DEFINING SUCCESS DOWNWARD

It is a good thing that the Iraqi people have a chance to vote, and it is a good thing that insurgent attacks did not kill a lot more innocent people. But the cynical attempt of Bush Co. to exploit these events as a vindication of their wrongheaded policies in Iraq is hard to swallow (especially because they OPPOSED these elections in the first place). Bush gives a speech immediately after the polls close calling it a “resounding success” (the first time in his life he has ever uttered the word “resounding,” I am sure) – but this means the speech must have been written well before the actual voting numbers or outcomes were known. They were determined to call ANYTHING that happened a “resounding success.” The conventional line from CNN and other celebratory commentators is that the vote totals “exceeded expectations,” but since the Bush people never publicly stated any predicted numbers, ANYTHING that happened could be described as “exceeding expectations.”

As usual, this is a case where there are the facts, and then the representation of the facts. The tv visuals were inspiring indeed, but only for the film crews allowed near heavily-protected sites where the turnout was good. The “intrepid Iraqis bravely risking death out of their love for democracy” narrative was just too hard to resist. Of course, in other parts of the country the polls didn’t even open for voting – but we never saw those. And while we don’t know the final vote numbers (and can hardly trust the numbers we do get), the widely quoted estimates of 50-60% were actually LESS than had been floated by some Bush people and Iraqi leaders. But the important fact, almost unmentioned in the celebratory coverage (yeah, I’m a party pooper) is that electoral “success” and legitimacy can’t be measured simply by turnout, whatever the numbers. If the voting patterns were as uneven as reported, the new assembly will be drastically skewed and unrepresentative. As with so much of this hapless misadventure, we’ve solved one problem only to put off a much bigger problem for another day.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005543.php
[Kevin Drum] The voting in Iraq seems to have gone pretty well. As expected, there were some attacks, but not many more than on a normal day. Also as expected, turnout was high among Kurds and Shiites, but lower in Sunni areas. . . So how is the press treating it? I'm watching CNN right now and they seem pretty enthusiastic. . . they're just gushing.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_01_30_digbysblog_archive.html#110712526277660993
[James Wolcott] Yesterday on one of the Fox financial shows, James Rogers, author of Investment Biker, commodities guru, and neighbor-down-the-block (an utterly irrelevant detail I thought I'd toss in to make this blog sound more "personal"), was asked by host Neil Cavuto whether the elections in Iraq would be successful. Rogers said, "They'll be successful because the media will say they're successful," adding impishly, "Fox News probably already has the results."

[Digby] And I think they got them from CNN. I haven't seen this much gushing since Asheigh Banfield threw on a little black burka and hitched a camel ride to Kabul. . . Clearly, the media loves these trumped up Iraq milestones. They sent Anderson and Campbell over to hang out in the Green Zone and get "the feel" for the place while they patch up their pancake blush and admire each other's groovy winter desert wear in the bar.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/mixed-story-im-just-appalled-by.html
[Juan Cole] I'm just appalled by the cheerleading tone of US news coverage of the so-called elections in Iraq on Sunday. I said on television last week that this event is a "political earthquake" and "a historical first step" for Iraq. It is an event of the utmost importance, for Iraq, the Middle East, and the world. All the boosterism has a kernel of truth to it, of course. Iraqis hadn't been able to choose their leaders at all in recent decades, even by some strange process where they chose unknown leaders. But this process is not a model for anything, and would not willingly be imitated by anyone else in the region. The 1997 elections in Iran were much more democratic, as were the 2002 elections in Bahrain and Pakistan.

Moreover, as Swopa rightly reminds us all, the Bush administration opposed one-person, one-vote elections of this sort. First they were going to turn Iraq over to Chalabi within six months. Then Bremer was going to be MacArthur in Baghdad for years. Then on November 15, 2003, Bremer announced a plan to have council-based elections in May of 2004. The US and the UK had somehow massaged into being provincial and municipal governing councils, the members of which were pro-American. Bremer was going to restrict the electorate to this small, elite group. . . Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani immediately gave a fatwa denouncing this plan and demanding free elections mandated by a UN Security Council resolution. . .

With all the hoopla, it is easy to forget that this was an extremely troubling and flawed "election." Iraq is an armed camp. There were troops and security checkpoints everywhere. . . The Iraqis did not know the names of the candidates for whom they were supposedly voting. What kind of an election is anonymous! There were even some angry politicians late last week who found out they had been included on lists without their permission. . . This thing was more like a referendum than an election. It was a referendum on which major party list associated with which major leader would lead parliament.

Many of the voters came out to cast their ballots in the belief that it was the only way to regain enough sovereignty to get American troops back out of their country. . . Iraq now faces many key issues that could tear the country apart, from the issues of Kirkuk and Mosul to that of religious law. James Zogby on Wolf Blitzer wisely warned the US public against another "Mission Accomplished" moment. Things may gradually get better, but this flawed "election" isn't a Mardi Gras for Americans and they'll regret it if that is the way they treat it.

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1043
“The elections Bush didn't want”

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/31/45322/1594
On an another note, this was not the elections the neo-cons had in mind. Read Lawrence Kaplan's piece in TNR or some of Richard Perle's recent interviews for more. Sistani forced these elections on the US. . . And no, Sistani and Al-Dawa and the SCIRI are not going to install a theocracy.

If turnout was “better than expected,” what WAS “expected”?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/29/113816/618
Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar said on Saturday he expected up to two-thirds of eligible Iraqis to vote in Sunday's election, after earlier appearing to suggest most would not cast their ballots. I expect a majority, up to two-thirds of eligible Iraqis, to vote”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6874656/
The electoral commission said it believed, based on anecdotal information, that turnout overall among the estimated 14 million eligible Iraqi voters appeared higher than the 57 percent, or roughly 8 million, that had been predicted before the vote. But it would be some time before any precise turnout figure was confirmed, they said.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=123&art_id=qw1107093961283B262
National turnout in Iraq's landmark election on Sunday was estimated at 72 percent of registered voters by 2pm (11h00 GMT), a far higher figure than most expected, the country's Electoral Commission said.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.main/index.html
The IECI clarified an earlier estimate of a 72 percent turnout, saying that the "figures are only very rough, word-of-mouth estimates gathered informally from the field."

http://corrente.blogspot.com/2005/01/time-to-stop-using-word-spinlets-start.html
There was no firm count of the number of people who voted, as Iraqi election officials in the evening backed away from an earlier estimate that turnout was approximately 72 percent. Sarid Ayar, spokesman for the electoral commission, said in the evening that the earlier numbers were "anticipations," and Reuter quoted him as "guessing" that maybe 8 million Iraqis voted, which would be a little over 60 percent of registered voters.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000780113
But more complicated questions emerged as the day wore on. What does "high turnout" mean? Is it a percentage of all eligible voters or just those who registered? Do the vast disparities suggest a coming civil war? Did the insurgency suffer a death blow in failing to severely disrupt the process? And what are the results of the voting likely to show, a broadly representative government or one that may take Iraq in a direction troublesome for the United States?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005549.php
[Kevin Drum] I just finished skimming through a bunch of reports on the Iraqi elections, and the current consensus seems to be that overall turnout was about 60% — which is pretty good. Turnout appears to have been very high in Shiite and Kurdish areas and very low in Sunni areas.

But how high and how low? Here's my rough guess:

• Shiite turnout: 70%

• Kurdish turnout: 70%

• Sunni turnout: 20%

(Based on an ethnic/religious makeup of 60% Shiite, 20% Kurd, and 20% Sunni, this adds up to a total turnout of 60%.)

If this is indeed how the turnout breaks down, and assuming that everyone votes for their own people, here's how the constitutional assembly will look:

• Shiites: 70%

• Kurds: 23%

• Sunnis: 7%

[NB: I read the same news sources, and I think this overestimates Kurdish and Sunni turnout. But, hey, what do I know?]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/20050131/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_the_vote
[Iyad Alawi] called on his countrymen to set aside their differences Monday while jubilant Iraqis sifted through millions of ballots, tallying the results of a vote they hoped would usher in democracy and lead to the departure of 150,000 American troops. . . But there were fears that not everyone would accept Sunday's results. Sunni participation was considerably lower than other groups, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. That raised fears that Sunni radicals who drive Iraq's insurgency could grow ever more alienated. . . Exact figures were not available, but few voters visited polls in Sunni areas — and four stations didn't open — during Sunday's election.

News wrap-up

George’s very, very, very good day
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30cnd-reac.html?ex=1264827600&en=3fd195fef1f77389&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Condi’s rosy debut
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48759-2005Jan30.html?nav=rss_nation

In Najaf
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30cnd-naja.html?ex=1264827600&en=3257ff447ecd38d9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112592/entry/2112884/fr/rss/

In Basra
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30cnd-basr.html?ex=1264827600&en=95a5e2e874d45c3b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

In Mosul
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30cnd-mosu.html?ex=1264827600&en=429654b7c4650b94&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

In Baqubah
http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/election-update-at-little-after-noon.html
[Juan Cole] On the other hand, if the turnout is as light in the Sunni Arab areas as it now appears, the parliament/ constitutional assembly is going to be extremely lopsided

In Samarra
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=663751

In the Sunni Triangle
http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/sistani-uia-and-elections-anthony.html
Polling centers were largely empty all day in many cities of the Sunni Triangle north and west of the capital, particularly Fallujah, Ramadi and Beiji, The Associated Press reported. In Baghdad's mainly Sunni Arab area of Adhamiyah, the neighborhood's four polling centers did not open, residents said.

Anecdotes
http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/01/wow.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2004/iraq_log/default.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4214707.stm

On the blogs
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009521.html
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009528.html

Maybe Matt’s right, we’ve been playing this all wrong

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/iraqi_elections_2.html
The vote was a stunning success. The war's critics have been completely discredited. Democracy is here! The war is won! George W. Bush is a genius! Time to bring the victorious troops home for a ticker tape parade. Democracy has happened, we were wrong, Bush was right, the war is won, and now it should be done with.

Unfortunately, no

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47674-2005Jan29.html
The question of U.S. withdrawal has become especially acute in Washington in the days leading up to today's elections, which will open a new phase in the U.S. involvement in Iraq. White House officials worry that Americans will see the vote as a natural turning point and expect quick reductions in U.S. forces afterward. In the face of growing pressure in Congress to begin bringing troops home, President Bush has tried to prepare the public for a long-term deployment.

So, what does it all mean?

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/iraqi_elections_1.html
[Matt Yglesias] It's time to prepare for three weeks of gloating from the hawks before they realize that nothing has really changed and they return to previous hawk practice of not mentioning Iraq. The interesting thing to watch, I think, will be whether or not Shiite political unity starts to break down now that the elections are behind us.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112885/fr/rss/
[Fred Kaplan] Few sights are more stirring than the televised images of Iraqi citizens risking their lives to vote in their country's first election in a half-century, kissing the ballot boxes, dancing in the streets, and declaring their hopes for a new day of democracy.

And yet, the challenges and uncertainties that seemed so daunting last week—about Iraq's security, society, and governance—are unlikely to turn less daunting next week, next month, or the month after. . .

Nearly all of the moving TV footage was taken in southern Iraq, the stronghold of Shiite Muslims, where Sunni insurgents lack a base of operation and where, therefore, turnout was expected to be high. The picture was more mixed in Baghdad (though, according to some reports, many more people voted than had been anticipated) and quite dismal in Sunni-dominated areas. (Just 5 percent voted in Fallujah, and commentators were surprised the number wasn't lower still.). . .

The precise results won't be known for days, perhaps weeks. But the vast bulk of votes will probably be split between two Shiite parties—the slate led by Acting Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the coalition put together by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Much depends on whether the winners reach out to the dispossessed Sunnis and let them have some say on the constitution's provisions—as well as shared access to the country's wealth. (Iraq's oil is concentrated in the Shiite south and the Kurdish north; hardly any graces the "Sunni triangle.") If Sunni leaders see they have something to gain by joining the new Iraqi order, they might be less willing to harbor insurgents. If they get nothing out of the deal, chaos will likely continue.

Much will also rest on the outcome of the struggle within the Shiite parties, specifically between the religious and secular factions. If the constitution imposes Muslim law too insistently, the Kurds—who comprise another 20 percent of the population, many of them Christians—may move toward secession. The Kurds, who also voted in very large numbers, elected not only a national slate but a regional assembly. Thanks to protection from U.S. air power, they have enjoyed a certain autonomy from Baghdad for the past decade, and they are not likely to surrender it just because Saddam Hussein is gone; they too need some assurances and rewards before they settle in to a Shiite-majority regime. The Turkish government, which has periodic problems with its own Kurdish minority, has warned that it will not tolerate an independent Iraqi Kurdistan on its southern border. . .

President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may say that Iraq has 140,000 security forces, but U.S. military officers in the region concede that only about 10,000 have been trained or equipped. Anthony Cordesman, a well-briefed military analyst who has been to Iraq many times and has written several studies for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, estimates that only about 4,500 are capable of fighting effectively on their own. Only in the past few weeks has the Bush administration shifted the resources necessary to mount a serious training effort. . . The upshot of all this is that if President Bush means it when he says U.S. troops will stay in Iraq until its new leaders can provide for their own security, then we are going to stay there for years. . .

A sure consequence of the election's success will be the derailing of any movement in the U.S. Congress to push for a swift troop withdrawal. In his State of the Union Address this week, President Bush will probably say that we cannot desert the Iraqis after their brave display of commitment to freedom. . . In other words, along many avenues of Iraq's journey to democracy (or wherever it's headed), there are many, many miles to go.

http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003167.html
[John Quiggin] The Iraqi elections seem to have been about as successful as could have been hoped, and may represent the last real chance to prevent a full-scale civil war. The pre-election analysis suggests that the United Iraqi Alliance, the main Shiite coalition, will get the biggest share of the votes, but probably not an absolute majority. If so, their leaders will face two immediate choices.

The first is what to do about forming a government. The obvious choice is a coalition with Allawi. Given the power of incumbency and the fact that there was no real campaign in many areas, his group is bound to get a fair number of votes, even though it’s clearly unpopular. There’s even talk that he could re-emerge as PM.

[NB: See http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=7476126&type=worldNews
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1400478,00.html]

The second choice is what to do about the Americans. Until a couple of days ago, the UAI platform called for a timetable for US withdrawal, but this was apparently changed at the last minute Meanwhile the Pentagon has been talking about continuing full-scale occupation for at least two years. In view of the security situation and the obvious pressure from the Bush administration, the obvious course of action is to defer any talk of withdrawal to the indefinite future.

In my view, the obvious choices would be disastrous in both cases, and for much the same reason. Holding elections is great, but the point of democracy is that they should make a difference and that governments should act in accordance with the wishes of voters. If the election leaves Allawi in office (even as a coalition partner) and the Americans in charge, it will be soon come to be seen as a pointless farce. And unless the government makes early US withdrawal a central demand, it will inevitably end up being seen, at best as a client and at worst a creature, of the Americans. The Sunnis won’t be slow to point this out, and neither will the Sadrists, who have played a cautious game that has given them some representation in the new assembly while maintaining a public boycott of the election.

http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003169.html
[Kieran Healy] The Iraqi elections have gone off successfully, in the sense that the turnout was good and the violence relatively contained. That’s very good news. Now comes the hard business of establishing a real government. I’m sympathetic with John’s view that it might not be such a bad thing if the U.S. took a “Declare Victory and Go Home” attitude, even though that’s one of the scenarios people were most worried by before the invasion. Getting out would leave the government in a position to at least try to run its own country, instead of inevitably playing second-fiddle to the U.S. occupying forces. I’m not sure any more that this is likely to happen, though.

The best possible outcome of the weekend’s election is a successful completion of the present government’s term followed by another real election. It’s often said that the key moment in the growth of a democracy is not its first election but its second, because — as Adam Przeworski says somewhere — a democracy is a system where governments lose elections. The question planners need to be asking is what are the chances that Iraq will be able to do this again in four or five years without the presence of U.S. troops and with the expectation that whoever wins will get to take power. This partly depends on whether some functioning government can really be established within the country, and partly on whether the U.S. wants a working democracy in Iraq (with the risks that implies) or just a friendly puppet state.

More: http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/the_second_elec.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/30/11232/3330
Rice conceded, however, speaking on ABC's "This Week, that "it's not a perfect election" and added, "there are going to be many, many difficult days ahead."

[Armando] The days ahead. Precisely. This Election is simply, in my estimation, an exercise in pretty pictures. Why? Because Elections are to choose governments, not to celebrate the day. Are the people elected capable of governing Iraq at this time? Without 150,000 U.S. soldiers? Or even with them? I have been accused of gloating by people right HERE because of my focus on the continuing violence. But my focus has been on the realities of governing a land in chaos, in the midst of civil war, with 150,000 U.S. soldiers the only force with the ability to provide security. And this is 2 years after the invasion.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/guest-editorial-sunni-anxieties-and.html
[Shahin Cole] Iraq after its elections is not out of the woods, and some severe dangers loom ahead. Iraq has had the form of elections, but will it have the substance of democracy? Can candidates who were afraid to reveal their identities before the election now be secure in doing so afterwards? Will not the members of the new parliament become immediate targets for kidnapping and assassination?

Moreover, now comes the hard part of drafting a permanent constitution in a way that meets the expectations of all the major groups in the country. Some substantial portion of them is likely to come away disappointed. What if controversial issues cause the negotiations to bog down? Will the third of the candidates who are women accept the likely attempt of the religious parties to impose religious codes in family law? Can a way be found to mollify the Sunni Arabs, who will be highly underrepresented in the parliament, and the legitimacy of which they are unlikely grant?

Far from seeing the elections as a good thing to be emulated, the Sunni Arab neighbors of Iraq are likely to be alarmed at the rise of Shiite dominance. They will also be disturbed at any close Shiite-American alliance. Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and Salafi fundamentalists elsewhere in the Gulf (including Iraq itself), deeply disapprove of Shiite doctrine and practice.

Chalabi (he’s baaack!)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_01_30_digbysblog_archive.html#110713279849946570

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_30_atrios_archive.html#110713937200146952

The fiercely partisan worldview of George Bush

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005548.php
[Kevin Drum] I continue to dither about what exactly it is that motivates George Bush, but there's at least one thing that's always seemed clear to me: he is the most unfailingly partisan president we've had in a long time. It's genuinely hard to figure out a political philosophy that ties together tax cuts, Medicare expansion, war in Iraq, immigration reform, Mars missions, Social Security privatization, and vastly increased domestic spending, but even if ideological coherency sometimes takes a backseat in Bush's world, partisan advantage is always front and center.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47559-2005Jan29?language=printer

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook31jan31,1,4741916.column?coll=la-headlines-nation
Bush and his allies. . . are trying to link Bush's agenda with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. . . In each case, to put it mildly, the connection is a stretch. In fact, in each instance, the Bush team is citing the Democrats to sell policies that reverse the strategies those presidents pursued.

More trouble for Chertoff

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49950-2005Jan30.html?nav=rss_nation

The job nobody wants (can you blame them?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49845-2005Jan30.html?nav=rss_nation

Brad DeLong proposes a Social Security compromise that could get support (and share the credit) on both sides of the aisle – which is why it won’t happen. The GOP has other plans for Social Security. . .

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000256.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_01_30_digbysblog_archive.html#110714052448594838
"It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible," wrote Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, Heritage Foundation analysts, in a 1983 article in the Cato Journal. "But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform.". . . analysts Butler and Germanis argued in their prescient 1983 article — provocatively titled "Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy" — that privatizing Social Security required a calculated, long-term campaign to transform the political environment.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_30.php#004597
“The congressional Republicans' confidential plan was developed with the advice of pollsters, marketing experts and communication consultants, and was provided to The Washington Post by a Republican official. The blueprint urges lawmakers to promote the "personalization" of Social Security, suggesting ownership and control, rather than "privatization," which "connotes the total corporate takeover of Social Security." Democratic strategists said they intend to continue fighting the Republican plan by branding it privatization, and assert that depiction is already set in people's minds.”

Paul Bremer’s CPA “lost” $9 billion in reconstruction money

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/index.html

ACLU pressuring Gonzales to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate prison torture

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009522.html

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:19 AM

 
DEMOCRACY, AT HOME AND ABROAD

A little lightbulb went off for me yesterday. I’m not a reporter, and have no access to sources – perhaps one of you does. But it occurred to me, reading this story about the sudden pull-out of Halliburton from Iran: What if Halliburton employees include covert operatives who are among those “advance forces” Seymour Hersh told us about? If Halliburton is providing cover for CIA or other agents who do surveillance, intelligence gathering, etc., it would explain a lot. It would explain why they get contracts with countries that U.S. says it won’t do business with, without being penalized in any way. It would explain their especially cozy relationship with the Defense Dept. It makes a lot of sense, with someone like Cheney in charge. Their leg up, then, is not just a matter of crony capitalism, but that the govt WANTS them to be boots on the ground in hotspots around the world, and so it gives them an edge in getting contracts there. And since being “outed” by Hersh, it would explain why suddenly they’re pulling out of Iran. Complete speculation, I admit, but it makes a certain amount of sense to me

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-halliburton29jan29,0,6199862.story?coll=la-home-world

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0403-10.htm

Hey, how’s that Iraq vote going?

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/01/30/fear_and_hope_collide_as_iraq_braces_for_vote/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Front+Page
Fear and hope collide

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.main/index.html
Bombers target Iraqi voters

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30democracy.html?ex=1264827600&en=235feac8ad1ec433&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
The Vote, and Democracy Itself, Leave Anxious Iraqis Divided

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/dozens-killed-in-election-day.html
Dozens Killed in Election Day Guerrilla Campaign

By saying that ANY election, however unpopular, however low the turnout, whoever wins, is somehow a victory – just because we said so – haven’t we cheapened the meaning of what “democracy” is?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/29/113816/618
[Armando] Iraq's interim president Ghazi al-Yawar said that only a minority of voters would take part in the country's historic election on Sunday because of fears of violence. We hope that everybody will participate, but most of the Iraqi people will not participate," he told a press conference. Most of them will not take part because of the security situation and not because they want to boycott the elections," Yawar added. . . Yawar also said he would oppose Iraq being used as a base for an invasion by US-led coalition forces against a neighbouring country. "I don't think that we Iraqis want to be a jumping off point against any of our neighbours. Personally, at least, I would not accept that."

I guess Negroponte moves fast. Now the Iraq President says:

Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar said on Saturday he expected up to two-thirds of eligible Iraqis to vote in Sunday's election, after earlier appearing to suggest most would not cast their ballots. I expect a majority, up to two-thirds of eligible Iraqis, to vote," said Yawar, a Sunni Arab.

[NB: Two thirds? This has me expecting massive vote inflation, especially if the prediction is coming via the Americans. Look at this Zogby poll (done ten days ago, BEFORE the escalation of prevote violence) and tell me if you think it looks like a two thirds turnout:

http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=957
The survey, to be released at 5 p.m. ET on Abu Dhabi Television, found three-quarters (76%) of Sunni Arabs say they definitely will not vote in the January 30 elections, while just 9% say they are likely to vote. A majority of Shiites (80%) say they are likely to vote or definitely will vote, as are a smaller majority of Kurds (57%).]

Let’s be serious. Isn’t it possible that the way the U.S. has gone about forcing “democracy” upon Iraq, on its own timetable with its own interests in mind, has actually set back progress toward democracy in Iraq, and throughout the Middle East?

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines05/0128-11.htm
Arab human rights activists say the Iraqi election is deeply flawed and will give democracy a bad name. They say violence and the prospect of a Sunni Arab boycott will undermine the poll. Many Arabs, already suspicious of U.S. intentions in Iraq, are also dismissing the vote's credibility because of the presence of the 150,000 U.S. troops there.

"The influence of the elections for us as democrats is disastrous," Syrian human rights activist Haytham Manna told Reuters from Paris. "When you marginalize wide sections of society from the political process. . . this is not democracy."

"With this example, all the Arab extremists will say to us: 'You democrats, go to hell, because you haven't been able to solve our problems with your democracy and elections'," said Manna, who left Syria in 1978 as a political exile. . . "The elections depict democracy as if it is connected to the idea of submission to the American occupier," said Abdel Halim Qandil, who is campaigning against an extension of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's 23-year-old rule. . . "The idea of democracy will lose its reputation in the Arab world entirely," Qandil said, comparing the Iraqi election with 20th-century polls held in Egypt under British occupation. "Democratic charades of this type were going on then," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/weekinreview/30weis.html?ex=1264741200&en=05b67872b7209abc&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
But today, as Iraqis vote in their first modern election, the war in Iraq is also transforming the Middle East and its relations with the United States in directions the Bush administration might not have expected.

Even many of the region's skeptics about the war say Iraq might, in the end, build a relatively stable democracy. But some of America's most steadfast allies, knowing how shaky their own hold on power is, fear that the Iraqi insurgency may encourage violent anti-government dissidents or Islamic militants in their own countries.

Among many ordinary Arabs, moreover, Iraq's example also has been more alarming than inspiring. Whatever hopes these citizens have for democracy, they have started to wonder if Iraq has paid a high price to get there by first descending into violence, sectarian strife and greater susceptibility to those who preach hatred of the United States.

Two questions are on their minds: Even if democracy takes root and grows in Iraq, will a more stable Middle East follow? And if civil war consumes Iraq, how quickly will instability engulf its neighbors?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/29/iraq_election/
Many here harbor suspicions that the U.S. has designs on Iraqi oil and wants to keep the country unstable to keep control over it. We "thought the Americans would come and build Disneyland here. I thought there would be good jobs for everybody, but I think the Americans were slow to take actions," said Ahmed Salam, a 42-year-old owner of a travel and tourism business. Alaa al Tamimi is more blunt. "They blew up a major water [line]. Iraq is the size of one state in America," he sputtered, leaning forward and growing louder. "Why can't the U.S. Army guard it? There are no rules. There is no law. This is freedom?" Despite their anger, most Iraqis don't want the U.S. troops to leave, at least not yet. It's not from any affection for America. No one likes the idea of being occupied or having Humvees zooming through their streets and helicopters screaming overhead. But many fear the country is so fragile that total anarchy will ensue if U.S. soldiers suddenly pack up and go home. They blame the U.S. for creating a mess but are grudgingly resigned to the fact that they need it to stay to clean it up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30democracy.html?ex=1264741200&en=20dfae2ced693b1d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Many Iraqis, interviews in recent months have shown, do not accept that fundamental choices about the shape of their future political system should be made by a foreign power, particularly one they regard as a harbinger of secular, materialistic values far removed from the Muslim world's. . . But questions over the election go far beyond the American stewardship, to issues that touch on whether it was ever wise or realistic to think that Jeffersonian-style democracy, with its elaborate checks on power and guarantees for minority rights, could be implanted, at least so rapidly, in a country and a region that has little experience with anything but winner-take-all politics. . . Compounding these objections, the elections are being held in the grip of a paralyzing fear that many Iraqis see as inconsistent with a free vote.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/29/bush.radio/index.html
President Bush praised the Iraqi people on the eve of their historic elections Saturday for their "courage and determination" and pledged that U.S. involvement in Iraq will not end after the vote. . . "As democracy takes hold in Iraq, America's mission there will continue," Bush said in his weekly radio address. . . "Our military forces, diplomats and civilian personnel will help the newly elected government of Iraq establish security and train Iraqi military police and other forces."

[NB: Clever, how they switch from being an “occupying force” on one day to being a friendly “helper” the next. Now we know why ANY kind of vote was essential]

Also, let’s be clear what people will and won’t be voting for: this is clearly a process thoroughly hedged with controls to assure that only a narrow range of possible outcomes can result

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/29/iraq_election/
Ideally, the cleaning up will get started with the national election, which is intended to eventually lead to an autonomous government for Iraq. It's a complicated process: On Sunday, a 275-member national assembly will be chosen. That group will choose a president and two deputies. The president and deputies will choose a prime minister, with the approval of the assembly. Then the prime minister will choose a cabinet, again with the approval of the assembly. The assembly will then set to writing a constitution to replace the temporary one drawn up last spring. The constitution will pave the way for elections for a new government to be held by the end of this year and mark the beginning of a truly sovereign government run and chosen by Iraqis. Also on Sunday, Iraqis will vote for local provincial councils that will act much like a state government in the U.S. At least that's the plan.

Good thing the Iraqi people weren’t given the option of voting about this issue (you don’t want TOO much democracy, do you?)

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/01/29/polls_show_iraqis_want_us_troops_out.html
"Majorities of Iraq's Sunni Arabs (82%) and Shiites (69%) favor U.S. forces withdrawing either immediately or after an elected government is in place," according to a new Zogby Poll. . . The Washington Post notes similar surveys: "Public opinion polls show 80 percent want the Americans out of their country. In the election campaign, one common theme among candidates was the withdrawal of occupying forces."

CIA refuses to release documents detailing its collaboration with Nazi war criminals

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/europe/30nazis.html?ex=1264741200&en=412aaf15c37279a6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

On Social Security. Here’s one thing we’ve learned about the Bush Way (WMD, Saddam/Al Qaeda, etc) : when you’ve tried a lie and no one buys it, the solution is. . . tell an even bigger one

http://fugop.blogspot.com/2005/01/instrumental-truth.html
The GOP clearly doesn't really believe that the Social Security system will be in crisis by 2008 - those who think that matters, though, are mere members of the reality based community. That which serves the Party is true.

The New York Times: Party leaders and White House officials who gathered at the Greenbrier resort also discussed a new rhetorical twist in their campaign to remake Social Security. In meetings on Friday, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Representative Bill Thomas of California, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, discussed redirecting public attention on 2008 as an imminent danger point for the Social Security trust fund because baby boomers will begin retiring, people present said. Even the most dire analyses say the fund will remain solvent for a decade or longer after that.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/politics/30repubs.html?oref=login

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/30/22321/0324

Social Security: for most Democrats, the fight of their political lives (and no, that isn’t hyperbole)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004592

What will Bush’s Social Security proposal (when he finally gets around to giving us one) look like?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-accounts30jan30,1,6781580.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

And they’re STILL using the SSA to plan and fund a promotional campaign for Bush’s initiative (after denying that they would EVER do such a thing)

http://fugop.blogspot.com/2005/01/democratic-policy-committee-on-social.html
The employees, Deborah Fredericksen and Steve Kofahl, testified Friday at a hearing by Senate Democrats who oppose Bush's plan. They said the strategy was devised by Social Security's Office of Communications. It was then disseminated to all of the agency's regional offices, which fell in line behind it. . . Fredericksen and Kofahl said the strategy improperly uses public resources to sell two notions central to Bush's plan: that Social Security faces an imminent funding crisis and that any solution must include private accounts. . . In a statement, Social Security Commissioner Jo Anne Barnhart denied that she had told agency employees to promote "any specific proposal for Social Security reform." She said the agency has sought to "educate the American public about the programs and finances of Social Security."

[NB: It all depends on what the meaning of “specific” is]

Chief Justice Antonin Scalia?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47527-2005Jan29.html?nav=rss_nation

Orwell watch, Minnesota edition: “welfare health care”

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/01/welfare_health_.html

The GOP discovers blogging

http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001195.html
So let us get this straight: The top Democrat in the Senate loses a race where the GOP sets up a phony blog that passes along news reports from a pseudo media organization, written by a reporter given White House credentials under a fake name.

Hello to my friends in Porto Alegre!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/29/154512/755

Bonus item: a fabulous debate between Graham Larkin and David Horowitz over academic freedom, diversity of viewpoints, and the supposed “leftism” of university faculties. Good to see someone exposing DH’s intellectual dishonesty with clear analysis and arguments

http://www.aaup-ca.org/larkin_horowitz.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001620.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:18 AM

 
FAUX PAS (False Steps)

Buh-bye! DHS nominee Chertoff helped formulate torture policies

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/politics/29home.html?ex=1264741200&en=8b261a9df1338e4a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/28/23461/5347

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001623.html

Iraqi election “a sham” (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/01/27/news/edlone.html

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/international/middleeast/29iraq.html?ex=1264741200&en=60691e60bec387db&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/international/middleeast/29vote.html?ex=1264741200&en=30935007ab5a2968&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Bob Dreyfuss provides a handy-dandy Iraq election guide

http://www.tompaine.com/archives/the_dreyfuss_report.php#003521

Why Iraq dropped its troop withdrawal demand

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2521

Allawi/Chalabi Steel Cage Death Match continues

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001621.html

Some say “Duck!” and others say “Crouch!” (are you listening, Iran?)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001622.html
Rumor has it that J.D. Crouch is set to become deputy national security advisor, working under Stephen Hadley. Told that Crouch is an "uber hawk". . .

http://fugop.blogspot.com/2005/01/jd-crouch-ii.html
A champion of U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, Crouch has supported military action against Cuba; defended the development of offensive chemical weapons; opposed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); and advocated the development of new nuclear weapons for such purposes as destroying underground facilities (bunker-busters). . . Before his appointment in 2001, he also strongly criticised the previous Bush administration decision to withdraw nuclear weapons from South Korea, and called for Washington to unilaterally destroy suspected nuclear and missile installations in North Korea unless Pyongyang complied with an ultimatum to dismantle them.

More evidence that an Iran attack is on the horizon

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000288.html

Dick Cheney’s fashion faux pas

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_atrios_archive.html#110692239091878792
"Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children's clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults. . . Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one's country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words "Staff 2001." It was the kind of hat a conventioneer might find in a goodie bag. . . It is also worth mentioning that Cheney was wearing hiking boots -- thick, brown, lace-up ones."

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/01/28/dressing_down_cheney.html
Vice President Dick Cheney "was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower."

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005341
Cheney's flagrant violation can, Givhan rightly suggests, be considered an affront to the dignity of the ceremony and signal that Cheney took it less seriously than previous leaders have. At a time when the United States is widely reviled internationally for its brusque and imperious ways, such an arrogant disregard for protocol can only further damage America's international image. . . It's hard to imagine what Cheney was thinking when he prepped for this event. . . There's no question in my mind that Cheney knew what he was doing when he chose to play the role of ugly American in his embroidered parka and knit cap. Perhaps he was trying to signal something about America casting aside the constraints of history. If so, it was a message ill-suited to the occasion. As Paul Fussell noted in his acclaimed book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, even in the United States the wearing of any items of clothing with writing on them signals a lack of sophistication and education on the part of the wearer, and an intention to engage in leisure activities.

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_01_28_bestof.html#110692561386004906
Nothing says "go f-ck yourself" more than wearing your Cracker-Parka to a somber and elegant and formal ceremony of great symbolic importance to your alleged allies.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009503.html
I didn't think Dick Cheney was a good choice to represent the U.S. at the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, but I didn't expect this. Can anyone find another time he appeared at an official event so dressed down? I bet not. It's not like he flew commercial and they lost his baggage. So why the nonchalance (at best) and disrespect?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005534.php
This is not the biggest deal in the world, but it sure is peculiar — especially since, as the bottom picture from a ceremony today shows, Cheney had a dark overcoat with him. It's not like he accidentally left it at home or something. I wonder what the deal was?

http://www.realitybasednation.com/blog-archives/2005/01/take_off_dick.html
Dick Cheney's disrespectful cold weather gear at Auschwitz yesterday reminded me of something. . .

[Don’t miss it!]

Here’s what matters about all this: the pattern of missteps by Bush Team 2.0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44390-2005Jan28.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing

Mr. Contrarian, Matt Yglesias, gleefully gives a different view

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/parkagate.html
Thinking it through over the course of a very cold day in New York, I've come to the following conclusion. Cheney probably wore the parka because it was cold, and parkas are warmer than formal overcoats. . . I feel that this sneering will, like my museum thoughts, merely redound to the benefit of the Bush/Cheney team. If we've learned anything over the past four years its that heartland ressentiment against disresrespect -- both real and imagined -- from the American cultural elite is a power force in motivating conservative politics. So speaking of which, how come no one is talking about the possibility of a Cheney '08 run? He's gotten a reputation as "too old" but he's really not that old at all. Much younger than, for example, Ronald Reagan, who was certainly good at winning elections. As I see it, the wheels will start to fall off the Bush White House circa winter 2006-7 unless the president can unite the party around a designated "establishment" choice for the nomination, and Dick and Jeb remain the logical choices.

A more substantive problem for Cheney. Wonder why there hasn’t been a more thorough investigation into the Oil-for-Fool scandal (aside from using it rhetorically to hammer Kofi Annan)? Could it be. . . ?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/28/155243/210

Court says Cheney can keep energy task force documents secret

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/cheney.energy.ap/index.html

Bush (hearts) junk social science

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2522

Of course, Bush is in good company. The President of Harvard (hearts) junk social science too

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112799/fr/rss/

BRILLIANT! Just brilliant. By Bush’s reasoning, if Social Security is “bankrupt,” so is his own administration

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/01/why_didnt_i_think_of_this_under_bush_magic_accounting_us_is_bankrupt.html
[A]s the great Carpetbagger notes, if you define ‘bankruptcy’ as ‘cash flow out exceeds cash flow in’ or ‘cash flow flow out exceeds cash flow in plus assets on hand’ then the US government, GWB proprietor, is ‘bankrupt’.

The incoherence of GOP arguments on Social Security

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/01/28.html#a828

Interesting discussion: where does Bush go now that his initial foray into Social Security reform has (apparently) crashed and burned?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005536.php
[Kevin Drum] What I mean is this: it now looks pretty certain that George Bush's private account plan isn't going to fly. Democratic opposition is pretty firm and it increasingly looks like too many Republicans are backing away from private accounts for Bush to pull out a victory. So what's the backup plan?

A different analysis of exactly the same point

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004588
[Josh Marshall] As badly as the White House has stumbled in these early weeks of the Social Security debate, the presidency is an office of tremendous force and power, particularly one as familiar with and wedded to discipline and demagoguery as this one. All the folks who cover the White House are looking for WMD2. It'll be one big push of fear-mongering and fibs to bum-rush the country into phasing out Social Security. . . Do not underestimate it.

As this and other articles make clear, the president will hit the road right after the State of the Union, with the avowed aim of breaking through the biggest obstacle standing in the way of his efforts to begin phasing-out Social Security. As the Times puts it, "the trip next week will be in part an effort to crack the Democratic wall" of opposition. . .

So there it is. The Democrats have built a solid wall of opposition to phasing out Social Security. And it's there -- in many ways more than in his own party -- that his plan has been momentarily stopped in its tracks. He knows it. The Dems know it. Everybody knows it. . . The Dems have built it up. And next week we get to see if the president can knock it down.

And what IS Bill Thomas’ game?

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/01/chaos_intrudes.html

WH Office of Special Counsel may have broken the law

http://www.peer.org/press/562.html

Old tricks: Bush raising “fees,” but not “taxes”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/28/124056/591

Bonus items: Bring me the head of “Jeff Gannon” (not his real name)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_atrios_archive.html#110695056420863397
According to sources, Jeff Gannon's real name is not, in fact, Jeff Gannon. According to the same sources, his White House press credentials list him as "Jeff Gannon" - they let him use his pseudonym -- even though married female reporters, who use their maiden name professionally, are given credentials with their married name and aren't allowed to be credentialed under their maiden names. . . not sure why this isn't clear, but the point is that he's allowed to be credentialed under his professional pseudonym even though women whose "professional pseudonyms" are their maiden names aren't.

Gannon responds to accusations that he recycles GOP and WH press releases as his own news reports

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501280005
“Just for the record, all material in these articles come from White House PRESS RELEASES, (you know, those things that a PRESS OFFICE puts out for use by the PRESS) and speech transcripts that are attributed to and accurately reflect the position of the President. In many cases I have liberally used the verbiage provided on key aspects of the issue because it is the precise expression of where the White House stands -- free or [sic] any "spin." Its [sic] the ultimate in journalistic honesty -- unvarnished and unfiltered. If only others would be as forthcoming.”

[NB: Because, you know, the job of an unbiased and objective media is simply to repeat government propaganda and disseminate it far and wide. This, of course, is the ultimate expression of turning the press into professional stenographers]

Holden, the “Gaggle Obsessed,” has been onto Gannon’s game for a long time: a few gems

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2044&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

And Gannon’s employer, “Talon News”? Let the eagle soar. . .

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501280006

Hope you read this far: a possibility that Gannon and Talon are implicated in the Plame affair (thanks to Laura Rozen for this link)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/1/28/203014/655

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001620.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 9:18 AM

 
REALITY BITES

So if the new party line in Iraq is that U.S. troops will be asked to leave as soon as Iraqi troops are capable of taking over security on their own, what will “capable” mean – and who will decide?

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2519
[T]he top U.S. commander here, Gen. George Casey, said Iraqi forces were not ready to take over the fight against the insurgents and there was no guarantee they would ever be able to do so.

Bush says he will pull out troops if the new Iraqi govt asks him to (which means he knows they won’t)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/politics/28prexy.html?ex=1264654800&en=774579ad887f7b9a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Meanwhile, back home, denial, self-delusion, and the suppression of dissent remain the Order of the Day

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_01_27_bestof.html#110685906476642065
[Seymour Hersh] "Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is. It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity, it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completely been taken over -- by cultists.”

Reality bites

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/27/vote/index.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001618.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/international/middleeast/27election.html?ex=1264568400&en=c9f1a9a0aeed8c00&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
More than two-thirds of all Iraqis live in districts that have experienced insurgent attacks in the past month, according to an analysis of new intelligence data. . . More than half the Iraqis live in districts - roughly the equivalent of large counties in the United States - that suffered an average of at least one attack every three days. . .

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/15-iraqis-killed-in-attacks-focusing.html
Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that guerrillas killed 15 Iraqis on Thursday and blew up six polling sites, continuing their campaign to prevent successfull elections on Sunday. One such attack involved a clash with the new Iraqi army, and when the smoke cleared 11 Iraqis and one US soldier were dead.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40777-2005Jan27.html
Citing Iraq's profound insecurity, foreign countries and international organizations mustered only a single accredited observer, and she is expected to remain in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

“What I Heard About Iraq” (thanks to Mathew Gross for the link)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/wein01_.html

Interrogation techniques in Iraq: in some ways I find stuff like this even more disturbing than the waterboarding, etc.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2030&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Leap of Feith

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/27/feith/index.html
We remember other things about Feith's tenure at the Pentagon. A few Feith flashbacks:

From Carl Levin's report on Feith's faulty intelligence assessments: "This report shows that in the case of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, intelligence was exaggerated to support Administration policy aims primarily by the Feith policy office, which was determined to find a strong connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, rather than by the [intelligence community], which was consistently dubious of such a connection. In order to present a public case that heightened the sense of threat from Iraq, Administration officials reflected more closely the analysis of Under Secretary Feith's policy office rather than the more cautious analysis of the [intelligence community]."

Not one, not two, but three government investigations into the goings on at Feith's office. Borrowing from a Progress Report summary: The FBI probe involves charges that a Pentagon Iran analyst, Larry Franklin, passed secret government documents concerning the administration's Iran policy to an Israeli lobbying group, AIPAC. The Senate Select Intelligence Committee is looking into "back channel" meetings between officials from Feith's office and the former Iran contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government officials. And the House Judiciary committee probe also focuses on the Ghorbanifar/Iran back channel meetings, with the key players attempting to destabilize the government of Syria.

Remember the propaganda office? (Sorry, the "Office of Strategic Influence.") That was Feith's baby, and he was forced to shut it down.

And who can forget Tommy Franks' observation of Mr. Feith? According to Bob Woodward, Franks called Feith "the f-cking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/feith-resigns-under-pressure-of.html
[Juan Cole] Feith is clearly resigning ahead of the possible breaking of major scandals concerning his tenure at the Department of Defense, which is among the more disgraceful cases of the misleading of the American people in American history.

[NB: For more on these and other scandals, search the PBD archives using the keyword “Feith”]

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005332

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001615.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001616.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/politics/27military.html?ex=1264568400&en=28777f58c94fc1b5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Orwell watch, part 1. Who is this biased commentator, throwing around nonapproved WH lingo?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2028&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
“But we've got to worry about the youngsters, our kids and our grandchildren, when it comes to the solvency of the Social Security system. That's why I believe younger workers ought to be able to take some of their own money, set aside a personal savings account that will help Social Security fulfill its promise, a private account that they can call their own, a private account they can pass on to the next generation and a private account that Government can't take away.”

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004578

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004572

Orwell watch, part 2. Who is relying on the “politics of fear”?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004574
"I fully understand the power of those who want to derail a Social Security agenda by, you know, scaring people."

[See: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/10743508.htm]

Orwell watch, part 3. Why does someone proclaiming to be a “uniter and not a divider” rely on “wedge” issues so much? Isn’t a wedge issue by definition “divisive”?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005337

Krugman on Bush’s cynical use of race to promote his Social Security proposal

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/opinion/28krugman.html?oref=login&hp
[T]he claim that blacks get a bad deal from Social Security is false. And Mr. Bush's use of that false argument is doubly shameful, because he's exploiting the tragedy of high black mortality for political gain instead of treating it as a problem we should solve.

Chile reception

http://www.davidsirota.com/2005/01/bushs-social-security-example.html
"Members of Congress could take some lessons from Chile, particularly when it comes to how to run our pension plans. Our Social Security system needs to be modernized, Mr. President, and I look forward to getting some suggestions as to how to do so, since you have done so, so well."
- President Bush speaking to the Chilean president, 4/16/01

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/business/worldbusiness/27pension.html?ex=1264482000&en=42c98585c86afe88&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Nearly 25 years ago, Chile embarked on a sweeping experiment that has since been emulated, in one way or another, in a score of other countries. Rather than finance pensions through a system to which workers, employers and the government all contributed, millions of people began to pay 10 percent of their salaries to private investment accounts that they controlled.

Under the Chilean program - which President Bush has cited as a model for his plans to overhaul Social Security - the promise was that such investments, by helping to spur economic growth and generating higher returns, would deliver monthly pension benefits larger than what the traditional system could offer. . . But now that the first generation of workers to depend on the new system is beginning to retire, Chileans are finding that it is falling far short of what was originally advertised. . . Even many middle-class workers who contributed regularly are finding that their private accounts - burdened with hidden fees that may have soaked up as much as a third of their original investment - are failing to deliver as much in benefits as they would have received if they had stayed in the old system.

More: http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003152.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_digbysblog_archive.html#110685163473018959

It starts with the DHS staff, but eventually Bush means to dismantle civil service protections for all Federal workers

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005333
This is only one front in a very aggressive White House mobilization against federal labor structures and the civil service unions (who are set to sue DHS over the new changes), an initiative that has met with mixed results during Bush’s first term but that looks to be ramped up in the coming years.

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/01/bush_plans_politicize_entire_civil_service.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005530.php

Trouble for Bush: the coming internal GOP war over immigration policy

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/27/immigration/index.html
But in typical fashion, Bush also sounded like he wanted to have it both ways on the issue (and as long as immigrants don't take over the desirable jobs in America): "I'm against amnesty; I've made that very clear. On the other hand, I do want to recognize a system where a willing worker and a willing employer are able to come together in a way that enables people to find work without jeopardizing a job that an American would otherwise want to do."

More on the debate over religion and politics, a wonderful essay by Jim Wallis (thanks to K.C. Martin for the link)

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0502&article=050210
Those are the two ways that religion has been brought into public life in American history. The first way - God on our side - leads inevitably to triumphalism, self-righteousness, bad theology, and, often, dangerous foreign policy. The second way - asking if we are on God’s side - leads to much healthier things, namely penitence and even repentance, humility, reflection, and accountability. We need much more of all those, because they are often the missing values of politics. . . Martin Luther King Jr. did it best. With his Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other, King persuaded, not just pronounced. He reminded us all of God’s purposes for justice, for peace, and for the "beloved community" where those who have been left out and left behind get a front-row seat. And he brought religion into public life in a way that was always welcoming, inclusive, and inviting to all who cared about moral, spiritual, or religious values. Nobody felt left out of the conversation.

. . . Of course, God is not partisan. God is not a Republican or a Democrat. When either party tries to politicize God or co-opt religious communities to further political agendas, it makes a terrible mistake. The best contribution of religion is precisely not to be ideologically predictable nor loyally partisan. Both parties, and the nation, must let the prophetic voice of religion be heard. Faith must be free to challenge both the Right and the Left from a consistent moral ground. . . "God’s politics" are therefore never partisan nor ideological. But God’s politics challenge everything about our politics. God’s politics remind us of the people our politics always neglect - the poor, the vulnerable, the left behind. God’s politics challenge narrow national, ethnic, economic, or cultural self-interest, reminding us of a much wider world and the creative human diversity of all those made in the image of the creator. God’s politics remind us of the creation itself, a rich environment in which we are to be good stewards, not mere users, consumers, and exploiters. And God’s politics plead with us to resolve, as much as possible, the inevitable conflicts among us without the terrible destruction of war. God’s politics always remind us of the ancient prophetic prescription to "choose life, so that you and your children may live," and challenge all the selective moralities that would choose one set of lives and issues over another. This challenges both the Right and the Left, offering a new vision for faith and politics in America and a new conversation of personal faith and political hope. . .

After the 2002 mid-term elections, I attended a private dinner for Harvard Fellows in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Our speaker was a Republican political strategist. . . This very smart political operative said that Republicans won middle-class and even working-class people on the "social" issues, those moral and cultural issues that Democrats don’t seem to understand or appreciate. He even suggested that passion on the social issues can cause people to vote against their economic self-interest. Since the rich are already with us, he said, we win elections. . . I raised my hand and asked the following question. "What would you do if you faced a candidate that took a traditional moral stance on the social and cultural issues? They would not be mean-spirited and, for example, blame gay people for the breakdown of the family, nor would they criminalize the choices of desperate women backed into difficult and dangerous corners. But the candidate would be decidedly pro-family, pro-life (meaning they really want to lower the abortion rate), strong on personal responsibility and moral values, and outspoken against the moral pollution throughout popular culture that makes raising children in America a countercultural activity. And what if that candidate was also an economic populist, pro-poor in social policy, tough on corporate corruption and power, clear in supporting middle-class and working families in health care and education, an environmentalist, and committed to a foreign policy that emphasized international law and multilateral cooperation over pre-emptive and unilateral war? What would you do?" I asked. The Republican strategist paused for a long time, and then said, "We would panic!". . .

A totally unfair attack on DHS nominee Michael Chertoff, but my new mantra is WWRD do? (What would Rove and DeLay do?) By that standard, swing away

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2027&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Help Bush get past the “liberal media filter” (donate here)

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/27/mehlman/index.html

[NB: I assume that this is all about finding non-taxpayer supported funds to continue their aggressive PR campaigns in support of their proposals. But then isn't this a concession that having spent millions in public funds on such purposes in the past was wrong?]

Of course, Bush does pretty well getting past the liberal media already (like by ignoring them)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2032&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
There are assigned seats in the briefing room, and Bush started, like press secretary Scott McClellan normally does, by working his way through the first few rows. . . With one exception: "He called on everyone in the front two rows except for Helen," Kumar said, referring to firebrand Helen Thomas, doyenne of the White House press corps, now a columnist for Hearst, and a scourge to the Bush administration

“Questions I would have asked”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41596-2005Jan27.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
[Dan Froomkin] Sir, there were two big developments yesterday about torture in Iraq. Newly released Army documents show that there have been many more alleged acts of brutality and abuse of Iraqis at the hands of military personnel than we knew of. And a new report from Human Rights Watch says some of Saddam's torturers are back in business under new management and that torture is again routine in Iraq. Are you outraged?

Sir, in one of the new incidents made public yesterday, a 73-year-old Iraqi woman was captured by members of the Delta Force special unit and allegedly robbed and sexually abused. One of your special assistants, whose name was redacted, apparently took an interest in the case. But like all of these newly released cases, it was closed without a conclusion. Did you know about this -- or any other of the incidents made public yesterday?

Sir, let me read you a question Sen. Ted Kennedy asked Alberto Gonzales: "The FBI e-mails produced in the ACLU lawsuit include reports that detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo have suffered from the following abuses: Detainees were bound hand and foot and left in urine and feces for 18-24 hours; cigarette burns were inflicted; detainees were exposed to extreme temperatures for prolonged periods; enemas were forced on detainees. Do you believe any of these practices were or are lawful interrogation techniques or lawful detainee management?" In his written reply, Mr. Gonzales refused to rule any of those out. Will you?

Sir, you spoke in your inaugural address about bringing liberty to every corner of the globe. Do you mean like in Iraq? Are you aware that some people who don't share your world view don't consider that a good example?

Sir, why do you continue to say that Social Security will go bankrupt in 2042 when in fact even in the worst-case scenario it could still pay out 73 percent of wage-adjusted benefits? That's not bankrupt. In fact, your staffers are talking up a plan that would cut benefits even further than that. So why use the term bankrupt?

Sir, Social Security isn't really a retirement plan, it's more like an insurance plan, making sure that the elderly, the disabled, their dependents and survivors don't go destitute. Some people get a lot more out than they put in; others get a lot less; it's like insurance that way. Private accounts would be a huge change to the structure as established by FDR. What in your view is wrong with the way Social Security works now, other than the alleged financial shortfall, which private accounts don't address anyway?

Sir, when you go out into the country to make your case on Social Security "directly to the American people" will you only be meeting with and speaking to pre-screened groups of people who already agree with you? Or will you be willing to hear dissenting voices?

Scotty’s press gaggle “warming up”

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2029&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Q Scott, is Tony Blair right when he says the U.S. has to get on board with the agenda of countries who see climate control as a major priority?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I'm not sure that that's an accurate way to describe what he's saying. First of all --

Q How do you interpret it?

MR. McCLELLAN: I mean, climate change is an issue we take very seriously. And in terms of discussing it at the G8, we welcome a discussion of climate change at the G8. . .

Q Don't you think Prime Minister Blair was telling the U.S. that it should change its approach --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I think that there are many areas where we agree on how to move forward on climate change. . .

Now let's see what Tony Blair actually said.

"Interdependence is no longer disputed," said Blair, speaking to a forum of business and political leaders. "If America wants the rest of the world to be part of the agenda it has set, it must be part of their agenda too."

Jeff Gannon, “Talon News” (discussed yesterday) is such a right-wing shill that he’s actually recycling old – and UNTRUE – Rush Limbaugh lines

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/27/155855/527
Gannon asked Bush: "[H]ow are you going to work with people [Democratic leaders] who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" prefacing the question with the assertion that Senate Minority Leader "Harry Reid was talking about [the poor having to get food in] soup lines." But Reid made no reference to soup lines. As Limbaugh noted, "Uh, Harry Reid never said 'soup lines.' That's my term for the simple way to characterize the Democrats' view of America." Limbaugh said he was "flattered and honored and proud to have a point made by this program represented in the press conference and asked by a reporter."

More: http://mediamatters.org/items/200501270005

But that’s not all: Gannon files “news reports” that are simply recycled text from GOP documents

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501280001

Number three in the Payola scandal (Michael McManus). What is the tipping point?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/27/mcmanus/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/27/232735/477

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_atrios_archive.html#110687846679233253

Democrats respond: the “Stop Propaganda Act”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/27/184616/772

Bonus item: Funny photos, c/o First-Draft

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2033&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2026&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:38 AM

 
THE BIG PICTURE

An empire in decline?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112697/fr/rss/
[Fred Kaplan] Who will be the first politician brave enough to declare publicly that the United States is a declining power and that America's leaders must urgently discuss what to do about it? This prognosis of decline comes not (or not only) from leftist scribes rooting for imperialism's downfall, but from the National Intelligence Council—the "center of strategic thinking" inside the U.S. intelligence community. . . The NIC's conclusions are starkly presented in a new 119-page document, "Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project." It is unclassified and available on the CIA's Web site. . .

In this new world, a mere 15 years away, the United States will remain "an important shaper of the international order"—probably the single most powerful country—but its "relative power position" will have "eroded." The new "arriviste powers"—not only China and India, but also Brazil, Indonesia, and perhaps others—will accelerate this erosion by pursuing "strategies designed to exclude or isolate the United States" in order to "force or cajole" us into playing by their rules. . . America's current foreign policy is encouraging this trend, the NIC concluded. "U.S. preoccupation with the war on terrorism is largely irrelevant to the security concerns of most Asians," the report states. . . [A] "key question" for the future of America's power and influence is whether U.S. policy-makers "can offer Asian states an appealing vision of regional security and order that will rival and perhaps exceed that offered by China." If not, "U.S. disengagement from what matters to U.S. Asian allies would increase the likelihood that they will climb on Beijing's bandwagon and allow China to create its own regional security that excludes the United States.". . . To the extent that these new powers seek others to emulate, they may look to the European Union, not the United States, as "a model of global and regional governance."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17726
[Tony Judt] To a growing number of Europeans, however, it is America that is in trouble and the "American way of life" that cannot be sustained. The American pursuit of wealth, size, and abundance —as material surrogates for happiness —is aesthetically unpleasing and ecologically catastrophic. The American economy is built on sand (or, more precisely, other people's money). For many Americans the promise of a better future is a fading hope. Contemporary mass culture in the US is squalid and meretricious. No wonder so many Americans turn to the church for solace. . . These perceptions constitute the real Atlantic gap and they suggest that something has changed. In past decades it was conventionally assumed—whether with satisfaction or regret—that Europe and America were converging upon a single "Western" model of late capitalism, with the US as usual leading the way. . . But something has gone wrong with this story.

America's cultural peculiarities (as seen from Europe) are well documented: the nation's marked religiosity, its selective prurience, its affection for guns and prisons (the EU has 87 prisoners per 100,000 people; America has 685), and its embrace of the death penalty. As T.R. Reid puts it in The United States of Europe, "Yes, Americans put up huge billboards reading 'Love Thy Neighbor,' but they murder and rape their neighbors at rates that would shock any European nation." But it is the curiosities of America's economy, and its social costs, that are now attracting attention.

Americans work much more than Europeans: according to the OECD a typical employed American put in 1,877 hours in 2000, compared to 1,562 for his or her French counterpart. One American in three works more than fifty hours a week. Americans take fewer paid holidays than Europeans. Whereas Swedes get more than thirty paid days off work per year and even the Brits get an average of twenty-three, Americans can hope for something between four and ten, depending on where they live. Unemployment in the US is lower than in many European countries (though since out-of-work Americans soon lose their rights to unemployment benefits and are taken off the registers, these statistics may be misleading). America, it seems, is better than Europe at creating jobs. So more American adults are at work and they work much more than Europeans. What do they get for their efforts?

Not much, unless they are well-off. The US is an excellent place to be rich. Back in 1980 the average American chief executive earned forty times the average manufacturing employee. For the top tier of American CEOs, the ratio is now 475:1 and would be vastly greater if assets, not income, were taken into account. By way of comparison, the ratio in Britain is 24:1, in France 15:1, in Sweden 13:1. A privileged minority has access to the best medical treatment in the world. But 45 million Americans have no health insurance at all (of the world's developed countries only the US and South Africa offer no universal medical coverage). According to the World Health Organization the United States is number one in health spending per capita—and thirty-seventh in the quality of its service.

As a consequence, Americans live shorter lives than West Europeans. Their children are more likely to die in infancy: the US ranks twenty-sixth among industrial nations in infant mortality, with a rate double that of Sweden, higher than Slovenia's, and only just ahead of Lithuania's—and this despite spending 15 percent of US gross domestic product on "health care" (much of it siphoned off in the administrative costs of for-profit private networks). Sweden, by contrast, devotes just 8 percent of its GDP to health. The picture in education is very similar. In the aggregate the United States spends much more on education than the nations of Western Europe; and it has by far the best research universities in the world. Yet a recent study suggests that for every dollar the US spends on education it gets worse results than any other industrial nation. American children consistently underperform their European peers in both literacy and numeracy. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/26/144024/687
[Michael Lind] A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited. . . Consider Asean Plus Three (APT), which unites the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations with China, Japan and South Korea. This group has the potential to be the world's largest trade bloc, dwarfing the European Union and North American Free Trade Association. The deepening ties of the APT member states represent a major diplomatic defeat for the US, which hoped to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum to limit the growth of Asian economic regionalism at American expense. In the same way, recent moves by South American countries to bolster an economic community represent a clear rejection of US aims to dominate a western-hemisphere free trade zone.

Consider, as well, the EU's rapid progress toward military independence. American protests failed to prevent the EU establishing its own military planning agency, independent of the Nato alliance (and thus of Washington). Europe is building up its own rapid reaction force. And despite US resistance, the EU is developing Galileo, its own satellite network, which will break the monopoly of the US global positioning satellite system. . . The participation of China in Europe's Galileo project has alarmed the US military. . .

The US is being sidelined even in the area that Mr Bush identified in last week's address as America's mission: the promotion of democracy and human rights. The EU has devoted far more resources to consolidating democracy in post-communist Europe than has the US. By contrast, under Mr Bush, the US hypocritically uses the promotion of democracy as the rationale for campaigns against states it opposes for strategic reasons. . .

Nor is American democracy a shining example to mankind. The present one-party rule in the US has been produced in part by the artificial redrawing of political districts to favour Republicans, reinforcing the domination of money in American politics. America's judges -- many of whom will be appointed by Mr Bush -- increasingly behave as partisan political activists in black robes. America's antiquated winner-take-all electoral system has been abandoned by most other democracies for more inclusive versions of proportional representation.

In other areas of global moral and institutional reform, the US today is a follower rather than a leader. Human rights? Europe has banned the death penalty and torture, while the US is a leading practitioner of execution. Under Mr Bush, the US has constructed an international military gulag in which the torture of suspects has frequently occurred. The international rule of law? For generations, promoting international law in collaboration with other nations was a US goal. But the neoconservatives who dominate Washington today mock the very idea of international law. The next US attorney general will be the White House counsel who scorned the Geneva Conventions as obsolete.

A decade ago, American triumphalists mocked those who argued that the world was becoming multipolar, rather than unipolar. Where was the evidence of balancing against the US, they asked. Today the evidence of foreign co-operation to reduce American primacy is everywhere. . . That the rest of the world is building institutions and alliances that shut out the US should come as no surprise. The view that American leaders can be trusted to use a monopoly of military and economic power for the good of humanity has never been widely shared outside of the US. The trend toward multipolarity has probably been accelerated by the truculent unilateralism of the Bush administration. . . In recent memory, nothing could be done without the US. Today, however, practically all new international institution-building of any long-term importance in global diplomacy and trade occurs without American participation. . .

Europe, China, Russia, Latin America and other regions and nations are quietly taking measures whose effect if not sole purpose will be to cut America down to size.

The leading Shiite party in Iraq has now dropped (or “redefined”) its platform demand that US troops leave – adopting just the line that Allawi has been pushing in recent days

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2518

Will Allawi come out on top after all?

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/oy.html

We know that US military helicopters are ferrying Allawi around the country, but where is his campaign money coming from?

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/01/just_asking.html

Bush (no comment)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/26/bush/index.html
"I firmly planted the flag of liberty for all to see that the United States of America hears their concerns and believes in their aspirations. And I am excited by the challenge and am honored to be able to lead our nation in the quest of this noble goal, which is freeing people in the name of peace."

Ugh (and catch the photo too)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/politics/27spin.html?ex=1264568400&en=bd14b9c7fb6b8076&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
He said that if he had told the reporters in the room a few years before that the Iraqi people would be voting, "you would look at me like some of you still look at me, with a kind of blank expression."

Yeah, and how IS that election coming along?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112739/fr/rss/
[T]he NYT John Burns declares, "Baghdad is not under control, either by the Iraqi interim government or the American military." A named colonel in charge of southern Baghdad, went even starker, "I would definitely say it's enemy territory.". . . Burns also sees residents too scared to go to the polls: "In one Baghdad office, only one of 20 people who were asked said he intended to vote.". . . Another piece inside the NYT combines Iraqi census data with info gathered by security companies to conclude that the insurgency is widespread and growing. "More than half" (?) of Iraqis live in provinces averaging at least an attack every three days, which have also become more lethal. "There has been a decrease in small-arms attacks and ambushes and an increase in car bombs," said one security consultant. Here's a chart. . . Yesterday's LAT mentioned that in Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar province, "the 1,000-member police force [has] abandoned its posts.". . .

The best deconstruction of Bush's performance comes from ... the NYT's Elisabeth Bumiller, who explains it was the kickoff of a spin-offensive to paint the Iraq as just another stop in the worldwide march to freedom: "The goal, a Bush adviser said, was not only to lower expectations but to avoid any definition of success." Bumiller also notes that reporters were given "only 45 minutes' notice."

Joe Lieberman on why he supported Condi Rice (if you can bear it)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/26/155753/892

On Gonzales, the Democrats show some spine

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/26/132056/083
The committee Democrats, all who deserve praise: Leahy (VT), Kennedy (MA), Biden (DE), Kohl (WI), Durbin (IL), Feinstein (CA), Feingold (WI), and Schumer (NY).

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/26/134428/053
[WP] Mr. Gonzales has confirmed that the Bush administration is violating human rights as a matter of policy. . . .[H]is written testimony to the committee makes clear that "abuse" is, in fact, permissible -- provided that it is practiced by the Central Intelligence Agency on foreigners held outside the United States. The Convention Against Torture, which the United States ratified in 1994, prohibits not only torture but "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment . . . In his written testimony, Mr. Gonzales affirmed that the provision would have "provided legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled." Senators . . . face a critical question: If they vote to confirm Mr. Gonzales as the government's chief legal authority, will they not be endorsing the systematic use of "cruel, inhumane and degrading" practices by the United States?"

More: http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2015&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Social Security: it’s getting personal

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/26/personal/index.html
Not surprisingly, in his press conference today the president dismissed all questions regarding the specifics of his Social Security privatization scheme. Bush declined even to acknowledge obvious mathematical truisms -- for instance that the government will need to borrow a couple trillion dollars or so to cover the transition costs associated with pulling money out of Social Security and setting up private investment accounts. Still, despite his reticence, it was possible to see in Bush's words the outline of what will likely be a very aggressive effort, beginning with the State of the Union address next week, to -- how to put this without scaring people? -- throw out the New Deal.

The main thing we noticed today was the president's language, and the language of the reporters questioning him. The way to fix Social Security, Bush said, was to let people divert money from their payroll taxes and invest it in what he called "personal accounts." Note the repetition of his words here: "Personal accounts are very important. . . a personal account, obviously, under strict guidelines of investment, will yield a better rate of return. . . and personal accounts will enable a worker to be able to pass on his or her earnings. . . "

And note what reporters asked him: "Q: Mr. President, at the beginning of your remarks today you referred to two criteria that you're looking for on a Social Security fix; namely, permanent solvency and personal accounts . . . Q: Any transition to personal accounts is estimated to cost between $1 trillion to $2 trillion over 10 years. . . Q: Are you prepared today to say that those who opt into a potential private account -- a personal account could, in fact, have a guaranteed benefit, as well?"

[NB: That last one, who caught and corrected himself to get on message, would be Carl Cameron, of Fox News: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004561]

Ah, that well-trained WH press corps

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/26/question/index.html
The timidity and ineptitude of the White House press corps serving under the Bush administration continues in earnest. It was on glorious display again during this morning's press conference with the president, where one reporter (we can't tell who from the transcript) essentially set Bush up to tag his fiercest critics on Capitol Hill as weak-willed cowards, and to align them with the terrorists in Iraq. Bush was perfectly obliged, of course, to keep his eye on the softball and swing away.

And the softballer is. . .Jeff Gannon (of something called “Talon News”)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005327
However, also at a news conference today, the president called on and took a question from Jeff Gannon of Talon News, a conservative outfit run by a Republican activist that has been the subject of some tough media criticism in recent years for its cozy relationship with the Bush White House. Gannon, who virtually brags on his Web site that he's a conservative plant with orders to counter the questions of the mainstream press, asked the president this total softball of a question. . . [Read on]

More: http://mediamatters.org/items/200501260015

As usual, Holden has a great wrap-up of the press conference transcript

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2017&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Helicopter crashes in Iraq, 31 U.S. soldiers dead. How does Bush respond?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_digbysblog_archive.html#110679654431344804

Interesting: Bush on Social Security, 1978

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004551
[B]ack in 1978 when President Bush was running for congress in Texas, "he predicted Social Security would go broke in 10 years and said the system should give people 'the chance to invest money the way they feel' is best."

[NB: Gee, did Social Security go bust in 1988? I must have missed that]

Another great Social Security cartoon (thanks to Josh Marshall for the link)

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/wpnan/2005/wpnan050125.gif

Sharp analysis from Kevin Drum: how Bush is playing Social Security reform as a wedge issue

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005525.php

Let the campaign begin!

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004568

Accountability, Bush style

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/26/armstrong/index.html
Q Mr. President, do you think it's a proper use of government funds to pay commentators to promote your policies?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No.

Q Are you going to order that –

PRESIDENT BUSH: I expect my Cabinet secretaries to make sure that that practice -- there needs -- doesn't go forward. There needs to be independence. And Mr. Armstrong Williams admitted he made a mistake. And we didn't know about this in the White House. . .

Q So Mr. Williams made a mistake, but --

PRESIDENT BUSH: Who?

Q Mr. Williams made a mistake. Did the Department of Education make a mistake?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes. They did.

Q And what will happen to the people that made this decision?

PRESIDENT BUSH: We've got new leadership going to the Department of Education.

[NB: Now, first, of all, Rod Paige had already announced his resignation, for other reasons entirely, long before this story aired – so the change had nothing to do with holding him accountable. Second, if Bush’s new principle is that Dept heads will be held accountable for the actions of underlings, watch out Don Rumsfeld (of course that will never happen). Third, it will be interesting to see if he applies this standard over at HHS, now that the Maggie Gallagher payola has been disclosed. But, finally, and unbelievably, the person in Education who (apparently) arranged the deal with Williams has been PROMOTED! http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004563]

“How stupid is the WSJ editorial page?” (or, more precisely, how stupid do they think WE are?)

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000229.html

Remember the big fight in passing the Department of Homeland Security bill, which almost scuttled the whole deal, exempting DHS employees from civil service rules protecting all other govt employees? Well, now the other shoe drops

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/01/bush_plans_politicize_entire_civil_service.html

Bush spends over $36 million in PR costs, 67 separate contracts. How many of them will show Williams/Gallagher style payola?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005329

One head rolls: Doug Feith resigns for “personal and family reasons." Will the full story of what this guy did ever come out?

http://www.dod.mil/releases/2005/nr20050126-2013.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001614.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-feith27jan27,1,1878963.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Microwave beam weapons being tested in Iraq?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2013&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Prostitutes used at Guantanamo?

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/01/more_ugly_gitmo_allegations.html

How Rove pulled off a Bush “win” in 2004 (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012405H.shtml

Bonus item: Watch it Buster! New Education Sect’y Margaret Spellings gives a preview of what HER priorities will be

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40188-2005Jan26?language=printer

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:04 AM

 
WWJD

Bush, the Right, and faux Christianity. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a few days now, and this article provides an occasion

http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2005/001/3.8.html
Whether the issue is divorce, materialism, sexual promiscuity, racism, physical abuse in marriage, or neglect of a biblical worldview, the polling data point to widespread, blatant disobedience of clear biblical moral demands on the part of people who allegedly are evangelical, born-again Christians.

[NB: I for one am sick of being lectured to about “moral values” by a group of people – led by that “Christian philosopher” George Bush – who see no contradiction between their putative beliefs and rationalizing aggressive war, torture and abuse of prisoners, capital punishment, or any of the host of forms of violence they deem necessary to rid the world of infidels (With General Jerry Boykin as their poster boy.)

Remember that Bush is the man who mocked the pleas for clemency of a woman he was sentencing to death (http://www.cuadp.org/bush.html). That in itself should be a disqualification from any claim to Christian piety. I have hated him from the moment I heard that story and nothing short of a public confession and expression of shame could even begin to make me reconsider that judgment. (I, fortunately, am not a Christian so I feel no obligation to forgive him.)

What does Christianity as a moral stance mean if not humility, gentleness, generosity, and love for fellow humans? Of course any of us is imperfect and falls short of our moral ideals. But invoking Jesus as a leader into battle, suggesting that God takes sides in fights over political ideology, attacking gays or abortion rights defenders out of vicious hatred or bigotry, is hypocrisy of the most cynical kind.

I understand the history of Crusades and Inquisitions, Salem witch trials, lynchings and genocide that have often been carried out in the name of Christianity – but no one today would argue that they were justified (or would they?)

I do not understand why there is not a greater fight within the Christian community between believers who do understand and try to emulate the moral tenor of Jesus’s message, and the highly visible politicians, pundits, and televangelists who invoke that mantle in the service of profoundly un-Christian policies.]

More: http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/003716.html

“Time for Bush to talk about torture”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35221-2005Jan25.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
[Dan Froomkin] Two sobering news reports today suggest that while Saddam Hussein's torture chambers may indeed be closed, some Iraqis continued to be abused under new management. . . It's a jarring counterpoint to President Bush's second inaugural address, in which he spoke so passionately of the role of the United States in advancing liberty and freedom across the globe. . . So maybe now would be a good time for Bush to publicly clarify his views on liberty, and on torture, and on whether they can coexist.

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/25/abuse/index.html

A brief for a “no” vote on Gonzales

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/25/15437/3930
As the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Administration, Gonzales's advice led directly to the abandonment of longstanding federal laws, the Geneva Convention, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales's legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law's undoing.

Today the WP and the NYT have editorials calling for his rejection

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112684/fr/rss/
[WP] According to President Bush's closest legal adviser, this administration continues to assert its right to indefinitely hold foreigners in secret locations without any legal process; to deny them access to the International Red Cross; to transport them to countries where torture is practiced; and to subject them to treatment that is "cruel, inhumane or degrading," even though such abuse is banned by an international treaty that the United States has ratified. In effect, Mr. Gonzales has confirmed that the Bush administration is violating human rights as a matter of policy.

CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) files an ethics complaint over Gonzales’s deceptions about his involvement in covering up Bush’s DUI conviction. Gee, can you have an Attorney General who has been disbarred?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_atrios_archive.html#110667421449014110

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/25/payback/index.html

Must-read. As bad as you think it is in this White House, it just keeps getting more surreal

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35221-2005Jan25.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
[Dan Froomkin] I just noticed that in an interview broadcast Jan. 12, Colin Powell told NPR's Juan Williams: "A President is well-served when he has cabinet officers who have different points of view and who are secure enough in who they are, and who are secure enough in their relationship with the President that you can argue out these points of view. A President is not well served when he has people in his cabinet who have points of view but are not prepared to argue those points of view forcefully for fear that it might leak or it looks like members of the cabinet are squabbling.". . .

As Guy Dinmore recounted in the Financial Times on Jan. 13: "According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. 'We're losing,' Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave."

[NB: “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, Don’t distract me with bad news!”]

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2512
[Spencer Ackerman] The U.S. can't defeat the Sunni insurgency--but we can in fact fuel it. The Washington Post describes a "growing consensus" that "the current strategy may be spurring greater opposition and deeper anger at the coalition, possibly even making the counterinsurgency unwinnable as it is now being conducted." This shift in thinking--that the occupation of Iraq is basically counterproductive to its stated objectives--is quite possibly the most important to occur in the entire war.

Juan Cole plays speechwriter

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/speech-bush-should-have-given-this-is.html
This is the speech that I wish President Bush had given in fall, 2002, as he was trying to convince Congress to give him the authority to go to war against Iraq.

My fellow Americans:

I want us to go to war against Iraq. But I want us to have our eyes open and be completely realistic.

A war against Iraq will be expensive. It will cost you, the taxpayer, about $300 billion over five years. I know Wolfowitz is telling you Iraq's oil revenues will pay for it all, but that's ridiculous. Iraq only pumps about $10 billion a year worth of oil, and it's going to need that just to run the new government we're putting in. No, we're going to have to pay for it, ourselves. I'm going to ask you for $25 billion, then $80 billion, then another $80 billion. And so on. . .

Then, this Iraq War that I want you to authorize as part of the War on Terror is going to be costly in American lives. By the time of my second inaugural, over 1,300 brave women and men of the US armed forces will be dead as a result of this Iraq war, and 10,371 will have been maimed and wounded, many of them for life. . .

I know Dick Cheney and Condi Rice have gone around scaring your kids with wild talk of Iraqi nukes. I have to confess to you that my CIA director, George Tenet, tells me that the evidence for that kind of thing just doesn't exist. . .

There also isn't any operational link between a secular Arab nationalist like Saddam and the religious loonies of al-Qaeda. . .

So why do I want to go to war? Look, folks, I'm just not going to tell you. I don't have to tell you. . . you'll just have to trust me.

How the world sees the U.S. – and why Bush doesn’t get it

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6857387/site/newsweek/

2006=1994?

http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002006.html
Former House Speaker Gingrich cautioned Monday that the narrow majority enjoyed by House Republicans could be threatened in upcoming election cycles if GOP leaders do not re-evaluate how they govern the chamber and other factors. . . "The odds are not trivial that the Republicans could lose the House either in '06 or '08," Gingrich said during a panel discussion on the "Contract with America" at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "The size of the margin is not big enough that you could comfortably say that incumbency is going to protect you," he said. "Democrats, if they could move to the center and actually be a serious reform party, would be a formidable threat overnight."

Democrats becoming better organized, more aggressive

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/25/141311/920
For the first time, the 44 Democratic senators are coordinating their media messages through a centralized Senate Democratic Communications Center. The new center has its "war room" in an office on the Capitol's third floor, where staff members send out daily talking points to Democratic press secretaries, line up radio and television interviews with senators, and issue "rapid-response" news releases in the style of political campaigns. . . The center has an aide dedicated to getting information to Democratic-leaning bloggers and yesterday launched a website, democrats.gov, to better communicate the positions of Senate Democrats. . .

On Friday, a newly formed Democratic Committee on Oversight and Investigations will hold its first hearing, in an attempt to highlight areas and issues that the Republicans are not willing to. The initial hearing will focus on whether Bush's contention that the Social Security system is in crisis is accurate. . . Reid said Senate Democrats do not consider Bush's victory over Senator John F. Kerry to have been a statement in support of Bush's policies, and will continue to fight for their own values.

And they are learning to use the “L” word, which is indispensable in dealing with the current regime

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/25/rice1/index.html
The Bush administration had hoped that Condoleezza Rice's nomination as Secretary of State would cruise through the Senate so quickly that all of the debate and voting over her could be squeezed into an hour or so amid the pomp and parade of inauguration day. . . It's not working out that way. . .

Rice was able to dodge questions about her Iraq performance during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, rebuffing efforts by Sen. Barbara Boxer by saying that she would not have her credibility "impugned." Democrats are firing back today, making it clear that Rice's credibility is, in fact, the issue. . . "I don't like impugning anyone's integrity," Sen. Mark Dayton said this morning, "but I really don't like being lied to." Dayton said Rice misled him, misled other members of Congress and misled the public both before and after the war began. Among the evidence Dayton cited: Rice's claim in September 2002 that Saddam Hussein was trying to purchase aluminum tubes that were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." Rice coupled her pronouncement on the tubes with the warning that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." But as the New York Times later reported, Rice was aware at the time she gave her warning that the government's top nuclear experts had concluded that the tubes were most likely not for weapons use at all.

Dayton said he would vote against Rice's confirmation to send a signal that administration officials cannot "get away with lying -- lying to Congress, lying to committees, lying to the American people. It's wrong, it's immoral, it's un-American, and it has to stop."

A truly ingenious argument in Rice’s defense: she may be a liar, but calling her one will reduce her credibility as Sect’y of State

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/25/rice2/index.html
In the weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer warned "all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.". . . As the Senate continues to debate the nomination of Condoleezza Rice, at least one Republican thinks it's time for Democrats to remember Ari's warning. Speaking on the Senate floor a short time ago, Virginia Sen. George Allen said his Democratic colleagues should "be careful" when criticizing Rice for making false statements about the war in Iraq lest they "diminish Dr. Rice's credibility in capitals around the world.". . .

Funny, we would have thought that Rice "diminished" her own credibility -- that she did a "disservice" to the country -- when she made statements that turned out not to be true about Saddam Hussein's supposed nuclear weapons program. But we wouldn't say that. We need to be careful.

Bush’s new “deficit cutting” budget: do the math

(1) Suddenly, CBO projections have miraculously changed from a $2.3 trillion deficit over ten years to “only” $855 billion. How was this magic achieved?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_atrios_archive.html#110666702195343018
The deficit projections for the years 2006 through 2015 is almost two-thirds smaller than what congressional budget analysts predicted last fall, but the drop is largely due to estimating quirks that required it to exclude future Iran and Afghanistan war costs. Last September, their 10-year deficit estimate was $2.3 trillion.

[Atrios] The numbers also exclude plans to make the tax cuts permanent and the inevitable AMT rejiggering.

[NB: In addition to that, they don’t count the possible costs of Social Security reform, also being run off the books: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/politics/26deficit.html?ex=1264482000&en=5d52e5b7a89d480b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland. And Atrios catches the typo – OR IS IT? – about future “Iran” war costs]

(2) Don’t include the $80 billion Bush JUST ASKED FOR to continue the war in Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/politics/25cnd-budg.html?ex=1264395600&en=93f63e53769ef6d4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
The Congressional Budget Office predicted today that the federal government would run a deficit of $368 billion this year, a figure that does not include a request that administration officials plan to unveil later today for $80 billion more in funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, at least it will be $80 billion well-spent in the war effort, right?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36544-2005Jan25.html?nav=rss_nation
The U.S. government's biggest department is also one of the most prone to waste, fraud and abuse, raising concerns about the effectiveness of many of its programs, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112684/fr/rss/
Yesterday, TP wondered if anybody could get the administration to explain how the $80 billion will be divvied up. Today's Post says "administration officials refused" to do so.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/25/cost/index.html
This includes, as Atrios points out, $1.5 billion for a U.S. embassy in Baghdad. If anyone's looking for an area fertile for cost-cutting, we'd suggest starting here.

[NB: $1.5 BILLION to build an embassy?!??!! I have a small fraction of that total to wager that the contract to build it will go to a company whose name begins with an “H”]

(1) + (2) = ?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005514.php
[Kevin Drum] The CBO's latest deficit projections are out, and the press is accurately reporting that they show a reduced deficit for 2005 only because the CBO is projecting zero new expenses for the war in Iraq. Why? Because last year supplemental military appropriations totaled $115 billion and CBO is required by law to extrapolate that into the future. This year — so far — there have been no supplemental military appropriations, so CBO is now legally required to extrapolate that into the future.

No, this doesn't really make sense, but that's the way it goes. In reality, last year's deficit was $412 billion, and this year's deficit is not going to be $368 billion, it's going to be at least $400 billion and probably higher.

What's more, the 10-year deficit projection is even worse. The CBO report itself explains all this nicely if you're willing to wade through the text. If you're not, I've created a handy graphic below.

Bottom line: if you do an apples-to-apples comparison, last September CBO was projecting a 10-year deficit of $861 billion not counting Iraq. Today, CBO is projecting a 10-year deficit of $1,364 billion not counting Iraq. In other words, the projected deficit sans Iraq has gone up 58%.

Honest math: ANOTHER RECORD DEFICIT (three years running) – and how’s that promise to cut it in half coming along George?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/politics/25cnd-budg.html?ex=1264395600&en=93f63e53769ef6d4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
White House officials predicted this afternoon that the budget deficit would hit a record $427 billion this year, including an additional $80 billion that President Bush will ask for mostly to cover the costs of the war in Iraq.

White House officials said today that they were still on track to fulfill Mr. Bush's campaign promise of cutting the budget deficit in half by 2009. . . But the administration is already well behind on its goal. The White House predicted last summer that the budget deficit would decline in 2005 and continue to sink after that.

. . . The new estimate calls for the budget to climb slightly, and a new report earlier today by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows that deficits will remain above $350 billion through 2009 and climb sharply after that.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000222.html
[Watch] OMB Director Joshua Bolten put on the big shoes and the rubber nose as he takes a starring role in the Bush administration's economic policy clown show. . . So last year's deficit was $412 billion, and this year's deficit will be $427 billion, but they're still "on track" to cut the deficit in half.

More:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/26/22449/7892

Scotty’s utter gobbledygook in explaining why the war is costing so much more than expected

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2010&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

More bad math: shuffling numbers to extend the tours of Reserve forces

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/25/reserves/index.html

National Guard recruitment down, even though they keep lowering standards. (BTW, I just heard of a case where a young Reservist, desperate to get into flight school, was repeatedly turned down because of poor vision. Now, in order to get him to re-enlist, he has been promised a place in flight school after all – no, I don’t think his vision suddenly got better)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guard26jan26,1,5221300.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

The Allawi/Chalabi Steel Cage Death Match

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/wsj_votes_chalabi.php

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112682/fr/rss/

Ooooh, tough love. Christian right-wingers warn Bush that they will withhold support for his Social Security proposal unless he gets more active in promoting the Gay Marriage Amendment (as he promised to do during the campaign, then retracted after being safely elected)

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2516

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005311

Meanwhile, Bush shifts focus to Black Americans -- who DO get screwed by the current Social Security system – which is, I am certain, motivated by his sincere and honest concern for their shortened lifespans

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-social26jan26,1,4368201.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Race became a significant factor in the debate over Social Security on Tuesday as President Bush told African American leaders that the government retirement program shortchanged blacks, whose relatively shorter lifespan meant that they paid more in payroll taxes than they eventually received in benefits. . . Bush's comments came during a private White House meeting with 22 black religious and business leaders who backed his reelection last year — marking a new line of argument in his attempts to win support for adding worker-owned investment accounts to Social Security.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004549
[Josh Marshall] Since the president now seems inclined to bang on this patently dishonest argument, it's probably time for someone to pipe up and explain that the study the president is relying on has already been discredited by studies by the Social Security Administration and what was then still called the Government Accounting Office for errors so elementary that they were almost certainly intentional.

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004545

More media outlets get the WH memo on how they want people to talk about their Social Security proposal

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/25/12432/9597
This Boston Globe headline states:

AARP poll shows skepticism over Bush's plan for personal accounts

Read the story though, and Bush's efforts are referred to as "private" accounts seven times. The White House's efforts to cow the press into using their nomenclature appears to be paying off.

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004544

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/01/25.html#a824
[Scott Rosenberg] The more pressure the White House puts on Americans to stop thinking of the proposal as "privatizing," the more opportunity they give opponents to point out that that's exactly what it is -- and to ask why the Republicans are running from an accurate description of their idea. . . Any time you hear a Bush supporter protest that "No one is talking about dismantling Social Security, just reforming it!," you can show them this quotation from a prominent advocate for the president's plan. . .

"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," said Stephen Moore, the former president of Club for Growth, an antitax group. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

That doesn't sound like "reform," now, does it? It sounds like the violent release of 70 years of conservative Republican hatred of Social Security and resentment at its success and popularity

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/25/154325/316
[Fred Barnes] “To sell Social Security reform, the president has already adopted strategies associated with Republican consultant Frank Luntz and Presentation Testing's Richard Thau. They've derived lessons from dozens of focus groups and polls on this issue. . . Where Bush is following the advice of Luntz and Thau is in avoiding certain poisonous words. Chief among these is "privatization." Supporters of reform toss that word around to describe the process of creating investment accounts controlled by individual workers. To the public, however, it indicates corporate control of Social Security, which they oppose. Bush never utters the word. Instead of calling investment accounts funded by payroll taxes "private," he calls them "personal."

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/25/154325/316
[Chris Bowers] We need to immediately turn this into a process story over the use of words. Every time a Republican uses the term "personal accounts," we need to respond with something to the following effect: “Why did you start using that term when you used to say "private accounts" (cite source). When did you get the memo from Frank Luntz?” Exposing this in the media will be difficult, but I promise you it would kill any last shred of hope Bush had in promoting his destruction of Social Security. Revealing the Republican language games to the public would do significant damage to their national image and destroy any immediate legislative proposal they are working on.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004538
[Josh Marshall] Luntz said that it is okay for Democrats to use these terms but not the press since that would mean they were taking sides in the debate. When I asked why this was so since these were words the president was using only a few weeks ago, what emerged in the course of the conversation is that it is apparently inappropriate for reporters to use a given term after the date on which the president stops using it. . . So whereas it was okay two months ago for reporters to use the term 'private accounts' they must now refer to them as 'personal accounts' because the president has now decided that that is the proper word. . . The New York Times seems to understand the new rules of the road. In the piece on the White House's emerging phase-out strategy, Edmund Andrews and Richard Stevenson are careful only to refer to them as "personal accounts."

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/personal_or_pri.html
[Matt Yglesias] Well, complaining that the press shouldn't act like douchebags is fun, but we know how this game is played. The only way to get the media to refer to private accounts as "private accounts" is if the media is convinced that "private accounts" is a neutral third-way term between the Bushian "personal accounts" and some other Democratic alternative term. . . Then you send around a memo getting all Democrats to start calling them "X accounts" while the White House calls them "personal accounts." Then "private accounts" will look like a decent compromise and it may well get back in the stories.

It's insane, yes, that the very term invented by proponents of private accounts is now considered to be off-limits. But that's the game. If you want to work the refs, you've got to work the refs. "Forced savings accounts" strikes me intuitively as something that focus groups won't like, but actual research should be done.

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/lying_in_politics_/2005/01/paging_dr_orwell_paging_dr_owell_code_blue.php
“Paging Dr. Orwell. . . “

More on the personal/private word game, from Tom Toles

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/tolestom/?name=Toles&date=20050125

Another cartoon c/o Josh Marshall
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/cartoons/babin/story/12134370p-13005434c.html

Bush pleads with Congressional Republicans not to abandon him on S.S.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004543
The first graf tells the tale: "President Bush pleaded for patience yesterday from Republican lawmakers who will shape Social Security legislation, summoning them to the White House at a time when they are expressing increasing frustration about his handling of his top priority for the year.". . . This graf, though, may be the most revealing. . .

Senators and administration officials said that during the meeting, Bush emphasized the need to act quickly after he presents his proposals, and both sides said most senators agreed that something needs to be done.

So the president has been in no rush to explain what's actually contained in his proposal, even though he announced his intention to submit his own bill within a couple days of his reelection. And yet it's very important that Congress adopt it quickly after he submits it. I guess that says something about how confident he is in selling it to the public. . .

Did the Iraqi police have Zarqawi and then let him go because they didn’t recognize him?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005522.php

(And why does USAT wait until the 10th paragraph of an unrelated story to include this little minor detail?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-01-24-suicide-bomber-revenge_x.htm)

Armstrong Williams not the only right wing pundit to be found on the Bush payroll -- now there is another (and how many more to follow?)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004547
(Maggie Gallagher)

One last wrap up of the still-unanswered questions about e-voting fraud in the 2004 elections (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)

http://www.crisispapers.org/essays-p/fraud.htm

Bonus item: starts better than it finishes, but a clever idea – Bush’s obituary, circa 2018 (thanks to A.G. Rud for the link)

http://citypages.com/databank/25/1248/article12626.asp

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

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I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:56 AM

 
QUICK, GET ME REWRITE!

Hey, what’s the big deal? The Pentagon immediately wheels out the emergency brigade to defend its secret operation teams: they aren’t illegal, they’re just gathering intelligence, the relevant govt agencies already know about them, they’ve been around under one guise or another for a long time - and hey, they helped find Saddam. But if you read between the lines of this story, you see something else going on

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1152&slug=Pentagon%20Spy%20Teams
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, "Generally speaking, the president is aware of the Department of Defense's efforts to expand and enhance humanitarian intelligence capabilities. That was something that was emphasized in the 9/11 commission report. They said it needs to be improved across-the-board. So we support efforts by the Department of Defense to collect intelligence to enhance battlefield capabilities."

The concept of augmenting military forces with specialized intelligence teams was born after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as a means of expanding the military's ability to collect human intelligence - information from spies as opposed to listening devices or satellites. . . Another official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to reveal details, said the unit's origins can be traced to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, when commanders of special operations forces found they lacked the interrogation experts they needed. . .

William Arkin, a former Army intelligence officer and author of a new book, "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9-11 World," said in a telephone interview Monday that the DIA unit may be a permutation of a secret intelligence unit known informally as Gray Fox, which reportedly has played a role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. . . Arkin said he was concerned that the Pentagon's expanding use of such secret intelligence units is blurring the lines between combatants and noncombatants, since some in these units don't operate in military uniforms but appear on the battlefield.

CIA? Hey, we (heart) the CIA

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33798-2005Jan24.html?nav=rss_nation
Defense Department officials acknowledged yesterday that the Pentagon has created new clandestine teams to gain better human intelligence for military commanders but emphasized that the program was developed with the cooperation of the Central Intelligence Agency, not to bypass it.

If there is nothing wrong with it, why is the Pentagon acting like there is?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/24/secret_spying/index.html?source=RSS
The deployment of the unit further muddies the issue of accountability for covert and clandestine intelligence operations in the "war on terror." The program was established by diverting existing Pentagon funds, thus freeing it from any congressional oversight.

Recent administration guidelines suggest that the Pentagon need not report all "deployment orders" to Congress, as it did previously. Pentagon lawyers argue that by defining the "war on terror" as indefinite, global and ongoing, the defense secretary's war powers are extended beyond times of imminent combat. "Operations the CIA runs have one set of restrictions and oversight, and the military has another," a Republican member of Congress with a role in the oversight of national security told the paper.

"It sounds like there's an angle here of 'Let's get around having any oversight by having the military do something that normally the [CIA] does, and not tell anybody.' That immediately raises all kinds of red flags for me. Why aren't they telling us?"

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480
Not only does the group operate outside the public view, Rumsfeld has also hidden it from Congress and is not coordinating with the CIA. Already, it has been operating in places like Iraq and Afghanistan – as well as in unnamed "friendly countries" with which the United States is not at war. The group has been working with the elite U.S. Special Forces, such as Delta Force, as well as recruited outside agents, including "notorious figures" whose "links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed." The Defense Department has also engaged in legal tricks, redefining the rules to support its claims that the intelligence group is subject to less stringent oversight than similar operations within the CIA. . . Defense Department lawyers are hard at work redefining the rules to give Secretary Rumsfeld more expansive powers and to get around any legal constraints. Take Title 10 of the U.S. code, for example. While the Pentagon is legally required to tell Congress about all "deployment orders," Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone this month issued new guidelines that state the group is allowed to "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations…before publication" of a deployment order, making the subsequent order meaningless. Title 50 got a friendly freshen-up as well: current law says Congress does not have to be informed about "traditional" military activities and their "routine" support, so the Pentagon's general counsel simply expanded the definition of "traditional" and "routine.". . . The Strategic Support Branch operated well below congressional radar. The group was set up using funds siphoned off of other Pentagon projects "without explicit congressional authority or appropriation.". . .

Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita issued a very carefully worded statement designed to look like a denial. "There is no unit that is directly reportable to the Secretary of Defense for clandestine operations as is described in The Washington Post. . . Di Rita, however, went on to admit, "It is accurate and should not be surprising that the Department of Defense is attempting to improve its long-standing human intelligence capability."

And what’s wrong with covert ops?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005510.php

In Iraq, attention to the voting and its results is starting to be displaced by a focus on deal-making and maneuvering for control after the vote

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/24/iraq_election/index.html?source=RSS

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/international/middleeast/25sunni.html?ex=1264395600&en=f7db139377bb7709&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Bush plans to keep 120,000 troops in Iraq at least through next year

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33540-2005Jan24.html?nav=rss_nation

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/25/14730/8448

And he asks for $80 billion more to pay for “the war that was supposed to pay for itself”

http://www.freep.com/news/nw/war25e_20050125.htm
The package would be in addition to $25 billion already approved for 2005, and would push the total provided so far for those wars and for U.S. efforts against terrorism elsewhere in the world to more than $280 billion. . . The forthcoming request also underscored how the war spending has clearly exceeded initial White House estimates. Early on, then-presidential economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey placed Iraq costs of $100 billion to $200 billion, only to see his comments derided by Bush administration colleagues.

[Before they fired him!]

The media’s failure

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_atrios_archive.html#110659426959953885
[Philadelphia Inquirer] The failure of the coverage leading up to the invasion of Iraq was the failure to be wary of the powerful, the failure to listen to those who are not our own. Stories about an imminent Iraqi threat, which turned out to be false, were splattered across the pages of the nation's most prominent newspapers. There were voices, important voices, that questioned the assertions, but they were largely unheard because the media ignored them. This failure was also, and perhaps more important, a failure to honor the moral contract that journalists have with viewers and readers to be truthful, even when it means challenging conventional wisdom and ferreting out unpleasant facts.

Those who defend the prewar coverage argue that reporters are only as good as their sources. They say they reported accurately the falsehoods leaked to them by those who sought to wage war. By making such an argument they are also saying they are morally neutral, that they are little more than conduits for lies, half-truths and truths all rolled into one unintelligible message. They forget the contract.

There is a concerted attempt to destroy this contract. Balance and objectivity have become code words to propagate the insidious and cynical moral disengagement that is destroying American journalism. This moral disengagement gives equal time, and sometimes more than equal time, to those who spread falsehoods and distort information. It tacitly sanctions the dissemination of lies. It absolves us from making moral choice. It obscures and often shuts out the truth.

This sophistry has come to characterize the circus that goes by the name of journalism on cable news shows. Facts on television are largely interchangeable with opinions. The television reporter, like a game show host, makes sure each warring party has his or her time to vent. The veracity of what is said is irrelevant. But the disease of moral neutrality is no longer confined to the poseurs on television, who are, after all, entertainers posing as journalists. It is seeping into those organizations that are still attempting to report the news. Objectivity is not the same as moral disengagement. Balance does not mean giving everyone the same space. We are more than dutiful court stenographers. Journalists have a contract with viewers and readers. This contract was broken. We must make sure it is not broken again.

Opposition to Gonzales starting to grow

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/24/13107/3885
In a significant and welcome move, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund ("MALDEF") has publicly stated that it "cannot support [Alberto Gonzales'] confirmation" as Attorney General.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/24/193541/278

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/24/gonzales2/index.html

[NB: Ironic that the torture memos didn’t sink him, but a decades-old DUI case might http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004526]

More on torture: the Pentagon’s internal investigations and self policing have let a lot of abusers off the hook

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33733-2005Jan24.html?nav=rss_nation
Army personnel have admitted to beating or threatening to kill Iraqi detainees and stealing money from Iraqi civilians but have not been charged with criminal conduct, according to newly released Army documents. . . Only a handful of the 54 investigations of alleged detainee abuse and other illicit activities detailed in the documents led to recommended penalties as severe as a court-martial or discharge from military service. Most led to administrative fines or simply withered because investigators could not find victims or evidence.

Plus, the extent of torture and abuse was (surprise!) even more extensive than originally reported

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/01/the_evidence_of_systematic_widespread_torture_is_growing_more_tales_of_abuses_in_iraq.html

AND STILL IS!

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112641/fr/rss/
In other torture news, the Post goes inside with Humans Right Watch reporting that Iraqi security forces are regularly torturing prisoners, and charging that Prime Minister Allawi appears to be "appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit." In response to the charges, Iraq's vice president said, "I think we have to put security as our priority." There have been eyewitness reports of such torture for months.

Bad news: 83% of U.S. debt held by foreign banks. REALLY bad news: they are losing confidence in the financial viability of the U.S. economy

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_atrios_archive.html#110657289369424740
[FT] In 2003, the most recent year with full international statistics, central banks financed 83 per cent of the US current account deficit, with Asian central banks accounting for 86 per cent of flows. . . A similar picture is emerging for 2004. Despite a good start to the year, when the private sector was a large net purchaser of dollar assets, central banks came to the rescue again. The People's Bank of China has let it be known that China increased dollar reserves by $207bn (€159bn) in 2004, financing nearly a third of the US current account deficit, estimated at $650bn.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9ef63678-6d7d-11d9-9b69-00000e2511c8.html
[FT] Central banks are shifting reserves away from the US and towards the eurozone in a move that looks set to deepen the Bush administration's difficulties in financing its ballooning current account deficit. . . In actions likely to undermine the dollar's value on currency markets, 70 per cent of central bank reserve managers said they had increased their exposure to the euro over the past two years. The majority thought eurozone money and debt markets were as attractive a destination for investment as the US. . . Any rebalancing of central bank reserve portfolios has serious implications for the global financial system as the US has become increasingly dependent on official flows of funds to finance its current account deficit, estimated at $650bn in 2004.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/24/131938/005

[NB: This is not good. Bush’s people may treat domestic views of the economy as just one more perception game to be spun through Rovean sh-t and shinola, but the serious players of international finance aren’t motivated by good will or wishful thinking. They see that the economy is a wreck and that upcoming Bush proposals, like making tax cuts permanent, will blow the deficit through the roof]

And the one domestic agency that isn’t susceptible to political pressure or pleading, the Fed, has made up its mind too

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000211.html
Despite Mr. Greenspan's reputation as a staunch opponent of fiscal deficits, he tiptoed around criticism of the soaring federal debt that Mr. Bush ran up in his first term and will almost certainly continue to run up in his second.... But something new is afoot... a rising concern at the Fed about the nation's imbalances: the federal deficit, which hit $413 billion in 2004; a low and declining national savings rate; evidence of speculative behavior among investors and consumers; and the country's enormous trade and financial deficit with the rest of the world. . . The trade deficit this year is almost certain to exceed $600 billion - nearly 6 percent of the nation's economy, and still climbing. "This situation suggests that international investors will eventually adjust their accumulation of dollar assets or, alternatively, seek higher dollar returns to offset concentration risk," Mr. Greenspan said. That, he continued, would make the cost of foreign debt "increasingly less tenable.". . . In private sessions, Mr. Greenspan may well be warning Mr. Bush in blunter terms. The Fed chairman meets regularly with Vice President Dick Cheney and periodically with Mr. Bush. There is a rumor in Washington - thus far unconfirmed - that Mr. Greenspan warned the White House in mid-December that it would have to take more credible steps than it has so far to meet its goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009. . .

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000214.html
[Morgan Stanley] Under the general rubric of the so-called “ownership society” -- privatization of social security, healthcare saving accounts, lifetime retirement accounts, private pension revamping, and tax reform -- a major reworking of economic policy is being proposed. My concerns are not about the philosophical and political merits of this debate. It’s hard to quibble with the noble objectives of ownership -- asking individuals to take on greater responsibility for their own economic destiny. Instead, my concerns are those of the steely-eyed national income accountant. What worries me as I put on my green eyeshade are the impacts of shifting ownership on national saving. In my view, these proposals do basically nothing to address America’s biggest problem -- an unprecedented shortfall of national saving. . . I worry that social security privatization, healthcare saving accounts, or lifetime retirement accounts would do precisely the same thing -- siphon off saving from other assets. Instead, incentives need to be directed at lifting the level of aggregate saving rather than rearranging the micro pieces of the puzzle. . .

WH rewrites the script yet again: it ain’t “privatization,” it’s “private accounts” – no, it ain’t “private accounts,” it’s “PERSONAL accounts.” And press lapdogs bark like Pavlov’s pooches (I guess they got the memo)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005296

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004523

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004521
[Josh Marshall] Cokie Roberts, on the case for the White House, from this morning's Morning Edition. . .

Steve Inskeep: “Democrats are promising to defeat President Bush’s proposed solution, or partial solution anyway, this imposition of private accounts. Do they have the power to stop it?”

Cokie Roberts: “Well you see, by saying ‘private accounts’ you’ve already entered the debate, as far as the White House is concerned. They’re calling them ‘personal accounts’ not ‘private accounts’ to just try to change the rhetoric so that seniors again will not get frightened.”

In fairness, the rest of her commentary on the subject wasn't that bad. But do journalists really have to genuflect every time the White House issues a new vocabulary directive?

AARP is not playing along this time

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004528

Bush Co. rethinking Social Security strategy

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004533
Articles in tomorrow's Washington Times and New York Times show the White House conceding defeat in the initial skirmish over phasing-out Social Security. But, of course, the broader battle has scarcely even started.

Bush’s “mandate”? He doesn’t even have “political capital” with his own party

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/24/124730/452
The effect on Democrats remains to be seen, but Republicans themselves don't seem to be too impressed. Given the amount of political capital Bush has invested in social security privatization, every indication is that it's DOA (though we can't let our guard down, of course). Sunday was particularly brutal to Bush's SS plans. . . Key Republicans in Congress on Sunday questioned White House assertions that the Social Security system was in crisis, one of President Bush's justifications for acting now on private accounts, and said new taxes should be considered. . . Though Bush said he will oppose tax increases for Social Security, Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, told CBS's "Face the Nation" that a hike in payroll taxes "has got to be on the table" along with other financing options. . . In a separate interview, moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, of Maine, questioned the White House's proposals and strategy, a sign of trouble for Bush in the Senate. . . Bush is off to a rocky second term. His signature domestic initiative is struggling at the starting line (they now claim they never used the word "crisis"). His people are lowering expectations for the Iraqi vote, while our troops continue to return home in body bags, missing limbs, or mentally damaged. We continue to run out of troops while allies continue to abandon us in Iraq. . . The "Bush Doctrine" -- that rousing call to arms against the world's tyrannies -- fell flat. And then fell flatter when the administration admitted that American tyrannical allies like Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan need not worry. . . Bush's approval ratings are falling, which is cold comfort to us at this point. What is encouraging is the congressional GOP's stampede away from Bush, as they start looking out for their own hides in the coming 2006 elections. That many are running away from Bush is telling.

Ha ha. Bill Thomas’s proposal to have differentially race-based retirement ages was first floated by. . . Chris Rock!

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005307

More reactions to Thomas’s jaw-dropping performance on Meet the Press: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005302

[NB: And through it all shines the light of something really significant. The House GOP wants to put together a massive, revolutionary bill that restructures Social Security AND the entire tax system in one breathtaking sweep (because they see the issues of how S.S. is funded through payroll taxes as part of what needs to be reformed). This is a big problem for Bush because (a) he wants to break apart the two issues and deal with them sequentially, which is plenty ambitious enough and (b) because tying together two radical and unpopular changes to the fabric of modern govt makes success politically almost impossible. Still, the GOP’s sense is, we own all the branches now, let’s do the things we’ve dreamed about for decades]

Democrats beginning to lay down some markers of their own

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/003746.html
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid will do something this morning that an opposition party is supposed to do: Senate Democrats stopped playing defense and will begin playing offense by setting forward an ambitious agenda of their own. In a conference call earlier this morning, Reid’s staff announced their top ten priority bills for the 109th Congress, and they address many of the needs accumulated by this country but ignored by the White House the GOP Congress under Bill Frist and Denny Hastert.

But have they sold out Labor?

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/who_screws_labo.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005305

Big Hill, framing the terms for 2008, tries to carve out a Clintonian “third way” stance on abortion (by the way, I think she is basically right about this)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/politics/25cnd-clinton.html?ex=1264309200&en=de2b88a98be859ee&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Colin and Michael Powell: both failures?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/24/powell/

60 Minutes may have Tom DeLay in the cross-hairs

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/01/24/60_minutes_targets_delay.html

Scalia in line to replace Rehnquist?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/24/scalia/index.html

Bush Co. telling other countries to divest in Iran, while their own buddies at Halliburton are cashing in

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001607.html

How the rest of the world views U.S. adventurism in Iran

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112589/fr/rss/

Bush’s stem cell “compromise” was to limit research to existing stem cell lines – don’t get me started on how cynical and morally incoherent THAT resolution was. Now we find out that ALL those lines are contaminated, rendering them useless

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005507.php

Bush’s (and the GOP’s) environmental know-nothingism about to cost us big time

http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001188.html
A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Center for American Progress, and The Australia Institute, released tomorrow, claims that the point of no return for global warming is less that 10 years off. . .

George Bush, Christian philosopher (oh, puh-leeze!)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112603/fr/rss/
One [Weekly Standard] piece argues that, in "the most philosophical inaugural address ever," President Bush showed he was more Thomas Jefferson than the "impossible combination of Dr. Evil and Forrest Gump" that puzzled pundits have made him out to be—a Christian philosopher in the long tradition of civic interpreters of natural law

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32589-2005Jan24.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
[Dan Froomkin] The initial reaction to President Bush's second inaugural speech, in which he vowed to end tyranny everywhere, was that it sounded awfully ambitious. . . But now comes word from the White House that Bush wasn't actually setting out a new agenda at all. He was simply describing what his approach has been all along. . . And that has invited additional concerns, among them that revisionism may be pushing aside reality-checking in the Bush White House. . . In hindsight, the White House is apparently suggesting, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq weren't so much about bringing Osama bin Laden to justice and destroying Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. They were about lighting the flame of freedom. . . And in spite of the mixed success in both countries, Bush continues to express unfaltering confidence in his world view.

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/24/speech/index.html

Jeb Bush’s showboating over the Terri Schiavo case gets slapped down by the Florida Supreme Court

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1990&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Norm Coleman (R-MN) gets his teeth fixed, which is fine, but then lets his image be used for before/after advertising, which is not fine

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_atrios_archive.html#110659034490588692

The National Review’s web site “The Corner” features some of the sharpest conservative commentators – and then there are the others

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1988&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Kathryn Jean Lopez shoots from The Corner and misses:

DEMS-ARE-NOT-SELF-AWARE FILES [KJL]
Robert Byrd delays the confirmation of the first black secretary of State. Didn't think that one through, did you?

Two hours later she discovers that she "left out a word or two" and revises the post.

DEMS-ARE-NOT-SELF-AWARE FILES [KJL]
Robert Byrd delays the confirmation of the first black [female] secretary of State [from the south]. Didn't think that one through, did you?

Bob Novak: once a respected (if conservative) news hound, now a cranky, bloviating caricature — and still on the hook for Plame (PLAME?. . . .PLAME!!!. . . is anybody listening?)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501240005
Nationally syndicated columnist and CNN host Robert Novak said that people who protested President Bush's inauguration "are a lot of punks and it's none of their business and it isn't free speech." He also claimed that Democrats are "so nasty" and that Republican partisans are "nothing like these Democrats."

As we say back in the old country, “know your enemy.” But here, in this country, we say “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/ignorance_is_bl.html
Via Gene Healy, I see that The New York Post is outraged that anyone might consider publishing English-language translations of the writings of radical Islamist leaders. The Post's editorialists might be interested to learn that the writings of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler are all available in English and have been for some time and we seem to be doing okay. You might even think that no one what these people have to say might be an important part of designing policies to deal with them.

Bonus item: the funniest thing you will ever see about the war in Iraq – a topic that doesn’t make me laugh very often (thanks to Fazal Rizvi for the link)

http://www.koreus.com/files/200409/news-report-from-iraq.html

Double bonus item: the funniest thing you will ever read about torture – another topic that doesn’t make me laugh very often

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2005/01/24/tomo/index1.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001620.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:44 AM

 
BANANA REPUBLIC

More this morning on the secret (not any more) Pentagon unit that gives Rumsfeld a free hand to conduct covert operations outside the bounds of interagency cooperation, Congressional oversight, or accountability to U.S. law. Now we know why he is indispensable to Bush and can’t be fired. Now we know why Jerry Boykin (General “My God is Bigger Than Your God”) wasn’t let go a long time ago. Now we know how a loser like George Waldroup rises in the system despite a record of failure and alleged misconduct. Like the old Watergate gang, this ain’t the Best and the Brightest: it’s the ones whose ambition and messianic zeal drives them to DO ANYTHING NECESSARY in the cause of advancing national interest. It helps, obviously, to have a strong streak of Christian righteousness, so long as that doesn’t get in the way of actually doing very un-Christian things

Who is Boykin?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=William_G._Boykin
"Our "spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."

“George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States. He was appointed by God.'"

Who is Waldroup?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29396-2005Jan22?language=printer
Col. George Waldroup, an Army reserve officer who commands the Defense Intelligence Agency's Strategic Support Branch, is described by associates as a colorful Texan who refers to himself in the third person, as "GW.". . . Among skeptics of the Pentagon's intelligence initiatives, including members of two elite special operations units interviewed for this article, Waldroup is controversial. His ascent to a top espionage post from a civilian career at the Immigration and Naturalization Service is a cautionary tale, according to them, about the risks of rapid expansion in the staffing and mission of clandestine units. . . Waldroup spent most of his working life as a midlevel manager at the INS, where he became embroiled in accusations that he participated in deceiving a congressional delegation about staffing problems at Miami International Airport in June 1995. The Justice Department inspector general's office, which concluded its probe the following year, quoted in its report sworn statements from subordinates that Waldroup, then assistant district director for external affairs, helped orchestrate a temporary doubling of immigration screeners on the day of the visit, instructed subordinates not to discuss staff shortages and physically confronted a union leader to prevent him from reaching members of Congress. Waldroup told the investigators that he was following an order from a superior in Washington to withhold information. . . During the investigation, according to the inspector general's final report, Waldroup refused to disclose the password to his e-mail files, refused to sign an affidavit summarizing his testimony and, in a subsequent interview, "stated that he would not answer any questions" because "he wished to protect himself from exposure to criminal sanctions." The authors of the Justice Department report found insufficient evidence to file charges but said they were troubled by "recurrent failures to provide documents."

A “perfect fit”
http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/01/perfect_fit_for.html

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/apr01/19e7.htm
Top management set the tone, Ramirez claims. He has a picture of a flag he says hung in the office of assistant district director George Waldroup long before -- and after -- the Gonzalez raid. Above it a bumper sticker reads, "American by birth, Texan by the grace of God." The green-and-yellow flag sports a version of the Miami city seal and six bananas. "Banana Republic," it reads. Many of South Florida's Hispanics consider that term to be a blatant anti-Cuban slur.

On what happened with Waldroup at Miami airport: http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/9606/miafile5.htm

More details today on this new military intelligence unit

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/politics/24rumsfeld.html?ex=1264309200&en=0ef0084cdee60802&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Congress will investigate

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mccain24jan24,1,5425959.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday that he would look into a reported move by the Pentagon to reinterpret U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over spy operations abroad. . . McCain, responding to a report in Sunday's Washington Post, told CBS' "Face the Nation" that he would raise the question at hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He is a member of the panel. . . Defense Department spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Sunday said there was "no unit that is directly reportable to the secretary of Defense for clandestine operations as is described in the Washington Post article."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30713-2005Jan23.html?nav=rss_nation
"I'm always sorry to read about things in The Washington Post when they affect a committee that I am a member of," McCain said.

On the military’s new domestic role

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009430.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] In a nutshell, the problem with this is the Posse Commitatus Act of 1878, which prevents the U.S. Military from acting as law enforcement officers inside the U.S.

The pros and cons of torture

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/books/review/23KAPLAN.html?oref=login&oref=login
[Robert Kaplan] Interrogators can use many tools that do not involve actual physical abuse. They spread rumors among detainees, wear them down through repetitive questioning and threaten to turn them over to other intelligence services known to employ torture -- all of which cause interrogators constantly to ask themselves where, exactly, does the slippery slope toward real abuse begin? Sadly, it is no use saying torture never works, because as the French authorities learned in Algeria, as the Filipinos learned with their own Muslim insurgents and as the Dubai authorities learned with a Qaeda terrorist, it periodically does work, and in some instances can possibly avert a major attack. While it is true that the threat of torture, as Mackey and Miller report, induces more anxiety among detainees than torture itself, that threat over time will carry little weight if it becomes widely known that the jailers have no record of following through. ''Fear is often an interrogator's best ally,'' the authors note, ''but it doesn't have a long shelf life.'' A captured Qaeda manual even advises Muslim prisoners that people in the West don't ''have the stomach'' for torture, ''because they are not warriors.''

Machiavelli famously said that good men bent on doing good must know how to be bad. . . To follow Machiavelli further: it is not simply and crudely that the ends justify the means. It is that evil, if it is to be employed, should be used only to the minimum extent necessary, and then only to accomplish a demonstrably greater amount of good.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/23/174845/254

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1985&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
[Dallas Morning News, which endorsed Bush] “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it!" –Col. Nathan Jessep, A Few Good Men

The famous courtroom outburst from Jack Nicholson in the film A Few Good Men is a classic defense of "ends-justify-the-means" morality. The fictional Jessep, on military trial for complicity in a soldier's beating death, argues that the society that counts on the security he provides had better take care in judging him. . .

There are far too many questions left unanswered about U.S. policy on physical abuse of these prisoners. There are reams of documents – official investigations, a Red Cross report, internal government papers made public thanks to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit – showing that cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners was more widespread than initially believed. . . We know now that some detainees were beaten, some were raped, some burned, choked, urinated on, forced to face mock execution, shocked with electricity, sodomized with a police stick, sexually humiliated. . . the list goes on.

We know, too, that the White House adopted what might charitably be called an expansive view of the limits of physical coercion. President Bush has said that he does not condone torture, but much depends on the definition of the word. When does necessary roughness become torture – and do our interrogators know and respect the distinction?

More importantly: Does it matter to the American people that they do? If not, then Col. Jessep is right, and there is no moral limit to what might be done to human beings in the name of security. So much for the sanctity of moral values.

“War crimes”? Michael Froomkin argues, “yes”

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/01/war_crimes_trials_a_cloud_on_the_horizon.html

Did Gonzales commit perjury in his Senate confirmation hearings?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6857224/site/newsweek/
Senate Democrats put off a vote on White House counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general, complaining he had provided evasive answers to questions about torture and the mistreatment of prisoners. But Gonzales's most surprising answer may have come on a different subject: his role in helping President Bush escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case involving a dancer at an Austin strip club in 1996. The judge and other lawyers in the case last week disputed a written account of the matter provided by Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It's a complete misrepresentation," said David Wahlberg, lawyer for the dancer, about Gonzales's account.

Bush's summons to serve as a juror in the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976 arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in Kennebunkport, Maine—an incident that didn't become public until the closing days of the 2000 campaign. (Bush, who had publicly declared his willingness to serve, had left blank on his jury questionnaire whether he had ever been "accused" in a criminal case.) Asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy to describe "in detail" the only court appearance he ever made on behalf of Bush, Gonzales—who was then chief counsel to the Texas governor—wrote that he had accompanied Bush the day he went to court "prepared to serve on a jury." While there, Gonzales wrote, he "observed" the defense lawyer make a motion to strike Bush from the jury panel "to which the prosecutor did not object." Asked by the judge whether he had "any views on this," Gonzales recalled, he said he did not.

While Gonzales's account tracks with the official court transcript, it leaves out a key part of what happened that day, according to Travis County Judge David Crain. In separate interviews, Crain—along with Wahlberg and prosecutor John Lastovica—told NEWSWEEK that, before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge's chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to "consider" striking Bush from the jury, making the novel "conflict of interest" argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar's), the judge said. "He [Gonzales] raised the issue," Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales's argument surprising, since it was "extremely unlikely" that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But "out of deference" to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along. Wahlberg said he agreed to make the motion striking Bush because he didn't want the hard-line governor on his jury anyway. But there was little doubt among the participants as to what was going on. "In public, they were making a big show of how he was prepared to serve," said Crain. "In the back room, they were trying to get him off."

Gonzales last week refused to waver. "Judge Gonzales has no recollection of requesting a meeting in chambers," a senior White House official said, adding that while Gonzales did recall that Bush's potential conflict was "discussed," he never "requested" that Bush be excused. "His answer to the Senate's question is accurate," the official said.

More: http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/gonzalezmania.html
[Matt Yglesias] A correspondent points me to this Newsweek story suggesting that Alberto Gonzalez is dishonest and has no respect for the rule of law. But of course we knew that already! And by appointing him, the president has made it clear that he is dishonest and has no respect for the rule of law. But of course we knew that already, too!

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/lying_in_politics_/2005/01/did_gonzales_lie_to_the_senate_judiciary_committee_.php
[Mark Kleiman] Senate Democrats should demand another round of hearings, and filibuster Gonzales's nomination if Hatch refuses to hold them.

Looks as if Allawi might be able to maintain control in Iraq after all

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/international/middleeast/24shiites.html?ex=1264309200&en=f996c731fa4e77ef&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
With the Shiites on the brink of capturing power here for the first time, their political leaders say they have decided to put a secular face on the new Iraqi government they plan to form, relegating Islam to a supporting role.

The senior leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of mostly Shiite groups that is poised to capture the most votes in the election next Sunday, have agreed that the Iraqi whom they nominate to be the country's next prime minister would be a lay person, not an Islamic cleric. . . The Shiite leaders say there is a similar but less formal agreement that clerics will also be excluded from running the government ministries. . .

The decision to exclude clerics from the government appears to mean that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric who is the chief of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the scion of a prominent religious family and an oft-mentioned candidate for prime minister, would be relegated to the background.

Or. . .

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/bombs-zarqawi-and-sistanis.html
[Juan Cole] Aqil Abdul Karim Saffar, a member of the leadership of the Iraqi National Accord (Allawi's party) said Sunday that if other parties win, it will provoke a civil war. He seemed to be saying that the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition, would be unacceptable to other Iraqis were it to win and form the government. . . Based on past evidence, my guess is that Sistani will push for personal status law to be religious. It governs marriage, divorce, inheritance, alimony, etc. Sistani will want Shiites to be under Shiite religious law, Chaldean Catholics to be under Catholic canon law, Sunnis to be under Sunni shariah or Islamic codes, etc. This system is also used in Lebanon and Israel. It has disadvantages for women, and it causes an entanglement of the state with religion, since typically the clergy are the arbiters of it.

Allawi keeps making post-election promises
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/international/middleeast/23cnd-poli.html?ex=1264222800&en=eb16ad75635a5b6e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Mr. Allawi said that if his party emerges triumphant, it will be in no hurry to set a timetable for an American withdrawal. And Mr. Negroponte said that he did not expect any new governing party to ask for such an immediate pullout. . . he was cautious in replying to questions about how the United States would react if a new, elected government called for its withdrawal. While some Iraqi political parties “look to a day when they will not have to rely as much, or even at all, on American security assistance,” he said, those parties likely “would agree that now is not yet that moment.”. . . But if an elected government decided American forces were no longer necessary, he added, “we will comply with that wish.”. . . Mr. McCain said there was a simple reason why no quick request for an American withdrawal was likely: “because the extremists will take over, and if you see Iraq disintegrate, then they won’t be part of a government,” he said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation."

Our support for Allawi
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000281.html

Mind the Gap: globalization as the chief security issue of our time

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005506.php

Bill Thomas (R-CA) appears on Meet the Press to explain the House GOP position on Social Security. But between his incoherence and Russert’s disinformation, no one knows what the heck is going on now

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004514

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004518

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_atrios_archive.html#110650509180989363

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_23.php#004517
[Josh Marshall] Thomas restated his suggestion that we consider instituting a system of racial classification into the Social Security benefit structure. . . You can't say this is anti-racial minority exactly since the Thomas's logic -- if you can call it that -- seems to suggest that at least blacks would get to retire earlier than whites and possibly hispanics too. It's just moronic -- and that still must count for at least somewhat of a bad thing.

Thomas's idea of penalizing female recipients for their longer lifespans, which certainly caught on life wildfire, would at least be pretty easy to administer since -- setting aside the standards applied in some graduate English and critical studies programs -- the number of Americans whose gender is truly ambiguous is rather small.

But what about race? Does Thomas want the SSA actuaries to dust off the old racial classification systems from the Old South. . . What about Hispanics and Asians? And will those clean-living Mormons be adequately penalized for living so damn long?

But this we do know

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-social24jan24,1,3450693.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Republicans Skeptical of Bush Social Security Plan
"There is very little appetite, even among Republicans, to adopt a proposal that would significantly alter the most popular government program," said Marshall Wittmann, a former Senate GOP staffer now with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. "It is unlikely that Republicans are willing to go out on a limb, because while the president won't be on the ballot again, they will."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/politics/24repubs.html?ex=1264309200&en=cba4833a8993a53e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
President Bush begins his second term with the Republican Party in its strongest position in over 50 years, but his clout is already being tested by Republican doubts about his domestic agenda, rising national unease about Iraq and the threat of second-term overreaching, officials in both parties say.

With this election producing a second-term Republican president and solid majorities in both the Senate and the House, Mr. Bush's party is more dominant than at any time since Herbert Hoover was elected in 1928. As Mr. Bush embarks on an explicit effort to put an imprint on politics and policy that will long outlast his presidency, his advisers are heady over what several described as an opportunity to make a long-lasting realignment in the nation's political balance of power. . .

Mr. Bush has repeatedly overcome doubts about his ability to win approval of controversial proposals. And his political advisers are confident going into this second term. They say that the party is poised to at least begin the broad political realignment and the diminishment of the Democratic Party that has been a goal of Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove.

Bonus item

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/23/144127/607
Rasmussen shows Bush's approval rating collapsing over the past week:

Jan 17: 48 Approval 50 Disapproval
Jan 23: 44 Approval 54 Disapproval

[NB: Boy, those lavish coronation festivities and that visionary inaugural speech really fired up the people, didn’t they?]

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:02 AM

 
BUSH'S NATIONAL SECURITY STATE

An underdiscussed element in Hersh’s article is his disclosure that in his ongoing war with the CIA, Rumsfeld controls not only the lion’s share of the intelligence budget (80%), and runs his own independent intelligence operation (which despite the 9-11 Bill will NOT be unified under a single intelligence head): he has also created his own covert operations unit which, unlike the CIA, is utterly accountable. While America sleeps, he along with Cambone and Boykin are creating the elements of rogue “action teams” to carry out secret operations that they don’t even need to inform other branches of the U.S. govt about

http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050124fa_fact
Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief. . .

Rumsfeld planned and lobbied for more than two years before getting Presidential authority, in a series of findings and executive orders, to use military commandos for covert operations. One of his first steps was bureaucratic: to shift control of an undercover unit, known then as the Gray Fox (it has recently been given a new code name), from the Army to the Special Operations Command socom), in Tampa. Gray Fox was formally assigned to socom in July, 2002, at the instigation of Rumsfeld’s office, which meant that the undercover unit would have a single commander for administration and operational deployment. Then, last fall, Rumsfeld’s ability to deploy the commandos expanded. According to a Pentagon consultant, an Execute Order on the Global War on Terrorism (referred to throughout the government as gwot) was issued at Rumsfeld’s direction. The order specifically authorized the military “to find and finish” terrorist targets, the consultant said. It included a target list that cited Al Qaeda network members, Al Qaeda senior leadership, and other high-value targets. The consultant said that the order had been cleared throughout the national-security bureaucracy in Washington. . .

Rumsfeld and two of his key deputies, Stephen Cambone, the Under-secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, will be part of the chain of command for the new commando operations. Relevant members of the House and Senate intelligence committees have been briefed on the Defense Department’s expanded role in covert affairs, a Pentagon adviser assured me, but he did not know how extensive the briefings had been. . . The legal questions about the Pentagon’s right to conduct covert operations without informing Congress have not been resolved. “It’s a very, very gray area,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a West Point graduate who served as the C.I.A.’s general counsel in the mid-nineteen-nineties. “Congress believes it voted to include all such covert activities carried out by the armed forces. The military says, ‘No, the things we’re doing are not intelligence actions under the statute but necessary military steps authorized by the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to “prepare the battlefield.”’” Referring to his days at the C.I.A., Smith added, “We were always careful not to use the armed forces in a covert action without a Presidential finding. The Bush Administration has taken a much more aggressive stance.”

In his conversation with me, Smith emphasized that he was unaware of the military’s current plans for expanding covert action. But he said, “Congress has always worried that the Pentagon is going to get us involved in some military misadventure that nobody knows about.”. . . Some operations will likely take place in nations in which there is an American diplomatic mission, with an Ambassador and a C.I.A. station chief, the Pentagon consultant said. The Ambassador and the station chief would not necessarily have a need to know, under the Pentagon’s current interpretation of its reporting requirement.

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”. . .

The White House solidified its control over intelligence last month, when it forced last-minute changes in the intelligence-reform bill. The legislation, base substantially on recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, originally gave broad powers, including authority over intelligence spending, to a new national-intelligence director. (The Pentagon controls roughly eighty per cent of the intelligence budget.) A reform bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 96-2. Before the House voted, however, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld balked. The White House publicly supported the legislation, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert refused to bring a House version of the bill to the floor for a vote—ostensibly in defiance of the President, though it was widely understood in Congress that Hastert had been delegated to stall the bill. After intense White House and Pentagon lobbying, the legislation was rewritten. The bill that Congress approved sharply reduced the new director’s power, in the name of permitting the Secretary of Defense to maintain his “statutory responsibilities.” Fred Kaplan, in the online magazine Slate, described the real issues behind Hastert’s action, quoting a congressional aide who expressed amazement as White House lobbyists bashed the Senate bill and came up “with all sorts of ludicrous reasons why it was unacceptable.”

“Rummy’s plan was to get a compromise in the bill in which the Pentagon keeps its marbles and the C.I.A. loses theirs,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Then all the pieces of the puzzle fall in place. He gets authority for covert action that is not attributable, the ability to directly task national-intelligence assets”—including the many intelligence satellites that constantly orbit the world.

“Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing so they can ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘What are your priorities?’

[NB: This is the report DoD spokesman Larry DiRita ran out immediately to attack as a complete fabrication, blah blah blah. Read on. . .]

Today’s Washington Post has more

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29414-2005Jan22.html?nav=rss_nation
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post. . . The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces. . .

And now this: secret military teams also authorized to act DOMESTICALLY

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/national/nationalspecial3/23code.html?ex=1264136400&en=0d0d6577969032af&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Will Congress stand by and let all this happen? There could be an interesting debate ahead

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009428.html

Hey, it ain’t torture if you don’t CALL it “torture”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-torture23jan23,1,3295533.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The question Democratic senators put to Condoleezza Rice last week seemed easy enough to answer: Did the secretary of State nominee consider interrogation practices such as "water-boarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he will drown, to be torture?

She declined to answer. . . "I'm not going to speak to any specific interrogation techniques," Rice said, adding that it was up to the Justice Department to define torture.

About the same time, senators on another committee were asking nearly identical questions and getting nearly identical answers from Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush's choice for attorney general.

The back-to-back confirmation flare-ups spotlight a problem the Bush administration faces in its policies for detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects. . . In the months since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the administration has insisted that America does not and will not use torture. At the same time, the government has tried to preserve maximum leeway in the interrogation of terrorism suspects by not drawing a clear line between where rough treatment ends and torture begins.

"What the administration is saying is we're not going to torture people," said John C. Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor who, as a deputy assistant attorney general during Bush's first term, worked on torture policies. . . "What the administration does not want to say, and I think for good reasons too, is what methods the United States might or might not use short of torture."

Opponents say it is a moral, political and tactical mistake for the United States to blur that line. They charge that the administration, while condemning outright torture, deliberately has sought loopholes in laws and treaties that would allow U.S. intelligence officers to use extreme interrogation methods on terrorism suspects held abroad.

To protest the administration's Iraq and anti-terrorism policies — and what they charged was the evasiveness of Rice and Gonzales under questioning — Democratic senators have delayed both confirmation votes until this week. . . As a result, the full Senate likely will debate the definition of torture in a session that could embarrass the administration and provide fodder for its international critics. . .

In Iraq, things are going to hell

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10703534.htm
The United States is steadily losing ground to the Iraqi insurgency, according to every key military yardstick. . . A Knight Ridder analysis of U.S. government statistics shows that through all the major turning points that raised hopes of peace in Iraq, including the arrest of Saddam Hussein and the handover of sovereignty at the end of June, the insurgency, led mainly by Sunni Muslims, has become deadlier and more effective. . . The analysis suggests that unless something dramatic changes - such as a newfound will by Iraqis to reject the insurgency or a large escalation of U.S. troop strength - the United States won't win the war. It's axiomatic among military thinkers that insurgencies are especially hard to defeat because the insurgents' goal isn't to win in a conventional sense but merely to survive until the will of the occupying power is sapped.

Overseas registration for Iraqi voters (many of whom have never even lived in Iraq but are eligible to vote) is running very low (about 10% of expected numbers). This casts real doubt on whether that 1 million mark will be met. Gee, I guess voting for candidates whose names you don’t even know (in a country where you have never lived) doesn’t inspire a lot of enthusiasm. There was heavy reliance on the 1 million absentee vote to pull the overall voting numbers above 50% (the magic benchmark for “legitimacy,” according to some)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61768-2005Jan9.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/al-hakim-no-to-civil-war-yes-to.html

In Iraq, no observers for the election (no surprise)

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_01_23_bestof.html#110647880285141208

The state of election “security” and public confidence

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/22/11729/4822

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/international/middleeast/23voices.html?ex=1264136400&en=0d54220691960323&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

As predicted, Mr. “Nine Lives” Chalabi is not going to be arrested after all – or maybe he will, who knows?

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/22/chalabi/

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/chalabi-to-be-arrested-political.html

After the election: how long before a call for U.S. troop withdrawal?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1396221,00.html
Private memos are circulating in Washington, Baghdad and London setting out detailed scenarios for withdrawal of US and British forces from Iraq as early as possible, a Foreign Office source said yesterday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/international/middleeast/23military.html?ex=1264136400&en=8e99ad1e46e3289d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Gen. Gary E. Luck largely endorses a plan by American commanders in Iraq to shift the military's main mission after the Jan. 30 elections from fighting the insurgency to training Iraq's military and police forces to take over those security and combat duties and become more self-reliant, eventually allowing American forces to withdraw, the officials said.

Two views of Bush’s inauguration speech: an admirable paean to freedom (which he has no intention of implementing). . .

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/lying_in_politics_/2005/01/classic_bushit.php
Thursday, GWB gave a mighty pretty speech, all about freedom and how we were going to be for it from now on. A day later, that speech officially became a dead letter courtesy of one of the dreaded "senior officials" who makes official leaks, not for attribution: Bush Freedom Speech Not Sign of Policy Shift: Aides (Reuters); Bush Speech Not a Signal of New Policy, Aides Say (NYT).

. . . or a thinly veiled rationale for selective intervention and cowboy adventurism all around the world?

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/inau-j22.shtml
However personally insignificant the man himself, the inaugural address delivered Thursday by President George Bush is a major political statement and must be taken with deadly seriousness. As an expression of the global strategy of the United States, the speech presages a massive escalation of military operations all over the world.

Krauthammer: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25279-2005Jan20.html

[NB: or BOTH?]

More on Krauthammer: he praised Bush’s speech as a pundit but was also one of the people who helped write it (without disclosing that involvement)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110642162475223524

Another media outrage: “Not In Our Name” runs a full-page protest ad for the NYT on the day after Bush’s coronation, which is accepted for publication, then pulled without explanation at the last minute (thanks to Megan Boler for the link)

http://www.nion.us/
We had planned for the new Not In Our Name statement of conscience to run on Friday, January 21, in the New York Times. We had a contract and a confirmation number. This ad was to be our answer to the inauguration, and it was timed to appear in the middle of the inauguration news coverage. . . The ad did not run. The advertising department were themselves deeply surprised by this, and have not been able to explain what happened. In fact, we were told that to their knowledge this had never happened before. . . At the same time, the Times lead editorial said that this should be a time of legitimacy and acceptance for the President -- and that this was especially something that the opposition has to come to terms with.

More: http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_01_23_bestof.html#110647011591450195

An interesting perspective on U.S. politics and the landscape for the Dems: an “urban archipelago” (thanks to A.G. Rud for the link)

http://www.urbanarchipelago.com/

Similar title as yesterday, but a different article: “Unsocial Insecurity”

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?050124ta_talk_hertzberg
The cynical, or maybe just the political, interpretation of the rush to privatization is that private accounts would, as David Brooks, the Times’ freshman columnist, wrote the other day, “create Republicans. People who have them will start thinking like investors.” (They won’t actually be investors, not in any meaningful sense—they’ll still be workers for hire. But, come election time, they’ll take their cue from the Dow, not from wage scales or income gaps or the unemployment rate.) The really cynical explanation is that privatization is a nice, clean way to transfer gigantic sums to Wall Street brokerage houses. . . A third explanation—and, who knows, maybe a more accurate one—is that the true impetus to privatization is ideological.

Bonus item: I AM NOT ROHAN PINTO!

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009415.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:20 AM

 
FINE SPEECH, NOW HOLD HIM TO IT

All you need to know about Bush’s inauguration speech, in one pithy sentence

http://www.liberaloasis.com/archives/011605.htm#012105
There is not one single thing wrong with this part of Bush’s inaugural address:

The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

Great stuff. One small problem though: Bush doesn’t mean one damn word of it.

Something else Bush didn't mean

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/21/honeymoon/index.html
"We have known divisions," President Bush noted in his inauguration speech on Thursday, "and I will strive in good faith to heal them.". . . But even still, it was a little ominous that on the same day the president reached for the olive branch, two of the nation's other most prominent Republicans reached for their rhetorical revolvers.

A longer critique, from former GOP speechwriter Peggy Noonan (!) and a few others

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/
The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. . . A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president's evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty. . .

The administration's approach to history is at odds with what has been described by a communications adviser to the president as the "reality-based community." A dumb phrase, but not a dumb thought: He meant that the administration sees history as dynamic and changeable, not static and impervious to redirection or improvement. That is the Bush administration way. . . On the other hand, some things are constant, such as human imperfection, injustice, misery and bad government. . . This world is not heaven.

The president's speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul.". . . It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. . . The speech did not deal with specifics--9/11, terrorism, particular alliances, Iraq. It was, instead, assertively abstract.

"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." "Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self government. . . . Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time." "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth.

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/01/21.html#a819
[Scott Rosenberg] There you have it: The Bush inaugural marked the final transition of the Bush-family ideology from old-school conservatism, with its abhorrence of abstract schemes of human perfectibility, to a messianic idealism so divorced from reality it gives even sympathizers like Noonan the willies. Bush's vision of human perfectibility may be shaped by born-again fervor rather than socialist theory, but that difference doesn't make its collision with reality any less dangerous.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-neocons22jan22,1,6057221.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
Bush proclaimed in his inaugural address that the central purpose of his second term would be the promotion of democracy "in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" — a key neoconservative goal. Suddenly, the neocons were ascendant again. . . "This is real neoconservatism," said Robert Kagan, a foreign policy scholar who has been a leading exponent of neocon thinking — and who sometimes has criticized the administration for not being neocon enough. "It would be hard to express it more clearly. If people were expecting Bush to rein in his ambitions and enthusiasms after the first term, they are discovering that they were wrong."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112480/
[Chris Suellentrop] Bush set a clear goal for the country. . . But what is the means to this end? It is "not primarily the task of arms," Bush said, so the optimistic interpretation is that Bush has signaled that he is replacing hot war against tyrants with cold war. But Bush also declared, "America's influence is not unlimited, but fortunately for the oppressed, America's influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in freedom's cause." Adding to the confusion, Bush implied that he will be patient with friendly governments, such as Pakistan, when he asked countries to merely "start" on the journey to democracy. . . Moreover, the entire thesis of Bush's address is questionable. "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," he said, because democracy is an elixir that will defeat fanatical terrorism. . . The issue is whether he really has any intention of promoting democracy in Russia, China, and the Mideast when promoting it comes into conflict with other economic and security interests of the United States. There is much reason for skepticism here, such as Bush's policy in relation to Saudi Arabia, Tibet, and Chechnya during his first term. But rather than criticizing Bush's speech, Democrats should nod vigorously and then hold him to it.

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/01/siege_mentality.php
[James Wolcott] I only caught snippets of the coverage today--jury duty--but I was impressed once again by how skillfully the reporters, pundits, and historians managed to dismiss the evidence of their own eyes. Despite the fact that there was no specific terrorist threat, the security was unprecedented even for these unprecedented times, with FBI snipers on rooftops, clusters of antiaircraft missiles, layers of police and checkpoints, video command centers monitoring every spilled cup of coffee. . . and rows of empty bleachers. The commentators noted this clampdown with a sigh of regret, and mentioned the "irony" of President Bush using the words "freedom" and "liberty" dozens of times in his address while the city was under such tight constriction. But this has gone past way irony now into total cognitive dissonant breakdown. Commentators refuse to recognize the ominous import of the stepped-up militarization of the parade and pageantry, and increasingly of civilian life in this country under a president who likes to wear neat little uniforms that say, "Me commander-in-chief."

Will Bush rue the day he uttered these words?

http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003132.html
[David Brooks] With that speech, President Bush’s foreign policy doctrine transcended the war on terror. He laid down a standard against which everything he and his successors do will be judged.

When he goes to China, he will not be able to ignore the political prisoners there, because he called them the future leaders of their free nation. When he meets with dictators around the world, as in this flawed world he must, he will not be able to have warm relations with them, because he said no relations with tyrants can be successful.

His words will be thrown back at him and at future presidents. . .

[NB: Well, they’ll be thrown back at HIM, certainly]

Vladimir Putin will never again be the possessor of that fine soul; he will be the menace to democracy and rule of law.

Because of that speech, it will be harder for the U.S. government to do what we did to Latin Americans for so many decades - support strongmen to rule over them because they happened to be our strongmen. It will be harder to frustrate the dreams of a captive people, the way in the early 1990’s we tried to frustrate the independence dreams of Ukraine.

It will be harder for future diplomats to sit on couches flattering dictators, the way we used to flatter Hafez al-Assad of Syria decade after decade.

[NB: Well, I’m not buyin’ it. Does anyone think for a second that Bush (a) plans to do a damn thing about the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere, and (b) COULD do anything about them even if he wanted to? And, as no one seems to have mentioned, where the HELL do they get off lecturing anyone on the virtues of democracy when they just got elected by cynically disenfranchising thousands of voters in their own country? As you might guess, this whole charade is being dismissed scornfully by others around the world, while “serious” pundits over here praise its rhetorical savor: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4194221.stm]

EXCLUSIVE! Michael Berube gets ahold of the original, unedited text

http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/inaugural_address_transcript_exclusive/
“There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants. And that is the force of human torture. . .”

Read more. . .

The day after, Bush’s people are already backpedaling from the speech’s policy implications

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/politics/22diplo.html
A senior official said that the speech signaled Mr. Bush's intention to raise the need to expand freedoms in Russia, China and the Arab world but that this did not mean that such pressure would become the only factor in these relationships. . . "It's not a discontinuity, a right turn, but an acceleration, a raising of the priority," the official said of the new policy direction. . . The official also said that American officials would not necessarily raise principles of freedom and democracy with foreign leaders in a public way because doing so might sometimes be counterproductive.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27672-2005Jan21.html
White House officials said yesterday that President Bush's soaring inaugural address, in which he declared the goal of ending tyranny around the world, represents no significant shift in U.S. foreign policy but instead was meant as a crystallization and clarification of policies he is pursuing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and elsewhere. . . Nor, they say, will it lead to any quick shift in strategy for dealing with countries such as Russia, China, Egypt and Pakistan, allies in the fight against terrorism whose records on human rights and democracy fall well short of the values Bush said would become the basis of relations with all countries.

Sect’y of State-to-be Condoleezza Rice demonstrates her own diplomatic savoir-faire and commitment to democratic values

On Hugo Chavez (DEMOCRATICALLY elected President of Venezuela)
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/21/15151/3113
Senator Lincoln Chaffee: Can you think of anything good to say about Mr. Chavez?

Condoleezza Rice: No.

Now for administration that -- according to Bush's admittedly rhetorically powerful inaugural speech. . . wants to advocate democracy the world around, you would think at least Ms. Rice would say that Hugo Chavez is someone who is willing to go before the people, and thus participate in what is for the Bush administration's more idealistic guise, just what the world needs more of. . .

[NB: Now Allawi, on the other hand, CIA thug, undemocratically selected puppet, and someone who personally executed six prisoners by shooting them in the head, Rice calls him, “really good. . . terrific” http://mumbai.usconsulate.gov/wwwhiraq237.html]

Six others on Rice’s enemies list

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20050119-120236-9054r.htm

Comment: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/21/cheney/index.html

Meanwhile, our “friends” include. . . (not a democracy among them, of course)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/21/125750/614

Comment: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005497.php

In Iraq, a problem deeper than better armor for vehicles can remedy (hell, they’re blowing up Bradleys now!)

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/01/another_sign_of.html
"This crazy nonsense is because there was an unwillingness to admit three things: the Iraqi insurgency is a rebellion against the U.S. military occupation, it was steadily worsening, and U.S. soldiers were at serious risk in wheeled vehicles," says retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, a former armored cavalry officer who led troops in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Iraqi prisons filled to bursting already

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1968&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Wow. Even the hand-picked henchmen of Allawi’s govt are resigning in disgust over American tactics

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1966

$300 million dollars disappears as SOMEONE in the transitional government starts feathering his nest

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/international/middleeast/22baghdad.html?pagewanted=1&oref=login
Earlier this month, according to Iraqi officials, $300 million in American bills was taken out of Iraq's Central Bank, put into boxes and quietly put on a charter jet bound for Lebanon. . . The money was to be used to buy tanks and other weapons from international arms dealers, the officials say, as part of an accelerated effort to assemble an armored division for the fledgling Iraqi Army. But exactly where the money went, and to whom, and for precisely what, remains a mystery, at least to Iraqis who say they have been trying to find out. . . The $300 million deal appears to have been arranged outside the American-designed financial controls intended to help Iraq - which defaulted on its external debt in the 1990's - legally import goods. By most accounts here, there was no public bidding for the arms contracts, nor was the deal approved by the entire 33-member Iraqi cabinet. . .

"I am sorry to say that the corruption here is worse now than in the Saddam Hussein era," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security adviser. . . Isam al-Khafaji, the director of the New York-based Iraq Revenue Watch, said corruption had become an "open secret" within the Iraqi government. . . "There is no legal system to bring charges against anyone not following the rules and not abiding by the law, especially if you're a powerful politician," Mr. Khafaji said. "That's the tragedy of Iraq: Everyone runs their business like a private fiefdom.". . .

Dr. Allawi's office did respond to repeated requests for an interview. . . According to a senior Iraqi financial official with knowledge of the deal. . ."The government here knows it is coming to an end," the official said. "This is what governments do when they are coming to an end."

Chalabi, a man with an arrest warrant hanging over him, isn’t working to make friends (and he may really be in trouble this time)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1977&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Iraqi interim Defence Minister, Hazim al-Shalan has said he will have Ahmed Chalabi, head of Iraqi National Congress (INC), arrested before the 30 January elections after Chalabi ”defamed” him, it was reported Friday.

More:
http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/chalabi-to-be-arrested-political.html
Interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan announced on al-Jazeerah Friday that Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi would be arrested after the three-day Eid al-Adha celebrations that end Saturday. Shaalan said that Chalabi would be turned over to Interpol to face justice in the embezzlement of $300 million from his own Petra Bank in the late 1980s, for which he was convicted in absentia in Jordan in 1992.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005498.php
Questions abound. Why announce his arrest to the world before actually nabbing him? Does the defense minister really have the authority to turn him over to Interpol anyway? And what do the American authorities think about all this?. . . And most important, is this the end of the road for Chalabi? Or merely another speed bump in his long and checkered career? Stay tuned.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001595.html
One wonders, what ever did happen with Chalabi's erstwhile INC intelligence chief, who reportedly fled to Teheran?

Memory lane. . .
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/080904X.shtml
[August 8, 2004] Iraq has issued an arrest warrant for Ahmad Chalabi, a former governing council member, on counterfeiting charges. . . The warrant was a new sign of the fall of Ahmad Chalabi from the centers of power. Chalabi, a longtime exile opposition leader, had been a favorite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans in the weeks before the U.S. occgupation ended in June.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5641431/
[August 12, 2004] The Iraqi Interior Ministry said Thursday that it had “no intention” of arresting former Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi in the near future on counterfeiting charges, despite an arrest warrant issued by an Iraqi court. . . The announcement came a day after Chalabi returned to Iraq from Iran to face the charges against him

Another disposable Bush cliché you will never hear again: “the coalition of the willing”

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110636667172155414

Salon with the classic good news/bad news on the same day

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/21/violence/
Violence will not stop Iraq vote
The chief U.N. election official in Iraq said yesterday that elections could still be held next week despite the torrent of violence that has shaken the country.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/21/trigger/index.html?source=RSS
Election could trigger civil war
Amid escalating insurgent attacks, a threatened Sunni boycott, and growing American misgivings, the prospect of Iraq's elections producing a strong, inclusive government looks increasingly remote.

House report calls for troop withdrawal within 12-18 months

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/01/22/house_report_proposes_troop_withdrawal_plan/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Front+Page

Bush’s budget: don’t get fooled again

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2005/01/21/medicaid/
President Bush is readying a new budget that would carve savings from Medicaid and other benefit programs, congressional aides and lobbyists say, but it is unclear if he will be able to push the plan through the Republican-run Congress. . . White House officials are not saying what Bush's $2.5 trillion 2006 budget will propose saving from such programs, which comprise the biggest and fastest growing part. . . But lobbyists and lawmakers' aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, say he will focus on Medicaid, the health-care program for low-income and disabled people.

Analyses of Bush’s budget ploys (thanks to Michael Froomkin for the links)
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/02/return_of_the_washington_monument_ploy.html
http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/01/how_to_read_a_b.html

Conservatives go crazy because “Face the Nation” had Teddy K with no right-wing “balance” – but do they expect “balance” in both directions? (what do you think?)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110633742639330779

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501220001

On renewing the Fairness Doctrine (a good idea that the Republicans will fight to the death)

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/21/13622/8346
Representative Louise Slaughter will introduce a bill to Congress to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine is an extremely popular idea, but when Democrats tried to pass the legislation in 1993, conservatives were able to defeat it. They did so through the traditional conservative means: they lied.

Bush’s Social Security mess: Paul Krugman piles on

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000203.html
President Bush is like a financial adviser who tells you that at the rate you're going, you won't be able to afford retirement - but that you shouldn't do anything mundane like trying to save more. Instead, you should take out a huge loan, put the money in a mutual fund run by his friends (with management fees to be determined later) and place your faith in capital gains. . . That, once you cut through all the fine phrases about an "ownership society," is how the Bush privatization plan works.

Bloomberg.com too!

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000202.html
"President George W. Bush's assertions that Social Security faces a crisis and is “flat bust, bankrupt'' are patently false. Bush and other administration officials are greatly exaggerating potential problems facing the program to push through changes that would undermine the most successful social insurance program in the nation's history. . . The system is so far from crisis or bankruptcy that the truly prudent course at this point most certainly would be to make no changes in Social Security at all."

Some advice for liberals (thanks to Matt Yglesias for the link)

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/perma12105.html
[Timothy Burke] I do mean to suggest that liberals who fit in this category, whose political ideology derives from their sense that they know more and better about the world and many of the things within it, could maybe benefit from Morris’ advice. Rather than telling the story of their political values as a kind of moral fantasy of their own compassion and boundless emotional commitment to selflessly aiding the less fortunate, perhaps they could say more, and say it more authentically, about the roots of their social vision. At the very least, this might prove a more potent and honest—if not particularly democratic—reply to the kind of anti-intellectual populism that is embodied in something like the resurgence of creationism in many parts of the United States. It might also reconnect educated liberal Americans with a hopeful, progressive story of American life as opposed to a bitter story of alienation from America.

Al Franken may run for Senate (MN), take back Paul Wellstone’s seat from the reptilian Norm Coleman

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009406.html

Michael Powell stepping down from FCC (and I bet you he will end up running for some GOP office)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/21/business/21cnd-powell.html?ex=1264050000&en=704d891842c25da8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Powell did not say what he would do after leaving the commission, other than "spending some time off with my wife and two boys, before taking up my next challenge."

Texas redistricting back in court

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1970&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Bonus item: The clip everyone is talking about. Fox News anchor busts a gasket when a guest dares to question the lavishness of the Bush inauguration

http://www.oliverwillis.com/taxonomy/page/or/46

Double bonus: another light bulb joke

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_01_21_bestof.html#110632716793377969
Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb. It's improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001620.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:26 AM

 
WORDS AND DEEDS

Are the Dems delaying the vote on Gonzales because they think that his follow-up memos, after the confirmation hearings -- exempting CIA and other nonmilitary interrogators from rules requiring humane treatment, exempting Al Qaeda and other “illegal combatants” from the Geneva conventions, and removing certain interrogation techniques from the definition of “torture” without saying what they are (waterboarding, for example?) -- still provide the basis for a fight against him? When you look at the numerous qualifications and exceptions it makes those bold moral statements that “We don’t torture” look pretty empty

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/20/155927/584

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6790622/
In his memo, Gonzales did not address the topic of torture. He did say that in its treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban members, the United States “will continue to be constrained by its commitment to treat the detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with” the 1949 Geneva Convention.

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005273

Photos from the inauguration: images you WON’T be seeing in your local paper

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1959&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1954&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1960&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1962&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

And a couple of more inauguration day photos you REALLY WON’T see in the paper (thanks to Kos for the link)

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/01/happy-inaguration-daydont-worry-your.html

I didn’t have the stomach to watch it, but some people did: Bush’s inauguration speech

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112487/fr/rss/
[Fred Kaplan] President Bush's inaugural address today was a flimsy, shallow speech—eloquent, even graceful, but in the service of clichés and slogans, not ideas or policies. The theme was attractive: "freedom" and the necessity to spread it to around the world, not just for its own sake but to protect those who already enjoy it. . . The template, clearly, was John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address, which began, "We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom" and went on, more famously, "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.". . . But George W. Bush is not John F. Kennedy and, more to the point, 2005 is not 1961. It is doubtful that even Kennedy's words—so flush with idealism at the time—would have come off so stirringly had they been written, say, eight years later, at the height of the Vietnam War. They would have raised questions, set off alarm bells. And so should Bush's paraphrasings in the middle of the present war in Iraq.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/freedoms_jihad.php
[Bob Dreyfuss] So it’s clear from the speech: The next four years will be four more years of Christian jihad. . . What’s most ironic about Bush’s speech is this: It’s as if suddenly all of the hundreds of tyrants and despots and dictators that the United States created, supported and sustained during the Cold War didn’t exist. As if the United States has always stood for freedom and democracy around the world, rather than tyranny. As if the government of South Vietnam, the Greek colonels, the Brazilian generals, the Central American death squads, the South African apartheid regime, Indonesia’s military thugs, General Zia of Pakistan, and the countless others who were warmly embraced as freedom-loving leaders by U.S. presidents from Truman to Clinton didn’t ever exist. . . Now we have God on our side. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004496
[Marshall Wittman] The Moose observes that the eloquence of the President's address was only matched by its disconnectedness to reality ... If he were in touch with the reality of America, he would discover that the country has deep doubts about the wisdom of the war in Iraq ... He is oblivious to the notion that he speaks ever so eloquently about advancing freedom abroad while he imposes economic policies that promote plutocracy at home.

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/01/20.html#a818
[Scott Rosenberg] This speech wasn't just soaring rhetoric. It was a lighter-than-air burst of helium verbiage -- lofty language untethered from the perplexing world we occupy and from the messy events of the last four years, sentences floating off into an empyrean of millennial vagaries. . . The world is a simple place to Bush. For him, "the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right" is one that involves no hard calls. And since America represents freedom and freedom is eternally right, it must still be right even when it locks hundreds of people away for life without trial or it tortures prisoners in a war launched on a lie. We are the forces of freedom; we can admit no wrong because we can do no wrong.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112538/fr/rss/
Page One analyses in the NYT, LAT, and WP all ponder the gaping dissonance between the lofty talk and the administration's actual policies. But you'd have a tough time knowing that from the headlines, particularly the Post's: "AN AMBITIOUS PRESIDENT ADVANCES HIS IDEALISM.". . . The Post eventually gets down to business, noting the speech is "at odds with the administration's increasingly close relations with repressive governments in every corner of the world." Except that quote is from a different story— "ANALYSTS NOTE GAP BETWEEN BUSH RHETORIC AND REALITY"— safely tucked away on page A25.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005492.php%20%5BKevin
[Kevin Drum] Jonah Goldberg thinks I should blog something about George Bush's inaugural speech, but I don't feel like it. I will say this, though: I'll bet him a C-note that six months from now no one will remember a word he said.

Bush’s expansive view of Presidential power

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/01/20/cheney_claims_bush_restored_power_of_presidency.html

Bush by the numbers (thanks to Kos for this link)

http://numeralist.blogspot.com/2005/01/by-numbers-u.html
Poverty Rate
2000: 11.3% or 31.6 million Americans
2003: 12.5% or 35.9 million Americans

Stock market
Dow Jones Industrial Average
1/19/01: 10,587.59
1/19/05: 10,539.97

Value of the Dollar
1/19/01: 1 Dollar = 1.06 Euros
1/19/05: 1 Dollar = 0.77 Euros

Budget
2000 budget surplus $236.4 billion
2004 budget deficit $412.6 billion

More. . . .

On the news: “fair and balanced” coverage of inauguration events

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501210001

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/20/media_on_inauguration/index.html?source=RSS
In Sunday's New York Times, John Tierney examined the delicate balancing act administrations face when throwing a lavish inauguration celebration against the backdrop of unsettling world events. Tierney wrote that inaugurations "become even trickier during times of war, particularly when television images of dancers in black tie can be instantly juxtaposed with soldiers in body armor.". . . Tierney must be confusing the D.C. press corps as it might be expected to function -- posing uncomfortable questions to those in power -- with the press corps that exists in Washington today. Because the notion that the television networks or 24-hour news channels would spend their inauguration coverage contrasting the scenes of wealthy corporate donors toasting the president while young soldiers and middle-aged Guardsmen battle in Iraq is wildly naive. During the nearly 24 months of war coverage of Iraq, many American news outlets have remained steadfastly allergic to relaying disturbing images of war, particularly anything that shows Americans being wounded or killed. So the idea that broadcast journalists would use this celebration, of all things, as a time to press President Bush on Iraq simply does not reflect the modus operandi of today's mainstream media. . . This week's inauguration story came ready with two interesting news angles: the huge cost (in contrast with the dire situation in Iraq) and the unprecedented security. And in both cases, the political press corps, as has been its habit under the Bush administration, showed little interest in prying. In the days and weeks leading up to the event, the press has largely treated inauguration criticism as partisan and silly, making sure to give Bush backers lots of time and room to defend the unmatched pomp and circumstance.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/20/wash_times/index.html
First, the Times reports Bush and his team of supporters are spending $40 million in private funds to pay for the inauguration, making it the most expensive in history. The $40 million figure is interesting because just nine days ago the very same Washington Times reported that the Bush team hoped to raise $50 million for the parties and parade.

[NB: Does this mean, by the way, that despite their best efforts, Bush Co. raised LESS money than they had hoped? And that this is why they had to charge $10 million in security costs to D.C., without reimbursement?]

Here it is, in black and white

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050131&s=alterman
"The conservative press is self-consciously conservative and self-consciously part of the team," Grover Norquist explains. "The liberal press is...conflicted. Sometimes it thinks it needs to be critical of both sides."

Read it and weep

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110631196039180948
The Ridgecrest Daily Independent:

Newspaper shouldn't print Liberal voices

Editor:

Thank Goodness for such literate and intelligent men as Julius Wolfson, Derek Cooper, Ron Scott and May Shaw.

I just can't understand why more good conservatives haven't spoken out against the dangerous opinions of rabble-rousers such as Phyllis Lilly, Linda Robin and that R C Johnson person. Why does The Daily Independent print the degenerate views of poisonous Liberals who hate freedom?

As Mr. Scott points out, the glorious Constitution is there to protect the rights of Christians to profess their faith. This country was founded by good Christians and the Constitution guarantees our right to express our religion.

It just is completely beyond me how we have allowed Liberals to deny us this guaranteed right.

Oh, they raise ridiculous arguments like other (false) religions would be "upset" if they were forced to pray alongside the righteous in schools or council meetings.

Surely those others would appreciate the opportunity to be saved. As God's chosen people, we Christians have the right to express our religion and praise tolerant, patient and merciful God, and I don't want to read any more letters from Liberals suggesting non-believers should be allowed to express their superstitions just because we Christians can express ours.

The Founding Fathers were God-fearing men and never intended the first Amendment to promote other superstitious beliefs.

Ridgecrest used to be filled with right-minded, polite and decent people.

I can't believe the vicious slander of some people who have the nerve to portray or suggest Jesus behaved as a Liberal.

Jesus makes his position very clear. The wisdom of an "eye for an eye" would never occur to a Liberal.

Liberals are always talking about peace at any price, when Jesus said: Do not think I have come to bring peace, but a sword.

Liberals hate people who have managed to raise their station in life, and instead insist on giving money away to the irresponsible: Store yourselves treasures for Heaven for where your treasure is, there your heart is also.

No one can serve two masters, either your are a good conservative with God or you are not with God. Remember: A bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

Billie Miller

Ridgecrest

[NB: Could this letter be a joke?]

One more review of Rice’s confirmation hearings

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/rice-doublespeak-at-senate-transcript.html
[Juan Cole] The transcript of the Rice/Boxer exchange is worth reading in full. Rice's performance is breathtakingly bad, and Boxer has all the quotes and facts at her fingertips. The issue is that Condoleeza Rice engaged in demagoguery before the Iraq war. She invoked the image of a mushroom cloud over the United States. But George Tenet had told her the evidence was weak in that regard. The State Department Intelligence and Research division thought the whole nuclear bit was far-fetched. But Rice kept on saying these alarmist things nevertheless. . . In the end, Rice falls back on the same brain-dead rhetorical strategy as George W. Bush. Saddam was a threat because he is intrinsically evil. He is so evil that he can be a threat even though all he had in his arsenal were those spitballs toward which Zell Miller showed such derision at the Republican National Convention. Saddam was a threat to the region, she says. She is still saying this now, today. Saddam was not a threat to the region in 2002. That is ridiculous. Iraq was also not a threat to the US. This turns out to be the Achilles Heel of any doctrine of preemptive war. It would require, in order to be justified, much better intelligence than is usually available on the capabilities and intensions of the enemy. Rice still won't admit this, which means she may drag us into further wars with further gross mistakes in judgment.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/4-bombs-shake-baghdad-wednesday.html
Dr. Rice seemed unwilling to condemn torture unreservedly (her people back in Birmingham must be proud of that one). . . I was alarmed at how doctrinaire all her answers were, and how she consistently refused to take any responsibility for misleading the American public into an unnecessary war. Her notion that the US cannot afford to let failed states fester is something that could be debated. But Iraq was not a failed state in 2002. If anything Condi Rice has helped turn Iraq into a failed state. If it is undesirable for the US to let failed states fester, surely it is even more undesirable for the US to use false pretences to turn countries into failed states. She either doesn't get it, or doesn't have the elemental courage and integrity to admit that she was wrong. Her deputy Stephen Hadley, by the way, was the one who over-ruled the CIA and authorized the phrase about Iraq buying uranium from Niger in the 2003 State of the Union address. Condi is responsible for her subordinates. If you just went through and made a quotation table of everything she said about Iraq in the first term, it would be hilarious to read now. . . Her lack of political and intellectual independence from Bush will turn her into a mere parrot, and all the heavy duty decisions will be taken by Donald Rumsfeld and his Neoconservative phalanx. Her testimony, which sounded as though she had been stuck in a time warp for the past three years and hadn't noticed the disaster in Iraq, was a good sign of her future irrelevance and current inability to deal with reality.

Mr. Reasonable

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2506
[Dick Cheney] “I can understand why some people have the view that it was all about WMD”

[NB: Yeah, Dick, because you and Rice and other Bush shills lied for weeks telling us that it was!]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney21jan21,1,4831545.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
In bluntly threatening terms on Inauguration Day, Vice President Dick Cheney removed any doubt that in its second term the Bush administration intended to directly confront the theocracy in Tehran. . . Cheney, who often has delivered the Bush team's toughest warnings to foreign capitals, said Iran was "right at the top" of the administration's list of world trouble spots, and expressed concern that Israel "might well decide to act first" to destroy Iran's nuclear program. The Israelis would let the rest of the world "worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterward". . .

[NB: Or is this just more U.S./Israel good cop/bad cop?]

Growing demands in Iraq for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/consensus-growing-in-iraq-for.html

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2505

Zarqawi, on the other hand, is planning for the long haul

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/21/international/middleeast/21iraq.html?ex=1264050000&en=ff0bd57046cd3377&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Top Rebel in Iraq Says War With U.S. May Last for Years

Chalabi making his move (what a surprise)

http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/chalabi-attacks-shaalan-rivalry.html

Cheney comes up with novel explanation for why U.S. has failed in Iraq: it’s all Saddam’s fault, see?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/20/inaugural.cheney.ap/index.html
Asked to name his mistakes in planning the war in Iraq, Cheney said he had not anticipated how long it would take the Iraqis to begin running their own country. Not until after Saddam was ousted did the United States realize the extent of the Iraqi leader's brutality in putting down revolt in 1991, Cheney said. . . "I think the hundreds of thousands of people who were slaughtered at the time, including anybody who had the gumption to stand up and challenge him, made the situation tougher than I would have thought," he said on "The Don Imus Show" on the radio.

[NB: Yep, our mistake was that Saddam was EVEN WORSE than we imagined]

I certainly expect widespread vote fraud and inflation of voter totals (who’s doing the counting, after all?) – but look at this

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005493.php
On ABC News tonight they had a report about preparations for voting in the city of Mosul. The original plan was to have 100 polling places, but because of the violence there that's been cut down to 40. . . The population of Mosul is 2 million, and you can probably figure that about two-thirds of that number are eligible to vote. That means each polling place will have to handle 33,000 voters. Even if turnout is only 50%, that's still about 16,000 people per polling station.

“Hotel journalism”: Why you will never hear the real story about the elections (or anything else) in Iraq (thanks to Megan Boler for the link)

http://counterpunch.org/fisk01172005.html
[Robert Fisk] "Hotel journalism" is the only phrase for it. More and more Western reporters in Baghdad are reporting from their hotels rather than the streets of Iraq's towns and cities. Some are accompanied everywhere by hired, heavily armed Western mercenaries. A few live in local offices from which their editors refuse them permission to leave. Most use Iraqi stringers, part-time correspondents who risk their lives to conduct interviews for American or British journalists, and none can contemplate a journey outside the capital without days of preparation unless they "embed" themselves with American or British forces. . . Rarely, if ever, has a war been covered by reporters in so distant and restricted a way. The New York Times correspondents live in Baghdad behind a massive stockade with four watchtowers, protected by locally hired, rifle-toting security men, complete with NYT T-shirts. America's NBC television chain are holed up in a hotel with an iron grille over their door, forbidden by their security advisers to visit the swimming pool or the restaurant "let alone the rest of Baghdad" lest they be attacked. Several Western journalists do not leave their rooms while on station in Baghdad. . .

"The United States military couldn't be happier with this situation," a long-time American correspondent in Baghdad says. "They know that if they bomb a house of innocent people, they can claim it was a 'terrorist' base and get away with it. They don't want us roaming around Iraq and so the 'terrorist' threat is great news for them. . . They can claim they've shot 600 or 1,000 insurgents and we have no way of checking because we can't go to the cemetery or visit the hospitals because we don't want to get kidnapped and have our throats cut."

Thus, many reporters are now reduced to telephoning the American military or the Iraqi "interim" government for information from their hotel rooms, receiving "facts" from men and women who are even more isolated from Iraq in the Baghdad Green Zone around Saddam Hussein's former republican palace than are the journalists. Or they take reports from their correspondents who are embedded with American troops and who will, necessarily, get only the American side of the story.

Bush’s new slogan: “You’re on your ownERSHIP SOCIETY”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004498

“Antisocial insecurity”

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/01/20.html#a817

Robert Rubin weighs in

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1394301,00.html
"It's a badly, badly flawed plan," Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the treasury and current Citigroup director, told me. "From a fiscal point of view it's horrendous. It adds to deficits and federal debt in very large numbers until 2060." He calculates that the transition costs of Bush's plan for the first 10 years will be at least $2 trillion, and $4.5 trillion for the second 10 years. The exploding deficit would have an "adverse effect on interest rates, an adverse effect on consumption and housing prices, reduce productivity and growth, and crowd out debt capital to the private sector. Markets could begin to lose confidence in fiscal policy. The soundness of social security will be worse". . . Rubin adds that the stock market is hardly a sure bet. "You are not making social security more secure by subjecting people's retirement to equity risk. If you look at the Nikkei in Japan you get a sense of what can happen."

Now we see it, as in Iraq: when one rationale for the urgent necessity of Social Security reform gets discredited (there is no “crisis”), a new one slides in to replace it, one after another

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004491

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005275

Rove uses the “P” word (Karl, off message?)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004495

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004503

The Social Security Administration denies that it would ever, ever use its resources to promote Bush’s reform proposals (even though it is already doing so)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004494

If you want to see how Bush Co. is going to “fix” Social Security, just watch how they are “fixing” Medicare

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005280

And what ARE those House Republicans up to?

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2507
[Noam Scheiber] [O]ne way to read the article is that McCrery and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas favor a version of reform that would leave the current Social Security system more or less intact while adding on private accounts, which would be funded through an entirely separate mechanism. The second reading is that Thomas and McCrery want to throw everything into a bowl--the Social Security system, the payroll tax, the entire tax code for that matter--stir it up, and then pull out something that, once you sort it all out, amounts to a partially privatized version of the current system. The third option is that this is just an attempt by Thomas and McCrery to derail the whole Social Security-reform enterprise and maybe move on to tax reform. . . The second option is where I thought things were headed after reading Thomas's comments yesterday, and where I'd still put my money.

Why Bush will fail (thanks to Kevin Drum for the link)

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=OUaw81vQ%2BP9d4IeXQirrwx%3D%3D
[Peter Beinart] Why is President Bush having more trouble (so far) trying to partially privatize Social Security than he had cutting taxes in 2001? Some of the reasons are simple: Partially privatizing Social Security could mean short-term pain, in the form of reduced benefits. Upper-income tax cuts, by contrast, seemed pretty cost-free. Yes, they increased the deficit, but that danger looked fairly remote in 2001, when the country was running a budget surplus. Today, by contrast, even if Bush tries the free-lunch approach to partial privatization--no benefit cuts and trillions in new debt--Democrats will likely react with greater alarm. After all, the government is already running a large deficit, created in part by the tax cuts Bush assured us we could afford.

And it's not just the president's economic record that has Democrats wary; it's his political record as well. When Bush began selling his first tax cut four years ago, he was still considered a can't-we-all-get-along bipartisan, a reputation fed by stories of his famously chummy relations with the Democratic good ol' boys in the Texas legislature. Today, needless to say, his reputation is rather different. As Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, recently told the Los Angeles Times, "There is absolutely no trust among Democrats that you could cooperate with Republicans ... and not be taken to the cleaners.". . .

It may be that the GOP's victories in last November's elections, the very victories that Bush says give him the "political capital" to push through partial privatization, are actually making the effort harder. By killing off the Democrats most susceptible to his influence, Bush may have created a political dynamic that works for his opponents, and against him. . . The most obvious example, as Carolyn Lochhead recently pointed out in an excellent article in The San Francisco Chronicle, is Charlie Stenholm. Stenholm, a 13-term representative from West Texas, was probably the congressional Democrat most enamored of partial privatization. He had already co-sponsored a partial-privatization bill and would likely have done so again. Having Stenholm's name attached to private accounts would have given Bush's effort a bipartisan veneer--and an ally able to lobby red-state Democrats more effectively than the White House ever could.

But Stenholm is no longer in Congress. He lost his seat, along with four of his Democratic colleagues, when Bush's Texas allies pushed through an absurdly gerrymandered redistricting plan. In the Senate, Bush has also lost a host of potential allies. The Democratic senators most inclined to support some version of Bush's plan are, not surprisingly, those from the South. Charles Robb, the former senator from Virginia, was a vocal proponent of private accounts. So was John Breaux, who retired from his seat in Louisiana last year. When the Senate took up Bush's tax cut in 2001, both Democrats from Georgia--Zell Miller and Max Cleland--voted yes. . .

It is far too early to declare Social Security privatization dead. But, if it fails, it will likely prove the old Washington axiom that big changes either occur on a bipartisan basis or they don't occur at all. Having made it almost impossible to be a bipartisan Democrat, Bush may be about to learn that they can be useful to have around. Somewhere, Charlie Stenholm is laughing.

Is Frist “bluffing” about bending (breaking) Senate rules to block judicial filibusters?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005285

UN-believable! Ohio Attorney General wants to file charges against those who challenged state voting results

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0119-12.htm

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/05/01/ale05018.html

[NB: You know, it occurs to me that this could be a BIG mistake. Do they really want to give Arnebeck et al. their day in court, with subpoena power and the chance to get Blackwell, Triad, and others on the stand, under oath?]

Conyers won’t drop exit poll questions, wants raw data

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/05/01/ale05019.html

Will the Oil-for-Food scandal investigation net catch up Jack Kemp and a few other Republicans?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001594.html

Tsunami photos: before and after (thanks to A.G. Rud for the link)

http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/9.html

Bonus item: Ships passing in the night

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/tolestom/?name=Toles&date=20050120

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:52 AM

 
TO THE VICTOR GOES THE SPOILED

Hey George, here’s hoping you have a GREAT inauguration

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/politics/20poll.html?ex=1263877200&en=ee3774332aecb892&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
On the eve of President Bush's second inauguration, most Americans say they do not expect the economy to improve or that American troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the time Mr. Bush leaves the White House, and many have reservations about his signature plan to overhaul Social Security, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. . . The poll found that 43 percent of respondents expect most forms of abortion to be illegal by the time Mr. Bush leaves the White House, given Mr. Bush's expected appointments to the Supreme Court.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/19/lat_poll/index.html
A new poll from the LA Times finds that the American public's support for the war in Iraq has dropped to an all-time low. By a margin of 56-39, the poll's respondents thought that America's problems with Iraq were "not worth going to war over." Those who believed that invading Iraq had "stabilized the situation in the Middle East" were outnumbered nearly two to one by those who thought the opposite, and only 29 percent of those surveyed believed the U.S. was "winning the war." A plurality of 47 percent agreed with the statement that "the invasion of Iraq has alienated many in the Muslim world, which will increase the risk of terrorism against the United States."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/international/europe/17spiegel.html?oref=login
[Der Spiegel] US military officials are becoming increasingly vocal in their criticism of the war in Iraq, telling Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that more troops are needed to prevail over the insurgents. Moreover, recruitment is down and more reservists and members of the National Guard are being sent to Baghdad.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000194.html
[The Guardian] There is growing dissension and dismay in the US armed forces about their prospects of victory in Iraq. The yellow ribbons, lapel pins and yard signs expressing solidarity with the nation's soldiers are still conspicuous around army bases across America. But commanders and soldiers alike are conducting an increasingly anguished debate. . . There are four reasons for this. First, many service people are shocked by the incontrovertible evidence that the justifications offered by the Bush administration for invading Iraq - WMD and a link with international terrorism - were false. Second, bitter and painful fighting, notably in the showpiece assault on Falluja, has failed to suppress insurgency. Third, there is deep scepticism about progress in recruiting Iraqis to assume the security burden. Even General David Petraeus, the US airborne general charged with organising Iraq's new forces, is said to be increasingly despondent. And finally, the army and marine corps are acutely aware that they have to sustain the occupation without sufficient troops to control the country effectively

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=&e=7&u=/ap/20050119/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/economy_22
Consumer prices jumped 3.3 percent last year as the biggest surge in fuel bills in 14 years pushed up inflation at the fastest pace since 2000, the government reported Wednesday. . . The Labor Department said the 3.3 percent increase last year in its Consumer Price Index, the most closely watched barometer of inflation, was the biggest annual jump since a 3.4 percent rise in 2000.

And this priceless headline from CNN (thanks to Josh Marshall for the link)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/19/poll/index.html
Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider

The price tag

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/19/numbers/index.html
$40 million: Cost of Bush inaugural ball festivities, not counting security costs.

$20,000: Cost of yellow roses purchased for inaugural festivities by D.C.'s Ritz Carlton.

200: Number of Humvees outfitted with top-of-the-line armor for troops in Iraq that could have been purchased with the amount of money blown on the inauguration.

$10,000: Price of an inaugural package at the Fairmont Hotel, which includes a Beluga caviar and Dom Perignon reception, a chauffeured Rolls Royce and two actors posing as "faux" Secret Service agents, complete with black sunglasses and cufflink walkie-talkies.

22 million: Number of children in regions devastated by the tsunami who could have received vaccinations and preventive health care with the amount of money spent on the inauguration.

1,160,000: Number of girls who could be sent to school for a year in Afghanistan with the amount of money lavished on the inauguration.

$15,000: The down payment to rent a fur coat paid by one gala attendee who didn't want the hassle of schlepping her own through the airport.

2,500: Number of U.S. troops used to stand guard as President Bush takes his oath of office.

26,000: Number of Kevlar vests for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that could be purchased for $40 million.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005265
[Jeffrey Dubner] One of the best things about this post-election White House is how little it worries about how minor details will be picked up by the press. So you get George W. Bush casually discussing optics rather than issues, describing his role in the Social Security battle as "provid[ing] the political cover" for congresspeople, or talking about his inaugural speech itself rather than the subject matter it contains. And then there's the attendance at the inauguration of Bernie Kerik and Ashley Faulkner (the latter of Ashley's Story fame). . . During the campaign season, the "we don't care about the press" attitude was more a posture than a genuine disregard. But now? The inaugural could remind people of the Kerik embarrassment -- and they don't care! It could reunite Bush with the focus of the most expensive 527 ad buy of the campaign, even though Bush ostensibly deplores 527 organizations -- and they don't care!. . . Is this indicative of an administration unconcerned about handling bad press or confident it won't receive any?

The big story out of the election was how the exit polls could have gotten it so wrong (when in fact many of us believe they were more accurate than the voting results). After a lengthy review and analysis of what happened, the answer is “we dunno”

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/01/19/why_the_exit_polls_were_wrong.html
"Our investigation of the differences between the exit poll estimates and the actual vote count point to one primary reason: in a number of precincts a higher than average Within Precinct Error most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters. . . It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters."

[NB: Uhhh. . . maybe because there were MORE of them?]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005483.php
There's still a fair amount of guesswork involved in this, though, and it seems to have been mostly a process of elimination. No other source of error appears to have been present, so the error must have come — somehow — from an oversampling of Kerry voters in individual precincts.

[NB: I want to return to the question that no one seems to want to discuss any more, which is, What if the exit polls were actually correct? Exit polls are generally considered highly accurate, and are routinely used to check the validity of voting results (e.g., in the Ukraine recently). In an era of e-voting, with no paper trails, exit polls are the ONLY check that tells you if – inadvertently or not – the e-totals match actual voter intentions. This is the second national election in a row in which exit polls showed that something went wrong with the voting. Yet the onus is thrown onto why the exit polls must have been wrong, even if (as in this case) there is NO REASON to assume they were off. Attributing the explanation to an “oversampling of Kerry voters” – with no proof that that even happened! – is simply explaining the phenomenon in a circular fashion (i.e., no explanation at all).]

Further fallout from the Bill Thomas “dead horse” comment

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110614948251089150
[Harry Reid] “The President's plan is a dead horse not because of partisan politics but because it is a privatization plan based on massive benefit cuts, risky Wall Street accounts and $2 trillion in new debt. It will undermine Social Security at a time when we should be looking to strengthen the program and help Americans save. . . And if a 50 percent benefit cut is not enough, now we learn Republicans are aiming to push even deeper cuts for America's women. Any suggestion that women do not deserve the same benefits as men is just plain wrong. . . Retirement security is America's promise to all its workers, and I will ensure that promise is kept.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-social20jan20,1,1615677.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Bush's plan would mean benefit cuts, higher debt and a "disaster for the most successful social program in the history of the world," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

[Give ‘em hell, Harry!]

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005263
Republican Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas' decision to label the Bush Social Security plan "a dead horse" and call "on Congress to undertake a broader review of the problems of an aging nation" provides at least two opportunities. One is for Democrats to find a third way between the school that says "just say 'no'" to privatization and the school that says the opposition needs to put forth an alternative plan. House Democrats can happily propose to work with Thomas on any number of retirement-related ideas that have nothing to do with gutting Social Security, from trimming the fat from the Bush Medicare bill to private pension reform to the ASPIRE Act. . . At the same time, this is a chance to get out of the defensive crouch on Social Security and start attacking. A plan that doesn't have the support of the House Ways and Means Chairman or the Senate Finance Committee Chairman is in no danger of passing in the near future. Democrats would be well-advised to spend less time focusing on defending their position and more time launching vituperative attacks on the Bush view. It would be a shame to just let Bush wiggle out of this without paying a major price.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110616158240491716
Indeed. The president's agenda is going down in flames. Time to keep punching. . . I'm starting to think we may hear as much about social security privatization in the state of the union address this year as we heard about MARS in the last one.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004483
Not only did Thomas manage to utter what everyone has been thinking of late: that the president's proposal isn't doing very well and even a modern-day Diogenes would probably be hard pressed to find more than a few Hill Republicans who actually want, in their heart of hearts, the president to keep pushing this issue. In addition to that he managed to float a bunch of new winning ideas that Democrats can now attach to a senior member of the House GOP leadership. Great ideas like upping the retirement age for women since they don't die as soon as men -- an idea whose underlying premise can be rattled off in any number of ridiculous directions, as our friend Ed Kilgore demonstrates to his obvious delight.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/19/112640/723
Obviously Thomas knows something about Bush's plan that we don't. . . Thomas may have saved his party some major heartache in 2006.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004489
Rep. Phil English (R - PA): “. . . individual accounts by themselves will only marginally improve the performance of the system overall."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004490
Newt Gingrich: “This is not a crisis"

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110614206175660770
[Atrios] I caution any Dems about getting suckered into a "bipartisan plan" to "reform" the system which will be magically switcherooed by DeLay's goons on the conference committee.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004485
The piece begins with what the Post describes as a growing realization among many Hill Republicans that getting money for private accounts out of payroll taxes now destined for Social Security just may not be workable because of the level of opposition that approach has already churned up. McCrery's tack is to get radical tax reform (i.e., a national sales tax or other ideas) back into the mix to open up different possibilities for funding private accounts. . . But in the Post's telling it's maddeningly difficult to figure out whether the Ways and Means Republicans are talking about leaving Social Security and its payroll tax base alone and finding other ways to fund private accounts or whether they are trying to put the entire federal tax code on the table, thus turning the entire debate, and whatever clarity it had, on its head.

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2502
[Noam Scheiber] Put that all together and what do you get? I think you get a Social Security bill that has lots of convoluted, Thomas-inspired, hand-waving--possibly including a change to the way Social Security benefits are funded (i.e., the payroll tax)--that creates private accounts but in a way that hides the fact that the numbers don't add up. You get the White House coming on board and endorsing such a plan (at least behind the scenes), and then twisting a lot of arms on the Hill to get it passed. (Absent White House arm-twisting, Hill Republicans would just as soon see the effort die.) The White House still might not get there in the Senate, where they're going to need five Democrats even if they get every Republican vote. But then, if we're not even talking about a carve-out at this point (i.e., diverting current Social Security revenue into private accounts), who knows? In any case, that's where see things heading.

More on future trends: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004486

Scotty’s reaction

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1945&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Q So does the President believe that his Social Security proposals will still have a life by the time they get to Congress?

MR. McCLELLAN: Which proposal are you referring to, John? The President has outlined some very clear principles that should guide us as we move forward to address Social Security. Social Security faces many serious challenges and members on both sides of the aisle in Congress recognize the problems facing Social Security and the need to move forward on solutions to address it now, because it only gets worse over time. . .

Q Does the President still believe there's a crisis in Social Security and that the crisis is now?

MR. McCLELLAN: John, we talked about this last week. We can argue over the words crisis or not a crisis, but the bottom line is that there is a serious problem facing Social Security. Younger workers today -- my generation and younger generations expect that they won't have any savings, when they retire, in their Social Security accounts. That's why the President wants to act to strengthen it. We see that in 2018 that the number of people paying into the system won't be able to support the benefits being paid out. . .

Media performance on Social Security

ABC
http://mediamatters.org/items/200501190001
ABC News chief White House correspondent Terry Moran allowed President Bush to dodge a question about the risks of relying on personal investment accounts to provide a portion of retirees' Social Security benefits. Bush asserted that "there will be strict ... investment guidelines" restricting the types of investments that people can make using funds from their personal accounts, but also that "Over time stocks and bonds and mutual funds yield a rate of return that's much better than that which is in the Social Security trust." Moran declined to challenge Bush on how a single system could accomplish the two competing goals of low risk and high return.

NBC
http://mediamatters.org/items/200501180003
On the January 16 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, moderator Tim Russert once again advanced the administration's highly debatable argument for the privatization of Social Security. On the program, Russert misleadingly suggested that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted by 2029 by quoting an outdated 1998 remark by former President Bill Clinton that relied on projections at that time. Russert also failed to correct Bush counselor Dan Bartlett's erroneous assertion that private personal accounts are "part of the solution" to the problems facing Social Security.

USA Today
http://mediamatters.org/items/200501140003
In a January 14 column in USA Today, Stefani D. Carter, identified as a former fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a current student at Harvard Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, made false claims to argue that Social Security faces an imminent threat and that private accounts are the solution. . . First, Carter falsely claimed that Social Security "will be forced to cut benefits or increase taxes" in 2018. . . In fact, the Social Security trustees estimate that under current law the trust fund has enough money to pay promised benefits until the year 2042 -- not in 2018, as Carter claimed -- while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the so-called "year of exhaustion" will be 2052.

Next, Carter misleadingly claimed that Social Security is unfair to poor and minority workers. . . But while whites do have a higher life expectancy than blacks, the difference between the two expectancies is largely due to higher mortality rates among infants and the young. . . According to the report Health, United States, 2004, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics, the difference in life expectancy for blacks and whites who survive until 65 is about two years (depending on birth cohort). . . Carter also ignored a substantial element of the Social Security program: survivor and disability benefits.

Finally, Carter criticized the current Social Security system as inefficient, writing: "The program, as it stands, is an inefficient way to save for retirement: It has a decreasing rate of return." Many economists believe, however, that President Bush's proposed private investment accounts will vastly increase retirees' exposure to risk without producing a better rate of return than the current system.

On the plus side, the Center for Economic and Policy Research launches a web site to gather the best Social Security reporting

http://www.cepr.net/ssrr/2005_01_18.htm

More from the Truth Squad

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110614817697866276
[Atrios] I really want to highlight something. . . which I don't think has actually penetrated the skulls of our ethical media. While it's difficult to talk about the "Bush plan" when no such plan actually exists, the media don't seem to understand that an element of the possible plans is that actual government benefits will be reduced by the amount in your private accounts. In other words, they aren't just talking about cutting guaranteed benefits - they're talking about reducing your actual benefit by the amount you pull out of your account.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004481
[Josh Marshall] Long-time readers of the site will remember that Republicans long called their plan to replace part of Social Security with private investment accounts 'privatization'. It was their word. They came up with it, embraced it, etc. That was until the 2002 election cycle came around and word went out from the NRCC to stop using the word 'privatization' and try as much as possible to get reporters to stop using it too. . . Suddenly, 'privatization' was a slur, even though it was the Republicans' own word until word came down from party central to start zigging and by no means zag. . . Orwellian word redefinition notwithstanding, however, for most folks the word 'privatization' still means 'private accounts'. . . So here we have Rep. Mike Ferguson (R) of New Jersey. And his website says "Congressman Ferguson's principles on Social Security are clear: he opposes privatizing Social Security ..."

Nowhere does he even mention private accounts. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004488
Under the new Ownership Society, apparently, Republicans are so dead-set on letting people control their own money that they're going to go out on to the international capital markets and borrow a few trillion dollars so they can give it out to people so they can put it into the stock market. Of course, if individuals are more inclined toward conservative investment strategies they can purchase bonds and thus lend back to the Treasury the money the Treasury just borrowed so they could put it in stocks.

A bit more on Rice’s gutless confirmation performance

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000192.html
SEN. DODD: Is it your view, as a human matter, that water-boarding and the use, as we saw, in prisons in Iraq of nudity--is that torture in your personal view, as a nominee here for the--

MS. RICE: Senator, I'm not going to speak to any specific interrogation techniques...The determination of whether interrogation techniques are consistent with our international obligations and American law are made by the Justice Department. I don't want to comment on any specific interrogation techniques. I don't think that would be appropriate, and I think it would not be very good for American security....

SEN. DODD: Well, let's leave it, if that's your answer, there. It's a disappointing answer, I must say. The face of U.S. foreign policy is in the person of the secretary of State, and it's important at moments like this to be able to express yourself aside from the legalities of things, how you as a human being react to these kinds of activities. And with the world watching, when a simple question is raised about techniques that I think most people would conclude in this country are torture, it's important at a moment like that that you can speak clearly and directly without getting involved in the legalisms questions. I understand these involve some legal determinations, but as a human being how you feel about this, about to assume the position and be responsible for pursuing the human rights issues that this nation has been deeply committed to for decades, is a very important moment....

SEN. DODD: Do me a favor. At the end of all of these hearings, I'd like you to spend about 15 minutes with John McCain and talk to him about this stuff. I think you'll get some good advice when it comes to the subject matter, someone who has been through this, about what the dangers are when we have sort of waffling answers about these questions and then Americans can be apprehended and what happens to them....

Dems to delay Rice, Gonzales confirmations

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cabinet20jan20,0,5271984.story?coll=la-home-headlines
But Democrats — critical of her advocacy of the Iraq invasion, as well as Gonzales' answers on prisoner abuse and torture — acted to postpone final votes by at least a day for Rice and possibly more than a week for Gonzales.

http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=565
The Democratic Senate leadership expects to reach an agreement with Senate Republicans for a nine-hour debate on the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice next Tuesday. . . The agreement, which must be reached by unanimous consent, but which is very much expected, will allow Democratic senators not on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to voice their thoughts about Rice on the Senate floor.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112470/fr/rss/
While the LAT's lead notices that Democrats are ticked about Gonzales' evasions, it doesn't really detail them. The Post's Dana Milbank, writing inside the paper, does, pointing out that stonewalling is the latest most fabulous trend among Cabinet nominees. Asked about some pre-war briefings on Iraq's weapons programs, Rice said, "I'm sorry, I just don't remember." And asked to detail his role in the memo that build the legal framework for torture, which the papers have reported that Gonzales requested, Gonzales wrote to senators, "I have no present knowledge of any such notes, memoranda, e-mails or other documents and I have not conducted a search.". . . Milbank even counts up Gonzales' written evasions: "I am not at liberty to disclose" at least 10 times; "I do not recall" or "I have no recollection" six times; I did not "conduct a search" seven times; "I am not at liberty [to discuss certain matters]" 10 times; and "I have no present knowledge" seven times. "It's a little bit appalling," said one Reagan administration official. "A conservative should want greater congressional scrutiny—it limits government."

Tony Blankley believes Seymour Hersh should be tried for espionage

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/tonyblankley/tb20050119.shtml

More: http://mediamatters.org/items/200501190006

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001593.html

Our man in Iraq

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1938&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
A former Jordanian government minister has told The New Yorker that an American official confirmed to him that the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, executed six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station last year. . . Writing about his research in Jordan in December, Anderson says: "A well-known former government minister told me that an American official had confirmed that the killings took place, saying to him, 'What a mess we're in - we got rid of one son of a bitch only to get another one'."

The New Yorker also revealed that Anderson was present during an interview conducted by the Herald's chief correspondent, Paul McGeough, in late June, with a man who said he witnessed the executions by Dr Allawi. . . Anderson writes: "The man ... described how Allawi had been taken to seven suspects, who were made to stand against a wall in a courtyard of the police station, their faces covered. After being told of their alleged crimes by a police official, Allawi had asked for a pistol, and then shot each prisoner in the head. [One of the men survived.] Afterward, the witness said, Allawi had declared to those present, 'This is how we must deal with the terrorists.' The witness said he approved of Allawi's act, adding that, in any case, the terrorists were better off dead, for they had been tortured for days."

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/19/allawi/index.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005267
Dr. Allawi said that he would call for a "conditions-paced" rather than a "calendar-paced" gradual withdrawal program, a formulation that appears to signal that he favors tying an American military pullout to progress in the war here instead of setting a strict timetable for the drawdown of more than 170,000 American troops currently in Iraq.

[NB: This is puzzling because he will be out of office in ten days (if the election predictions are correct). Or does he know something about plans after the vote that we don’t?]

More good news from our friends in Iraq

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112470/fr/rss/
The LAT fronts word that the FBI is now investigating whether an American contractor and his coworker gunned down last month in Iraq were killed because one of them blew the whistle on corruption in the Iraq defense ministry. In the days before he was killed, the contractor had lodged complaints against Iraqi officials who were apparently siphoning funds from the first major contract the ministry was involved in. The Times says a Defense Ministry spokesman offered the paper an interview with a ministry official but then forbade the reporter to ask questions about the contract, explaining it was too "dangerous."

Oh, those wacky Iraqi elections

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/bizarro_election.php
[Bob Dreyfuss] The election in Iraq is getting weirder and weirder.

First, does anyone but me think that the media’s emphasis on registering Iraqi voters in the United States and other Western countries is being wildly hyped? This is, after all, an election in Iraq, but the U.S. media is giving enormous ink to the polling places being set up in the United States, neglecting to mention that these voters have no idea who to vote for, since there is no campaigning, no election materials, and no easy way to find out who the candidates are. Second, the press here keeps calling them Iraqi “exiles,” but they are in fact “immigrants,” just like millions of other foreign-born U.S. citizens and residents. They are not going back. Why exactly they should vote in Iraq isn’t clear to me, but it is clear that they represent a large pool of mostly pro-American (and pro-Shiite) voters.

The Bush administration has been saying for weeks now that the election doesn’t matter, that it’s only a first step, downplaying the importance of the election—even as sober analysts point out that the election is likely to splinter the country and set it up for civil war.

The funniest thing of all is the report that the Iraqi puppet government is planning to ban all private vehicular traffic on election day. How are people supposed to get to the polls? Why don’t they just impose an all-day curfew and order people to stay in their homes? That would make the election safe.

No security, no reconstruction

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/01/iraq_reconstruc.html
“The administration has disbursed only $2.5 billion of the $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds that were appropriated in late 2003.”

Tamim province – never heard of it? Me neither

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2501
[Spencer Ackerman] Tamim is the province that contains the multiethnic and oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by Arabs, Turkmen and especially Kurds. The province has a population of about 1.2 million people, split roughly evenly between Arabs and Kurds. That equivalence, however, is in no small measure the result of Saddam Hussein's genocide of the Kurds, which encouraged Arabs to move into formerly Kurdish areas. The Kurdish leadership, which routinely refers to Kirkuk as the Jerusalem of the Kurdish people, has as a first-tier objective the control of the city.

Control of the city is tied up in control of Tamim province. Since the invasion of Iraq, a delicate ethnic balance has held over the 40-seat provincial council: Fifteen seats have gone to the Kurds, eleven to Arabs, nine to Turkmen, and seven to Christians, with the remainder distributed amongst smaller factions. But also since the invasion, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees have been returning to Kirkuk and the surrounding areas; in several cases, returning Kurds have in turn created Arab refugees. The electoral status of these refugees has been in question for months. Recently, the Kurdish leadership threatened to boycott the provincial election entirely unless their refugees were enfranchised in Tamim. This caused no end of bitterness among Kirkuk's Turkmen and Arabs.

On Saturday, the Iraqi electoral commission, apparently deciding that the risk of a Kurdish boycott was unacceptable, announced a deal allowing up to 100,000 Kurdish refugees to vote in Tamim province. The deal effectively guarantees that the Kurds will dominate the Tamim council and the prized city it contains. And that, in turn, has massive implications for the future of Iraq: Under the Transitional Administrative Law, the final status of Kirkuk--that is, whether it is or isn't part of Kurdistan--will be determined after the ratification of a permanent constitution and the holding of a census in the province and the city. That census is now guaranteed to show a Kurdish majority. As George Packer recently wrote in The New Yorker, what comes next is "a foregone conclusion":

[T]he province of [Tamim] will vote to join the autonomous region of Kurdistan, and the city will go with it.

Not surprisingly, the city's Arabs and Turkmen are unhappy with the deal. A local Arab leader, Sheikh Ghassan Muszhir Al Azsi, told AFP that "this move will result in denying Arabs and Turkmen our legitimate rights in the provisional council," adding that Arabs and Turkmen were meeting to discuss how to resist what is being called "Kurdification.". . .

The Kurds have scored a massive victory in Tamim, and it looks certain to be resisted, even if the Turks don't intervene. "If this continues, we are headed for a civil war," a leader of the Iraqi Turkmen front told the Los Angeles Times. What the U.S. will do in this case is totally uncertain--especially because, at least publicly, the Bush administration is saying everything is under control. When John Kerry asked Condoleezza Rice a pointed question about Kirkuk and the prospect of ethnic violence at her confirmation hearing yesterday, she replied, "We need to be patient with people as they make these moves to democracy, understand that it will be in small steps, that they will have ups and downs, that the whole process will have ups and downs." Get ready for a serious--and potentially irreversible--down.

Guantanamo being rebuilt as a permanent facility

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/19/gitmo/index.html

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009387.html
A Washington, DC judge has rejected a petition for writ of habeas corpus filed by seven Guantanamo detainees. According to the New York Times, the judge ruled that while the detainees had the right to request the petition for the writ, they did not have the right to obtain one. . . He also ruled that the Geneva Convention protections did not apply to the Guantanamo detainees. Another judge in D.C. has a similar case pending, and may or may not rule differently.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009391.html
There is a serious gag order imposed on lawyers who visit their clients at Guantanamo. Nonetheless, today we get a glimpse of the detention conditons from defense attorney Thomas Wilner, who says that by comparison, Charles Manson is living in a palace.

Ken Mehlman’s plans for the GOP

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009379.html
- Enact the president's agenda, including fighting terrorism, revamping Social Security, changing the tax code and appointing "strict constructionists to the courts."

- Institutionalize the GOP's 2004 grass-roots operation, which most experts believe was far better than the Democrats'.

- Recruit quality candidates for the 2005 and 2006 elections. He also urged RNC members to start focusing on the 2008 presidential campaign and, further down the road, the 2011 redistricting process.

- Use the GOP agenda to court new voters: Blacks through school voucher initiatives, young voters through Social Security changes and Hispanics through efforts to limit legal liability.

- As for conservatives, he said, "When we debate who should sit on the judiciary, we have an opportunity to deepen the GOP by registering to vote men and women who attend church every week but aren't yet registered voters."

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rnc20jan20,1,2476866.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Just when you thought that only progressives were disgusted by Bush’s dishonesty and cynicism

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/01/19/bush_backs_off_gay_marriage_ban.html
President Bush "came under fire from some social conservatives yesterday for saying he will not aggressively lobby the Senate to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage during his second term," the Washington Post reports.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/19/14828/6614
Prominent leaders such as Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and many rank-and-file Bush supporters inundated the White House with phone calls to protest Bush's comments in an interview published Sunday in The Washington Post. "Clearly there is concern" among conservatives, Perkins said. "I believe there is no more important issue for the president's second term than the preservation of marriage."

In the Post interview, Bush, for the first time, said senators have made it clear to him the amendment has no chance of passing unless courts strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which protects states from recognizing same-sex marriages conducted elsewhere. Challenges to the act are pending in state courts from California to Florida.

"It was not articulated that way in the campaign," Perkins complained.

[Kos] Note, "no more important issue" than gay marriage. Not terrorism, not jobs and the economy, not Iraq -- but gay hatred. That's the definition of "wingnuttery" for you.

Bonus item: A Republican Dictionary (don’t miss this!)

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000277.html

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:33 AM

 
FRIED RICE

Boxer vs Rice: the transcript

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-011805boxertext_wr,0,7859017.story?coll=la-home-headlines
SEN. BOXER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Rice, for agreeing to stay as long as it takes, because some of us do have a lot of questions. . . I personally believe -- this is my personal view -- that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth. And I don't say it lightly, and I'm going to go into the documents that show your statements and the facts at the time. . .

Now, perhaps the most well-known statement you've made was the one about Saddam Hussein launching a nuclear weapon on America with the image of, quote, quoting you, "a mushroom cloud." That image had to frighten every American into believing that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of annihilating them if he was not stopped. . . On July 30th, 2003, you were asked by PBS NewsHour's Gwen Ifill if you continued to stand by the claims you made about Saddam's nuclear program in the days and months leading up to the war.

In what appears to be an effort to downplay the nuclear-weapons scare tactics you used before the war, your answer was, and I quote, "It was a case that said he was trying to reconstitute. He's trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year." So that's what you said to the American people on television -- "Nobody ever said it was going to be the next year."

Well, that wasn't true, because nine months before you said this to the American people, what had George Bush said, President Bush, at his speech at the Cincinnati Museum Center? "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."

So the president tells the people there could be a weapon. Nine months later you said no one ever said he could have a weapon in a year, when in fact the president said it.

And here's the real kicker. On October 10th, '04, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, three months ago, you were asked about CIA Director Tenet's remark that prior to the war he had, quote, "made it clear to the White House that he thought the nuclear-weapons program was much weaker than the program to develop other WMDs. Your response was this: "The intelligence assessment was that he was reconstituting his nuclear program; that, left unchecked, he would have a nuclear weapon by the end of the year."

So here you are, first contradicting the president and then contradicting yourself. So it's hard to even ask you a question about this, because you are on the record basically taking two sides of an issue. And this does not serve the American people.

MS. RICE: Senator, may I respond?. . . I have to say that I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. It is not my nature. It is not my character. And I would hope that we can have this conversation and discuss what happened before and what went on before and what I said without impugning my credibility or my integrity. . . We went to war because this was the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a man against whom we had gone to war before, who threatened his neighbors, who threatened our interests, who was one of the world's most brutal dictators. And it was high time to get rid of him, and I'm glad that we're rid of him. . .

SEN. BOXER: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to take 30 seconds, with your permission. First of all, Charles Duelfer said, and I quote. . . "Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to '91, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years."

Here's the point. You and I could sit here and go back and forth and present our arguments, and maybe somebody watching a debate would pick one or the other, depending on their own views. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in the facts. So when I ask you these questions, I'm going to show you your words, not my words.

. . . You sent [troops] in there because of weapons of mass destruction. Later, the mission changed when there were none. I have your quotes on it. I have the president's quotes on it. . . And everybody admits it but you that that was the reason for the war. . .

MS. RICE: Senator Boxer, I would refer you to the president's speech before the American Enterprise Institute in February, prior to the war, in which he talked about the fact that, yes, there was the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but he also talked to the strategic threat that Saddam Hussein was to the region.

Saddam Hussein was a threat, yes, because he was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And, yes, we thought that he had stockpiles which he did not have. We had problems with the intelligence. . . But it wasn't just weapons of mass destruction. He was also a place -- his territory was a place where terrorists were welcomed, where he paid suicide bombers to bomb Israel, where he had used Scuds against Israel in the past.

And so we knew what his intentions were in the region; where he had attacked his neighbors before and, in fact, tried to annex Kuwait; where we had gone to war against him twice in the past. It was the total picture, Senator, not just weapons of mass destruction, that caused us to decide that, post-September 11th, it was finally time to deal with Saddam Hussein.

SEN. BOXER: Well, you should read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period. That was the reason and the causation for that, you know, particular vote. . . But, again, I just feel you quote President Bush when it suits you but you contradicted him when he said, "Yes, Saddam could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." You go on television nine months later and said, "Nobody ever said it was" --

MS. RICE: Senator, that was just a question of pointing out to people that there was an uncertainty. No one was saying that he would have to have a weapon within a year for it to be worth it to go to war.

SEN. BOXER: Well, if you can't admit to this mistake, I hope that you'll --

MS. RICE: Senator, we can have this discussion in any way that you would like. But I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity. Thank you very much.

SEN. BOXER: I'm not. I'm just quoting what you said. You contradicted the president and you contradicted yourself.

MS. RICE: Senator, I'm happy to continue the discussion, but I really hope that you will not imply that I take the truth lightly.

[Mathew Gross: “I'd really hope that Democrats wouldn't imply such a thing, either. It should be shouted from the rooftops, towed on a banner behind a light plane. . . ” http://mathewgross.com/blog/]

Pure speculation, but what if Condi was part of a discussion on Air Force One (July 11, 2003) about outing Valerie Plame?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1929&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Biden vs. Rice

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005479.php
BIDEN: Now, how many [Iraqi forces] do you really think are trained that Allawi can look to and say, I can rely on those forces? What do you think that number is?

RICE: We think the number right now is somewhere over 120,000.

BIDEN: Well, I thank you for your answer. I think you'll find, if you speak to the folks on the ground, they don't think there's more than 4,000 actually trained Iraqi forces. I strongly urge you to pick up the phone or go see these folks.

Kerry vs. Rice

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112386/fr/rss/
[Fred Kaplan] Kerry didn't play the Democrats' bulldog—that role had been assigned to Sen. Barbara Boxer, who assumed it later in the morning with venom—but he did strike the demeanor of a stern, dismayed taskmaster. He recited the common wisdom that Rice's confirmation was assured, but added that she might not get his vote. "I have reservations," he said, as if in a tone of regret.

A few minutes earlier, the committee's ranking Democrat, Joseph Biden—whose presence had its own poignancy, since, had Kerry won, he might have been sitting in Rice's chair just then—had asked Rice if, in retrospect, she thought President Bush should have sent more troops to Iraq. Rice replied that she didn't, noting that the rise of the insurgency was an "unforeseen" development. The insurgents, she said, were Saddam loyalists who "melted into the countryside" during the U.S.-led invasion and were now resurfacing to fight.

Kerry, who had recently returned from a trip to Iraq, found Rice's reply "disturbing," and not just because it marked another instance of the Bush administration's refusal to admit mistakes. There was nothing "unforeseen" about the insurgents' re-emergence, he said. The U.S. military "encouraged" them to vanish from the battlefield, promising to pay them if they did so. "But we didn't pay them," Kerry said. So "they got angry and organized."

This is an oversimplified view of the insurgency, but it has some validity. Certainly it rebuts Rice's explanation of the insurgency as the result of an all-too-speedy victory by U.S.-led forces (or, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has described it, a "catastrophic success"). Kerry's argument also speaks to a broader failure of Bush's policy in Iraq—a failure to come to grips with the internal, sectarian tensions unleashed by the removal of Saddam's oppressive regime.

Rice replied that the insurgents are angry not because we didn't pay them, but because "they've lost power and they want it back." Kerry agreed, but noted that's precisely the point. In the Iraqi election, still scheduled for Jan. 30, the Shiite parties are going to win, and win big, partly because Shiites comprise a strong majority of Iraq's population, partly because—owing mainly to poor security and insurgents' threats—few Sunnis are likely to vote. Kerry asked: What is the administration going to do, right after the election, to help reconcile the sectarian factions and thus stave off a potential civil war?

Future of Iraq “looking pretty grim”

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/18/iraq/index.html
Knight-Ridder reports that "a series of new U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq paints a grim picture of the road ahead and concludes that there's little likelihood that President Bush's goals can be attained in the near future."

"Instead of stabilizing the country, national elections Jan. 30 are likely to be followed by more violence and could provoke a civil war between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunni Muslims, the CIA and other intelligence agencies predict, according to senior officials who've seen the classified reports."

And it looks like Bush's Iraq policy is bringing at least some people together, but unfortunately they're not the people we should be uniting. It's even more clear, based on new assessments, that terrorists are using post-invasion Iraq much as they used pre-war Afghanistan: As a training ground fertile with new recruits. . . "Two senior intelligence officials with access to classified reporting said Islamic militants allied with or inspired by Osama bin Laden were forging ties to Iraqi nationalists and remnants of former dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. The linkage is similar to the one that so-called 'Afghan Arabs' formed with Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the Soviet Union withdrew from that country, they said. ... 'The sad thing is we have created what the administration claimed we were intervening to prevent: an Iraq/al-Qaida linkage,' one of the senior intelligence officials said.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/international/middleeast/19iraq.html?oref=login&oref=login&pagewanted=all&position
Also, the Iraqi interior minister issued a bleak forecast, saying that unless enough people vote in the elections on Jan. 30, the country would tear itself apart. . . "If there are not good elections, we won't have a constitution, and there will be chaos, and we will have a civil war," the minister, Falah Hassan al-Naqib, said at a news conference in the heavily fortified Interior Ministry in Baghdad.

Gunfire rattled behind him nearly the whole time he spoke. Mr. Naqib did not specify how much voter turnout would qualify as a good election.

John D. Negroponte, the American ambassador to Iraq, said he was confident that "elections can and will be conducted successfully," but he acknowledged that there was no end in sight to the insurgency and that American officials still did not know how big it was.

[NB: This article also includes a photo and caption that will haunt you: “An Iraqi girl screamed Tuesday after her parents were killed when American soldiers fired on their car when it failed to stop, despite warning shots, in Tal Afar, Iraq. The military is investigating the incident”]

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005259
[Matt Yglesias] To me, though, all the concern about whether or not the insurgency can somehow derail the voting is a bit misguided; not to be too callous about it, but even if people get killed while voting it's not as if people aren't being killed every day in Iraq already. The much bigger problem is that the odds look pretty good to me that, rather than building the new regime's legitimacy in the eyes of Sunni Arabs (the original hope for the election), we're going to wind up degrading the regime's legitimacy in the eyes of Shiite Arabs.

http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/003685.html
The U.S. military is resorting to collective punishment tactics in Iraq similar to those used by Israeli troops in the occupied territories of Palestine, residents say. . . Military bulldozers have mown down palm groves in the rural al-Dora farming area on the outskirts of Baghdad, residents say. Electricity has been cut, the local fuel station destroyed and the access road blocked. . . The U.S. action comes after resistance fighters attacked soldiers from this area several weeks back.

Public sentiment moving more strongly against the war in Iraq

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/18/181035/726

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/01/18/accountability/index.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17887-2005Jan18.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-iraqpoll19jan19,1,3888812.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Global poll: also not so good for the U.S.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4185205.stm
More than half of people surveyed in a BBC World Service poll say the re-election of US President George W Bush has made the world more dangerous. . . Only three countries - India, Poland and the Philippines - out of 21 polled believed the world was now safer. . . The survey found that 47% now viewed US influence in the world as largely negative and such unfavourable feelings extended towards Americans as a whole.

American Conservative magazine: Get out of Iraq

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_01_18_bestof.html#110610015422756323

Nevertheless, Bush admin has their sights on a new adventure in Iran

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/18/iran/index.html?source=RSS

The Hersh article everyone is talking about

http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050124fa_fact
The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005478.php
[Kevin Drum] Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker article is getting a lot of attention because of his allegation that the Bush administration has plans to invade Iran. But that's not what really caught my eye after reading through his piece. . . First, that the Defense Department is conducting special ops reconnaissance inside Iran and developing plans to destroy Iran's nuclear bomb program. This is undoubtedly true. But that's what militaries do: they create plans. Frankly, they'd be derelict if they weren't trying to figure out where Iran's nuclear sites were and developing contingencies for taking them out. . . Second, that in return for Pakistani cooperation we agreed not to make a fuss about A.Q. Khan's nuclear network. . . Third, that they're dead serious about all these plans and a strike against Iran is already a certainty. But that's not all: Hersh says administration hawks are convinced — again — that not only will this destroy Iran's nuclear program, but will also provoke a pro-western uprising against the mullahs. It's regime change on the cheap, Part 2! This fantasyland thinking is obviously more disturbing. . . Fourth, though, is the part that ought to be getting more attention. Hersh says — with seemingly considerable backup — that the administration has a broad plan to remove covert operations from the CIA and centralize them all in the Pentagon. Why? Because they believe that Pentagon ops are exempt from 70s-era laws that limit covert activities. In other words, no oversight. Just lock and load.

Blogpac launches a new Social Security site: “There is No Crisis.” Please help to promote it

http://www.thereisnocrisis.com/

Bill Thomas (R-CA), the ultra-powerful chair of Ways and Means, says one very interesting thing and one very dumb thing.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004475
Thomas predicted yesterday that partisan warfare over Social Security will quickly render President Bush's plan 'a dead horse' and called on Congress to undertake a broader review of the problems of an aging nation.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004476
Thomas suggests he supports "gender-adjusting Social Security," i.e., raising the retirement age for women since they live longer.

[NB: Though I’m sure the Bush admin considers them BOTH to have been pretty dumb comments]

More: http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/thomas_weighs_i.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005480.php

http://www.newdonkey.com/2005/01/big-bait-big-switch.html

The most diabolical, Machiavellian analysis I’ve seen of all this

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/01/bill_thomas_giv.html
"Every breath that's spent on discussing that plan [the Bush privatization plan] is an attempt to lay a political ground war for the next election," Thomas said. "Save those breaths. Talk about what we need to do now that the president's plan is on the table so that we can address, in a legislative way, a solution on a bill the president could sign. That would be, I think, a positive gesture.

[Mark Schmitt] What Thomas was saying is exactly the point I've been trying to make: that the Bush/DeLay goal is not primarily to privatize Social Security, although they would be happy to do that if they can. Rather, the goal is to create a political dynamic over the next one to two years in which the Republicans appear the party of opportunity, ownership, dynamism, and forward thinking, while the Democrats appear to be the defenders of old, boring, inadequate safety net programs. As Gingrich said, going for the biggest privatization of Social Security has the biggest political payoff, but only if it doesn't actually become law.

[NB: This is all very clever, perhaps too clever, and may reveal something about how Congressional Repubs are looking at all this. But I can’t believe that Bush has pinned his credibility and “mandate” on getting this legislation passed, just to create a dynamic of perceptions. If a bill “reforming” Social Security doesn’t end up passing, everyone will call it a failure – BUSH’S failure – and we all know how he feels about being called a failure]

GOP in Congress distancing themselves from Bush initiatives

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/01/18/bush_agenda_faces_some_gop_resistance/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Front+Page

NYT gets its Social Security coverage right

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005262
The President last week surrounded himself with citizens ranging from children to an 80-year-old and warned that the Social Security system will be "flat bust, bankrupt" by the time workers in their 20s retire. As early as 2018, Bush said, "you're either going to have to raise the taxes of people or reduce the benefits." At another appearance intended to promote federal standards for testing high school students, Bush went off script to warn a group of teenagers, "The system will be bankrupt by the year 2040.". . . That sounds pretty scary--except that it's not true.

Hold onto your lunch: Bush seeks “greatness”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush18jan18,1,186597.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
As he prepares to launch his second term, President Bush is aiming for nothing less than a legacy that would rank him among America's great presidents.

What Dick Cheney wants

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004469
The vice president supports putting over 95% of the employee-side contribution to Social Security into private accounts.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005258
Cheney plays a role in this White House that is truly unprecedented in the history of his office, and he is consistently a force pushing for the maximally crazy policy option on every major issue.

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2499
One of the most annoying habits of journalists is to accept people's own explanation of their motivations at face value, even when the explanation is patently absurd. . . To wit, today's New York Times profile of Dick Cheney, which explains his vote against the 1986 Tax Reform Act. . . Cheney comes across as a kind of economic growth purist here, voting against tax reform because it didn't go far enough. But that's obvious nonsense. The 1986 tax reform was a dramatic, sweeping act that lowered the top rate from 50 percent to 28 percent. Nobody opposed it because it didn't go far enough. They opposed it because it wiped away preferential treatment for all sorts of things, including capital gains. To write that Cheney and other die-hard defenders of special breaks opposed reform "even though it closed loopholes" is to invert reality. He opposed reform because it closed loopholes.

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2500
It actually gets worse. Here, for example, is the Times' description of Cheney's role in shaping the 2003 tax cut, which accelerated some of George Bush's earlier tax cuts and reduced taxes on dividend income. . . If memory serves, Cheney's exact words to O'Neill in their private discussions about the tax cut were: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We won the midterms. This is our due.". . . But wait, there's more. Quite possibly my favorite part of the Times profile is it's portrayal of Cheney as a man of deep principle for insisting that wealthy people be given a bigger tax cut, even though it would leave the White House politically vulnerable.

Grover Norquist: a tax cut every year

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005481.php

Gonzales: is anybody paying attention?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/politics/19gonzales.html?pagewanted=all&position
Officers of the Central Intelligence Agency and other nonmilitary personnel fall outside the bounds of a 2002 directive issued by President Bush that pledged the humane treatment of prisoners in American custody, Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, said in documents released on Tuesday. . . In written responses to questions posed by senators as part of his confirmation for attorney general, Mr. Gonzales also said a separate Congressional ban on cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment had "a limited reach" and did not apply in all cases to "aliens overseas." That position has clear implications for prisoners held in American custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq, legal analysts said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19264-2005Jan18.html?nav=rss_nation
Attorney general nominee Alberto R. Gonzales, responding to questions about his role in setting controversial detention policies, told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that any form of torture by U.S. personnel is illegal, according to new documents released yesterday. . . But Gonzales, the White House counsel who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate in coming weeks, declined to identify the techniques allowed under U.S. interrogation policies, citing restrictions on classified information. He also reiterated his view that a president could theoretically decide that a U.S. law -- such as the prohibition against torture -- is unconstitutional. . .

Lessons in judicial temperament

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110608541263294305
Here are the comments of a judge denying a minor's request to get an abortion without notifying her parents:

The legislature, in its infinite wisdom, has determined that an unborn child who never has had even the ability to do any wrong, could be put to death so that his mother can play [sports]. . . "Ah, but this young woman has more ambition than to play [sports]. Her possible ... scholarship is but the means to the end of her becoming a [health--care provider]. But what is the duty of a [health--care provider]? To save lives. Should her child die so that, possibly, she might later save other lives?. . . She said that she does not believe that abortion is wrong, so, apparently, in spite of her church attendance, there won't be spiritual consequences, at least for the present. . . This is a capital case. It involves the question whether [the minor's] unborn child should live or die.

Why the Agricultural Commissioner election in North Carolina might change national politics

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005256
The problems arise from an e-voting machine malfunction in Carteret Country, North Carolina, which used Digital Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines manufactured by the UniLect Corporation. DRE machines use ATM-style touch-screen technology; like most DRE machines used on Election Day, those in Carteret County left no paper trail for a recount. A single machine lost more than 4,500 votes due to computer error -- a significant number given that the statewide contest for agriculture commissioner decided by fewer than 2,400 votes. With no hope of recovering the lost votes, both sides are engaged in a bitter legal dispute, and the state is now without an agriculture commissioner–elect. . . The Times says that Carteret ought to inspire states to mandate that DRE machines be accompanied by a voter-verified paper receipt. . . North Carolina's plight underscores a basic point about elections: because there are often problems, there must be a mechanism for a recount. If the Carteret County voting machine had produced a voter-verified paper record each time a vote was cast, these paper records could have been be counted and the matter would be resolved. But electronic voting machines that do not produce paper records make recounts impossible. . . Despite these Election Day problems, and despite the wonderful advocacy of The New York Times editorial page on this issue, a national mandate that DRE machines produce a paper trail is not likely. In my reporting on this issue for our January special report on the elections, I found the voting machine manufacturers generally hostile to the idea of fitting their DRE machines with voter-verified paper receipts. The startling collusion between this industry and secretaries of state who oversee their operations does not help the cause either. But unless state legislatures and state election officials mandate that they will only allow state funds to purchase machines that offer a paper trail (as is the case in Nevada), DRE machines will continue to undermine our confidence in the voting process in 2006 and beyond.

Theocracy watch: Ralph Reed, former head of Christian Coalition, begins his climb to the top in Georgia

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/01/18/reed_to_run_for_office_in_georgia.html
Associates say Reed, 43, "hopes to use the lieutenant governor's job to position himself to run for Georgia governor. Friends also say the Atlanta-based consultant's long-held ambition is ultimately to win for himself the Republican presidential nomination that, as a campaign adviser, he has helped others to seek.". . . Says one Reed associate: "Some political operatives are content to be the political teachers, to show people how to run their campaigns — others, like Reed, have been there and done that. They itch to be the candidate, to hold the office."

Bonus item: whenever right wingers invoke the name of Martin Luther King, you know something’s afoot (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501180001
O'Reilly: King "would be appalled" by "attacks on Christmas"

Double bonus item: WHOSE birthday holiday?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005251
“Hello, you've reached the Mississippi State Tax Commission. On Monday, January the 17th, the state tax commission offices will be closed in observance of Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthdays. Tax Commission offices will reopen on Tuesday, January the 18th. Office hours are from eight until five. Thank you. Have a safe and happy holiday.”

Triple bonus item: unintended irony

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110610273811402893

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:14 AM

 
TRACK RECORDS

Lawrence DiRita, Pentagon spokesman, has such a despicable record of lies and misrepresentations that I take his appearance at the podium as an automatic sign that some story has them worried enough that they need to throw smoke and haze all over it. Anyway, read carefully, and you can see that this “denial” is nothing of the sort

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16426-2005Jan17.html?nav=rss_nation
Hersh's article, published Sunday, was "so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed," DiRita said. . . Hersh reported that President Bush had signed a series of top-secret findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces military units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

DiRita did not comment on that assertion.

Instead, he said, Hersh's sources fed him "rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist and statements by officials that were never made."

Asked whether U.S. military forces had been conducting reconnaissance missions in Iran, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Defense Department spokesman, said: "We don't discuss missions, capabilities or activities of Special Operations forces."

Here, just to give one example, is what DiRita said about an earlier Hersh piece claiming that torture had occurred at Abu Ghraib prison (and we all know how that story turned out)

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=16223%20
"These assertions are outlandish, conspiratorial and filled with error and anonymous conjecture!"

And, by the way. . .

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=3&u=/nm/20050118/pl_nm/iran_usa_dc
Bush said on Monday that Washington would not rule out military action against Iran if it was not more forthcoming about its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Interesting developments on the Iraqi election front (thanks to Holden at First Draft for some of these links)

http://www.fox6.com/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=4E3AC2F2-5051-43C7-A17C-FEEFF4F00162
Ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who is being held in a prison at Baghdad airport, will be transferred to a U.S. military base in Qatar. . . The sources said the decision was made in consensus with the Iraqi government as a precautionary measure against surprise developments that might occur ahead of the upcoming elections slated for Jan. 30.

http://www.sierratimes.com/05/01/16/mass_resignations.htm
U.S. and Iraqi officials are scrambling to recruit new police and election workers in Mosul after thousands of them resigned in the face of rebel intimidation. A new police chief was appointed a week ago to command a force of barely 1,000 police. Last November the city had 5,000 police. . . Similar mass resignations are believed to have occurred in other Sunni Muslim areas of northern, central and western Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/international/middleeast/17cnd-iraq.html?ex=1263704400&en=7e066da8a4680f82&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
An Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman, Sabah Kadhum, said the interim government was trying to crack down. . . "We are arresting hundreds of criminals daily in different parts of the Iraq," Mr. Kadhum said. "But as you know, the interrogations take a long time."

[Ick!]

Hoping desperately for a million absentee ballots from outside Iraq to push the vote percentage over 50%

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16474-2005Jan17.html

Conservative claims that Saddam’s WMD migrated to Syria take a huge hit

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110596797606845353
But intelligence and congressional officials say they have not seen any information — never “a piece,” said one — indicating that WMD or significant amounts of components and equipment were transferred from Iraq to neighboring Syria, Jordan or elsewhere.

Condoleezza Rice’s confirmation hearings: Boxer looking for a fight

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/17/233453/815

Eight questions for Rice

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=292254

Tom Ridge indirectly admits the manipulative use of terror warnings

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/01/terror_warnings_used_to_scare_electorate_now_inoperative.html

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110602284931000825

Bush’s war against the news media (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/011705.html

Salon lists 34 Bush scandals worse than Whitewater (why wasn’t this published before the election?)

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/18/scandal/index_np.html

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110602161038660715

George Bush, philosopher king

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112357/fr/rss/
On the subject of Social Security reform, "It's exciting to be part of stimulating a debate of such significance," President Bush told the Wall Street Journal this past week. "It really is the philosophical argument of the age.". . . You may be surprised to learn that the president views Social Security reform as a philosophical question. . . But understanding why he framed the subject that way is critical to understanding the impetus behind Social Security privatization. . . Explaining how both the "Social Security crisis" and the "privatization solution" rely on faulty math misses the point of the president's plan entirely. Like supply-side tax cuts, Social Security reform is a subject on which conservatives prize philosophy—or, if you prefer, ideology—over arithmetic.

And how’s that PR campaign working?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004466
In the new Washington Post/ABC poll, President Bush has a 38% approval rating on Social Security and a 55% disapproval. 7% have no opinion. . . Which is his worst age bracket? 18-30 year olds. They give him 33% approval/60% disapproval.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005474.php
On a related note, despite several weeks of nonstop fear mongering it's notable that Social Security still isn't that big a concern to most people: it's rated as only the sixth most important topic (behind Iraq, terrorism, the economy, healthcare, and education). And tort reform, Bush's other big initiative? It's next to dead last. So far, the American public doesn't really seem to share Bush's priorities.

Old and New politics join forces

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/01/index.html#005239

The case for demagoguery

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2494

And an interesting development (if you believe Fred Barnes): Bush may be backing off benefit cuts as part of the package

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2495

Finally, no surprise: on Social Security and other domestic initiatives, Cheney wielding huge influence behind the scenes

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/politics/18cheney.html?ex=1263790800&en=3cb3185ed9c07aec&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Mr. Cheney is going into the debate over how and whether to rewrite the tax code philosophically inclined to support a single-rate flat tax that would create incentives for more savings and investment, a position shared by many conservatives, Cheney associates say.

E-voting in Florida: shockingly unreliable

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/01/17/evoting_produced_more_flawed_ballots.html
"Florida voters using ATM-style touch-screen voting machines in November were 50 percent more likely to cast a flawed ballot or have an unregistered vote in the presidential race, compared to voting machines employing simple paper ballots," according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis.

On the Armstrong Williams scandal. According to Ketchum, it’s all his fault

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004461

The investigation widens

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/17/12954/3395

Clarification: that Clarence Thomas quote yesterday wasn’t entirely accurate. You can judge for yourself whether its ambiguity can be read different ways

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110598077271483641

Bonus item: conservatives, deaf AND dumb

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2005/01/17/tomo/index1.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

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I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:06 AM

 
SCRAPING BOTTOM

One of my guilty pleasures is the tv series “24”: intrepid Jack Bauer’s frantic adventures within a span of one day to save the nation from enemies outside and within. Because the show is always based on the premise of a major terrorist attack, it has offered numerous variations on the classic “ticking bomb” scenario: you have a prisoner who knows when and where an imminent catastrophe will occur, so is it justified to torture them to get the information? In one scenario, Jack staged a threat to shoot the son of a prisoner unless he talked; in another he withheld medical treatment from a wounded prisoner and squeezed on her injured arm to get her to talk. These events were always accompanied by deep soul-searching, reluctance, desperation, and guilty feelings afterward. But because the threat was imminent, the specific knowledge of the suspect certain, and the lack of any alternative way of finding out the information quite clear, you can see the logic of the “torture one to save the lives of thousands” rationale (whether you accept that logic or not).

This season, within the first minutes of the opening episode, Jack walks into an interrogation room and without any hesitation or reluctance shoots a prisoner in the leg because he BELIEVES the person MAY have some information about an UNKNOWN event that MIGHT be happening in the near future. What are we to make of this classic demonstration of a slippery slope?

To what extent do tv shows like this REFLECT a changing popular attitude toward, and tolerance for, changing values systems about the war on terror? To what extent do they CREATE those changing attitudes? Does the fact that this series is on Fox raise any questions about manipulating public sentiment?

I raise this question because I believe that post-Abu Ghraib, we have been in the midst of a concerted administration effort to “re-educate” people about torture and the necessity of torture in the war against terror. I have touched on this theme repeatedly, along with the Bush pattern of (on the one hand) denying that we use torture and giving lip service to its moral unacceptability, while at the same time encouraging a definite slippage in the boundaries of what constitutes “torture” and hinting that when you’re dealing with bad people, they deserve pretty much whatever they get.

All this in the midst of reports that internal Bush admin documents authorized torture, that the CIA and Special Forces routinely used torture in Iraq – and still do – and that we outsource some of the very worst cases to other countries to do the torturing for us.

I understand the realpolitik that you can’t always endorse publicly what the contingencies of “dark ops” might require you to do secretly during wartime. I don’t accept that, but this is a separate issue. I am talking about a consistent effort to change people’s tolerance for torture as a policy and practice, and a gradual redefinition of the boundaries of what counts as torture.

All of this comes to mind again with the latest story about Tom Ridge

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/16/164538/572
The outgoing head of the US Department of Homeland Security has said torture may be used in certain cases in order to prevent a major loss of life. Speaking to the BBC, Tom Ridge said the US did not condone the use of torture to extract information from terrorists. But he said that under an "extreme set" of hypothetical circumstances, such as a nuclear threat, "it could happen"

[Kos] Because "extreme set of circumstances" means different things to different people. Is the potential death of your comrades not an extreme set of circumstances? How many potential deaths does it take to be an extreme situation? How about a theory of "potential" extreme circumstances? Sort of a corollary to the Bush Doctrine of preemptive invasions. There is no workable definition of "extreme situations, and to speak of it is to invite torture. . . Mind you, this hypothetical discussion has NOTHING to do with the Bush policy of torture. There is no pretense to "extreme situations" in the Bush policy. Torture is a part of the Bush policy as a matter of course. So let's not conflate the two discussions. The Bush policy is more akin to systematic police violence for interrogation purposes. The "tuning up" of suspects.

On Iraq elections: making it up as you go

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10CND-CAPI.html?ex=1106110800&en=637af19aa92067f3&ei=5070&oref=login&ex=1105765200&en=57618f3217983bad&ei=5070&oref=login
[April 10, 2003] In the broadcast, Mr. Bush promised the Iraq people that the United States would help set up a representative government, "and then our military forces will leave. . . The government of Iraq and the future of your country will soon belong to you."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/16/14114/0029
[January 16, 2005] Unable to deliver on its lofty goal of bringing democracy to Iraq through the Jan. 30 elections, the Bush administration is pressing a damage-control campaign to lower expectations for the vote. . . With fears for a low voter turnout among Sunni Arabs due to a boycott and insurgents' intimidation, the administration no longer touts the elections as a catalyst to spread democracy across the Arab world. . . "Clearly, we don't see the election itself as a pivotal point," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told NPR on Friday. "It's the beginning of a process. . . “

On WMD

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/13/opinion/edwmd.html
What all our loss and pain and expense in the Iraqi invasion has actually proved is that the weapons inspections worked, that international sanctions - deeply, deeply messy as they turned out to be - worked, and that in the case of Saddam Hussein, the United Nations worked. Whatever the Hussein regime once had is gone, all destroyed a decade ago, under world pressure.

On abusing our troops

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook17jan17,1,6314788.column?coll=la-headlines-nation
The strains on the volunteer military from the war in Iraq are now unsettling as many Republicans as Democrats — and exposing an enduring contradiction in President Bush's agenda.

Conservative defense analysts and GOP legislative leaders are raising alarms over the pressures that Iraq is imposing on the military, especially the part-time Army National Guard and Reserve. With growing urgency, these critics argue that the Pentagon is relying too heavily on the citizen-soldiers of the Guard and Reserve in Iraq because the administration has refused to enlarge the size of the full-time military enough to meet new demands.

"The problem for the United States is not imperial overstretch, it's trying to run the planet on the cheap," American Enterprise Institute fellow Tom Donnelly, a leading neoconservative defense commentator, wrote recently. Military historian Frederick W. Kagan delivered a similar indictment in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine.

Most strikingly, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) this month urged an increase in the active military and condemned lengthy deployments that he said were compelling Guard and Reserve volunteers to effectively "serve in the permanent forces."

These dissents signal an important shift in the political weather as Bush begins his second term. Until recently, complaints about the Pentagon's personnel strategy came from Democrats and a few maverick Republicans such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But it's a more ominous sign for the White House when a GOP leader such as Blunt, ordinarily a loyal soldier for Bush, breaks ranks.

On our war future

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11305-2005Jan15?language=printer
Having led his country into this unmapped territory, Bush must demonstrate the flexibility and imagination to build support for a conflict that will surely outlast his presidency. . . It is too soon to know how history will judge success in the current struggle. But failure will be readily recognizable, even to members of Bush's party who will gather at his inauguration on Thursday. If in the next four years the United States suffers another catastrophic attack, or if Iraq becomes an enemy state or flies apart, or if terrorism metastasizes to threaten our interests beyond the Middle East, then surely President Bush will be a flop by his own definition.

Bush has in the past used presidential speeches to rally the country, but he has failed to follow through on the promise of his rhetoric. . . Bush identified the wrong enemy -- "terrorism" instead of "radical Islamic terrorists" -- and quickly slipped into the apocalyptic rhetoric of good and evil, complicating strategy and making success impossible to measure. He followed with actions uncharacteristic of wartime presidents and harmful to war-making. First, he implored the American people to return to normal, never asking for sacrifice (or even for youth to join the military). Then he refused to increase the size of our ground forces, even after embarking on campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unlike Lincoln and Roosevelt, he turned the conduct of war over to underlings, eschewing active presidential involvement. He refused to abandon his domestic agenda (as Lyndon Johnson did in 1965) or to subordinate it to war's necessities (as Roosevelt did in World War II).

Bush never followed up his burst of bipartisan rhetoric with true bipartisan action, and, unlike his predecessors, he avoided the commitment of time and energy necessary to bring our allies together, antagonizing them instead with take-it-or-leave-it choices. Most divisive of all, he attacked Iraq without a unifying casus belli.

. . . When the president speaks about Iraq, it seems as if American strategy relies on democratizing the rest of the world, starting with a country that appears to be moving from insurgency to civil war. . .

Shortly before the election, the president let slip that he didn't think the war against terrorism was winnable in any traditional sense, suggesting that he now sees complexities that were absent from his defiant words of Sept. 14, 2001, at Washington National Cathedral: "This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others," he said. "It will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing."

Seymour Hersh: U.S. already has begun operations inside Iran

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050116/2005-01-16T173311Z_01_N16248289_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-IRAN-USA-NEWYORKER-DC.html
The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday. . . The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites.

Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible.". . . One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."

The White House said Iran is a concern and a threat that needs to be taken seriously. But it disputed the report by Hersh, who last year exposed the extent of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. . . "We obviously have a concern about Iran. The whole world has a concern about Iran," Dan Bartlett, a top aide to President Bush, told CNN's "Late Edition.". . . Of The New Yorker report, he said: "I think it's riddled with inaccuracies, and I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact."

Theocracy watch

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_atrios_archive.html#110591735204952251
An Alabama SC justice claims, according to a Birmingham News reporter, that Clarence Thomas told him:

[A] judge should be evaluated by whether he faithfully upholds his oath to God, not to the people, to the state or to the Constitution.

This is indeed a big deal, no matter what your personal religious views happen to be. Did he really say it? Will anyone else in the media bother to try to find out?

Before the election, I called this the “F*** you” administration. More evidence

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1907&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
The Post: Will you talk to Senate Democrats about your privatization plan?

THE PRESIDENT: You mean, the personal savings accounts?

The Post: Yes, exactly. Scott has been --

THE PRESIDENT: We don't want to be editorializing, at least in the questions.

The Post: You used partial privatization yourself last year, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes?

The Post: Yes, three times in one sentence. We had to figure this out, because we're in an argument with the RNC [Republican National Committee] about how we should actually word this. [Post staff writer] Mike Allen, the industrious Mike Allen, found it.

THE PRESIDENT: Allen did what now?

The Post: You used partial privatization.

THE PRESIDENT: I did, personally?

The Post: Right.

THE PRESIDENT: When?

The Post: To describe it.

THE PRESIDENT: When, when was it?

The Post: Mike said it was right around the election.

THE PRESIDENT: Seriously?

The Post: It was right around the election. We'll send it over.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm surprised. Maybe I did. It's amazing what happens when you're tired. Anyway, your question was? I'm sorry for interrupting.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/no_fuck_you.html
With his inauguration days away, Bush defended the administration's decision to force the District of Columbia to spend $12 million of its homeland security budget to provide tighter security for this week's festivities. He also warned that the ceremony could make the city "an attractive target for terrorists."

"By providing security, hopefully that will provide comfort to people who are coming from all around the country to come and stay in the hotels in Washington and to be able to watch the different festivities in Washington, and eat the food in Washington," Bush said. "I think it provides them great comfort to know that all levels of government are working closely to make this event as secure as possible."

Yes, I'm feeling very comforted to know that the president is planning a party for himself that will increase my risk of dying and that he's forcing my tax dollars to be used paying for it. Very comforted. Can't we do this in Crawford?

The Bush response to the story about using the Social Security Administration (an ostensibly independent organization) to advance their “reform” proposal has been that SSA resources would only be used to give out “factual” information (i.e., to frighten people) not to lobby for any particular policy (i.e., theirs). But of course that's a lie

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/politics/17social.html?ex=1263618000&en=9dea72112074959c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
A senior White House official said on Sunday that career employees of the Social Security Administration would not be asked to advocate "any specific prescription" for the program's financial problems, but he defended government efforts to convince people that the problems were severe. . . "The Social Security Administration is an independent organization that has a duty to fulfill the obligations of making sure that checks go out, and the solvency of the actual system itself," said the official, Dan Bartlett, counselor to President Bush. "There's no expectation that career employees would be asked to advocate on behalf of any specific prescription for Social Security. But one thing they can do, and what anybody can do, is to look at the numbers, and they're undeniable."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004456
[Josh Marshall] We have a packet of documents here from the SSA Communications office, which we'll be sharing with you. But one of the action points, if that's the lingo these folks use, is this one from a February 2004 message memo "on the Long-Term Challenges Facing Social Security.". . . Under the heading that says "reform" is a "presidential priority" one of the items reads: "Modernization must include individually controlled, voluntary personal retirement accounts to augment Social Security."

More lies: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004457

Krugman reaches out to youth, via a Rolling Stone interview

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6822964?rnd=1105945008990&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1040
What would you say to college students and young workers who are convinced they'll never see a dime of the money they put into Social Security?

You've been sold a scare story. Right now Social Security has a large and growing trust fund -- a surplus that has been collected to pay for the surge in benefits we'll experience when the baby boomers start to retire. If you're twenty now, you'll be hitting retirement around 2052. That's the year the Congressional Budget Office says the trust fund will run out. In fact, many economists say it may never run out. If the economy continues to grow at an average rate, the trust fund could quite possibly last forever.

More from the Social Security Truth Squad

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004458
If you're following or care about the Social Security debate, you really must read the article by Roger Lowenstein in today's New York Times Magazine. It is probably the best single piece of journalism I've read on the subject -- mixing clarifying statistical and historical information with elegant description and context. . . Along the way the author touches on a number of points that are commonly either ignored or distorted.

Are you enjoying the Bush assault on Social Security? Wait til he tries to remake the tax system

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/magazine/16TAXES.html?pagewanted=1
As Bush's second term takes shape, the G.O.P. has little incentive to broker compromises, and by all appearances, not much interest either. That means that to a degree unimagined in the 80's, tax reform under Bush can be a discussion within the Republican Party, among people who share a basic sense of how the tax code needs to change. The various constituent parts of the conservative coalition, of course, have multiple stakes in the broader agenda of tax cutting. Large industrial concerns might be most interested in lowering the tax bill on purchases of equipment; rich party donors would like to see the top marginal tax rates reduced; and social conservatives have rallied around calls for permanently eliminating the so-called marriage penalty. The key visionaries of conservative-style tax reform, however, are a vanguard of anti-tax activists, conservative economists and a handful of Republican politicians who have made taxes their pet issue. Like all conservatives, they think that the government is too big and that taxes ought to be lower and flatter. But This group has also come to share a few articles of faith about the relationship between taxes and growth. One is that for years the American economy has been enormously handicapped by excessive taxation on savings and investment; because people and businesses are discouraged from saving, the theory goes, there is a pervasive shortage of capital for future investments. Another belief is that lifting those burdens would create a permanent increase in most Americans' standards of living. Still another belief is that cutting all those taxes won't worsen the deficit, because the growth the cuts will unleash would produce more than enough income -- and, therefore, tax revenue -- to make up the difference. . .

So what will Bush propose? The president did cause a minor stir during the campaign in the summer when he mentioned that a national sales tax was ''the kind of interesting idea that we ought to explore seriously.'' But he has since retreated into anodyne rhetoric about simplifying the code and promoting savings and investment. . . There are other sales-tax proposals, plus plans that put a flat tax on all forms of income or institute a European-style value-added tax (V.A.T.), basically a sales tax levied at each stage of production.

In theory, the members of Bush's tax commission are supposed to approach their efforts with an open mind. In practice, its purpose is to test the political waters, to see which version of conservative tax reform would be most palatable to the public and how far it can be pushed. ''It'll come out with three or four proposals, which are already written, and already on people's desks,'' Grover Norquist told me. ''So this is not a commission to invent something, or several somethings. This is a commission to discuss several somethings. Poke 'em, bring 'em around the country, test-fly them, run 'em up the flagpole, see who shoots at it, see who salutes.''

Bonus item: MLK memories

http://www.alternet.org/rights/20992/
Every year, millions of Americans pay tribute to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King. We often forget, however, that King was the object of derision when he was alive. At key moments in his quest for civil rights and world peace, the corporate media treated King with hostility. Dr. King's march for open housing in Chicago, when the civil rights movement entered the North, caused a negative, you've-gone-too-far reaction in the Northern press. And Dr. King's stand on peace and international law, especially his support for the self-determination of third world peoples, caused an outcry and backlash in the predominantly white press.

In his prophetic anti-war speech at Riverside Church in 1967 (recorded and filmed for posterity but rarely quoted in today's press), King emphasized four points: 1) that American militarism would destroy the war on poverty; 2) that American jingoism breeds violence, despair, and contempt for law within the United States; 3) the use of people of color to fight against people of color abroad is a "cruel manipulation of the poor"; 4) human rights should be measured by one yardstick everywhere.

http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/opinion//index.php?ntid=24648
Thus it is appropriate on this day, when we honor King's memory, that we recall what he had to say about robbing the nation's treasury to fund military misadventures abroad:

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. . . A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

More: http://www.alternet.org/story/21003/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/17/05753/5185
[Bob Herbert] Never since his assassination in 1968 have I felt the absence of Martin Luther King more acutely. Where are today's voices of moral outrage? Where is the leadership willing to stand up and say: Enough! We've sullied ourselves enough.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001620.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:36 AM

 
A LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY

OK, let me get this straight. Bush, while feigning concern for the financial status of Social Security and fear-mongering that it is about to run out of funds, now proposes to SPEND trust fund money to promote his campaign to “educate” (propagandize) people into supporting his “reform” (dismantling) proposal. This has become a frequent Bush ploy (Medicare, Education): spending public taxpayer revenues on what is essentially a partisan political campaign. If it isn’t illegal, it should be. But even worse, here he is draining revenues from the very source he claims to be worried about running dry. How cynical can you get?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/politics/16benefit.html?ex=1263531600&en=f330c326dbefd633&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Over the objections of many of its own employees, the Social Security Administration is gearing up for a major effort to publicize the financial problems of Social Security and to convince the public that private accounts are needed as part of any solution. . . The agency's plans are set forth in internal documents, including a "tactical plan" for communications and marketing of the idea that Social Security faces dire financial problems requiring immediate action. . . Social Security officials say the agency is carrying out its mission to educate the public, including more than 47 million beneficiaries, and to support President Bush's agenda.

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_09.php#004452

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/15/152254/410

Social Security media watch: THIS is unbelievable

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_09.php#004451
[Josh Marshall] The latest from TPM False Equivalence Watch (TM). . . Today from CBS News. . .

Is there a Social Security crisis? Mr. Bush says yes, the Democrats say no. They say the system as is can deliver the promised benefits until at least 2042. And they say minor revenue increases and benefits made soon can safeguard Social Security for much longer. They say the "crisis" is made up so the administration can start experimenting with private Social Security accounts.

And THAT, the Democrats say, is a crisis. They believe the administration’s proposal to offer optional, voluntary private accounts would start an inexorable avalanche on the slippery slope of privatizing Social Security, of taking away government guaranteed payments to old people. They think it’s an evil plot by evil-doers. A crisis. That’s their crisis-mongering.

On the facts, the Democrats are right to say that Social Security doesn’t pose an immediate crisis. But in defining the issues supporting an aging population so narrowly, the Democrats are every bit as disingenuous as the administration. When you put Social Security on top of Medicare, on top of rising medical costs and in the context of a shrinking workforce and expanding elderly population, you have something pretty close to a crisis. But it’s not one either party is talking much about.

Nice try. . . Let's address two points. If President Bush is whipping up a phony crisis, as he did during the lead up to Iraq, to shred the social safety net which has made poverty among the elderly close to a thing of the past and provides financial security in the face of premature death, disability and other blows of fate at other points in life, that's a bad thing that should be fought at every opportunity. Opposing it simply cannot be put on the same moral footing as perpetrating it.

On the other hand, if the Democrats are wrong, and there really is a dire crisis, which they are ignoring for political reasons, then they're in the wrong. . . The point is that you cannot duck the moral question by ignoring the factual question, which is what the author seems intent on doing in this case, thus creating the standard 'they all do it' moral equivalence.

Then there's the issue of Medicare and spiralling health care costs. The funding challenges facing Medicare really are far more acute than those facing Social Security. But they are also qualitatively different. For all the demographic challenges facing Social Security, the costs it is meant to cover are fundamentally stable -- factored against inflation. What are they? Rents, food, the basic costs of living, etc. It is in the case of health care where, for all the arguments about frivolous lawsuits or greedy drug companies, we face the basic 'problem' of an expanding array life-saving and life-extending technologies that cost money.

But Medicare and health care costs are a different and in many respects distinct issue. The fact that the president lies about Social Security while ignoring the more pressing challenges facing Medicare should be marked against him, not the Democrats.

And in any case, what sense does it make to pillory those who deny Social Security is in crisis just because when you combine it together with a bunch of other issues, which are in some ways related, all of them together may almost constitute a crisis? This is rather like saying, Iraq is no crisis. But when you combine Iraq with North Korea and Iran, non-state-terrorism, a possible global resource shortage in the next century and global warming, all together it's pretty close to a crisis.

Maybe so. But who cares? It's a non-sequitur. The president has forced a debate on Social Security -- not the long-term fiscal outlook of the country or rising health care costs. And while Social Security, as a major government expense, is related to both, the program's structure -- which is what President Bush wants changed -- is distinct from each. And if all that weren't enough the president's proposals don't address this broader array of problems -- at least not anymore than abolishing Social Security clears up problems tied to its funding.

It is almost as if the author cannot get himself to bite the factual bullet of who's crisis mongering and who's not. So he cobbles together another crisis to make up for the insufficiencies of the one the president is flogging in order to find one the Democrats are ignoring, even though this debate and changes to this program are what the president is forcing on the country.

More: http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/the_medicare_cr.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005462.php

Other Social Security reform options: for people actually interested in REFORM

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000170.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005463.php

Here’s the other big story that has me gnashing my teeth this morning: Bush consents to a WP interview, and tells us what he REALLY thinks about Iraq, etc. And in it all, not a moment of reflection or acknowledgment that his war, based on cynical lies, bravado, foolish predictions, and false promises, has FAILED

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12450-2005Jan15.html
President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

NB: Uh, George? “When it comes to handling the situation in Iraq, do you approve or disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling that issue? (Approve, 44 percent; Disapprove, 54 percent) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55828-2005Jan7.html]

With the Iraq elections two weeks away and no signs of the deadly insurgency abating, Bush set no timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops and twice declined to endorse Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's recent statement that the number of Americans serving in Iraq could be reduced by year's end. Bush said he will not ask Congress to expand the size of the National Guard or regular Army, as some lawmakers and military experts have proposed. . .

A new report released last week by U.S. intelligence agencies warned that the war in Iraq has created a training ground for terrorists. Bush called the report "somewhat speculative" but acknowledged "this could happen. And I agree. If we are not diligent and firm, there will be parts of the world that become pockets for terrorists to find safe haven and to train. And we have a duty to disrupt that."

[NB: Which, of course is exactly the opposite of what we have done in Iraq – that is the POINT of the CIA report]

As for perhaps the most notorious terrorist, Osama bin Laden, the administration has so far been unsuccessful in its attempt to locate the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Asked why, Bush said, "Because he's hiding."

[NB: Because, you know, it NEVER occurred to them that he might go into hiding to avoid capture. One little reminder (thanks to Joyce Atkinson): October 14, 2001 "We'll smoke him out of his cave and we'll get him eventually," Bush promised. . . "It may happen tomorrow," he said. "It may happen a month from now. It may take a year or two.” http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2001/011014-attack08.htm]

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_16.php#004453

Bush’s “low-key” $50 million inauguration

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/politics/16tone-top.html?ex=1263618000&en=638efd2132d1264c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Army revolt over latest Rumsfeld reorg plan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12518-2005Jan15.html?nav=rss_nation
The Army is engaged in a bureaucratic brawl with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over how to organize troops for "nation-building," a growing problem for the military as it settles in for lengthy occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly other countries.

Rumsfeld wants to shift thousands of civil affairs troops from the Special Operations Command to the regular Army on the theory that the service needs to do better at security and stabilization. This comes as he is pushing other components of the elite Special Operations Command -- such as Navy SEALs and the Army Delta Force -- to focus on aggressive actions against terrorists and other missions.

Officers specializing in civil affairs -- which helps establish local governments in occupied areas, oversees humanitarian assistance and coordinates military activities with aid organizations -- say they oppose the move. They say many officers believe, based in part on their experience in Iraq, that regular combat commanders do not understand their work and do not know how to use them well. . . "This is a huge change," said retired Army Col. Michael Hess, who remains active in civil affairs issues and who said he has concerns about it.

What the Iraqi elections will look like, under martial law

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/international/middleeast/16election.html?ex=1263531600&en=7fb02872bcc3ea63&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Rising Violence and Fear Drive Iraq Campaigners Underground
The threat of death hung so heavily over the election rally, held this week on the fifth floor of the General Factory for Vegetable Oil, that the speakers refused to say whether they were candidates at all. . . "Too dangerous," said Hussein Ali, who solicited votes for the United Iraqi Alliance, a party fielding dozens of candidates for the elections here. "It's a secret."

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/01/16/sweeping_security_is_set_for_iraq_vote/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Front+Page
Iraqi authorities announced sweeping security measures yesterday designed to prevent suicide bombings and other attacks during the national election scheduled for Jan. 30, including a three-day ban on car travel between major cities and wide cordons around thousands of polling places. . . The plans are the latest sign that the violence racking the country presents obstacles at every step of the way in the vote, from educating voters to counting ballots. . . More than 200 candidate slates are campaigning without naming most members, and the locations of polling stations will be handwritten onto preprinted election posters just before the vote. .