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March 31, 2006

Bloggingheads.tv Goes Right

Another Bloggingheads.tv episode is up featuring me and, this time, Byron York, White House correspondent for the conservative National Review. Yes, Bloggingheads is reaching out--well, at least, to other white-guy Washington journalists who are right-of-center. Recently Mickey Kaus fenced with Jim Pinkerton, a quirky conservative (who wants to give you tax breaks so you can colonize space--or something like that).

York and I discussed all the hot topics of the week. On immigration, I compared the Republicans to the final scene of Reservoir Dogs, where all the gangsters end up in a circle, guns drawn at each other. Someone pulls a trigger and...oops. York agreed that the GOP is in a pickle, but he maintained that the Democrats are not positioned to exploit it politically. He also said Andrew Card's departure from the White House won't mean much unless the Bush loyalist selected to replace that Bush loyalist has the assignment from another Bush loyalist (Bush or Rove) to bring into the White House someone not known as a Bush loyalist. We tussled over the wiretaps and my recent column accusing Bush of being an Orwellian demagogue. York wouldn't accept my use of the O-word but did concede Bush had engaged in "political hype," and he defended the warrantless eavesdropping. (It's not "domestic" spying, he argued, if one of the parties involved is outside the United States. After all, if you fly from Detroit to Berlin, that's an "international" flight, not a "domestic" one. Do you buy that?) Then we moved on the so-called war on Christianity (the newest version of the religious right's bugaboo, the war on Christmas). York essentially laughed it off as the paranoid delusions of fringe conservatives. Well, he wasn't that harsh. But I got the message. Finally, he explained why both Dems and Repubs are hypocritical when it comes to campaign finance reform and 527s. Visit Bloggingheads.tv to see why writers should stick to writing.

Posted by David Corn at 04:58 PM

Woodward and Reality

I just posted this in my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

Bob Woodward writes insider accounts of wars and the policymakers who wage them. He does so by talking to the insiders who--obviously--tell him what they wish to tell him. No doubt, Woodward does capture some (maybe even most) of what occurred. But what happens when the insiders try to spin Woodward or share with him a rather selective rendition of an important event? Does he buy it and sell it (literally) to the rest of us? The leak of a British memo recounting a January 31, 2003 conversation in the White House between George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair affords Woodward's readers a rare opportunity to factcheck the fellow who imbues his behind-the-scenes storytelling with an omniscient tone.

The Bush-Blair meeting came as Bush was moving closer to launching the invasion of Iraq. UN weapons inspectors were back in Iraq--thanks to a resolution passed by the UN Security Council the previous November--but the hawks of the Bush administration, including Bush himself, were by this point eager to declare the inspections a failure and to get on with the show. At issue was whether the Bush administration needed a second resolution from the UN that would authorize military action against Iraq. Blair wanted one. The prospect of war was unpopular in England; he needed the cover of a second resolution. Bush and his senior officials were not enthusiastic about going back to the UN once more. Bush had just delivered a State of the Union address that lay out the WMD case for war, and Colin Powell was about to make a more detailed presentation at the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and purported ties to al Qaeda. With the war preparations picking up speed, Bush and Blair met at the White House.

Now let's turn to Woodward. This is how he described the conversation between Bush and Blair in his book Plan of Attack:

Blair told Bush that he needed to get a second UN resolution. He had promised that to his political party at home, and he was confident that together he and Bush could rally the UN and the international community.

Bush was set against a second resolution. This as a rare case in which Cheney and Powell agreed. Both were opposed. The first resolution had taken several weeks, and this one would be much harder. Powell didn't think it was necessary....

But Blair had the winning argument. It was necessary for him politically. It was no more complicated than that, an absolute political necessity. Blair said he needed the favor. Please.

That was the language Bush understood. "If that's what you need, we will go flat out to try and help you get it," he told Blair. He also didn't want to go alone, and without Britain, he would be close to going alone. The president and the administration were worried about what Steve Hadley termed the "the imperial option."

So they were back in the briar patch as far as Cheney was concerned.

That's a rather straightforward description of a significant meeting. Earlier this week, New York Times correspondent Don van Natta Jr. published a front-page piece disclosing portions of a classified British memo that summarized this particular discussion. The memo was written by David Manning, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time and one of two Blair aides who were in the meeting. According to this document--which was stamped "extremely sensitive"--a different sort of conversation had occurred. Here are some of the key points in the memo:

* Manning wrote, "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin."

* Both acknowledged that no WMDs had been found in Iraq. Bush raised the possibility of provoking a confrontation with Saddam Hussein. One idea he proposed was placing UN colors on an American U-2 spy plane that would fly over Iraq and draw fire from Iraqi forces. Bush also discussed the possibility of assassinating Saddam Hussein.

* Bush did say that he would help Blair win a second UN resolution--and "would twist arms and even threaten," as the memo put it--but that if that effort failed he would still invade Iraq.

* There was tension between Bush and Blair over what might be a legitimate legal argument for going to war and what would be accepted by other nations.

* The two leaders talked about post-invasion Iraq, and Bush said that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Blair agreed.

* Blair asked Bush about planning for the postwar period. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who was in the meeting, assured Blair that much work had been done on this. Bush, the memo noted, "said that a great deal of detailed planning had been done on supplying the Iraqi people with food and medicine."

Read Woodward's account and you get the impression that Bush was doing all he could to help a buddy and that Bush was willing (more so than Cheney or Powell) to stick with the United Nations a little longer. Read the Times' account of the memo and you see that Bush had already set a date for war--despite saying in public that he hoped to avoid war--and that he had raised the prospect of staging an event to make it easier to sell the war. (Does a fellow looking to avoid a war talk about what could be done to provoke a war?) The memo also indicates that Bush and his aides were not fully prepared for the postwar challenges and that Bush and Blair had misjudged the sectarian divides within the Iraqi population.

Woodward likes to say that his best-selling books--which are good reads--are the first drafts of history. That's true. But they can also be tilted drafts--especially when his high-level confidential sources have an interest in tilting the facts. Whoever gave him the details of this Bush-Blair session--Rice, perhaps?--left out the best and most important stuff. The net result was a less-than-full but Bush-positive account of the event. This goes to show that Woodward is only as good as his sources and that those insiders are not always so good when it comes to disclosing the real story.

Posted by David Corn at 10:57 AM

March 30, 2006

Another Fancy Dinner in Washington

Last night was another one of those fabulous Washington, I'm-so-happy-to-be-here galas: the annual Radio & Television Correspondents Association dinner. Twenty-three hundred of your closest broadcast media friends, decked out in formal wear, gathered at the Washington Hilton. Usually the president shows and is required to do something of a stand-up routine. (Two years ago, George W. Bush joked about the missing WMDs. Most people in the room laughed, not me. Click here.) This night with Bush spring-flinging in Cancun, the honors fell to Dick Cheney. He dutifully poked fun at himself and his recent hunting mishap. He said nothing about the troops and the mission in Iraq (or Afghanistan). I don't understand why most people in the room felt compelled to grant him a standing ovation. Yes, it's the tradition and supposedly a sign of respect for the office, not the office holder. But perhaps its time to turn this dinner into a meritocracy in which the attending journalists only rise to their feet if they believe the president or vice president is doing one heckuva job.

Believe it or not, Cheney's bit was not the highlight of the evening. For me, it was, as it is most years, the before and after schmooze-fests. Some intriguing moments:

* Donald Rumsfeld chatting with a senior John Conyers aide, who handles the impeachment issue for the Michigan Democrat.

* Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist talking with assorted journalists about putting his multimillion dollar Washington home on the market-- a nice reminder that his stewardship of the Senate will soon (thankfully) be over. Then the fun can really begin: the Frist For President campaign.

* Retired General Wesley Clark praising the security platform the Democrats had rolled out earlier in the day. As he did so at Fox News' pre-dinner reception, one journalist (me) rolled his eyes. Clark astutely pick up on this and asked, "What's the matter with it?" Well, this journalist replied, under this plan, the Democrats promise to "eliminate Osama bin Laden, destroy terrorist networks like al Qaeda," How exactly do they propose doing so? The Dems also say they will "ensure" that 2006 will be "a year of significant transition" in Iraq (during which the Iraqi government and security forces will assume "primary responsibility for securing and governing their country") so US forces there can be redeployed. And the Democrats vow to "insist" that Iraqis "make the political compromises necessary to unite their country and defeat the insurgency." So hurray for ensuring and insisting! Sounds like a plan to me. Clark nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders, giving the universal sign for "I know, I know." But he said that he is often asked to speak to Senate Democrats on security issues and frequently no more than six or so show up. For the unveiling of the Democrats' new security plan, most of the Democratic Senators bothered to come. That's progress, he suggested.

I must confess that, in one way, I failed you. There came a moment at the Fox party when I was standing inches away from Richard Perle (who is looking somewhat ghostly these days) and after deciding not to accost him-- "Since you claimed that the U.S. could conquer and secure Iraq with only 40,000 troops, why should anyone listen to what you now say about Iran?"--I turned and came face to face with Donald Rumsfeld. What to say to him? I thought. I could practically feel his breath on my cheeks. He was wearing his squinty-glinty smile, and he shot me a nod that seemed to say, perhaps I know who you are but I'm not really sure. For a moment I considered remarking, "Mr. Secretary, when you suggested invading Iraq with 70,000 troops, what were you thinking? Or drinking?" But by the time I had formulated this bring-him-to-his-knees query, he had trained that smile on someone right behind me and was moving on.

The most poignant moment of the evening came at a post-dinner reception sponsored by Universal/NBC/MSNBC. Cable talk show anchor Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, came over to say hello to me and my conversation-mate of the moment (a producer from PBS's Newshour). Although we almost always disagree, Scarborough has been a friendly antagonist over the years, and he even had kind words to say about my book, The Lies of George W. Bush. As we chatted, I asked him if his MSNBC show was covering lots of true-crime stories these days, as are many of the cable shows. He told me that he was under considerable pressure to do more of that. Ratings for politics are medium, he said, ratings for international stories are lower, ratings for crime are... he then raised his hand above his head. But, he added, he was resisting. "I went to law school," he commented, "and if I wanted to do crime I would have become a lawyer." Scarborough was clearly saddened and troubled by the CSI-fication of cable talk shows. He said this was an unfortunate trend in his industry, noting that Bill O'Reilly's obsession with sex molestation cases was putting pressure on everyone else doing primetime cable shows. He was not a happy camper, indicating he'd rather be fired than be forced to wade too deep into that swamp. I felt sorry for him and wished him good luck in his fight against that powerful tide. Feeling sorry for Joe Scarborough? Things in the media biz must be getting pretty bad. But I encountered few people discussing such matters this evening. Why spoil a fine party?

Posted by David Corn at 11:22 AM

March 29, 2006

Orwellian--Or What?

My latest "Loyal Opposition" column for www.TomPaine.com. Please do visit that site....

Orwell Again
www.TomPaine.com
March 29, 2006

It is always perilous to invoke the term "Orwellian." It has become such an easy-to-hurl cliche, often used too quickly and in such a carefree manner as to dilute the visceral power of Orwell's original nightmare world of dictatorial double-talk in 1984. But try as hard as I might, I find it impossible to escape the word's gravitational pull when considering an exchange that transpired during George W. Bush's most recent press conference.

Fox News's Carl Cameron asked:

On the subject of the terrorist surveillance program....The primary sponsor [of legislation declaring the warrantless wiretapping illegal and calling for Bush's censure] Russ Feingold, has suggested that impeachment is not out of the question. And on Sunday, the number two Democrat in the Senate refused to rule that out pending an investigation. What, sir, do you think the impact of the discussion of impeachment and censure does to you and this office, and to the nation during a time of war, and in the context of the election?

Bush replied:

I did notice that nobody from the Democrat Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program. You know, if that's what they believe...then they ought to stand up and say it....They ought to take their message to the people and say, vote for me, I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program.

Before Bush answered this softball question, he had already, in a sense, scored a Big Brother-type victory. Cameron had used the administration's preferred term for the no-warrant eavesdropping that Bush had authorized: the "terrorist surveillance program.t And in his response, Bush deployed that phrase twice.

Terrorist surveillance program. Consider those three words for a moment. Who could be opposed to a terrorist surveillance program? No one. The operative question is how such a program should function. Who should be monitored? What guidelines, procedures and protections should govern the program? By using this term in a demagogic fashion, Bush is explicitly charging that if a person objects to wiretapping American citizens without a warrant he or she is opposed to penetrating terrorist operations. With such talk, Bush and his aides are engaging in--dare I say it--an Orwellian exercise.

They are crassly exploiting the rhetoric of fear. The critics of the warrantless wiretapping okayed by Bush are not saying that they desire no terrorist surveillance program. Yet Bush presents the issue as a harsh either/or--just as he did with the war in Iraq. Prior to the invasion, he claimed that the choice was either to mount a full-scale military attack against Saddam Hussein's WMD-loaded nation or do absolutely nothing, even though others advocated more aggressive and intrusive inspections and perhaps limited military action.

Dick Cheney has gone even further down the Orwell highway, equating criticism of the no-warrant eavesdropping with "the outrageous proposition that we ought to protect Al Qaeda's ability to communicate as it plots against America." In doing so, the vice president recasts expressions of constitutional concern as active protection of Al Qaeda. Give me another word for this--other than Orwellian.

Now ponder the frightening logic behind these statements and see how easy it can be stretched. If you do not support, say, the open-ended detention in secret jails of American citizens suspected of terrorism without any charges, then you are opposed to the terrorist apprehension program--and you are obviously protecting the ability of Al Qaeda operatives to concoct schemes to kill Americans and destroy this country. And if you think it is not a good idea to assassinate American citizens suspected of terrorism, you are then guilty of failing to support the terrorist prevention program.

By the way, it should be noted that the Bush administration has declined to extend its warrantless wiretapping to communications that take place entirely in the United States (as opposed to those involving at least one party who is overseas). Therefore, Bush and his aides are themselves protecting the domestic communications of Al Qaeda operatives who have already managed to gain access to the homeland.

Is it a surprise that Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove engage in this sort of rhetorical warfare? I suppose that depends on your view of their natures. But I have yet to seen members of the mainstream media cry foul. (My apologies, if I've missed someone doing so.) And at least one White House reporter, as noted above, accepts and promotes this insidious terminology.

And--don't be shocked--there's more. One could write an entire book (or at least quite a lengthy magazine piece) on how Bush and his team rhetorically linked Iraq to the horrific 9/11 attacks to justify the war. This past Sunday on Meet the Press, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried again. She told Tim Russert:

We're in Iraq because the United Sates of America faces a different kind of enemy in a different kind of war. And we have to have a different kind of Middle East if we're ever going to resolve the, the, the problems of an ideology of hatred that was so great that people flew airplanes into buildings. Iraq was--Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a threat. Now that the--

Russert was sharp enough to cut her off her at this point and interject, "But Saddam was not related to flying airplanes into buildings." Rice then countered,

No, and we have never said that Saddam--Saddam was not related to the events of 9/11. But if you really believe that the only thing that happened on 9/11 was people flew airplanes into buildings, I think you have a very narrow view of what we faced on 9/11. We faced the, the outcome of an ideology of hatred throughout the Middle East that had to be deal with. Saddam Hussein was a part of that old Middle East.

This is rather significant language. At first, we had a war on terrorism--not specifically a war on Al Qaeda. Now it's a war on the ideology of hatred. What's the slogan for this war? Let's hate hate? Rice is, of course, in error when she asserts that "we" never said that Saddam was related to 9/11, but that's another article. Yet Rice's refusal to acknowledge the administration's clumsy effort to tie Saddam to 9/11 was overshadowed by her argument that because the 9/11 hijackers hated America, America had no choice but to rid the "old Middle East" of the "ideology of hatred." That ignores the possibly relevant fact that Al Qaeda despised America for a different set of reasons than Saddam did. Lumping all anti-Americanism into a seamless, coherent "ideology of hatred" is a bolder rhetorical move than assailing an Axis of Evil. And since the "old Middle East"--including Iraq--still contains hotbeds of America-hating, what's next?

One other example, if I may: On Monday, The New York Times front-paged a story on a memo detailing a private conversation that Bush had with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on January 31, 2003. During that discussion, Bush made clear that he wanted war, not a diplomatic resolution--which was contrary to his public position. Not so, says the White House. Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, told the Times, "The public record at the time, including numerous statements by the President, makes clear that the administration was continuing to pursue a diplomatic solution into 2003. Saddam Hussein was given every opportunity to comply, but he chose continued defiance, even after being given one final opportunity to comply or face serious consequences."

Saddam Hussein--murderous tyrant that he was--had not chosen outright defiance. U.N. weapons inspectors were in Iraq and doing (what turns out to have been) a decent job. Certainly, Saddam was putting up obstacles, but the inspectors were working through these issues and generally reporting that they were making progress. But what was particularly slippery about Jones' response was that it ignored a key portion of the memo: a passage (previously reported in the British press) that noted that Bush had talked to Blair about trying to provoke a confrontation with Saddam, as the Times put it, by painting "a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire." I ask you: is this the notion of a president who prefers a diplomatic solution? In fact, it shows Bush was willing to engage in an act of subterfuge to create a pretext for a war. Orwellian? You make the call.

I try not to get overwrought when contemplating the excesses and consequences of the Bush administration. But it is hard to look closely at these matters and not question how far this administration is willing to go. (Note to Democrats regarding the 2006 elections: look out.) Perhaps a going-overboard reaction is appropriate. Still, charging this bunch with Orwellian practices--even if true--has a hackneyed ring. I wonder: what would George do? Orwell, that is.

Posted by David Corn at 11:06 AM

March 28, 2006

Card Folds, and Bush Draws to the Inside

From my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

The White House doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the term "fresh blood." It usually refers to new blood that is introduced into an anemic entity--not blood taken from one organ of an unhealthy body and placed in another organ of that unhealthy body.

But that's what the surgeons at the White House have done in the transplant operation that removed Andrew Card (a former lobbyist for the automobile industry) as White House chief of staff and replaced him with Joshua Bolten, the White House budget director. George W. Bush did not select someone who might have a slightly different perspective on his administration. Bolten has been in the White House since Bush was first inaugurated. Moreover, he has overseen one of the larger disasters of the Bush presidency: its fiscal policy. Here's how those radicals at The Washington Post editorial board recently described the situation:

President Bush has presided over a 46 percent increase in the federal debt, from about $5.6 trillion [to about $8.8 trillion]. By contrast, during President Bill Clinton's two terms, the debt grew from less than $4 trillion to $5.6 trillion, a 28 percent increase -- and during the last few years of his presidency, Mr. Clinton actually began to pay down the country's "real" debt....

Mr. Bush has managed to rack up more new debt during his five years in office than the entire debt amassed by the United States through 1988. And there is more to come: The president's budget envisions the debt rising to $11.5 trillion by 2011. This means that an increasing share of an increasingly tight budget must be devoted simply to paying interest -- an estimated $220 billion this fiscal year alone. Remember: This is the president who entered office promising to pay off $2 trillion in debt held by the public over the next decade.....

[A]s the debt ceiling approaches $9 trillion, it's time to pause and consider the unabashed recklessness of the Bush administration's fiscal policies and its unwillingness to alter its tax-cutting course to accommodate new budgetary realities. "Future generations shouldn't be forced to pay back money that we have borrowed," Mr. Bush said in March 2001. "We owe this kind of responsibility to our children and grandchildren." Where is that responsibility now?

Of course, Bush is most responsible for that lack of responsibility. But sharing the responsibility for being that irresponsible is Bolten. And his office has done its best to hide the true impact of Bush's budget decisions. So says the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities in its analysis of the White House's last proposed budget:

A standard part of the President's budget each year is a summary table that shows the impact of the Administration's proposed policies on the deficit. (See Table S-12 on page 364 of last year's budget.) This year, however, the Administration has eliminated that table from its budget publications, presumably to deflect attention from the deficit-increasing impact of its proposals.

Not just the liberals at CBPP believe Bolten's Office of Management and Budget at the White House has been dishonest. The centrist budget hawks of Concord Coalition have also complained:

Bush's budget fails to account for policies the Administration clearly and repeatedly has staked out as goals policies that would significantly increase the short-term and long-term deficit. In addition, the budget resorts to a familiar combination of unrealistic assumptions and scorekeeping gimmicks that understate likely expenses, overstate likely revenues and hide the costs of certain initiatives. Lastly, the budget's five-year window and limited goal of cutting the 2004 deficit in half by 2009 serve to divert attention from the fact that current policy is unsustainable over the long-term.

For weeks, Republicans and pundits have been moaning about the need for change at the White House. On Monday, Sally Quinn, the grand-dame of Georgetown, had an "essay" in The Washington Post that was an open letter to Laura Bush, calling on her to save her husband's presidency by forcing a shake-up at the White House. (The First Lady knows staff changes: she is on her second chief of staff, her second policy director, her second social director, and her third press secretary.) Quinn even mentioned bouncing Card--but in favor of some Washington poohbah with credibility on Capitol Hill and among the commentariat.

That's not Bolten. He is merely another Bush loyalist, whose stewardship of the administration's budget policy hardly inspires confidence in his integrity. Couldn't the White House get a better donor for the needed transfusion? I suppose David Gergen wasn't available. Fred Thompson is too busy making television shows and raising money for Scooter Libby's defense fund. And James Baker? Well, Bush the Younger may still be smarting over his dad's secretary of state's opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

Anyway, the problem at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is not who's managing the staff. The problem is the combination of policies, priorities and visions of the fellow who lives there. The mess in Iraq cannot be undone by better staff work. Nearly $12 trillion in debt cannot be erased by a more effective communications strategy. Bush cannot be removed from the bubble of his own policies--and certainly not by a Bush lieutenant. This staff change is not about new blood. It's just the recycling of thin blood already low on oxygen. And the patient remains the same.

Posted by David Corn at 12:14 PM

Woodpecker or Frog?

I've become a big fan of the AOL photo editor. Check out this morning's graphic for the big story on the shake-up (or sidestep) at the White House:

Whoever selects the pics for AOL does have a sense of humor. More on the Card departure soon....

Posted by David Corn at 10:56 AM

March 27, 2006

Panic on the Right?

Is there genuine panic on the right--or is it just a sales gimmick? Regnery, the powerhouse conservative publishing house, sent out a press release today pitching a new book by rightwing blogger/talk show host Hugh Hewitt, which apparently is based on the premise that the GOP is heading for a fall in a few months. I'm not a fan of Hewitt, and the last (and only) time I was on his radio show, he kept shouting over me in a way that made Sean Hannity seem as polite as church lady. So, please, don't see this as an endorsement. But here's how Regnery is selling Hewitt's book:

With the midterm elections just months away, it is "break the glass and pull the alarm time for the Republican Party," warns Hugh Hewitt in his compelling new book, Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority. Hewitt claims the upcoming November elections are shaping up to be as disastrous for the GOP as the elections of 1994 were for the Democrats.

The only hope, Hewitt argues, is to completely overhaul the current GOP strategy and engage grassroots activists in a new conservative fight for the heart of America.

Calling on his own extensive experience--and on the savvy political minds of Mark Steyn, Fred Barnes, Michael Barone, and others in exclusive interviews--Hewitt lays out the strategy that he believes will help Republicans win in 2006. In his book, Hewitt reveals:

* The Five Key Messages and Four Crucial Steps to a permanent Republican majority

* The Big Tent: How big is too big and which senator deserves to get pushed out of the Republican tent

* The next generation of liberal Democrats--if you thought Ted Kennedy was bad, wait till you see the party of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Howard Dean

* How the Democrats' alliance with liberal mainstream media can be turned against them both

* Where we go from here: coming up with the right candidate after Bush

I guess if you want to benefit from Fred Barnes' mind, you're going to have to buy this book. But last week, Barnes, that savvy fellow, had a piece in The Wall Street Journal, in which he called for Bush to shake up his Cabinet. And part of that, he advised, would entail kicking Don Rumsfeld out of the Pentagon and replacing him with Dick Cheney, who would give up the veep's office to make room for Condi Rice. What a great idea. Put Cheney in a post that requires Senate confirmation. Wouldn't it be a delicious moment to see Cheney have to answer questions--under oath--about the war, the wiretapping, the energy task force meetings with corporate execs, the Valerie Plame scandal, and much more. That would be more quite devastating for the GOP--even if he didn't shoot a senator by accident. (Remember, Cheney has an approval rating of about 18 percent--which is much lower than the approval rating of the war in Iraq.) I wonder if Barnes has donated similar pearls of political wisdom to Hewitt's book.
******
NOTE TO HOWARD DEAN, HIRE NEWT. I've taken plenty of pokes at Newt Gingrich over the years, but I've always respected his capacity for killer-instinct strategic scheming. So let me note that in Time magazine this week he has a terrific piece of advice for Democrats. Noting that the GOP has made a mess of much, he proposes a simple bumpersticker for the Democrats in 2006: "Had enough?" I've seen all sorts of lefties who have suggested running on troop withdrawal plans, impeachment and health care for all. But it seems the party cannot develop any consensus on these (and other) issues--and probably won't in time for the elections. So Gingrich may have given the Ds an overarching thematic message upon which they can all agree. Imagine the ads: Footage of chaos in Iraq, footage of chaos in New Orleans; pictures of Bush and Jack Abramoff; pictures of Cheney. And then those words: "Had enough?" Can the Democrats ever be that edgy and that creative?

Posted by David Corn at 08:24 PM

Bush's Power-Grab

Former Senator Gary Hart and UCLA history professor Joyce Appleby have written an interesting and succinct summation of George W. Bush's power-grab, arguing it is an outright violation of vision of America's founding fathers. The article has been distributed by the History News Service, and I first spotted it at History News Network, which is sponsored by George Mason University. (By the way, go GMU in the Final Four! The George Mason men's basketball team's victory over UConn on Sunday was a historic and wonderful sports moment.) Here's Appleby and Hart's take:

George W. Bush and his most trusted advisers, Richard B. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, entered office determined to restore the authority of the presidency. Five years and many decisions later, they've pushed the expansion of presidential power so far that we now confront a constitutional crisis.

Relying on legal opinions from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Professor John Yoo, then working in the White House, Bush has insisted that there can be no limits to the power of the commander-in-chief in time of war. More recently the president has claimed that laws relating to domestic spying and the torture of detainees do not apply to him. His interpretation has produced a devilish conundrum.

President Bush has given Commander-in-Chief Bush unlimited wartime authority. But the "war on terror" is more a metaphor than a fact. Terrorism is a method, not an ideology; terrorists are criminals, not warriors. No peace treaty can possibly bring an end to the fight against far-flung terrorists. The emergency powers of the president during this "war" can now extend indefinitely, at the pleasure of the president and at great threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed us under the Constitution.

When President Nixon covertly subverted checks and balances 30 years ago during the Vietnam War, Congress passed laws making clear that presidents were not to engage in unconstitutional behavior in the interest of "national security." Then Congress was reacting to violation of Fourth Amendment protections against searches and seizures without judicial warrants establishing "probable cause," attempts to assassinate foreign leaders and surveillance of American citizens.

Now the Iraq war is being used to justify similar abuses. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, providing constitutional means to carry out surveillance, and the Intelligence Identification Protection Act, protecting the identity of undercover intelligence agents, have both been violated by an administration seeking to restore "the legitimate authority of the presidency," as Cheney puts it.

The presidency possesses no power not granted to it under the Constitution. The powers the current administration seeks in its "war on terror" are not granted under the Constitution. Indeed, they are explicitly prohibited by acts of Congress.

The Founding Fathers, who always come to mind when the Constitution is in danger, anticipated just such a possibility. Writing in the Federalist Papers, James Madison defined tyranny as the concentration of powers in one branch of the government.

"The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department," Madison wrote in Federalist 51, "consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others."

Warming to his subject, Madison continued, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition;" the interest of the office holders must "be connected with the constitutional rights of the place."

Recognizing that he was making an appeal to interest over ideals, he concluded that it "may be a reflection of human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government." "But what," Madison asked, "is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

Madison's solution to the concentration of powers that lead to tyranny relied upon either Congress or the Supreme Court to check the overreaching of a president. In our present crisis, Congress has been supine in the face of the president's grab for unconstitutional, unlimited power, and no case is working its way towards a Supreme Court judgment.

If Madison's reliance on the ambition of other office holders has failed us, we need to look elsewhere. Can what Thomas Jefferson called the "common sense and good judgment of the American people" help us now? In the past, they have been a critical last resort when our leaders endangered the constitutional checks and balances that have made us the world's oldest democracy. But first the public must wake up to this constitutional crisis.

Posted by David Corn at 12:30 AM

March 24, 2006

Laura Bush, Savior?

Laura Bush to the rescue!

That's the solution prescribed by Sally Quinn, grand dame of Georgetown and occasional contributor of essays to the Style section of The Washington Post In Friday's edition, she publishes an open letter to the first lady, beseeching her to save her husband's presidency:

Dear Laura,
It's time for you to act. Nancy Reagan did it. You can, too.

Things are falling apart. They always do in the second term. And when they do, there's only one person who can change things: the wife. You are the only one who can tell him the truth. You are smart, astute; you're not afraid of him and you love him.

The "essay" goes on to quote fretful GOPers who are concerned that the guy married to Laura is too insular, too close to a handful of tired-out, stuck-in-a-rut aides, too dependent on bad advice from State and Defense, and too arrogant to clear the air by admitting he got the reason for war in Iraq wrong.

So it's time for a change. No, not resignation. But fresh blood around the president (even if, as Quinn gushes, "Chief of Staff Andy Card is one of the most well-liked people in Washington"). And Laura Bush, Quinn suggests, is the only one who can get her bullheaded podner to listen to reason.

Well, if the republic depends on Mrs. Bush, it might really be in trouble. There is nothing wrong in the practical political advice Quinn is so kindly sharing with the First Lady. But it does seem based on the notion that how Bush is managing the White House is more important than what Bush is doing with the power he has. Her piece does not reflect an inside-the-Beltway perspective but an inside-the-28th-Street-to-35th-Street-Northwest view of Washington. "The biggest problem your husband has now is that so many top Republicans have turned against him," Quinn writes. No, the biggest problem is that he launched a war on a false premise, and then he (and his aides, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) prosecuted it in a poor fashion. Too late to undo those mistakes (which Laura Bush did nothing to prevent). As they might say in Texas, it's pretty hard to get the cowpie back into the cow.

While it certainly wouldn't hurt to have Rumsfeld sent packing, it probably wouldn't make a tremendous difference--not if Bush, Dick Cheney (don't forget him), and Karl Rove remained. This president is not the puppet that some of his critics have charged over the years. He does make (or neglects) the critical decisions, and he does establish the overarching priorities and gameplans--such as staying the course. Laura Bush is not likely to change the fundamentals at work. Can she get her husband to be a better man? A lot of women do try to achieve that very thing. And a lot of women end up being disappointed. And if Quinn is actually counting on Laura Bush to save the Bush presidency--which, of course, is quite different from saving the nation--she may well be in for some disappointment, too.

Posted by David Corn at 11:58 AM

March 23, 2006

A Job in Iraq? The Lobster is Great

Below is an email sent out by an official at the Army Corps of Engineers in Baghdad that a reader passed to me. I confirmed the authenticity of the email but have withheld the name and title of the person who wrote it. This ACE official seems to be having trouble filling a job opening, and he hypes the perks: great pay, lobster, Harleys (at factory prices), decent shopping, an oversized pool, and the chance to help rebuild Iraq and "leave behind a safety culture." My hat is off to anyone who does try to help the Iraqis and who is willing to work in a war zone to do so. But with the Bush administration requesting no new funds for reconstruction in Iraq, I wonder whether ACE workers who want to rebuild Iraq will end up spending more time by the pool than the average government employee.

I need some serious network help from the team, please spread the word that I need an Industrial hygienist or Certified Industrial hygienist to support the IH program in Iraqi from Division level. I have offered the job to 8 top applicants, several could not pass the required physical, had a problem obtaining a security clearance or their agency would not release them.

The position is a GS-13 and base pay starts at $65,832 or $31.54/hour, with 35% post differential, 35% Danger pay. Also if within the government a SMA (separate maintenance allowance) starting at $9900 to 15K+ a year (tax free), a relocation bonus of 10 or 25% depending on what organization you come from with a minimum of 50 hours overtime a pay period, free food (we have lobster and king crab, shrimp, scallops, steak once a week and Baskin Robbins ice cream two meals a day 5-7 flavors), very nice free lodging (your own room and bathroom), free mail up to 13 oz, a softball league that safety took second place out of all 11 teams last season; GRD [Gulf Region Divison] is a great organization to work in with world class professionals, that are helping rebuild Iraqi and will leave behind a safety culture.

Bottom dollar, plug in the figures in the attached excel program at the top left (in yellow spaces) in the program and it helps you compute what you will make in 13 pay periods. You can find the salary information on the web and put in the figures to see which is beneficial TDY or TCS.

Estimated minimum (GS-13/1) with just post and danger, min OT and base pay is approximately $152,000/year without relocation or SMA, also there is R & R and other advantages; like buying a Harley Davidson or a new BMW at factory prices with delivery at your BMW dealer in the states or another car, unlimited exchange privileges, going on four day passes to see Qatar. Most do not know that 70% in Iraqi go to college, very bright and a great culture to work with. The processing at TAC is fast and efficient, you need a passport and a security clearance, be able to pass a physical and be proactive working in a team atmosphere.

You do not have to wear a military uniform all the time either, civilians can wear civilian clothes, blue jeans and a shirt with tennis shoes if they elect to. We also have a great pool in the IZ and I mean great never saw one as large not even the 7 million dollar one in Hawaii does not equal this one. We have our own workout gym with lots of brand new equipment and machines, sponsored runs and pretty good shopping every Friday morning at the Bazaar.

If you have someone that is an IH or CIH outside the government that is looking for a job have them send me their resume, we can also pick up non government on a schedule A appointment....Thank you for your help with this request to spread the word and it will be an experience they will not regret. Some team members are here on their 3[rd] tour!

[Name and title withheld]
Gulf Region Division, USACE
Baghdad, Iraq

Posted by David Corn at 01:57 PM

A Cheney Gag

On Face the Nation last Sunday, Bob Schieffer asked Cheney about his previous assertion that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes."

Cheney said that statement was "basically accurate."

Yeah, just like his aim when he went quail hunting with Harry Whittington.

Posted by David Corn at 12:14 AM

March 22, 2006

O'Reilly Does It Again

Bill O'Reilly truly has a you-know-what up his you-know-what about me. First he said last summer he would not book me on his radio show because I'm a "sewer dweller." Then in January he chastised James Carville and Paul Begala for using my work as a source in their new book, Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future. Last week, he took another swing. On his radio show, he talked up a New York Times article that reported that some of Saddam Hussein's top military officials believed that the boss did have WMDs squirreled away. Well, O'Reilly thundered, if the Iraqi generals thought this, then certainly it was not wrong for Bush and his aides to think the same. And that, he continued, means that anyone who accused the Bush crowd of having purposefully made false statements to sell the war are--guess what?--liars themselves. Here's a partial transcript of his rant, courtesy of Media Matters:

OK, we have an extraordinary story that broke in The New York Times over the weekend explaining weapons of mass destruction and what went wrong in Iraq. Now, as you know, The New York Times, a left-wing newspaper, which sometimes lets its hard news coverage be influenced by its editorial position, but in this case while they buried the lead, the definitely buried the lead, which means that they didn't tell you the most important of the story up front. It is an amazing display and it is true. And that's what we're going to talk about. Now, every person that said Bush lied about WMDs now has to apologize. Every single one. And what we're going to do is I'm going to name some of them and then you can call me at 1-877-9-NOSPIN, and you can tell me who you heard say that. 'Cause we have the politicians, but I'm sure that you heard lots of people, oh Bush lied, Bush lied, Bush lied. Um, they all have to apologize. And we're going to prove it. So that's coming up....

OK, here are the following -- just do a partial list of people who accused President Bush of lying the nation into war. John Kerry, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, Edward Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Mark Dayton, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Howard Dean, Al Sharpton, [Rep.] John Conyers [D-MI], [Rep.] Gary Ackerman [D-NY], [Rep.] Michael McNulty [D-NY], [Rep.] Dennis Kucinich [D-OH]. Now do all of those gentlemen owe Bush an apology? Do they?

How about on the entertainment front -- Will Smith, Chevy Chase, Johnny Depp, Ron Reagan Jr., Mike Farrell, Barbra Streisand, and the usual, you know, left-wing nuts like [The Nation Washington editor] David Corn and all of those people. Do they owe Bush an apology? I mean, this is very simple.

Saddam's own generals believed he had weapons of mass destruction. He sat down a few months -- three months according to The New York Times before the invasion and said, "Well, we don't have them." They were stunned. A month before when they watch Colin Powell at the U.N. lay out the charts and everything, the generals said, "Boy, he knows as much about this as we do."

So, I mean, with all due respect to Mr. Gordon, to me, I'm saying all right, now, if that intelligence is what the high-ranking officials in the Iraqi administration believed, well, the CIA got that information, passed it along to the president. Put yourself in Bush's position. I mean, I would have done the same thing. If all the top Iraqi generals think they have all of these biological and chemical weapons, then I'm going to assume they have them, correct?

Now it's only -- you gotta be a Kool-Aid drinker not to see the logic in this. You've gotta be crazy if you can't admit that all of these people have made a mistake and they should own up to it.

O'Reilly is double-backtracking. After having been a cheerleader for the war before the invasion--accepting the WMD argument whole-hog--he apologized in February 2004 for having too readily bought Bush's prewar assertions. He noted then that he had become "much more skeptical about the Bush administration," and he acknowledged, "I was wrong." He apologized. Now, he seems to be trading in that apology for accusation.

O'Reilly--no surprise--is looking at headlines, not facts. The Times story--an excerpt from Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor's new book, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq--was a good piece of journalism. But O'Reilly is comparing apples and orangutans. What the Iraqi generals knew about Iraq's WMDs is not the same issue as what Bush told the American public about Iraq's WMDs. One could write a book on the latter--and I wrote two chapters on the topic in my last book. But here are a few basics that I've presented before.

* Bush said that Iraq had stockpiled large amounts of biological weapons. The best intelligence at the time--and it was wrong--concluded that Saddam had an active biological weapons R&D program, which is not the same thing as a massive stockpile.

* Bush said in December 2002 that it was possible that Iraq already had nuclear weapons. No intelligence indicated that was a possibility, and no intelligence analyst or expert in the matter believed this. The CIA had concluded that Iraq was years away from developing a nuclear weapon.

* Bush said that Saddam was "dealing" with al Qaeda. The intelligence possessed by the US government did not support that assertion.

* Bush said the International Atomic Energy Agency had released a new report stating that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons facilities. There was no such report.

* Bush said there was "no doubt" about the WMD intelligence possessed by his administration. There was doubt about most of the significant WMD findings: the aluminum tubes (supposedly bought by Iraq to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons but actually purchased for rocket launchers), the mobile biological weapons labs (which did not exist), the uranium-shopping in Niger (which did not occur), Iraq's development of unmanned aerial vehicles that could hit the United States with biological and chemical weapons (which also did not exist). Within the intelligence community, there were analysts and experts that questioned each one of these assertions used by the Bush administration. And the Defense Intelligence Agency noted in a classified report in he fall of 2002 that there was no specific evidence to back up the presumption that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical weapons. So there was plenty of doubt about the intelligence. It just wasn't shared with the American public.

There are other examples I could hurl at O'Reilly--Media Matters has a list of its own--but what's the point? He's more interested in name-calling--I've gone from "respected journalist," as he once called me, to "slimy sewer dweller" to "left-wing nut"--than he is in a no-spin evaluation of the facts. But that's hardly news. And next time I'm hanging out with Will Smith and Johnny Depp, I'll make sure to order the Kool-Aid.

Posted by David Corn at 06:14 PM

March 21, 2006

Bush Slipping and Spinning at a Press Conference

From my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

In his Tuesday press conference, President Bush delivered the good news:

But I believe -- I believe the Iraqis -- this is a moment where the Iraqis had a chance to fall apart, and they didn't. And that's a positive development.

Not falling apart. That's hardly the prewar view of post-invasion Iraq Bush sold the American public three years ago. But "positive" has become a rather relative term regarding Iraq.

When asked whether he was concerned by the growing number of Americans who, according to the polls, are "questioning the trustworthiness of you and this White House," Bush replied,

I believe that my job is to go out and explain to people what's on my mind. That's why I'm having this press conference, see. I'm telling you what's on my mind. And what's on my mind is winning the war on terror.

Is that supposed to reassure Americans--or Iraqis? Such a remark prompts a larger question: why does Bush and the White House believe that sending him out to give a seemingly endless series of speeches on Iraq--and his plan for victory there--is going to change anything at this stage? This is the guy who said the war was about WMDs and who said virtually nothing when senior members of his administration before the war made it sound as if the post-invasion period would be a breeze. With that history, is sharing what's on Bush's mind about Iraq an effective strategy?

Asked about Senator Russ Feingold's bill to censure him for approving warrantless wiretapping conducted by the National Security Agency, Bush replied,

I think during these difficult times -- and they are difficult when we're at war -- the American people expect there to be an honest and open debate without needless partisanship. And that's how I view it. I did notice that nobody from the Democrat Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program. You know, if that's what they believe, if people in the party believe that, then they ought to stand up and say it. They ought to stand up and say the tools we're using to protect the American people shouldn't be used. They ought to take their message to the people and say, vote for me, I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program.

No needless partisanship? It's not needless partisanship to accuse the Democrats of being opposed to a "terrorist surveillance program"? This was a good example of the White House's Rove-ian response to criticism of the wiretapping program: equate the controversial (if not illegal) wiretapping with all surveillance conducted of terrorist suspects, including that which occurs lawfully under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and is monitored by the FISA court established by that law. No Democrat puts forward the "message" that "we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program." The only issue is whether wiretapping can be done outside of the FISA law--which Bush claims is permissible and which others (including assorted legal scholars) argue is illegal.

Dick Cheney took this counteroffensive one step further the day before Bush's press conference. Speaking at a GOP fundraiser at the Spread Eagle Tavern and Inn in Hanoverton, Ohio--pop. 388--he blasted Feingold and other critics of the warrantless wiretapping, by saying, "This outrageous proposition that we ought to protect al Qaeda's ability to communicate as it plots against America poses a key test for the Democratic leaders."

So here Cheney was not only whacking Democratic critics for being opposed to what Bush calls "a terrorist surveillance program." He assailed these Democrats for protecting al Qaeda's "ability to communicate."

Is not such rhetoric a tad partisan--and demagogic? He is accusing Dems of helping the mass murderers of 9/11. But since the Bush administration decided not to extend its "terrorist surveillance program" to domestic communications of terrorism suspects (and limited the warrant-free wiretapping to communications involving at least one overseas party), couldn't the same be said of the Bush-Cheney administration--that the president and the vice president are protecting the ability of al Qaeda suspects to communicate within the United States? It certainly could--if you were willing to engage in needless partisanship.

As for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, Bush did set something of a negative timetable. "Will there come a day--and I'm not asking you when, not asking for a timetable--will there come a day," a reporter asked, "when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?" Bush replied:

That, of course, is an objective, and that will be decided by future Presidents and future governments of Iraq.

In other words, three more years of US troops in Iraq--at least. Now that sounds like a no-spin-answer.

Posted by David Corn at 04:59 PM

March 20, 2006

Revenge of the Prewar Skeptics

In Monday's Washington Post, Howard Kurtz looks at the Revenge of the Prewar Skeptics, noting that Paul Krugman and I both recently called a prewar war-boosting pundit to task. In Krugman's case, he took on Andrew Sullivan; in my case it was Rich Lowry. Of my case, Kurtz writes:

A similar squabble erupted after National Review founder William F. Buckley, the intellectual godfather of modern conservatism, wrote that Bush must face reality: "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. . . . And the administration has, now, to cope with failure."

David Corn, the Nation's Washington bureau chief, used the concession to jab at Rich Lowry, National Review's editor, for having said while debating him that opponents of the war were enemies of democracy and freedom. "How can he not apply the same label to Buckley?" Corn demanded, adding: "If one side is willing to accuse the other of being weak, treasonous, and fans of tyranny, it is difficult to have a decent discourse."

Lowry responded by saying he didn't remember using that phrase, but that "I do remember complaining that in all our debates David had never once expressed the slightest pleasure at Saddam's ouster or the Iraqi elections. . . . For the record: I don't think David is an enemy of democracy, just a partisan blinded by Bush hatred. And I see no connection between the crowd-pleasing bile he sometimes spews at our debates, and Buckley's prudential doubts about nation-building in Iraq."

I appreciate the attention from Kurtz. That's an accurate summation of the back-and-forth--with one exception. Kurtz let Lowry's accusation against me stand unanswered. As I noted on this blog in response to Lowry's reply to me, I had indeed expressed delight at Saddam's capture and had called Iraqi elections a positive and encouraging development. I quoted previous postings to prove the point. It was, as George Tenet might say, a slam-dunk.

But I'm not going to get all huffy about this. Lowry and others can try to dismiss the prewar skeptics by claiming that they were only motivated by Bush-hatred--rather than prudence, caution, or a genuine concern that the war was not the appropriate response to the Saddam problem and could fare rather badly. But such an attack does not excuse their misjudgments and mistakes, which have led to the deaths of thousands and a mess that continues three long years after Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and others indicated that the war would be long done by now.
******
NEWS YOU CAN USE. I'm traveling on Monday. Don't expect any other postings. Pick up the slack in the comments section.

Posted by David Corn at 02:58 AM

March 17, 2006

Still Looking for the Smoking Gun in Iraq

I posted the below on my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com.

Doesn't the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee read? In a Washington Post article by Walter Pincus in Friday's edition, Representative Peter Hoekstra, who has succeeded in pushing the Bush administration to start releasing some of the 2 million documents captured in Iraq, said,

Whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them, the most important thing is that we discover the truth of what was happening in the country prior to the war.

Conservatives and war-backers have been howling for the release of all these documents because they believe--or hope--that they will contain a smoking-gun memo showing that Saddam had oodles of WMDs or was buddy-buddy with bin Laden. But so far, no soap. At least not from the first nine documents posted by the military. One actually shows that Iraqi intelligence in August 2002 was looking for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. This suggests Zarqawi was not given office space in Baghdad by Saddam, which is what some war supporters practically have claimed.

Back to Hoekstra. He's suggesting that that wily ol' Saddam destroyed his WMDs or sent them to Syria minutes before the US invaded. But if Hoekstra had bothered to read either the report from David Kay or the one from Charles Duelfer--the two pro-war fellows who headed the postwar search for WMDs--he would know that both concluded there were no significant amounts of WMDs in Iraq before the war and that Iraq's WMDs program were moribund. So there was nothing to hide or destroy. But let's wish Hoekstra well as he looks at each and every one of the two million documents for killer evidence to support the discredited prewar case for war.

Posted by David Corn at 11:22 AM

The Case of HRC and the Felonious Detective

I have long had an uneasy feeling about Hillary Clinton--and that goes double for her 2008 presidential campaign. In the months--perhaps years--ahead I will explore these feelings and share them. How else to cope with the prospect of HRC running away with the Democratic show? In any event, Tom Lipscomb had an interesting piece in Editor & Publisher on Hillary and the possible connection between the Clintons and sleaze-detective-to-the-stars Anthony Pellicano. There's going to be a lot of these sorts of articles on HRC in the coming two years, and her fans will dismiss them as nothing but the predictable Hillary-bashing. No doubt, some will be unfounded slime jobs motivated by Hillary hatred. But Dems should take a good look at each and every one of them, for they cannot afford to be saddled with a nominee who will generate more controversy than clarity. Here are some excerpts from the E&P article:

The New York Times began the week with a delicious glimpse of Hollywood Babylon, "A Studio Boss and a Private Eye Star in a Bitter Hollywood Tale" by David M. Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner. This is yet another tale of everyone's favorite rogue real-life Hollywood P.I., Anthony Pellicano.

He was private eye to such touchy stars as Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Michael Jackson. He handled his cases with all the subtlety of the baseball bat he bragged about keeping handy in the trunk of his car. The news that Pellicano finally got himself busted for possession of illegal explosives, was accompanied by the legal explosion of champagne corks all over Tinsel Town. After finishing a two and a half year sentence last month, to Hollywood's vast relief, he was immediately hit with a wiretap charge.

But as amusing as Pelicano's role in the hairpulling between a fourth-magnitude star like Gary Shandling, a sell-by-date endangered paramour, and a sticky fingers Hollywood climber who has just ascended a studio throne might be, it was just another of many available Pellicano peccadilloes....

So what was it doing on page one? And why did the story so studiously ignore and fail to explore far more newsworthy material on the same subject?

....He also had a long and close association with the Clinton White House beginning in the presidential campaign in 1992.

In an attempt to combat the "bimbo eruption" that occurred during the first Clinton campaign, Pellicano surfaced evidence that the Gennifer Flowers tapes of her long-term boyfriend Bill Clinton's phone calls were doctored. Pellicano's evidence was subsequently demolished, but the damage to Flowers's credibility was done.

Then, within four days of Matt Drudge's 1998 revelations about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton's relationship, Pellicano found Andy Bleiler. Lewinsky's former drama coach gave the world a blow by blow account of how Lewinsky had told him she wanted a job as a White House intern so she could earn her "presidential kneepads."

...[O]f course a lot of the attempts at Pellicano-Clinton connections were, are, and will continue to be politically motivated.

Nevertheless "enquiring minds want to know"--and with Hillary Clinton as the front-running Democratic Presidential candidate so should any decent newsperson. And yet in all the coverage of the Pellicano travails of the past four years not one Mainstream Media organization has bothered to look into any of this, from The New York Times to The Los Angeles Times.

...Did the current front-running Democratic Presidential contender Hillary Clinton hire or direct any or all of Anthony Pellicano's activities in her particular known area of interest?

Good question. It ain't necessarily Hillary-hating to ask that.

Posted by David Corn at 01:55 AM

March 16, 2006

Take the Rest of the Day Off

I'm traveling today. Posting may suffer. So talk to one another in the comments section or bash me some more for questioning whether an impeachment crusade is the most effective course of action for the anti-Bush opposition.

Posted by David Corn at 11:45 AM

March 15, 2006

U.S. Going Nuclear?

Here's an interesting press release about a report that probably will be read closely in Iran

New Report Shows Prominence of Nuclear Weapons in Global Strike Mission
Pentagon Preparing to Update Strike Plan

WASHINGTON, DC--(15 March 2006) Nuclear weapons are surprisingly prominent in the Pentagon's new offensive Global Strike mission, according to a report published today by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).

The report -- for the first time -- discloses the Concept of Operations document for the Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike, a new organization established in 2005 at U.S. Strategic Command to prepare and execute the Global Strike mission. The document lays out the responsibilities and structure of the new Component Command and reveals that nuclear strike planning forms a central component of the Global Strike mission. Other components are advanced conventional weapons, space, and information warfare capabilities.

"Global Strike was supposed to be the Pentagon's chance to show how they have reduced the role of nuclear weapons as part of the 'New Triad,'" said Hans M. Kristensen, author of the report and director of the Nuclear Information Project at Federation of Americans Scientists. "Instead, nuclear weapons appear to have been given a surprisingly prominent role in the new mission."

The 250-page report, Global Strike: A Chronology of the Pentagon's New Offensive Strike Plan, traces the development of Global Strike through a comprehensive compilation of guidance documents, public statements, budget program descriptions, contracts, and declassified military documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The report shows that the military implementation of Global Strike, a new strike plan known as CONPLAN 8022, is in the final phases of being updated.

Publication of the report coincides with a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on 16 March on Global Strike Plans and Programs in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2007.

Get the report here.

Posted by David Corn at 03:17 PM

Impeachable Strategy

If you're skeptical of the impeachment talk coming from some on the left--or not--below is my latest "Loyal Opposition" column for TomPaine.com. Comment away afterward. Am I thinking too conventionally, or are the impeachment advocates off the rails? And please remember to visit TomPaine.com from time to time.

Impeachable Strategy
David Corn
www.TomPaine.com
March 15, 2006

In 1868, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Andrew Johnson. The president was a Democrat. The House was controlled by Republicans.

In 1974, the House judiciary committee voted to impeach President Richard Nixon. The president was a Republican. The House was controlled by Democrats.

In 1998, the House of Representatives votes to impeach President Bill Clinton. The president was a Democrat. The House was controlled by Republicans.

See a pattern here?

Yet a band of left-of-center activists and a group of Democratic members of Congress are now calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush and acting as if this is a campaign that can actually succeed. A recent email from one pro-impeachment group declares, "Let's make impeachment our highest priority this spring--victory is possible!!" It scoffs at Democrats who dismiss impeachment as unrealistic and proclaims them the enemy.

There is nothing wrong with arguing that a president who overstated the case for war to whip up popular support, all for a misadventure that has led to the deaths of thousands, deserves the ultimate penalty. But neither is there anything wrong with recognizing political realities in assessing political strategies. Republicans don't impeach Republicans and Democrats don't impeach Democrats. So why waste time demanding that the Republicans politically assassinate the leader of their party?

This is not to suggest that the opposition ought to allow Bush's misdeeds to go unnoticed. In the March issue of Harper's, Lewis Lapham (whom I much respect and for whom I worked many years ago) has a cover story entitled, "The Case for Impeachment." At the start of the piece, he relates a conversation he had with Representative John Conyers, the senior Democrat on the House judiciary committee, who last December introduced a resolution in the House calling for the formation of a "select committee to investigate the administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment." What, Lapham asked Conyers, did the congressman hope to gain by this exercise? "What would you have me do?" Conyers replied. "Grumble and complain? Make cynical jokes? Throw up my hands and say that under the circumstances nothing can be done. At least I can muster the facts, establish a record, tell the story that ought to be front-page news."

Let it be noted that grumbling, complaining and making cynical jokes can be worthwhile endeavors. Certainly, the same goes for establishing the record and telling the story. In that regard, Conyers staff has produced a 182-page report that thoroughly describes much of the serious wrongdoing conducted by the Bush administration related to the Iraq war. But why did Conyers--who has more recently been accused by three former staffers of having forced them to perform personal tasks such as babysitting--have to peg his effort to the explosive I-word? Of course, Democrats ought to be calling for accountability and investigation into the prewar use of intelligence and similar matters.

Calling for impeachment--given the history noted above (and most everything we know about human nature and politics)--cannot escape the obvious slap-down: impeachment is a dream; it is so far-fetched a prospect that it raises questions about the sensibility and political judgment of anyone who suggests it be adopted as a real-life goal. A debating point, perhaps--but not an operating premise.

A possible reply to this slap-down is that other political movements that were fueled by high-minded principles not pragmatism did manage to succeed against the odds--the civil rights movement, the movement against the Vietnam War--and that those who accept the limits of conventional thinking condemn themselves (and others) to the status quo.

But--let's be real--those movements took years to gain momentum. And in the case of the civil rights movement, there was much tactical strategizing along the way that was shaped by hard-headed practical considerations. The impeachment of George W. Bush is not a cause for the ages. He will be out of the White House in thirty-four months. Yes, that is plenty of time in which additional damage can be done. But it's not much time for changing the fundamental political consciousness of the nation--and, more importantly, that of Congress. Bush's approval ratings are indeed in the tank. Yet is the public clamoring for impeachment--say, in the way it clamored for port terminals that are not owned by Arabs? And can anyone see a revolutionary change in attitude sweeping through the House and Senate that would permit the Republicans in charge to consider booting Bush for even a nanosecond?

The current crop of House Republicans--most of whom hold safe seats in gerrymandered districts--are not going to impeach Bush. Not this year. Not next year. They still support the war and, for the most part, accept the wireless wiretapping Bush ordered. These are party loyalists who won't even hold a hearing on Halliburton. What could conceivably turn them around in the next two years? Bad news from Iraq? Perhaps public sentiment could become so anti-Bush that House GOPers might feel pressure. But, once more, consider those gerrymandered districts. And remember that politicians--contrary to everything you know--do not always adjust their actions according to public opinion polls. Republicans pursued the impeachment of Clinton despite the polls that showed impeachment was unpopular.

So what's the impeachment game plan? Stir up public outrage to such an extent that Republicans--scared silly by a surge of people power--cannibalize Bush? That seems a quite bit tougher to achieve than the more down-to-earth goal of winning the 15 seats the Democrats require to gain control of the House. (And picking up those seats is already a tall order.) Impeachment certainly has a visceral appeal that some may not find in that mundane and tired ol' cause of let's-take-back-Congress. But unless you have a fanciful imagination, it's difficult to envision the former without the latter. And if your goal is impeachment, why focus on that controversial aim rather than on achieving the political power necessary for waging such a drastic step? The potential costs of an impeachment campaign are clear. It could cause Democrats to appear marginal or out-of-touch. (Sorry, that's how much of the world works.) And it could create a wedge issue--for Democrats. That is, it could lead to division among Democrats in the months before the 2006 elections. (Democrats.com, an Internet-based activist group that passionately champions impeachment, has been attacking Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean for supposedly trying to smother impeachment fever among Democrats.) As for the benefits--well, if Bush is not impeached before the next election, what are they?

One need not champion impeachment to whack the president. Consider Senator Russell Feingold. On Monday he introduced a resolution to censure Bush. "The president," Feingold said on the Senate floor, "authorized an illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil, and then misled Congress and the public about he existence and legality of that program. It is up to this body to reaffirm that rule of law by condemning the president's actions." There is no chance that this resolution will be adopted by the Republican-controlled Senate. But Feingold has taken a stand and provided a rallying point for those (in and out of the Senate) who share his belief that Bush trampled the Constitution by okaying warrantless wiretapping. There's a realistic way to defy political realities and an unrealistic way to do so. It's no sellout or surrender to recognize the difference.

Lapham elegantly concludes his article with these words: "It is the business of the Congress to prevent the president from doing more damage than he's already done to the people, interests, health, well-being, safety, good name and reputation of the United States--to cauterize the wound and stem the flows of money, stupidity and blood." In theory, the grand man (and wonderful writer) is right. But the Republicans in charge of Congress have been partners with Bush every bloody, stupid, costly step along the way. You may as well ask them to impeach themselves. For that matter, you may as well call on Bush and Dick Cheney to recognize their disastrous mistakes and resign. Let's remember that politics is about gaining and using power--and that gravity does apply.

Posted by David Corn at 11:54 AM

March 14, 2006

Check This Space Later

Got wrapped up today working on the next book. So talk amongst yourselves. Here's a question to kick things off. The White House says that Bush is going to give a series of five or so speeches to rally popular support for his management of the war in Iraq. Hasn't he tried this before? Is there anything--anything--he can say at this point that can have an impact on public opinion? USe both sides of the page if necessary.

By the way, I spoke to a prominent conservative today, and she told me she recently saw four Iraqi women involved in politics in Iraq with whom she has worked over the past few years. Asked about the prospects for democracy and stability in Iraq, they all confidently said, "Inshala, Inshala." And then they repeated that answer--several times. "Inshala" means "God willing." Then one took this American conservative aside and sadly said, "We just don't know how to do this."

Posted by David Corn at 04:43 PM

Pentagon Bugs Out?

A tip of the hat to my friend Shaun Waterman of UPI for writing the most gripping news story I've read in weeks. Here's a good chunk of it:

U.S. military plans to make insect cyborgs
By SHAUN WATERMAN
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor

WASHINGTON, March 12 (UPI) -- Facing problems in its efforts to train insects or build robots that can mimic their flying abilities, the U.S. military now wants to develop "insect cyborgs" that can go where its troops cannot.

The Pentagon is seeking applications from researchers to help them develop technology that can be implanted into living insects to control their movement and transmit video or other sensory data back to their handlers.

In an announcement posted on government Web sites last week, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, says it is seeking "innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect cyborgs," by implanting tiny devices into insect bodies while the animals are in their pupal stage.

As an insect metamorphoses from a larva to an adult, the solicitation notice says, its "body goes through a renewal process that can heal wounds and reposition internal organs around foreign objects, including tiny (mechanical) structures that might be present." The goal is to create technology that can achieve "the delivery of an insect within five meters of a specific target located at hundred meters away, using electronic remote control, and/or global positioning system." Once at the target, "the insect must remain stationary either indefinitely or until otherwise instructed...(and) must also be able to transmit data from (Department of Defense) relevant sensors...includ(ing) gas sensors, microphones, video, etc."

The move follows challenges the agency says it has encountered in its efforts to train insects to detect explosives or other chemical compounds, and to mimic their flight and movement patterns using small robots.

Several years ago, DARPA launched a $3 million project to train honeybees to find landmines. According to a report by the American Forces Press Service, scientists used sugar-soaked sponges treated with explosives to get the bees to identify the smell as a possible food source.

But last week's solicitation says the project didn't work out.

"These activities have highlighted key challenges involving behavioral and chemical control of insects... Instinctive behaviors for feeding and mating -- and also for responding to temperature changes -- prevented them from performing reliably," it says.

There's more. Read the rest here.

Posted by David Corn at 12:11 AM

March 13, 2006

Romney Sees Gay-Bashing as Key to White House Bid

Is it possible to run for the GOP presidential nomination without bashing gay people and their aspirations?

Mitt Romney, the Republican Massachusetts governor eying the White House (as if a Mormon from the Bay State has a chance), showed up at this weekend's meeting of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (held at the historic Peabody Hotel in Memphis, where I once had a lovely time watching Prom Night festivities with a soap opera star). The event was one of the first 2008 cattle calls for GOP presidential wannabes: McCain, Frist, Allen, Huckabee, and Brownback all were there, strutting their stuff. Most eyes were upon McCain, whose mission is to gather social conservative support so his next presidential campaign does not (like his last one) go down in flames in South Carolina. So McCain embraced Bush--the man whose 2000 campaign slimed McCain in South Carolina in a nasty fashion that had not been seen in years. (Did you know that McCain was brainwashed when he was a POW, had sired mixed-race children out of wedlock, and was married to a woman connected to the mob?)

But ambition trumps much, and McCain has put aside family honor for sealing a deal. And though he has whacked Bush in public on assorted policy issues--especially with the torture ban he forced down Bush's throat--McCain was eager to show that he can be as much of a Bush suck-up as the next Republican presidential candidate. "Anybody who ways the president of the United States is lying about weapons of mass destruction is lying," McCain declared before the crowd of 1500-plus. Let's rally around the president, he exhorted the crowd--even on the Dubai deal.

It will not be fun for us liberals in Washington who like McCain--for his (occasional) straight-shootingness, exuberant personality, and (occasional) semi-gutsy stands (for a Republican) on several issues (political reform, tobacco, global warming, torture, pork-barrel spending--to watch him pander to the right over the next two years, as he seeks the Republican Party's presidential nomination. He will have a damn hard time maintaining his quality brand as he slobbers over social conservatives and tethers himself to a president who keeps messing up. Teddy Roosevelt would have never done this.

But back to Romney--who may not be with us as a presidential candidate for as long as McCain will be. He, too, is courting the social cons bigtime. And he has decided the way to their heart is to slam gays. Assailing the Massachusetts Supreme Court's decision allowing same-sex marriages, he thundered, "Every child in America has a right to mother and a father."

A right to both a mother and father? But what if such a traditional parental couple is not available? Then does a child have the "right" to grow up within an institution or to live with a parent who doesn't want him or her? And does this mean that for all those children now living with same-sex couples (or single parents), their rights are being abused? Should the state burst in and cart them off--in order to protect their rights? Now why would Romney insult all these people--those living in the thousands of thousands of families headed by a gay couple? Oh, I forgot: to advance his own personal ambitions.

Romney has even recently changed his official stance regarding Massachusetts law regarding adoptions by same-sex couples. At first he said he was powerless as governor to prevent a state anti-discrimination law--which says that institutions arranging adoptions cannot discriminate against same-sex couples--from being applied to Catholic Charities. After Catholic Charities of Boston last week said it would end its adoption program (rather than keep it open to homosexuals), Romney said he would seek an exemption to the state law.

Reporting on this dustup, The Boston Globe noted,

In the past two decades, Catholic Charities in Boston placed 13 children with same-sex couples, a tiny fraction of the 720 children placed by the agency during that time. All were foster children who were considered hard to place, either because they had special needs or were older.

I wonder where those 13 "hard to place" children would have gone had not same-sex couples stepped up to the plate. Were the rights of those kids violated by these placements? By the way, after looking at several profiles of Romney, I see that he has five children, and none appear to have been adopted.

Telling kids you're better off bouncing around foster homes than being in a stable family with two mothers (or two fathers) is hardly compassionate. And it's hard to see how that shows you care about the rights of these children. If Romney is willing to throw hard-to-place kids overboard so early in his presidential campaign, one can only imagine what he'll be saying when the race heats up.

Posted by David Corn at 12:24 PM

March 10, 2006

A New Oversight?

The point of congressional oversight of national security matters is to assure the citizens of the republic that the government, when it engages in classified action, is not violating the law or the Constitution and not doing anything really stupid. Thus, the first meeting of the new panel set up by the Senate intelligence committee to oversee the warrantless wiretapping ordered by Bush was a disappointment. The establishment of this panel was somewhat absurd. The wiretapping was arguably (if not probably) illegal. But rather than investigate presidential action that might be unconstitutional or illegal, the intelligence committee, under the leadership of Republican chairman Pat Roberts, created a subcommittee to oversee the continuing warrantless wiretapping. And the members of this new subcommittee cannot tell any of their Senate colleagues (let alone the public) what they learn of this eavesdropping program.

So this subset of seven intelligence committee members (four Republicans, including Roberts, and three Democrats) had its first White House briefing on this wiretapping program yesterday. Afterward, Roberts released a statement calling the session "extremely productive and educational." Senator Jay Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the intelligence committee and this new subcommittee, only would say "it's too...sensitive to talk about." But the public needs to hear more from its representatives than that. The members of this subcommittee need not disclose the secret details of the wiretapping. But they should be reporting to the public whether the White House is giving them all the information they have requested, whether the administrations arguments justifying the program make any sense, whether this program is producing results sufficient enough to justify its continuation.

The existence of the program ain't no secret now. So there is less justification for the can't-say-anything approach too often embraced by the overseers of the intelligence community. Their job is not to be secret-keepers but to make sure the secret-keepers are engaged in legal and effective conduct--and to convince the rest of us that they are indeed keeping a close eye on the vast clandestine wing of our government.

Posted by David Corn at 10:19 AM

More Bloggingheads: Dems in Disarray, Hitchens on Iran, and Yglesias Takes on the Boss

Bloggingheads.tv has a new show up this morning. And, yes, it features the proprietor of Davidcorn.com--and liberal blogger Matt Yglesias. Millions, no doubt, will be glued to their ergonomically-correct chairs as they watch us take on a host of controversial matters. Are the Democrats in disarray? Or is this a media cliche? Did a former CIA official suggest that Bush did lie about the WMD threat in Iraq? Is Slate writer Will Saletan right on abortion when he encourages abortion rights advocates to give up on the second trimester? Is Christopher Hitchens right on Iran when he calls on the Bush administration to revive diplomatic relations with Tehran (instead of going bonkers over Iran's possible nuclear weapons program)? And--most important of all--is it not really a great idea for Springsteen to do an album of songs associated with radical folkie Pete Seeger? So if you want to see the blabbing heads behind the blogs, check out BHTV here.

Posted by David Corn at 09:43 AM

March 09, 2006

(Ex) Bush Lawyer Does Not Buy Warrantless Wiretap Argument

My hunch is that the Bush White House has managed (mostly) to turn around the warrantless wiretapping story. Civil liberties violations rarely become political hot-buttons. They can become the fixation of certain Americans--rightly so--but rarely hit American Idol status. The wiretapping story at first looked as if it would make it out of the civ-lib ghetto. It blew aside the CIA secret prisons story. It had GOPers--not just ACLU-luvin' Dems--frothing. But then Karl Rove got smart and tried to turn this big lemon into sorbet. the message was, Hey, Bush is so committed to kicking terrorist butt he'll damn-sure listen in whenever an al Qaeda guy is talking to someone in the United States. You'd rather be protected by Democrats who are too namby-pamby to do this? It was not a bad countermove (politically-speaking). And now with the GOPers in Congress having cut a deal with the White House on this sort of wiretapping and winning approval of a modestly-reformed Patriot Act, the Dems seem to be left only with Dubai--and that issue might fade with the new deal announced today.

But politics aside, the wiretapping episode raised significant legal and constitutional issues that have not been resolved--and that may not since there will be no congressional inquiry. Was it legal? Does the president have the power to ignore laws if he is performing his kick-terrorist-butt duties? Today, the National Security Archive posted some interesting records on this point: emails from the former Justice Department official in charge of national security issues in 2002 and 2003. And these communications show that this lawyer does not buy the White House's justification of the program. Here's evidence that there really is something in the water in the White House. Below is the Archive's press release explaining these emails. Click here to see the full emails.

The Justice Department official who oversaw national security matters from 2000 to 2003 e-mailed his former colleagues after revelation of the controversial warrantless wiretapping program in December 2005 that the Department's justifications for the program were "weak" and had a "slightly after-the-fact quality" to them, and surmised that this reflected "the VP's philosophy that the best defense is a good offense," according to documents released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and joined by the ACLU and the National Security Archive.

David Kris, the former associate deputy attorney general who now serves as chief ethics and compliance officer at Time Warner, e-mailed Justice Department official Courtney Elwood on 20 December 2005 his own analysis of the controversy, writing that "claims that FISA [the wiretapping statute] simply requires too much paperwork or the bothersome marshaling of arguments seem relatively weak justifications for resorting to Article II power in violation of the statute." The subject line of the e-mail was "If you can't show me yours."

On 22 December, after reading the Department's talking points as forwarded by Elwood, Kris commented that the Department's approach "maybe...reflects the VP's [Vice President Cheney] philosophy that the best defense is a good offense (I don't expect you to comment on that :-))."

On 19 January 2006, Kris wrote Elwood that the Department's white paper was "professional and thorough and well written" but that "I kind of doubt it's going to bring me around on the statutory arguments."

If you cannot convince your own lawyers once they are off the payroll, what does that mean?

Posted by David Corn at 03:57 PM

Jack Speaks

It's always good to start the day with a smile. Apparently, Jack Abramoff has been talking--to Vanity Fair, that is. And a few choice quotes have started circulating on the Web. There's this one regarding Tom DeLay:

"We would sit and talk about the Bible. We would sit and talk about opera. We would sit and talk about golf," Abramoff recalls. "I mean, we talked about philosophy and politics."

Yes, then after discussing philosophy, Abramoff would go bilk millions out of Native American tribes and DeLay would tell lobbyists that they could only talk to Republican leaders about pending legislation if they showered the GOPers with campaign contributions. What philosophers were they reading? Machiavelli? Sun Tzu?

But this is my fave. A spokesperson for Newt Gingrich told David Margolick of Vanity Fair that "before [Abramoff's] picture appeared on TV and in the newspapers, Newt wouldn't have known him if he fell across him. He hadn't seen him in 10 years." Abramoff responds:

"I have more pictures of [Newt] than I have of my wife."

What a romantic.

Posted by David Corn at 11:00 AM

March 08, 2006

Pillar at the CFR: Did Bush Exploit Fear? Did He Lie?

I attended an interesting chat last night at the Council on Foreign Relations. Paul Pillar, who was the National Intelligence Officer at the CIA in charge of the Middle East from 2001 to 2005, was explaining and expanding upon his recent Foreign Affairs article, in which he accused the Bush administration of not giving a damn about intelligence as it marched the nation into war in Iraq. Pillar's piece outlined how the we-know-better ideologues of the Bush administration perverted and politicized the intelligence process and abused the intelligence (the flawed intelligence and the good intelligence) produced by the CIA and other agencies in the run-up to the war.

Toward the start of the talk, Pillar said that he believed that the "main motivation" of the Iraq war was the Bush gang's desire "to stir up the politics and economics of the Middle East and use regime change in Iraq as a stimulus for regime change and other changes in the region." That is, it was not the WMD threat supposedly posed by Saddam Hussein's brutal regime or the purported tie between Baghdad and al Qaeda. But, he explained, "if you want to sell anything, the best thing to do is to link it...to the main concern of the American people"--which at the time was al Qaeda and 9/11. Thus, Bush officials repeatedly mentioned Iraq and 9/11 "in the same breath" to "create the impression of an alliance."

Pillar said he was hopeful that the obvious mistakes of recent years might temper and inform decisionmaking and politics in the present. For example, he remarked, "it is important to bear in mind that we don't know if Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon." He noted that he has seen plenty of politicians and commentators stating this possibility as a fact. And he explained that there is a "good analytic basis" for assuming this is indeed what Tehran is doing. But, he emphasized, "we don't know that." The same, he said, is true for North Korea. The lesson of Iraq, he commented, is that "analytical judgments too often get asserted as statements of fact." A judgment, he repeated, is not a fact.

The most poignant exchange of the evening came during the Q&A, when Marvin Kalb, the former network news correspondent who now is a senior fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Cetner on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, asked Pillar why Bush and his aides had not argued for war in real terms and shared with the public that the true reason they wanted to invade Iraq was to jiggle the geopolitics of the region.

"It's a lot harder," Pillar replied, "to make a case based on that...than it is to make a case built on fear, based on WMD, mushroom clouds, and dictators getting weapons in the hands of terrorists....That is a debate I wish we had....The American public has a right to know the real reason we go to war."

Kalb then remarked, "Then he lied."

"Your word, not mine," the career intelligence officer replied--without further elaboration.

Posted by David Corn at 10:15 AM

March 07, 2006

No Comment

From Dick Cheney's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Tuesday morning:

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the basic truths of the world we live in today is that George W. Bush is a man of his word.

Okay, one comment: No one has recently accused Cheney of being a realist.

Posted by David Corn at 05:33 PM

US Envoy in Iraq: In a Box or Out of a Box?

Here is yet another item for the "Now They Tell Us" file. This is from The Los Angeles Times:

BAGHDAD--The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Monday that the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime had opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war if America pulled out of the country too soon.

In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the "potential is there" for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war."

I seem to recall that before the invasion Khalilzad's neocon allies in and out of the Bush administration downplayed the prospect of ethnic and sectarian violence in Iraq--let alone civil war--and dismissed the judgments of regional experts who believed an American-led invasion and occupation could cause such trouble. No, Wolfowitz and the others knew better than the soft-on-war experts. It's only taken Khalilzad--an advocate of war against Saddam for years prior to 9/11--three years to catch up to the people he and his pals disregarded. Let's thank him for such belated frankness.

"We have opened the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?" Khalilzad said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times. "The way forward, in my view, is an effort to build bridges across [Iraq's] communities."

Of course, he's not going to counsel disengagement. But Khalilzad is turning one of the arguments that was used by those who advised not going to war (especially in the manner Bush did) into a reason for prolonging the misadventure in Iraq.

Comparing the invasion to the opening of Pandora's box sounds a bit defeatist. (Doesn't it, Rich Lowry?) And what's the lesson of the tale of Pandora's box? Don't open the lid. Doing so was a mistake. So will Khalilzad fully accept the metaphor he chose to use and concede that the invasion was ill-advised, particularly since it was mounted by people who refused to acknowledge (and prepare for) the obvious problems that would come? Or is he not yet willing to engage in that sort of out-of-the-box (for a neocon) thinking?

Posted by David Corn at 12:20 PM

March 06, 2006

Springsteen Does Seeger

I posted this in my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com

The best entertainment news of the weekend had nothing to do with the Oscars (though kudos to George Clooney, who picked up a statuette as best supporting actor, for defiantly defending Hollywood's out-of-touchness by hailing its ahead-of-the-curve support for civil rights and AIDS research.) No, the most interesting showbiz 411 was the announcement that Bruce Springsteen next month will be releasing an album, We Shall Overcome The Seeger Sessions, featuring thirteen traditional songs associated with Pete Seeger, the writer, performer, preserver, and champion of folk music.

With this disc, Springsteen continues as a pop culture-political force. It's an intriguing move for him. In the 2004 campaign, he spearheaded the anti-Bush and pro-Kerry Vote for Change tour--which also included R.E.M., Pearl Jam, the Dixie Chicks, Jackson Browne, Kenny "Babyface Edmonds, Bright Eyes and John Fogerty. Toward the end of the presidential campaign, Springsteen appeared with Kerry at huge rallies, in which he excited crowds but--unfortunately--highlighted the down-home-real gap between himself and the supposed star of these events. From identifying with Kerry's well-intentioned though poorly-presented conventional liberalism to celebrating Seeger's gritty authenticity and radicalism--that's an intriguing pivot.

Seeger has had a decades-long career that has combined promoting traditional folk music and practicing political activism. The latter led him to being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, where he was grilled on whether he was a communist. Seeger declined to talk about his political associations or ideas, but offered to tell the committee what songs he had sung in public. The committee was not amused. He was sentenced to one year in jail for contempt of Congress, but the verdict was overturned. Still, Seeger ended blacklisted and banned from performing on network television.

Springsteen's album is not an act of rehabilitation. That's hardly needed. Seeger long-ago transcended those ugly days. His neverending devotion to traditional music and activism outlasted his foes. But what Springsteen is doing is reaching beyond his roots to honor a historian of American song--for Seeger's mission has been to keep alive a certain slice of homegrown American music. The new album will include renditions of "John Henry," "Eyes on the Prize," "Shenandoah," and "We Shall Overcome."

Springsteen started out as a fast-singing wordsmith who obviously had been influenced by Bob Dylan and bar-band rock of the 1960s. But the Dylan who hovered over Springsteen's first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, was not the early, political Dylan but the next-generation beat-literary-fantastist Dylan, who threw together images and plot-lines to create impressions, not manifestos. In fact, Springsteen's career path flipped Dylan's arc. Dylan dropped the politics as his star rose; Springsteen expanded his range to include politics as his catalogue grew. It was after his Born to Run breakthrough that he began to identify with causes, perhaps first with his participation the No Nukes concerts of 1979. His songwriting, too, began to examine the plight--that is, stories--of living-on-the-edge Americans. "Born in the USA" was not a jingoistic anthem, as columnist George Will and Ronald Reagan falsely described it. It was a haunting tribute to veterans who had been screwed twice: first by the Vietnam War, then by the deindustrialization. The Ghost of Tom Joad, released in 1995, was a quiet-but-angry, Woody Guthrie-flavored look at the down-and-out of America. (Years earlier, Springsteen had started performing "This Land Is Your Land" during concerts.)

While Springsteen clearly made a conscious attempt to connect with Guthrie (as Dylan had done in his salad days), one might not have associated his decades of rock-driven work with Seeger. But by nobly nodding to Seeger in this way, Springsteen not only closes a circle, he advances it. This disc is a generous gesture. Fans of both men ought to hope the execution is as grand as the idea.

Posted by David Corn at 10:47 AM

March 03, 2006

More Bloggingheads/Bush's Hot Legacy

Check out my triumphant return to bloggingheads.tv. Robert Wright and I discuss everything that is on your mind: Bush in India, Iraq (rightwing commentators jumping off the ship), the Katrina video ("Any questions, Mr. President? None? Okay, we'll proceed"); Scooter Libby's hiring of a memory expert; felonious Duke Cunningham's hiring of a Beverly Hills shrink to help him avoid the maximum sentence of ten years (The Duke-stir, the shrink wrote, "came to the job of Congressman with the outsized sense of ego and a mantel of invulnerability....The process of rationalizing his behavior blinded him to the corruption it entailed, and led him to behave in ways totally antithetical to his life history,"); Rich Lowry and Ann Coulter; and the Oscars. I defended Munich, as I did on this site, and Bob noted, quite rightly, that not enough liberal/left bloggers have done so, while rightwingers have savaged the film and Spielberg. As for the Academy Awards, I'm not rooting for any particular film; I'm only rooting for Jon Stewart to give 'em (whoever 'em are) some hell.

Wright was still steamed that Coulter had accused him of showing affection for terrorists after he wrote in a New York Times op-ed that the outrage over the Danish anti-Muslim cartoons was not so outrageous--that is, that it was not "as alien to American culture as we like to think." That was precisely what I was going to think, but Bob, a smart fellow, got there first. Imagine the uproar if the Times ran a cartoon showing Jesus smiting Arab Muslims with a bloody sword and declaring they'd be better off as Christians. (That would only be a satirical depiction of the policy Coulter once advocated: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.") Sure, there wouldn't be rioting in Times Square, but a lot of people would be mighty pissed.

In any event, Bob was less angry at Coulter than at fellow blogginghead Mickey Kaus, who during a previous bloggingheads episode defended Coulter and betrayed his pal Bob. I'm with Bob. Coulter has made millions being a comic-book character who exploits provocation and eschews reasonable and facts-informed debate. No one should expect anything else of her--and Bob certainly doesn't. But he did wonder if Mickey's friendship with Coulter or her faux-blonde hair had gotten the better of Mickey's judgment. (Et tu, Mickey?) You can judge for yourself by looking at both conversations at bloggingheads.tv.

BUSH AND HOT WATER. So much for the infomercial. More bad news today on the Bush legacy front. The Washington Post is reporting this on its front page:

The Antarctic ice sheet is losing as much as 36 cubic miles of ice a year in a trend that scientists link to global warming, according to a new paper that provides the first evidence that the sheet's total mass is shrinking significantly.

The new findings, which are being published today in the journal Science, suggest that global sea level could rise substantially over the next several centuries.

It is one of a slew of scientific papers in recent weeks that have sought to gauge the impact of climate change on the world's oceans and lakes. Just last month two researchers reported that Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, and a separate paper in Science today predicts that by the end of this century lakes and streams on one-fourth of the African continent could be drying up because of higher temperatures.

The new Antarctic measurements, using data from two NASA satellites called the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), found that the amount of water pouring annually from the ice sheet into the ocean -- equivalent to the amount of water the United States uses in three months -- is causing global sea level to rise by 0.4 millimeters a year. The continent holds 90 percent of the world's ice, and the disappearance of even its smaller West Antarctic ice sheet could raise worldwide sea levels by an estimated 20 feet.

"The ice sheet is losing mass at a significant rate," said Isabella Velicogna, the study's lead author and a research scientist at Colorado University at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "It's a good indicator of how the climate is changing. It tells us we have to pay attention."

Not if you're George W. Bush. Here's more evidence to back up my prediction that 50 years from now Bush's presidency might be remembered--and scorned--more for its failure to address global warming than for its misadventures in Mesopotamia. Anyone want to bet me a hundred bucks on this?

Posted by David Corn at 12:16 PM

March 02, 2006

Replace George W. Bush with Michael Brown?

Well, the joke's on us. It seems the federal government might run better if George Bush left and Michael Brown remained. Can anyone who watches the quickly-infamous AP video of a pre-Katrina briefing--in which Brown comes across as engaged and Bush appears to be merely watching--conclude otherwise? Brown was worried big-time that the Big One was about to hit, and this former official of an Arabian horse society was asking the right questions about using the Superdome as a shelter for people who would be evacuated from their homes. Would the roof collapse? Would it flood? As the briefing proceeded, Bush merely offered vague reassurances--you can count on the federal government--and contributed nothing else. The tape is hardly an advertisement for his leadership potential.

Moreover, the tape shows that he was told by one of the hurricane experts participating in the video conference that the levees in New Orleans might fail. In response, did Bush slam his fist on the table and declare, "We must do everything possible to be ready for that. I want a report in three hours on the contingency planning for such an emergency. Failure is not an option!" Apparently, he had no such reaction. (At least he wasn't reading My Pet Goat.) And, as is well known now, after disaster struck the Big Easy, Bush, defending his administration's inadequate response, said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." There are three possible explanations for this false statement: (a) Bush was knowingly saying something untrue; (b) Bush had, in a matter of days, forgotten what he had been told at this important briefing; or (c) Bush had not been paying attention at the time. Which of these is the worst?
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YEAH, THAT'S IT. Talking to reporters today, Bush, who is in India, defended his administration's just-announced deal with India that will provide India with American nuclear technology and materials for its energy program. Since India, which has nuclear weapons, has refused to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty, critics charge this policy will reward a nuclear scofflaw. Nonproliferation advocates also argue that the arrangement might help India build more weapons--despite the controls that supposedly will be placed on India's civilian nuclear energy program--and that it will provide more incentive for Iran and other nations (especially in that region) to say screw-you to the global nonproliferation regime. Replying to all the criticism of the deal, Bush said, "Some people just don't want to change."

This is how Bush often answers criticism--by coming up with a simplistic formulation that ignores the substance of the debate at hand. Before the Iraq war, he addressed foes of invasion-and-occupation with a similar retort: the option of doing nothing is unacceptable. But the policy wonks and politicians opposing the war did not counsel taking no action. They called for more aggressive and more intrusive inspections. The choice was not invade and occupy or let Saddam run free and stockpile WMDs and nukes to his heart's delight. Yet that's how Bush depicted the debate. Is the commander in chief afraid of real debate?
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LIKE DRUNKEN SAILORS? For my take on how the UAE ports controversy has prompted selective outrage from politicians on both sides--who otherwise ignore other pressing security matters--see my latest TomPaine.com column here.

Posted by David Corn at 11:29 AM

March 01, 2006

Lowry Reponds...and So Do I (And a Update/Clarification}

After reading Bill Buckley's recent column, in which he contends that the war in Iraq is a failure, I threw a challenge at National Review editor Rich Lowry. Since during a debate with me last September, Lowry said that critics of the war were enemies of "democracy and freedom" and favor only one policy in the Middle East--"tyranny, tyranny, tyranny"--would he now say the same of Buckley, the founder of his magazine?

Lowry replied yesterday this way:

David Corn...is baiting me to denounce Bill Buckley. I was unaware that a few months ago David had written an incredibly tendentious account of a debate we had at Eastern Connecticut State University. Supposedly I labeled David an "enem[y] of democracy and freedom." This would have been a very ill-considered charge, and although these debates can get heated, I don't remember saying it. I do remember complaining that in all our debates David had never once expressed the slightest pleasure at Saddam's ouster or the Iraqi elections. Never once. I do remember complaining that the Left has suddenly lost a lot of its foreign-policy idealism, and elements of it had basically sided with the Iraqi insurgency. (I noted that Code Pink and other left-wing groups had issued a statement in support of the insurgency, something David promised to rush back to his key-board and denounce--not sure whether he ever did.) I do remember arguing it is an odd thing to say you are honoring the troops when you can never bring yourself to acknowledge that they have done any good. Finally, I remember an exchange at the end when I thought David spoke with a sneering, sarcastic voice about democracy, and took umbrage (he, in turn, denied his voice had been sneering and saracastic, and I said it had been, and so on--we're not talking Lincoln-Douglas here, I'm afraid). For the record: I don't think David is an enemy of democracy, just a partisan blinded by Bush hatred. And I see no connection between the crowd-pleasing bile he sometimes spews at our debates, and Buckley's prudential doubts about nation-building in Iraq.

Is that a beige-colored flag? I did not report that Rich had called only me an "enemy of democracy and freedom," but that he had hurled that insult at critics of the war in general. He now says if he said anything like that he was wrong to have done so, Apology accepted. [Clarification: In a phone conversation, Rich tells me that he truly does not recall uttering those words. Thus, my tongue-in-cheek "apology accepted" might be going too far. I take Rich at his word on his failure to recall that comment and withdraw my "apology accepted"--especially since he gentlemanly concedes that if he said such a thing he went too far. I only have my previous blog item (which was based on notes I took at the event) to back up what I reported. I'm confident I got it right, but there is no transcript. The event was taped for local public access television, but I'm not going to chase down a copy of that tape now. In any event, see how talking among debaters--instead of blogging at one another--can lead to respect and understanding?] But he does not address his use of the passionate "tyranny, tyranny, tyranny" remark--which was not directed at those who oppose the war because they don't like Bush but at anyone who did not accept Bush's neocon-driven, (mostly) after-the-fact justification for invading Iraq: we're bringing democracy to Iraqis and the region. Buckley's criticism of the war certainly indicates he does not buy that Kool-aid. Yet Rich would not consider for a moment calling WFB a tyranny-enabler.

As for being blinded by Bush hatred, such a charge is always an easy out for someone trying to delegitimize an argument. Is retired General Anthony Zinni--who called the invasion of Iraq a "brain fart"--blinded by hatred? And if you do believe a president misled the nation into an ill-advised war without preparing adequately for the aftermath, would hatred not be a reasonable reaction? Perhaps Rich would prefer war critics to not go beyond disappointment and peevishness.

And as for my reaction to Saddam's ouster and Iraqi elections, Rich would do well to research before blogging. I have gone to the videotape. This is the lead of a piece I wrote on Saddam's capture:

It is not unheard of for good to come from bad. George W. Bush misled the United States into war and occupation. His administration was recklessly negligent in its planning for the post-invasion period. It has poorly managed the challenges of nation building in Iraq, ensnaring the United States in an ugly (and lethal) mess. And he has alienated America from much of the world. Yet Bush has bagged Saddam Hussein, the butcher of Baghdad.

The capture of such a murderous fiend is good news. Hussein deserves to rot for the rest of his days in the underground rat's nest where he was found.

Regarding elections in Iraq, here's a portion of the blog entry--entitled, "Hooray for the Purple Fingers (Is Bush Right About Something?)"--I wrote after the January 2005 elections:

[T]here was something wonderful about the election. As columnist Bob Herbert noted in The New York Times on Monday, much was wrong with the election. Voters were not fully informed. Candidate lists had been kept a secret until right before the election. Candidates had been assassinated. The Sunni boycott largely succeeded. And the true impact of the election will not be immediately known. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser for the first President Bush, speculated before the election that if the voting produced a national assembly dominated by Shiites and lacking significant Sunni representation, more civil strife--perhaps civil war--could ensue. Then again, maybe it won't.

But the purple finger was a powerful symbol. (Elections workers dyed the index fingers of voters to prevent people from voting more than once.) How many Americans would risk their lives to cast a vote?

....Critics of the war and the continuing quasi-occupation ought not to diminish what occurred on Sunday...The election does not justify the war. It does not excuse Bush for greasing the way to war with false assertions and hyperbolic fearmongering. Nor does it mean the war will work out in the end and yield a democratic, stable Iraq allied with the United States in the fight against violent Islamic extremists. But those who opposed the war ought not to be blinded by their justifiable disregard for Bush. What was good for Bush--a decent turnout--was also good for Iraqis and for those who want an end to the United States' military involvement in Iraq. The critics now should point to those purple fingers and argue that we need more such becolored digits, that such fingers ought to be truly pushing the buttons of the new government, and that they ought to be increasingly on the triggers of guns used to secure Iraqi citizens from the insurgents who have declared war not only on US troops but on democracy itself. And soon those stained fingers should be waving at departing US forces, not pointing angrily at them.

The link to that posting above is not working at the moment on this site (archive troubles!), but you can see parts of that blog, under attack, here.

So a new question for Rich: who's the blinded one?

Posted by David Corn at 11:40 AM