Woodward, a crude assault on the cozy little cocktail party circuit which Washington journalists use to forge their incestuous bonds with Government officials, and nobody has benefited more from that system - and nobody is more entrenched at the center of it - than Woodward. It is hardly a surprise to learn that he has hid central facts in order to protect this system, but it is nonetheless enjoyable to watch him finally be revealed as someone who shed his principles and integrity a long time ago, if he ever had any to shed.

Just behold Woodward's petulance as he complains that journalists are actually being forced to comply with the law in order to determine who it is at the highest levels of the Government leaked the identity of a CIA cover operative:

WOODWARD: And that case, when I think it is all told, there is going to be nothing to it. And it is a shame. And the special prosecutor in that case, his behavior, in my view, has been disgraceful. . . .

I mean, did you ever talk to anybody about this case? Why don`t we just take the whole damn press corps and line them up and everyone can go to the grand jury or jail, because somebody might have talked to somebody about this?

Woodward’s concern is and always has been protecting the journalist-government love affair which has ruined our press’ primary function: to be an adversarial watchdog over the Government, not a cocktail party outlet for its propaganda. It is a good thing that Woodward’s true function in Washington is now being so starkly revealed.

William Bennett's hysterical rant against Jay Rockefeller

William J. Bennett, writing in National Review, works himself into a truly bizarre fit of pious rage, distorting a plainly innocuous quote from Sen. Jay Rockefeller into something sinister, and then -- based upon a meaning completely invented by Bennett -- all but demands that Rockefeller be booted from the Senate Intelligence Committee, investigated, and charged with treason.

Here's the Rockefeller quote out of which Bennett squeezed a whole column of petulant outrage:

WALLACE: Now, the President never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. The — I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq — that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.

Bennett's entire column is based upon the facially ludicrous notion that this Rockefeller quote constitutes a confession that Rockefeller disclosed top-secret information about U.S. plans to invade Iraq to those Middle Eastern countries. Amazingly, Bennett accuses Rockefeller -- all based upon this single quote -- of "tipping off sometimes friends and definitive enemies about war plans that not even the president has yet made as policy."

Bennett then darkly speculates:

If Syria — or elements in Saudi Arabia — began acting on this information before we even went to war in Iraq (more than a year later), then Senator Rockefeller may have seriously harmed, impeded, and hindered our war efforts, our troops, and the entire operation in the Middle East. This should be investigated immediately; and perhaps Senator Rockefeller should step down from the Intelligence Committee until an investigation is complete.

It's hard to believe that Bennett wrote this column with a straight face. The meaning of Rockefeller's statement could not have been clearer: Rockefeller believed that George Bush was hell-bent on invading Iraq no matter what and shared his opinion of what was likely to occur with foreign leaders. Rockefeller: "I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq."

Quite obviously, Rockefeller didn't have any classified information in January, 2002 that Bush had already decided to invade Iraq. If he did have any such information, that would be the real scandal -- a Republican scandal -- because George Bush was still claiming even as late as January, 2003 (a year later) that he had not yet decided yet to invade, and even then Bush was still peddling the ruse that he was hoping oh-so-very-much that inspections would work and war could be averted.

If, as Bennett stupidly implies, Rockefeller was privy to some sort of secret classified information in January, 2002, that the invasion of Iraq was a fait accompli, then it would mean that Bush officials lied -- repeatedly and unequivocally -- to the Congress, the U.N. and the American people, all of whom they were telling in no uncertain terms that war was "an option of last resort" which they had not yet concluded was necessary.

Bennett took a quote from Jay Rockefeller, blatantly distorted its meaning, and then wrote a whole column ranting against the meaning he invented, going so far as to call for investigations and implying that Rockefeller committed treason by helping Syria stay a step ahead of U.S. war plans. Are Republicans really this desperate now? And what happened to Bill Bennett? Is this the sort of crazed, dishonest shrillness to which he's descended?

Al Qaida's "Iraq branch"

This is the first paragraph of the Washington Post article on last Wednesday's terrorist bombing in Jordan:

Thousands of Jordanians rallied in the capital and other cities shouting "Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!" a day after three deadly hotel bombings that killed at least 59 people. Officials suspected Iraqi involvement in the attacks, which were claimed by al-Qaida's Iraq branch.

So al-Qaida now has a full-fledged "Iraq branch," which can organize and launch extremely deadly terrorist attacks on neighboring countries.

Regardless of one's views on the level and quantity of Iraq/al-Qaida connections before the war (if any), it is indisputable that al-Qaida had no such branch and no such capabilities based in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion.

Even if one believes that there are lots of important benefits from our invasion of Iraq, isn't this development unquestionably a very undesirable outcome of this war?

The ongoing rape of science

It's good to see that the Bush Administration isn't allowing its political and ideological beliefs to influence scientific judgments concerning our country's health policies:

Senior Food and Drug Administration officials were told that the application to sell the "morning-after pill" without prescription was going to be rejected before the staff completed its scientific review and months before the decision was made public, government investigators reported yesterday.

A report by the independent Government Accountability Office also said senior FDA officials, including then-Commissioner Mark B. McClellan, were actively involved in the politically sensitive decision -- one of four aspects of the agency's actions that the investigators called "unusual" . . . .

The GAO report, requested by Congress more than 16 months ago, said the agency did not follow its normal procedures in making the scientific assessment of the Plan B proposal and in having a top official sign off on the eventual decision after lower-ranking scientists refused.

The same article reported this completely-unrelated fact:

The application was strongly opposed by some social and religious conservatives, including 49 members of Congress who wrote a letter to President Bush asking that the application be rejected.

Efforts to determine whether Bush appointee Mark B. McClellan, the highly ideological former FDA commissioner, forced the rejection of the Plan B proposal were thwarted by this fact:

The letter noted that Congressional investigators had been unable to uncover the role in the Plan B decision played by the former agency commissioner, Dr. Mark B. McClellan, because agency officials told investigators that all of his e-mail messages and written correspondence on the subject had been deleted or thrown out. The Democrats charged that these acts contravened federal records laws.

The larger issues -- Iraq, terrorism, Katrina, budgetary recklessness -- are obscuring the extent to which religious conservatism is shaping and molding almost every aspect of U.S. domestic policy. Agencies and sub-agencies which receive relatively little attention but which have great influence on domestic policies have, in many cases, been turned over to religious extremists, and the lack of light being shined on these bureaucratic crevices in Washington means that they are running wild, without any real restraint or opposition.

Americans are going to wake up one day and look at the results of these largely covert maneuverings and find that there is a whole panoply of intrusive, religion-driven restrictions embedded into federal law in almost every sector.

Democrats should not tie themselves to the duplicity of recanting pro-war Senate Democrats

The White House and its supporters obviously believe they have finally come up with an effective tactic against the swirling WMD accusations: namely, repeatedly point out that Democratic Senators who had access to essentially the same intelligence reached the same conclusions as the Bush Administration reached about Saddam’s WMD activities. And they are largely right about this.

Democrats should not tie their fate to these position-switching Senate Democrats on the Iraq/WMD issue because pro-war Senate Democrats who now want to blame the White House for their vote acted no more admirably than the White House itself did.

Efforts by Democrats to defend these Senators and explain away these statements have been, for the most part, completely lame. And efforts by the Democratic Senators themselves to explain away their own statements have been even lamer; Sen. Rockefeller’s tortured self-defense with Chris Wallace this weekend was just embarrassing.

The reason these defenses of previously pro-war Senate Democrats aren’t working is because the excuses being offered just aren’t true. What really happened here is self-evident. It was not that these Senators were duped by the President and simply did not realize at the time that the White House was heavily involved in shaping the intelligence process. That was public knowledge at the time and they all knew that.

Worse, these Senators, especially Intelligence Committee members like Jay Rockefeller, had access to all of the intelligence necessary to be aware of the reasons to doubt the Administration’s WMD claims. The notion that there were some magical smoking guns in the PDB’s -- the only intelligence available to the President which the Intelligence Committee members could not access -- is absurd, especially since the Robb-Silberman Commission did access that intelligence and said it was even more alarmist on WMDs than the other available intelligence. Those facts aren’t going to go away simply by dishonestly denying them.

It was the American people -- not Senate Democrats -- who were duped into believing things about Saddam’s capabilities and activities that were not supportable, and in some instances outright negated, by the (largely classified) evidence at the time. Democratic Senators had access to all sorts of intelligence which the public did not, and they could have and should have known -- and arguably did know – about exactly the evidence which they are now citing in order to insist that they were tricked into supporting the war.

The reality is that when it came to the war in Iraq, Congressional Democrats failed in their duty to serve as a loyal but zealous opposition party which performs a watchdog function on the majority party. Particularly (though not exclusively) with regard to national security issues, many Democrats at that time were cowed into submission by their own political ambitions and more or less reflexively supported anything the Bush Administration wanted. More charitably, many of them were moved like the rest of the country by the still-stinging after-effects of 9/11 to stand deferentially behind the President when it came to the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East.

But regardless of the motives, the reality is that many Democratic Senators who would naturally oppose a war like this instead supported it, not because they were tricked by the President or fooled by fictitious intelligence that he concocted, but instead, it was because they were too afraid to oppose the war. It was only when the war started going badly and no WMDs were found did these same Senators try to pretend that the White House was to blame for their vote.

It is this game-playing which caused the Democrats to end up being plagued by the incoherence of John Kerry, a candidate who was absolutely tongue-tied on the most important issue of the 2004 election -- Iraq -- because his vote to authorize the President to wage war in Iraq, along with his pre-war statements in favor of the war, were in direct and obvious conflict with his campaign rhetoric attacking the war. And it was painfully apparent that he began to turn on the war which he had clearly favored (or which he had claimed to clearly favor) only when Howard Dean’s anti-war candidacy began to doom Kerry’s chances in the primaries.

And it was that confusion about the Democrats’ position on Iraq, more than anything else, which allowed the GOP to paint Kerry as a weak-willed, flip-flopping politician who changes position like the wind and therefore can’t be trusted, particularly when it comes to U.S. national security. Kerry turned on the war he supported once it started going badly and then, instead of taking responsibility for his mistake, tried to blame the White House for his vote. That’s the same vapid tactic Senate Democrats are resorting to now.

But denying the real reasons which accounted for these Senators’ votes is both ineffective and dishonest - it is really no better than whatever dishonesty the Administration is accused of engaging in with regard to the war. If Democrats are going to demand with any long-term efficacy that the White House finally come clean on Iraq, then the Democrats need to come clean, too.

It is just not the case that the Administration lied to defenseless U.S. Senators about the war and that Democratic Senators who supported the war were duped by the Administration into believing in bad intelligence. The reality is that the American people were duped in part because the Senate Democrats failed in their responsibility to rigorously scrutinize Bush’s pro-war arguments and to formulate their positions on the war based on principal rather than on short-term, self-interested political considerations.

People rely on their elected officials to make informed judgments about matters such as these. Senators have access to classified information which the public does not, and they are given the resources to remain informed about these matters, precisely because it is their responsibility to protect the people whom they represent. It is that responsibility which Senate Democrats failed so glaringly to fulfill.

Democrats should not tie themselves to the fate of the pro-war Senate Democrats who now wish to pretend that they were tricked. Pro-war Senate Democrats (who now want to recant without admitting error) acted dishonorably and with cowardice, and they are being duplicitous now in order to avoid admitting that. And that is becoming more and more apparent as the White House and its allies latch onto this issue in order to defend themselves.

There is a powerful argument to be made that the American people were helplessly fooled by the Administration’s rhetoric on WMDs, but there is no reasonable argument to make that these Senate Democrats were.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum set forth his case yesterday as to why it can be fairly claimed that the Administration abused pre-war WMD intelligence, and his argument perfectly illustrates that it is the American people who can fairly voice this complaint, not Senate Democrats:

In the debate on Iraq, Bush acted as both prosecutor and judge. He made his case as strongly as he could — which is fine — but he also withheld crucial information that would have allowed his opponents to make their case as strongly as they could — which isn't. In short, in order to further his own political aims, he abused his power to decide what information remains classified and what doesn't.

Senate Democrats did have access to much of the classified information now being cited as casting doubt on Bush's WMD claims, and Senate Intelligence Committee members had access to virutally all of it. They are therefore in no position to use Drum's argument as an excuse for their now-regretted support of the war.

By stark contrast, the American people did not have access to the evidence which undermined Bush's WMD claims, and for that reason, they do have grounds for claiming to have been deceived by Bush's excessively alarmist, and in some cases outright inaccurate, warnings about the threat posed by Iraq.

WMD Accusations & Patriotism: Reply to Jeff Goldstein

It is refreshing to engage in a debate about the Bush Administration's use of pre-war WMD intelligence without the usual obfuscating cliches and shrieking name-calling and rancor which almost invariably plague discussions of this issue. Rather than offer a point-by-point refutation to Jeff Goldstein's reply yesterday, which would likely just result in repetition, I wanted to highlight a few of the most significant points about which there is still something useful to say.

(1) Neither Phase I of the Senate Committee investigation nor the Robb-Silberman Commission examined whether the Administration distorted WMD intelligence.

Those who claim that it has already been proven that the Administration acted honestly with regard to WMD intelligence point to Phase I of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and the Robb-Silberman Commission. Goldstein’s defense of the “unpatriotic” label for those who believe the Administration lied about or exaggerated WMD intelligence rests largely on this claim.

But this assertion is simply untrue. The Senate Intelligence Committee expressly put off -- to the not-as-yet-completed Phase II investigation -- the question of whether the Administration distorted/lied about the intelligence it was provided, and the Robb-Silberman Commission made expressly clear that it was not examining that question.

Here is Michael Ledeen reporting in National Review on Jay Rockefeller’s description of the difference between Phase I and Phase II:

This report is said to focus on the intelligence "process" — that is, how information was gathered, analyzed, and provided to policymakers.

What a fine idea. But Rockefeller, at the press conference with Senator Roberts, was not happy about it. You could see that the poor man wanted, oh so desperately, to scream "Bush Lied!!!," but he couldn't go all the way. However, he certainly strained at his leash. Listen to this, for example:

The central issue of how intelligence on Iraq was — in this Senator's opinion, was exaggerated by the Bush administration officials, was
relegated to that second phase, as yet unbegun...

And here was Sen. Rockefeller’s description back in 2004 of what Phase II would, in part, entail:

According to a statement released by Rockefeller, the intelligence committee in February 2004 decided that Phase II would focus on five subjects. As he put it:

1. Whether public statements, reports, and testimony regarding Iraq by U.S. Government officials made between the Gulf war period and the commencement
of Operation Iraqi Freedom were substantiated by intelligence information;

The same article further reports:

Roberts' investigation had ignored such exaggerations of the Bush administration. At that press conference, Senator Jay Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the intelligence committee, pointed this out:

I have to say, that there is a real frustration over what is not in this report, and I don't think was mentioned in Chairman Roberts' statement, and that is about the--after the analysts and the intelligence community produced an intelligence product, how is it then shaped or used or misused by the policy-makers?

Nor was the Robb-Sliberman Commission empowered to investigate this issue, as the Commission itself made expressly clear:

Silberman-Robb Commission Report, 3/31/05: "[W]e were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community. Accordingly, while we interviewed a host of current and former policymakers during the course of our investigation, the purpose of those interviews was to learn about how the Intelligence Community reached and communicated its judgments about Iraq's weapons programs--not to review how policymakers subsequently used that information."

It is true that the Senate Committee purported that they found no analysts who claimed to have been pressured by the Administration to change their findings -- hardly proof that it did not occur. As Donald Rumsfeld is fond of observing: “An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and there are all sorts of plausible reasons why career intelligence analysts would be reluctant (to put it mildly) to complain to a Senate Committee about pressures that were exerted on them from the highest levels of the Executive Branch.

But regardless of whether there was undue pressure on intelligence analysts, the fact remains that neither the Senate Committee nor the Robb-Silberman Commission has resolved the issue at hand -- whether the Administration lied about, or deliberately exaggerated, the findings of the intelligence community.

(2) Attacking the President, even if it is solely for political gain, is not evidence of a lack of patriotism.

The crux of Goldstein’s accusation of a lack of patriotism against those who are raising these WMD issues is contained here:

Those who do know how intelligence works—and yet continue to suggest that Bush lied or manipulated intelligence in order to take us to war—are more concerned with damaging the Bush presidency than they are with winning the war.

Does it really mean that someone is unpatriotic if they are “more concerned with damaging the Bush presidency than they are in winning the war”? What if they believe that the war can’t be won, or that the costs to U.S. national security of "winning" exceeds the benefits to be gained? Or what if they believe that the longer we stay in Iraq, the worse our national security becomes? Isn’t it then an exercise in patriotism for them to do what they can to discredit the Administration and the war in order to compel a faster withdrawal of troops?

The interests of George Bush are not synonymous with U.S. national interests. Harming the former is not tantamount to harming the latter. Indeed, many people believe that the greatest thing they can do for their country as American citizen is to undermine Bush at every turn and expose what they believe are his great flaws – just as many patriotic Americans believed this about Clinton and did exactly that. They are doing this not because they want to harm America (which ought to be the standard for being "unpatriotic"), but precisely because they think that’s what is best for their country.

Whether they are right or wrong about that, the motivation which is driving them is to do what they think will make America stronger and better. It may be that they are completely off-base in their judgment as to what is best for the country, but the fact that they are acting with that motive ought to preclude -- really, by definition -- an impugning of their patriotism.

And, I would be remiss if I failed to note that the GOP political figures who were attacking Clinton’s wars as an unnecessary and corrupt surely could be accused – to use Goldstein’s standard for being unpatriotic – of being “more concerned with damaging the [Clinton] presidency than they [were] in winning the war.”

Finally, the claim that Bush lied about or deliberately exaggerated WMD intelligence is not tantamount to a claim that Bush acted unpatriotically or did so with venal motives.

It could very well have been the case that the Administration concocted or exaggerated the WMD threat not because Bush wanted war for bad, selfish reasons (Halliburton, avenging Daddy, the oil industry, etc.), but for good reasons – because he genuinely believed that the war was necessary for vital American security interests independent of the WMD issue (e.g., to re-assert American military power, to re-shape the Middle East into a stable, democratic region; to establish long-term military bases; to reverse Muslim perception that the U.S. supports dictatorships for that region).

The problem that likely arose was that those good non-WMD justification for the war would be insufficient for selling the Congress and American people on the need for this war, and they thus decided – as Paul Wolfowitz now famously suggested – to emphasize the WMD threat in selling the war because it was the one thing everyone could agree upon.

Thus, to raise questions about the Administration’s veracity on the WMD question does not, by itself, suggest that the Administration waged this war for unpatriotic or even misguided reasons. It is to suggest only that they did so in order to sell the need for the war – a war which they likely believed, genuinely, was necessary for American vital interests.

(3) The existence of a consensus that Saddam had "WMD’s" does not preclude a finding that the Bush Administration lied about or exaggerated the intelligence.

Goldstein seems to be suggesting that as long as a particular assertion found its way into the NIE, then the Bush Administration cannot be said to have done anything wrong by discussing it, no matter what they said when discussing it. But that is just illogical on its face. Surely, it was possible for Bush Administration officials to have characterized certain of the threats discussed in the NIE in inaccurate and misleading ways – by, for instance, describing potential threats as certain, by exaggerating the magnitude, immanence and nature of the threat, or by deliberately confusing Americans as to what the NIE said.

Moreover, as Administration officials surely knew, Americans would rely on the President to tell them the truth about the intelligence they had and the nature of the threats, so if he prevaricated about or exaggerated those threats, that is a very big deal regardless of what is in the NIE. My view on this issue is set forth in a post I wrote a few days ago:

[T]he way in which this debate has been cast is obscuring, rather than illuminating, its most pressing issue. The question that is being asked -- “Did the Bush Administration lie about WMDs?” -- is far too general to be useful, as it assumes that all WMDs were created equal, so that as long as it can be shown that there was reason to believe that Saddam had, say, a chemical here and there that could be weaponized (i.e., "WMDs" broadly speaking), then the entire panoply of pre-war Bush WMD claims would be vindicated, since that would mean that there was good reason to believe that Saddam did, indeed, have "WMDs".

That is just absurd. The WMD scare would never have worked if it was just about a couple of chemical weapons. What scared everyone into supporting the war was the prospect that Saddam had or was obtaining nuclear weapons, not just a few chemicals. Making that claim even scarier and more potent was the claim that Iraq was working with Al Qaeda.

Thus, even assuming it to be true for purposes of argument that there were reasonable grounds to believe that a pre-war Saddam had “WMDs” in the board sense of that term -- i.e., to include commonplace chemicals -- the fact that specific claims which were quite dubious were nonetheless advanced without qualification by the Administration regarding Saddam's nuclear capability and the Al Qaeda connection is very much of a big deal. It was the “mushroom clouds” and the nuclear suitcase bombs that scared so many people into supporting the war. For that reason, if the Administration's claims about that were unsupportable or exaggerated, it is not even remotely a defense to say that, well . . . there was some good intelligence that Saddam had a few chemical weapons.

Or, put another way, the fact that there was some evidence to support some of the pre-war WMD claims by the Administration does not, in any conceivable way, serve to justify or excuse the dissemination of other WMDs claims by the Administration for which there was no credible evidence or for which there was substantial evidence that the claims were false.

What sold this war to the American people and to Congress were these fears. People had these fears because of the things Administration officials said. Documents and evidence now publicly available for the first time make clear that there was substantial reason to have grave doubts about the veracity of those claims at the time they were made, even though the claims were being made by the Administration as though no doubts existed.

It cannot possibly be unpatriotic to be concerned about that and want to get to the bottom of it. It could be argued that what is unpatriotic is the desire not to do so.

Those Hunky, Masculine Warriors

One of the best and most incisive blog writers on the Internet, in my view, is Digby, and this post -- exploring the psychological motives of those belligerent, chest-beating warmongers who adopt the posture and language of a fearless masculine warrior even though they have never actually fought anyone and never would – illustrates why Digby is worth reading every day:

Vietnam, as we were all just mercilessly reminded in the presidential election, was the crucible of the baby boom generation, perhaps the crucible of America as a mature world power.The war provided two very distinct tribal pathways to manhood.

One was to join "the revolution" which included the perk of having equally revolutionary women at their sides, freely joining in sexual as well as political adventure as part of the broader cultural revolution. (The 60's leftist got laid. A lot.) And he was also deeply engaged in the major issue of his age, the war in Vietnam, in a way that was not, at the time, seen as cowardly, but rather quite threatening. His masculine image encompassed both sides of the male archetypal coin --- he was both virile and heroic.

The other pathway to prove your manhood was to test your physical courage in battle. There was an actual bloody fight going on in Vietnam, after all. Plenty of young men volunteered and plenty more were drafted. And despite the fact that it may be illogical on some level to say that if you support a war you must fight it, certainly if your self-image is that of a warrior, tradition requires that you put yourself in the line of fire to prove your courage if the opportunity presents itself.

You simply cannot be a warrior if you are not willing to fight. This, I think, is deeply understood by people at a primitive level and all cultures have some version of it deeply embedded in the DNA. It's not just the willingness to die it also involves the willingness to kill. Men who went to Vietnam and faced their fears of killing and dying, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, put themselves to this test.

And then there were the chickenhawks. They were neither part of the revolution nor did they take the obvious step of volunteering to fight the war they supported. Indeed, due to the draft, they allowed others to fight and die in their place despite the fact that they believed heartily that the best response to communism was to aggressively fight it "over there" so we wouldn't have to fight it here. These were empty boys, unwilling to put themselves on the line at the moment of truth, yet they held the masculine virtues as the highest form of human experience and have portrayed themselves ever since as tough, uncompromising manly men while portraying liberals as weak and effeminate. . . .

The only political aspirants among those three groups who failed to meet the test of their generation were the chickenhawks. And our problem today is that they are the ones in charge of the government as we face a national security threat. These unfulfilled men still have something to prove.

Now, none of this means, at least not for me, that there is something inherently corrupt or improper about supporting a war even if you never fought in one. In fact, I find that line of argument to be inane on its face, which is why I do not like the "chickenhawk" label and reject that argument. A country needs a majority of its population to support a war if it is to win, and the notion that nobody can support a war unless they fought in one is illogical and self-defeating. Roughly 90% of the country supported the war in Afghanistan, obviously including huge numbers of Democrats, ever though only a tiny fraction of that group even served in the military.

Nonetheless, there is no denying that attributes of physical power, aggression, virility, and a willingness to kill or risk one's life when necessary are masculine virtues which every society, including ours, instinctively values. And many men who are unable or unwilling to demonstrate these attributes through their actions -- either due to a lack of physical strength or personal courage -- find it necessary to compensate for this glaring deficiency in their manhood resume. And so they turn to the only thing they are capable of doing to establish some toughness credentials: talking tough, advocating battles that other men fight, striking the pose of a warrior while sitting in their suburban living rooms playing with their infants.

As I said, this does not mean, or even imply, that their views about war and foreign policy are wrong, nor does it mean that they ought to be excluded from participating in debates over these issues. But there is simply no denying that there is something missing inside men like this -- what is missing are the precise masculine-warrior attributes they revere. The contrast between their belligerent, tough guy rhetoric, on the one hand, and their physical awkwardness, their history of avoiding rather than seeking physical conflict and war for themselves, and their unseemly need to establish their own manhood the only way they know how (with risk-free words), on the other hand, is really too glaring not to notice.

Really, all one has to do is take a look at some of the he-men tough guys who shriek about the warrior mindset and showing toughness (while mocking those with different views as weak, soft, effete, and being unwilling to fight), and one immediately sees the visual proof for what Digby says about their psychological motives.

Here are some of America’s great warriors -- the ones who will beat their chests in front of you (from behind the keyboard) and mock those ("liberals") who, unlike them, are weak, mushy girly-men who lack the manly virtues which our warrior-heroes exemplify:

Richard Perle



Fred Barnes


Jonah Goldberg


Paul Mirgenoff, the Powerline Brigade





Karl Rove



Instapundit


Hugh Hewitt

Rush Limbaugh

____________________________

Is it really a great mystery why guys like this have a gaping, unfulfilled need to establish their manliness and warrior credentials through political dialogue, the only route they could find for doing so?

Just listen to the painfully revealing defense which tough-guy Jonah Goldberg gave for the war in Iraq:

Q: If you're a kid and you've had enough of the school bullies pants-ing you in the cafeteria, what's one of the smartest things you can do?

A: Punch one of them in the nose as hard as you can and then stand your ground.

Or, in Jonah's case, get someone else to punch one of them in the nose as hard as they can for you, and have them stand their ground for you, while you stay at home in your underwear nurturing your baby daughter and playing computer games. Jonah is candidly telling us -- albeit unintentionally -- why he supports the war: because bullies picked on him, and he needs some way to fight back.

What else is there to know? Just look at them. These guys are the ones who have had sand kicked in their faces their whole lives and have studiously avoided the exact type of physical conflict and confrontation which they now revere. And they have found the only way available to them to at least feel like hunter-warriors -- they play one on the computer, the television and the radio by striking the warrior pose, and by mocking in others the attributes of physical weakness, avoidance of confrontation, and a fear of fighting which they, though their actions, have demonstrated actually define them.

The respectful, polite GOP attacks on Clinton

When Instapundit decided a couple of days ago to label as "unpatriotic" anyone who believes that the Bush Administration deliberately misled the nation into war, one of his most eager defenders was Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom, who not only defended, but further advanced, the accusation. In response to my post yesterday documenting that Republicans made exactly the type of allegations against Clinton and his military deployments which Instapundit and Jeff believe to be proof of a lack of patriotism, Jeff wrote a reply in Comments, trying to distinguish between the GOP attacks on Clinton and the Democrats’ current attacks on Bush.

Goldstein’s whole argument rests on the question-begging assumption that, unlike the GOP’s attacks on Clinton, the Democrats’ WMD accusations against Bush have been definitively and dispositively disproven -- apparently all because a Senate Committee rejected them -- such that no person operating in good faith can continue to believe them. Thus, he reasons, since those who are voicing this WMD accusation can’t really believe it, they must be doing it to harm the President and without regard to the damage it does to our war effort, and that is unpatriotic.

Let’s put to the side the odd notion that when a Senate Committee speaks, it is to be taken as gospel, such that disagreement with its conclusions is proof that one has lost touch with reality. Let us also put to the side the fact that the question which Goldstein seems to believe that Committee answered -- i.e., whether the Administration purposely suppressed and manipulated pre-war WMD intelligence in order to create a false and unduly aggressive National Intelligence Estimate to show to Congress -- is precisely the issue which the Committee has not yet answered, because its GOP Chairman, Sen. Roberts, blocked Phase II of the Committee’s investigation (the part which was to deal with that question) until Sen. Reid, with his closed-door Senate "stunt," recently forced that part of the investigation to proceed.

Although that investigation is not yet complete, it simply undeniable that there is ample evidence which, if it does not prove, at least permits the good faith assertion that the Administration knew that many of the pre-war WMD claims which it was unequivocally asserting were, in fact, subject to grave doubt. Much of that evidence has been disclosed for the first time just this past week, which is what is fueling the renewal of this debate.

The notion, then, that this entire issue has already been conclusively resolved in Bush’s favor, such that nobody can reasonably discuss it any longer, is nothing more than self-serving, wishful thinking. There is ample documentary and evidentiary support for the belief that the Administration played fast and loose with the pre-war facts in order to sell the war. The only egregious bad faith argumentation that I can see is coming from those screaming "unpatriotic" in order to stifle the debate and prevent it from occurring.

The broader and more important point here is that these new GOP patriotism attacks are based upon the transparently false notion that Democrats are attacking Bush in a way that the GOP would never have attacked a Democratic President. After 8 years of the most extreme and virulent attacks by the GOP against President Clinton, that claim is just absurd.

Both sides are equally power hungry. At this point, both will use any tactic, provided it is effective (and regardless of whether it is fair or honest) which can hurt the other side’s standing. Both sides are brimming over with individuals and groups which recognize no constraints whatsoever on the rhetoric they employ, the accusations they make, or the devotion to having their side win.

A litmus test for determining whether someone has relinquished their intellectual honesty and replaced it with partisan blindness is whether they believe that the "other side" is more power-hungry than their side, or whether the "other side" will engage in tactics and attacks which their side is too decent and ethical to consider.

If you listen to right-wing radio or read its blogs, you will witness conservatives excoriating themselves for being too ethical, too upstanding and too demure, and they rail against their leaders for failing to engage in the vicious, win-at-all-costs warfare which "liberals" wield without mercy. And, of course, if you read the left-wing blogs, you hear the same exact complaints, only in reverse -- it is the right wing which is filled with amoral Machiavellian monsters, and liberal politicians must finally give up on their quaint standards of honesty and goodness and fight back.

Our political dialogue is fundamentally poisoned on both sides. And trying to figure out who started it is as impossible as it is pointless.

One can certainly argue that the starting point for this was the endless attacks on the Clinton presidency, involving every allegation from rape to drug running to murder, and culminating in accusations that he ordered military attacks just to distract attention from domestic scandals. It is hard to imagine allegations against a President which are more damaging to the U.S. than claiming that he is bombing another country or deploying the military not because U.S. national security requires it, but because doing so will distract attention from political scandals.

Goldstein tries to disassociate Republicans from tactics like the "wag the dog" accusation by claiming that it was emanating from just a few stray corners of the GOP, when the reality is that these accusations were loudly advanced by the two most senior GOP elected officials at the time, Senate Majority Leader Lott and House Majority Leader Armey, as well as by Sen. Larry Craig on behalf of the GOP Senate Policy Committee.

This onslaught of attacks on Clinton’s motives and honesty was followed, of course, by the crowning achievement of political destruction -- his impeachment over a sex scandal, despite his towering popularity. These GOP attacks on Clinton were coordinated and systematic.

Is there any doubt that these ugly, endless attacks by the GOP against Clinton are the ancestors of some of the more extreme accusations which have been disseminated against Bush -- that he went to war for Halliburton profits, that he had Osama bin Laden secretly imprisoned and would spring him right before the 2004 election, that he won both elections by virtue of vote fraud? No matter which anti-Bush accusation one wants to point to as being the most over the "line," the accusation has its roots in some equally poisonous attack made, over and over, against Clinton.

Or, in search of the starting point, one could plausibly claim that the mocking attacks on Ronald Reagan’s intellect and motives– rather than just his policies and viewpoints – was what really soured relations between the two sides. Or, I suppose, one could go back even further to the cultural wars of the 1960s to suggest that this is when the entrenched dichotomy began.

But identifying the starting point for this deterioration is an impossible and fruitless exercise. Our toxic political dialogue likely has no definitive starting point, but instead germinated by degree and then progressed incrementally to bring us to where we are now. And where we are now is that both sides mirror the other side’s tactics, accusations, and insatiable appetite for blindly partisan warfare, with virtually no recognized limits. And we are rapidly trending towards the elimination of the very few limits which remain.

That is why these pious patriotism attacks from Republican circles ring so false. After eight years of the most despicable and extreme allegations imaginable -- and after using its Congressional majority to impeach the twice-elected and highly popular U.S. President -- Republicans are in no position to hold themselves out as beacons of such lofty concepts as respecting the President’s standing during wartime, or the proper limits of political rhetoric, or the critical importance of avoiding arguments which are advanced strictly for political gain.

If, as we are now hearing, it renders one "unpatriotic" to attack a President’s honesty and motives, particularly with respect to war, then Republicans are as "unpatriotic" as the Democrats, because the Republicans did exactly that to Clinton which they are now decrying as "unpatriotic" when the Democrats are doing it to Bush. It is tiresome, cynical and hypocritical, and I really doubt that anyone other than the True Believers will be persuaded by it.

UPDATE: Goldstein has posted a reply to this post, which I just read. I will write a reply assuming I have things to say which I think advance the discussion.

Blogger self-righteousness

Last week, as I documented, a swarm of right-wing bloggers, including National Review’s Peter Robinson, shrieked that a CBS News poll showing a 35% Bush approval rating was fraudulent, manipulated and false – only for multiple polls released shortly thereafter, including from Pew, Newsweek, and Fox, to confirm CBS’ findings. As a result, I argued that those who viciously assaulted the integrity of CBS News and its poll should at least acknowledge their error, if not apologize for their false accusations, since they would be demanding (relentlessly, and self-righteously) that CBS do the same if it turned out that the bloggers were right and CBS was wrong.

At least one of the bloggers who was part of that mini-lynch mob has, in response to my post, apologized, sort of. He has at least acknowledged, commendably, that he was wrong to accuse the CBS Poll of reaching a deliberately skewed result in light of those subsequent polls.

I also received an e-mail in response to my post from Joe Malchow, the Dartmouth undergrad whose original post criticizing the CBS Poll became the basis for the other bloggers' attacks. The substance of his e-mail is as follows:

You should know that I am far, far more intellectually honest than you give me credit for. (And my spelling and grammar in the post your (sic) linked was also unusually poor, as I was in the throes of midterm studying and had little time.) A broader survey of my blog would reveal that. Just today, with the release of more polls, I did a post on the WH Comm. department's failings and the spate of [almost] concurring low approval ratings.

Joe's e-mail doesn’t address, at all, the false charges against CBS which he spawned, but that’s the e-mail I received from him. The other accusers, including Robinson and "Ace," have let their now disproven accusations against CBS News stand without comment.

This little brouhaha is relatively inconsequential standing alone, but it does illustrate a dynamic among blogs which is quite significant. As bloggers tirelessly declare, blogs have become an indispensable tool for compelling establishment institutions, government and media, to acknowledge and confront problems and even crises which they would, in the absence of blogging pressure, simply ignore. The list trotted out by the blog triumphalists to demonstrate their irreplaceable value in this regard is exceedingly familiar by now: Trent Lott, Rathergate, Eason Jordan, Judy Miller. Each of these controversies, to varying degrees, was catalyzed and fueled by blogs and likely never would have been acknowledged in their absence.

But blogs also can, and frequently do, serve as a repository for all sorts of reckless innuendo, baseless accusations and the assembling of lynch mobs over nothing. Because bloggers are really not accountable to anyone other than their (almost invariably) like-minded readers, it becomes cheap and easy to rant out one shrill accusation after the next without regard to whether there is merit to the accusation. That many bloggers are anonymous makes doing so even easier, and even cheaper.

If the accusation is revealed to be baseless and false, no problem - you just blithely move on to the next one, letting the prior allegations you spat out just linger until its odor slowly fades away, leaving residual damage (or worse) for the target of the false accusations. The bloggers’ fans will invariably forgive the injustice, because it’s directed at the common enemy, so even if false, the attack will be viewed as at least motivated by the right intentions.

Bloggers are the first to demand accountability and retraction from media outlets and politicians when they err. They should apply that same standard to themselves.

Reminder of GOP Attacks on Clinton's Motives & Honesty re: Iraq & Kosovo

So, we are now told by Instapundit and his throng of immediate defenders that it is unpatriotic to question the Bush Administration's honesty and motives in deciding to wage war in Iraq.

Does one become "unpatriotic" by making such allegations only with respect to this Administration and this military action, or does it always make one "unpatriotic" to argue that a President engaged in military action under false pretenses and for his own motives?

This question asks itself in light of these patriotism attacks, because it wasn't too long ago that GOP politicians and pundits were making exactly these same allegations against President Clinton with respect to his decision to bomb Iraq, to shoot cruise missles at Osama bin Laden, and to intervene in Kosovo.

A stroll down memory lane:

Rep. Dick Armey, GOP Majority Leader
"The suspicion some people have about the president's motives in this attack [on Iraq] is itself a powerful argument for impeachment," Armey said in a statement. "After months of lies, the president has given millions of people around the world reason to doubt that he has sent Americans into battle for the right reasons."

Rep. Gerald Solomon (R - NY)
"It is obvious that they're (the Clinton White House) doing everything they can to postpone the vote on this impeachment in order to try to get whatever kind of leverage they can, and the American people ought to be as outraged as I am about it," Solomon said in an interview with CNN. Asked if he was accusing Clinton of playing with American lives for political expediency, Solomon said, "Whether he knows it or not, that's exactly what he's doing."

Sen. Dan Coats
Coats, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement, "While there is clearly much more we need to learn about this attack [on Osama bin Laden] and why it was ordered today, given the president's personal difficulties this week, it is legitimate to question the timing of this action."

Sen. Larry Craig, U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee
The foregoing review of the Clinton Administration's prevarications on Kosovo would not be complete without a brief look at one other possible factor in the deepening morass. Consider the following fictional situation: A president embroiled in a sex scandal that threatens to bring down his administration. He sees the only way out in distracting the nation and the world with a foreign military adventure. So, he orders his spin-doctors and media wizards to get to work. They survey the options, push a few buttons, and decide upon a suitable locale: Albania.

The foregoing, the premise of the recent film Wag the Dog, might once have seemed farfetched. Yet it can hardly escape comment that on the very day, August 17, that President Bill Clinton is scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury to explain his possibly criminal behavior, Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton has ordered U.S. Marines and air crews to commence several days of ground and air exercises in, yes, Albania as a warning of possible NATO intervention in next-door Kosovo. . . .

Not too many years ago, it would not have entered the mind of even the worst of cynics to speculate whether any American president, whatever his political difficulties, would even consider sending U.S. military personnel into harm's way to serve his own, personal needs. But in an era when pundits openly weigh the question of whether President Clinton will (or should) tell the truth under oath not because he has a simple obligation to do so but because of the possible impact on his political "viability" -- is it self-evident that military decisions are not affected by similar considerations? Under the circumstances, it is fair to ask to what extent the Clinton Administration has forfeited the benefit of the doubt as to the motives behind its actions.

GOP Activist Paul Weyrich
Paul Weyrich, a leading conservative activist, said Clinton's decision to bomb on the eve of the impeachment vote "is more of an impeachable offense than anything he is being charged with in Congress."

Wall St. Journal Editorial Board
"It is dangerous for an American president to launch a military strike, however justified, at a time when many will conclude he acted only out of narrow self-interest to forestall or postpone his own impeachment"

Sen. Trent Lott, GOP Majority Leader
"I cannot support this military action in the Persian Gulf at this time," Lott said in a statement. "Both the timing and the policy are subject to question."

Rep. Gerald Solomon (R-NY)
"Never underestimate a desperate president," said a furious House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-N.Y.). "What option is left for getting impeachment off the front page and maybe even postponed? And how else to explain the sudden appearance of a backbone that has been invisible up to now?"

Rep. Tillie Folwer (R-Fla)
"It [the bombing of Iraq] is certainly rather suspicious timing," said Rep. Tillie Fowler (R-Florida). "I think the president is shameless in what he would do to stay in office."

Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum
First, it [intervention in Kosovo] is a "wag the dog" public relations ploy to involve us in a war in order to divert attention from his personal scandals (only a few of which were addressed in the Senate trial). He is again following the scenario of the "life is truer than fiction" movie Wag the Dog. The very day after his acquittal, Clinton moved quickly to "move on" from the subject of impeachment by announcing threats to bomb and to send U.S. ground troops into the civil war in Kosovo between Serbian authorities and ethnic Albanians fighting for independence. He scheduled Americans to be part of a NATO force under non-American command.

Jim Hoagland, Washington Post
"President Clinton has indelibly associated a justified military response ... with his own wrongdoing. ... Clinton has now injected the impeachment process against him into foreign policy, and vice versa"

Byron York, National Review
Instead of striking a strong blow against terrorism, the action [launching cruise missles at bin Laden] set off a howling debate about Clinton's motives. The president ordered the action three days after appearing before the grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair, and Clinton's critics accused him of using military action to change the subject from the sex-and-perjury scandal — the so-called "wag the dog" strategy.

Wall St. Journal editorial
"Perceptions that the American president is less interested in the global consequences than in taking any action that will enable him to hold onto power [are] a further demonstration that he has dangerously compromised himself in conducting the nation's affairs, and should be impeached"
_______________

Are all of those GOP political leaders and media pundits "unpatriotic" for questioning the veracity of Clinton's grounds for these military decisions and for questioning his motives in choosing them? Or was it OK to do that then but it's just not OK any longer?

UPDATE: One of Instapundit's principal defenders, Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom, replied to this post with a Comment. I replied to Goldstein's Comment in a new post, and he then replied to that post with a new reply on his site.

Bush's WMD claims: Fake But Accurate

Remember when, during the height of “Rathergate,” Democrats sought to direct attention away from the question of whether the specific Bush National Guard documents used by 60 Minutes were forged to the more general point that Bush failed to fulfill his National Guard duties irrespective of the authenticity of those documents? That response was subjected to incessant ridicule by Republicans, who mocked it as the “Fake-But-Accurate” defense, a little slogan they took such a liking to that they now rely on it to mock the Democratic position on all sorts of issues.

But now, in order to defend their Leader from charges that he lied about or knowingly exaggerated specific pre-war WMD claims, it seems like those same parties have rather suddenly gone from ridiculing this defense to passionately invoking it.

In the last week or so, numerous documents -- undoubtedly leaked by intelligence officials whose pre-war skepticism about WMD claims was ignored – have become available for the first time, and those documents cast grave doubts on specific WMD claims the Administration was making. The Washington Post this morning debunks much of Bush's self-defense speech yesterday by compiling and documenting some of the more precarious WMD claims made by Bush officials prior to the war – i.e., claims that were of doubtful validity at the time they were made, and not just in retrospect.

The documents in question reveal that there was substantial reason to doubt many of the most central pre-war claims which the Administration was loudly trumpeting to justify the war. Claims relating to issues as central as aluminum tubes, mobile biological weapons labs, uranium procurement efforts, and the Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection have been shown to have been seriously undermined, if not outright negated, by numerous documents and by substantial constituencies in the intelligence community -- much of which was available to the Administration at the time but not to anyone else.

None of that matters, insist Bush defenders, because the essence of the overall WMD claim was reasonable even if specific claims were not. Since the general conclusion that Iraq had WMDs prior to the war was supportable, they are now arguing, who cares if some of the specific claims made to bolster that case were based upon clearly discredited and quite obviously false information?

In response to the Post article, Paul of Powerline -- ironically, one of the prime propagators of the “Fake But Accurate” ridicule -- seeks to shoo away the annoying little evidence that specific WMD claims were likely false by noting that the Post article itself states that: “The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. . . .” From this premise, Paul protests:

If that's true, two questions arise: (a) what's all the fuss about and (b) why didn't Milbank and Pincus write this before, as the "Bush lied" meme went essentially unchallenged for weeks.

So there you have it. Who cares if specific evidence was faked and particular WMD claims were baseless? The overall point -- that Saddam had some WMDs -- was accurate (or at least supportable). So, demands Paul, “what’s all the fuss about”? Much of the evidence used to show that Saddam had WMDs may have been fake, but it was accurate -- Fake But Accurate.

It should go without saying, even to those who want to defend this war at all costs, that it is inherently significant, and incomparably disturbing, for an Administration to peddle knowingly false or exaggerated claims to the public and the Congress in order to manipulate them into supporting a war, even if the war was a good idea. Conservatives purported to be flabbergasted that anyone would invoke the “Fake But Accurate” defense to defend a news program, but it is truly inconceivable that anyone would invoke this defense to defend an Administration's knowingly making false claims about the reasons to go to war.

Moreover, the way in which this debate has been cast is obscuring, rather than illuminating, its most pressing issue. The question that is being asked -- “Did the Bush Administration lie about WMDs?” -- is far too general to be useful, as it assumes that all WMDs were created equal, so that as long as it can be shown that there was reason to believe that Saddam had, say, a chemical here and there that could be weaponized (i.e., "WMDs" broadly speaking), then the entire panoply of pre-war Bush WMD claims would be vindicated, since that would mean that there was good reason to believe that Saddam did, indeed, have "WMDs".

That is just absurd. The WMD scare would never have worked if it was just about a couple of chemical weapons. What scared everyone into supporting the war was the prospect that Saddam had or was obtaining nuclear weapons, not just a few chemicals. Making that claim even scarier and more potent was the claim that Iraq was working with Al Qaeda.

Thus, even assuming it to be true for purposes of argument that there were reasonable grounds to believe that a pre-war Saddam had “WMDs” in the board sense of that term -- i.e., to include commonplace chemicals -- the fact that specific claims which were quite dubious were nonetheless advanced without qualification by the Administration regarding Saddam's nuclear capability and the Al Qaeda connection is very much of a big deal. It was the “mushroom clouds” and the nuclear suitcase bombs that scared so many people into supporting the war. For that reason, if the Administration's claims about that were unsupportable or exaggerated, it is not even remotely a defense to say that, well . . . there was some good intelligence that Saddam had a few chemical weapons.

Or, put another way, the fact that there was some evidence to support some of the pre-war WMD claims by the Administration does not, in any conceivable way, serve to justify or excuse the dissemination of other WMDs claims by the Administration for which there was no credible evidence or for which there was substantial evidence that the claims were false.

Gay Groups Should Support a Ban on Divorce

Pam Spaulding at Pandagon reports that the author of the referendum banning same-sex marriages which just passed overwhelmingly in Texas has now announced that he wants to consider a similar ban on divorce, or at least significant restrictions on divorce.

I think that’s good news. I support a law banning divorces for Texans, as well as for the citizens of all of the other states which have adopted an affirmative ban on same-sex marriage in their constitutions or in statutes.

If our marriage laws must conform to Christian doctrine so as to bar gays from marrying, then it also must prohibit married couples from divorcing, and must also bar them from entering into so-called "re-marriages." As I pointed out last week, Christianity bars divorce and re-marriage every bit as much as it bars same-sex marriages. Thus, there is simply no intellectually or religiously honest way to claim that Christian values compel a ban on same-sex marriages while continuing to allow divorces and to recognize "re-marriages."

I really believe that gay rights organization should actively support measures like these. For one thing, whatever they have been doing thus far isn’t working -- at all. Every single state to consider same-sex marriage bans via referenda has passed them, almost all overwhelmingly.

The people supporting these same-sex marriage bans should be forced to acknowledge that under the most basic Christian principles, they cannot support the idea that we must conform our laws to Christian doctrine only where doing so restricts other people's behavior. If Christian doctrine should be the basis for our marriage laws -- as proponents of these bans have been expressly arguing -- then all divorces and marriages which are sinful under Christianity should be banned, not just same-sex marriages.

Although one wouldn’t know it from listening to "pro-family" groups, there are other mandates of Christianity beyond prohibitions on same-sex marriage. All of the divorces they are getting and the multiple "re-marriages" they are enjoying are as sinful under Christianity as same-sex marriages are.

Moralizing is easy when you don’t have to sacrifice anything or restrain yourself in any way. That’s why it’s so easy for these large majorities to approve bans on same-sex marriage. It doesn’t cost them anything, because they don’t want to marry someone of the same sex.

But they do want to divorce and find new spouses, often more than once. So let’s force them to follow through on their premise -- that our secular marriage laws must comport to Christian doctrine by excluding any "marriages" that are not permitted under Christianity -- to its logical conclusion.

Once they are married, they have to stay married. No more dumping your wife when the mood strikes or you find a newer, better, younger version. Till death do us part, for as long as we both shall live, vows before God, that which God has brought together, let no one put asunder - all of it – all of those Christian mandates should be reflected in our marriage laws.

And no more second, third, and fourth spouses either. Those are sinful and adulterous under Christian doctrine, too. Christian values and "pro-family" values compel that we not have our laws recognizing sinful, adulterous relationships as though they are "marriages."

The rhetoric about civil rights and equality is failing miserably – it is falling on deaf ears – because the vast majority of people aren’t having their equality and rights abridged by these referenda. But if it is made clear to them that the principle they are embracing will, should and must abridge not just the marriage opportunities of gays but also their own divorce and marriage rights, perhaps they will pay a little more attention.

If we really need to change our marriage laws because of threats to marriage, families, and children, then there is no question that divorce is a substantial menace. So by all means, let’s fix that, too. Let’s comport all of our divorce and marriage laws to Christian doctrine and save the family and its children by banning divorce. That should be the argument made by groups fighting for marriage equality.

Campus Conservatives have become the new PC whiners

National Review published an article yesterday trumpeting the latest campus "free speech" controversy, in which conservative students play the role of tormented victims, complaining of terrible oppression simply because others disagree with their viewpoints. Written by Jason Mattera, the spokesman for Young America’s Foundation, the article details the plight of the Federalist Society students at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, who, Mattera believes, are being treated with profound unfairness after they distributed some fliers promoting a speech they arranged by an author affiliated with Mattera's organization.

Why does Mattera believe that these law students have been so gravely wronged? It is not because the conservative group has been banned from promoting the speech. Nor is it because the speech itself has been prohibited. And it is also not because the students were disciplined in any way, or even threatened with discipline, because of the flyers or the event.

Instead, their complaint is that the Dean of the law school, along with other students, have criticized -- disagreed with -- the ideas which the conservative group expressed when promoting the speech and with the ideas of the speaker herself. Listen to Mattera describe the crux of the complaint:

Dean Rudy Hasl responded to ads for a conservative speaker by issuing a mass e-mail decrying the lectures theme as "offensive" and "inappropriate."

Even worse, Mattera tells us that:

Conservatives there must stomach teachers excoriating Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and contend with professors quick to give Bush the middle finger.

Oh, the horrors. Contemplate the trauma and outright hostility which these conservative law students must have felt as a result of the Dean criticizing their fliers and their law professors speaking ill of Scalia and the President.

This campus "controversy," and similar ones being promoted by conservatives, illustrate a disturbing role-reversal driven by an increasingly strident mindset on the part of conservatives (students and professors alike) in academia. Legitimate complaints about free speech suppression at the hands of left-wing censors in academia have morphed into a petulant insistence that -- like their PC counterparts on the Left who preceded them -- they have the right not just to free expression of their opinion, but also the right to an environment that does not criticize, insult or offend them as a result of the opinions they express.

Campus conservatives now complain – loudly, shrilly and often – not just when they are prohibited from expressing their views, but also when their viewpoints are criticized or condemned, whether by other students, professors, or by academic administrators. In short, campus conservatives and the complaints they are manufacturing are now based upon the same noxious sense of entitlement to a criticism-free environment which the PC warriors on the left for so long demanded be accorded to them.

How ironic. And how pitiful. The political correctness movement in academia was borne of the toxic notion that students, and particularly minority students, were entitled to an environment devoid of ideas and opinions which were offensive to them. Leftist campus warriors demanded a ban on any opinions which made them feel that their environment was subjectively "hostile" to them, and insisted on punishment and even expulsion for anyone who exhibited "insensitivity" to their viewpoints.

The self-evident corruption of these demands became increasingly clear. The notion that academia, of all places, should be structured so as to prohibit ideas of any kind, let alone those ideas merely guilty of being "offensive" to some, was one of the most self-absorbed, dangerous, and just plain dumb arguments imaginable. If college and post-graduate students cannot bear to be exposed to ideas with which they vehemently disagree or which they find "offensive," the solution is for them to leave the institution and seek out a more comfortable environment (or grow a thicker skin), not for the institution to bar free inquiry and opinion -- the hallmarks of academia –- in order to make them feel better.

Conservatives in academia, who have and still do constitute a minority in most academic institutions, bravely and, for the most part, effectively fought against this institutional effort to suppress free thought. Conservative speakers are now common on even the most liberal campuses; conservative campus political groups are vibrant; and the most extreme left-wing efforts to suppress free speech have been sufficiently discredited and justifiably mocked so as to keep would-be censorious left-wing academic administrations largely (though not entirely) in check, at least insofar as it concerns the use of their institutional powers to actively suppress (as opposed to merely criticize or condemn) conservative views.

But having emerged substantially victorious in this battle to preserve their right to express their views free of punishment and suppression, conservatives in academia are now becoming the mirror image of exactly that which they have for so long condemned. Their complaints now center around and reflect an entitlement not just to speak freely, but to be free of criticism and condemnation when they do so.

This role-reversal is as transparent as it is disappointing. The most prominent such controversy in the last several years involved complaints by pro-Israeli students at Columbia University that certain Mid-East Studies professors were too pro-Arab and anti-Israeli, and as a result, the pro-Israeli students felt "harassed" and "intimidated" in the classroom. This led to all sorts of demands for discipline against the accused professors, and never-ending complaints from conservative students that they felt insufficiently respected. In demanding that more attention be paid to the oh-so-unfair treatment of these students, Jonathan Mark of Jewish Week summarized the victims’ complaints as follows:

In October, The New York Sun broke the news about a documentary film, "Unbecoming Columbia," that featured students and former students describing serial intimidation — verbal and academic — of pro-Zionist students, in and out of the classroom, by several Arab professors, mostly from the Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture (MEALAC) department. The anti-Israel mood is not limited to that department. More than 100 faculty members, reports New York magazine, have signed Israeli divestment petitions.

Isn’t this exactly what conservatives (rightfully) mocked for so long – female, gay, and black students who complained of insensitivity, hostility, and even "intimidation," all because they were subjected to viewpoints with which they disagreed? The central rhetorical tactic of the PC complainers was to conflate disagreement with some sort of assault, so that the former could and should be regulated and even prohibited just as the latter is.

This is exactly the rhetoric which the coddled, whiny students on the Right and their enablers have now adopted. It is now deemed somehow unfair, even oppressive, if professors and academic administrators express views which conservative students find offensive and wrong. Criticism of conservative students by professors, administrators and even other students is deemed to be harassment and intimidation, and cries for help then follow.

There should be no doubt that the Federalist Society law students at Thomas Jefferson had very hurt feelings when they learned that the Dean of their law school condemned the ideas of the speaker they had invited. But as conservatives persuasively preached for so long, one is not entitled -- especially in an academic setting -- to be shielded from ideas which may be "hurtful" or with which one disagrees. And, notwithstanding Mattera's cries of censorship on behalf of these poor Federalist Society members, having others disagree with your opinions is not evidence that you are a free-speech victim needing protection.

To the contrary, if campus conservatives are free to express their ideas and others are free to criticize them, even vigorously, that is exactly the state of affairs for which proponent of campus free speech should be striving. Equating disagreement with oppression is no more appealing coming from the Right than it was when it came from the Left.

Powerline: John McCain is "Pro-terrorist rights"

John McCain is a war hero; a recipient of the Purple Heart, Silver Star and Bronze Star; and a former Captain in the U.S. Navy. McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for 5 1/2 years after he refused his captors' offer to be released once they found out he was the son of an admiral. He is also a steadfast supporter of the war in Iraq and a proponent of aggressive military action across the Middle East.

Paul Mirengoff is a lawyer and a blogger. According to Paul, "Paul supports Everton FC of the English Premier Soccer League, as well as the Washington Redskins, the Washington Wizards, and the University of Maryland basketball team."

Also according to Paul, John McCain is "pro-terrorist rights." Pro-terrorist rights. Why? Because McCain thinks the U.S. shouldn't torture people.

Today, Mirengoff wrote this:

What about the United States? The pro-terrorist rights wing of our Senate is picking up steam, and our Supreme Court can never be counted on to resist European trends.

The link which Mirengoff provided to exemplify the "pro-terrorists rights wing of our Senate" is to an article from The Los Angeles Times ," entitled McCain Vows to Add Torture Ban to all Legislation.

To Mirengoff, if you don't believe that the U.S. government should be torturing people, it means that you are an advocate for terrorists. Merely to describe his position is to illustrate its idiocy. Is there anyone more consistently repugnant than those tough guy "buddies" at Powerline?

On second thought, mabye we don't need that leak investigation

Great moments in Senate Integrity . . .

Frist and Hastert Demand Investigation of Leak to Washington Post re: CIA "Black Prisons"

In the wake of the disclosure, the top Republican Congressional leaders - Speaker Denny Hastert and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, sent the chairmen of the Intelligence Committees a request Tuesday for a joint investigation into the origin of the article.

"If accurate," the letter said, "such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks."

THEN . . .

Trent Lott Says It's Probably a GOP Senator Who did the Leaking

Almost immediately, senator Trent Lott, of Mississippi, (who you will remember was deposed as senate leader by Rove and replaced by Frist) informed CNN that the leak most probably came from a republican senator, as "Every word that was said in there went right to the newspaper," he said. "We can't keep our mouths shut." Lott also reportedly said "We can not remain silent. We have met the enemy, and it is us."

NOW . . .

Sen. Roberts says that the investigation is not such a great idea

The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence told Senate leaders yesterday that Congress should hold off on a probe of the disclosure of classified information on secret prisons to The Washington Post until the Justice Department completes its own inquiry.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said he will "respectfully" request that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) back off a strongly worded request that a bicameral investigation into the disclosure be convened immediately.

AND . . .

Frist signals that he will likely accept Roberts' suggestion

Frist spokeswoman Amy Call said the majority leader had not decided how to respond. "He always takes what his chairmen say into consideration," she said.
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Seriously, what has happened to them? They never used to be this transparent. Is it really all due to Bill Frist's buffoonery, unsupervised by a distracted Karl Rove, or are they all just starting to turn on each other?

The media should stop withholding gruesome photographs of terrorism

Last week, I wrote a post regarding the refusal of American media outlets to publish graphic photographs of violent events (on the grounds of "good taste"), and contrasted that approach with the practice of even the most serious and respected newspapers here in Brazil, which routinely publish photographs that are shocking, and even gruesome, when doing so is necessary to convey the horrendous, violent reality of what occurred.

As I argued, the suppression of such photos has the effect of sanitizing and rendering abstract even the most extreme violence and horrors. Whether it be the pure evil of terrorists slaughtering, blowing up and beheading innocent people; the devastation wrought by war; or the bloody, gruesome human destruction caused by abortion or violent crime, graphic photographs convey reality in a way that mere words cannot. As a result, American newspapers do a grave disservice to their readers by suppressing such photos, while international media (such as those here in Brazil) do a far better job of informing their readers and reporting on such events by disclosing, rather than concealing, newsworthy photographs no matter how extreme and unpleasant.

The revolting terrorist attacks yesterday in Amman, Jordan and the resulting media coverage of that event, illustrate this point perfectly. One can read the words describing the slaughter of innocent people sitting in their hotel rooms or in a business meeting or at a wedding, and easily evade the truth and visceral horror of what occurred. With mere words, it is much easier to simply avoid ingesting the true magnitude of the evil and human destruction wrought by Islamic terrorists, and simply breeze past it, blithely continuing to block out the severity and uniqueness of the threat which terrorism poses.

But the photographs which readers of Brazilian newspapers woke up to this morning regarding these attacks – including on the front page – do not allow anyone to avoid the horrors of what took place. The photographs are gruesome, revolting and jarring – and they ought to be, because that is what terrorists do, it is what they are, and we ought to know and feel that truth. A substantial reason for the widespread and increasing complacency towards terrorism, which continues to threaten every aspect of the civilized world, is that people are too easily able to avoid its reality, because the media enables that avoidance by suppressing images of what is going on.

These are the photographs of the work of Islamic terrorists in Jordan which Brazilians, but not Americans, woke up to this morning in their newspapers. The first photograph was in the middle of the front page of O Globo, where it belongs, but in an much more close-up version, where one could really see the faces and everyday clothing of the international tourists and businessmen who were pursuing common activities when their lives were randomly exterminated:

Photographs like these should be on the front page of The New York Times, shown on network news programs, published in all newspapers. This is the menance that Americans are forced to confront, whether they want to or not.

UPDATE: For another example of the incomparable value of graphic photographs in understanding certain news events, see this post at Needlenose concerning reports of the use of white phosphorus by the U.S. military in its Fallujah offensive. Controversy exists over the accuracy of these reports, but surely the photographs -- which would never be published by U.S. media sources -- constitute important (or at least relevant) evidence to consider for anyone who wants the truth of what took place there, as well as important testimony to the human costs of the war.

Similarly, the undeniably stomach-turning photographs of the three school-aged Christian girls slaughtered and then beheaded by Muslims in Indonesia convey the utter depravity of the Western World's enemies with a visceral potency that mere words can never achieve.

Reminder of French Lectures to the U.S.

It is, of course, unseemly, and even arguably disturbed, to take pleasure in another country's riots.

Nonetheless, it is worth reminding ourserlves of the pious, pompous, condescending lectures about social order, racial and economic inequalities, and government competence which the French doled out to America in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

Philippe Grangereau in France's Liberation
"Bush is completely out of his depth in this disaster. Katrina has revealed America's weaknesses: its racial divisions, the poverty of those left behind by its society, and especially its president's lack of leadership."

Jean-Pierre Aussant in France's Le Figaro
"This tragic incident reminds us that the United States has refused to ratify the Kyoto accords. Let's hope the US can from now on stop ignoring the rest of the world. If you want to run things, you must first lead by example. Arrogance is never a good adviser!"

Le Monde
Le Monde credits the hurricane with highlighting “the country’s social inequalities”. It says: “Despite the economic and military strength it is prepared to deploy overseas, the United States has shown itself incapable of dealing with a catastrophe of this scale at home.”

Le Monde
Why did federal authorities under Bush's command "seem to be so little prepared in the face of a hurricane, the strength of which was known 48 hours in advance?" Le Monde asked. "Why did the [Bush] administration fail its first great [national-]security test since the September 11, 2001, attacks?"

Le Monde
"Is it well-advised to spend hundreds of millions" -- make that billions -- "of dollars to make war in Iraq when America is incapable of protecting its own citizens?" a Le Monde editorial asked.

Liberation
For the French, who feel greater historical, cultural, linguistic and emotional ties to New Orleans than perhaps any other American city, the daily front-page images have been gut-wrenching. "The rage of the forgotten" declared the headline of Saturday's editions of Liberation newspaper beside a photograph of a young woman on her knees, screaming in despair.

Liberation
"Bush had already been slow to react when the World Trade Center collapsed. Four years later, he was no quicker to get the measure of Katrina - a cruel lack of leadership at a time when this second major shock for 21st century America is adding to the crisis of confidence for the world's leading power and to international disorder. As happened with 9/11, the country is displaying its vulnerability to the eyes of the world. "

Liberation
"Katrina has shown that the emperor has no clothes. The world's superpower is powerless when confronted with nature's fury."

Le Fiagro
Saturday's lead editorial in Le Figaro questioned how the U.S. military could have been so quick to arrive in South Asia for the tsunami, yet "wasn't able to do the same within its own borders."

Liberation
The situation is still as desperate as ever for thousands of Americans after Hurricane Katrina's passage. Why was the United States so ill-prepared? Bush reacted slowly, the levees couldn't handle more than a Category 3 hurricane. In addition, despite evacuation orders, most in New Orleans had no mode of transportation and finally, the war in Iraq has sapped resources.

Emmanuel Todd, Le Figaro
American neo-conservatism is not alone to blame. What seems to me more striking is the way this America that incarnates the absolute opposite of the Soviet Union is on the point of producing the same catastrophe by the opposite route. Communism, in its madness, supposed that society was everything and that the individual was nothing, an ideological basis that caused its own ruin.

Today, the United States assures us, with a blind faith as intense as Stalin's, that the individual is everything, that the market is enough and that the state is hateful. The intensity of the ideological fixation is altogether comparable to the Communist delirium. This individualist and inequalitarian posture disorganizes American capacity for action. The real mystery to me is situated there: how can a society renounce common sense and pragmatism to such an extent and enter into such a process of ideological self-destruction?
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Could these snide criticisms have been any better molded to so accurately describe the profound social and ideological failures and complete societal decay in France, currently on display for the whole world to see?

Partisan shill pop quiz

Q. How do you know for sure that you are a mindless partisan hack without even an iota of intellectual honesty?

A. If you shill the party line and defend the Party even more automatically and shamelessly than its own elected officials and political operatives.

Virginia yesterday elected as its new Governor Democratic candidate Tim Kaine, even though Virginia is a solidly red state, and even though George Bush himself materialized in that state over the weekend to instruct the previously obedient GOP legions to go to the polls and vote for Republican Jerry Kilgore.

GOP operatives and politicians are admitting the obvious, because (even) they have to: this is a bad sign for Republicans and a by-product of Bush's staggering unpopularity:

''Republicans are not so angry at the president that they want to vote for the other guy. They just stayed home,'' said GOP consultant Rich Galen. Others noted that Bush battled conservative allies over Miers' failed Supreme Court nomination and has drawn criticism from within the GOP ranks for government spending.

''The one bright spot for my party,'' joked Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, ''is that the tab for the victory party at the Republican headquarters will be much smaller than if w