HOT POTATO

In more than two and half years of doing this, I don’t think I’ve ever had an issue like today’s. I was going to lead with more Woodward revelations, but late Friday developments suggest that the Foley scandal has the potential to bring down the entire Republican House leadership! And I wonder how the media will manage to keep focus on Foley, Woodward, the NIE reports, and a ripening Abramoff scandal all at once, especially when they are so easily distracted – oh, look! A forest fire! A high school shooting! A tropical storm that may some day develop into a hurricane!

Never mind that our national government is rotten to the core . . .

Rep Mark Foley (R-FL): Yesterday we thought he was just guilty of some bad judgment. His staffers dutifully replied:

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8612.html
[ABC] Congressman Mark Foley's office says the e-mails were entirely appropriate and that their release is part of a smear campaign by his opponent.

Well, today we find out it was much, much worse than that. (You might not even want to read these emails – but then again you might.) Foley has quit, may very likely go to jail, and his seat could now swing to a Democrat

Not so bad: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/09/exclusive_the_s.html

Shocking: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/house-gop-leadership-knew-about-foley.html
[John Aravosis] Foley's "instant message" communications with yet another underage boy, circa 2003, have now been posted by ABC. They are horrendous. I cannot believe that Denny Hastert knew about Foley using the Net to chat-up underage boys a year ago and DID NOTHING . . . Tell me why Denny Hastert shouldn't be forced to immediately resign. They left your kids with this man AFTER they knew what he was doing. They let him stay in the GOP leadership. They let him remain the chair of the child sex offender caucus. Jesus Christ.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010064
[WP] Foley chaired the House caucus on missing and exploited children and was credited with writing the sexual-predator provisions of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which Bush signed in July.

[Huh???!!???] http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/national-center-for-missing-exploited.html
Statement, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC)
On the Resignation of Congressman Mark Foley
September 29, 2006

“Congressman Mark Foley’s resignation is a great loss to Florida and the nation. He has been a hard-working, dedicated and effective Congressman. He will be missed."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010051
[Josh Marshall] Rep. Foley (R-FL) may be prosecuted under child sex predator laws he helped pass. . .

http://makeashorterlink.com/?W2FD61FDD
[AP] His departure sent Republicans scrambling for a replacement candidate less than six weeks before midterm elections in which Democrats are making a strong bid to gain control of the House.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001642.php
[Paul Kiel] According to state law, they can pick a new candidate -- but Foley's name will stay on the ballot. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010052
[Josh Marshall] Let me explain.

Florida law says that the state GOP cannot remove Foley's name from the ballot. However, since he's dropped out of the race, they can designate a replacement. And any votes "Foley" gets will go to that GOP replacement.

The problem for the GOP is that Florida's 16th congressional district isn't that strong a GOP district. Foley won in 2004 with 68% of the vote. But President Bush pulled only 54%. That tells me it's a GOP district. But not by much. And there was already a serious Democratic challenger in the race.

So here's how this plays out to me. No question, strong Republican partisans will vote for "Foley" because they know that vote goes to the candidate the local GOP has chosen to replace him. But outside of strong partisans, I really don't think a lot of voters are going to check off the box next to the candidate who's just resigned because he was exposed for having sex chats with underaged congressional pages. That just doesn't play to me.

And once the replacement gets picked, candidate X and the local Republican party can start putting up flyers that say "Vote for guy who had cybersex with a minor because the vote will really go to candidate X who would never do such a thing." . . .

But then the real fun starts: let’s play Hot Potato

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010054.php
[Josh Marshall] Big. Big Trouble.

. . . The page in question worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA). And the page brought the matter of his contacts with Foley to the congressman's attention via a staffer, who I'm told has since left Rep. Alexander's employ.

Here's the key passage from the AP article ...

The page worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who said Friday that when he learned of the e-mail exchanges 10 to 11 months ago, he called the teen's parents. Alexander told the Ruston Daily Leader, "We also notified the House leadership that there might be a potential problem," a reference to the House's Republican leaders.

. . . So Rep. Alexander knew about this 10 or 11 months ago. And he says he notified the House leadership. That means Hastert and (at the time) either Tom DeLay or Rep. Blunt (R-MO). . .

http://www.thenewsstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060929/updates01/60929030
[T]he boy e-mailed a staff member from Alexander’s office about Foley’s e-mails, saying, “This freaked me out.” On the request for a photo, the boy repeated the word “sick” 13 times.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001644.php
Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who sponsored the page from his district, told reporters that he learned of the e-mails from a reporter some months ago and passed on the information to Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Republican campaign organization [the National Republican Congressional Committee].

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010055
An NRCC spokesman says the matter was brought before the House Page Board. But it's not clear what they did about it.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010057
Chairman of the House Page Board, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) interviewed Foley last year about some of the contacts with the page. The House clerk, who is also a member of the Board, was also present. Speaker Hastert's office was informed of the interview, but according to GOP leadership sources who spoke to Roll Call, Hastert himself was not informed.

Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI), the only Democrat on the Board, was not informed of the interview. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010063
Rep. Shimkus on why he didn't inform the Page Board's lone Democrat about the Foley matter: "I'm the chairman of the page board. The Clerk and I addressed this issue."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010057.php
Rep. Shimkus released the following statement ...

“As chairman of the bipartisan House Page Board in late 2005, I was notified by the then Clerk of the House, who manages the Page Program, that he had been told by Congressman Rodney Alexander about an email exchange between Congressman Foley and a former House Page. I took immediate action to investigate the matter.

“In that email exchange, Congressman Foley asked about the former Page’s well-being after Hurricane Katrina and requested a photograph. When asked about the email exchange, Congressman Foley said he expressed concern about the Page’s well-being and wanted a photo to see that the former Page was alright.

“Congressman Foley told the Clerk and me that he was simply acting as a mentor to this former House Page and that nothing inappropriate had occurred. Nevertheless, we ordered Congressman Foley to cease all contact with this former House Page to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. We also advised him to be especially mindful of his conduct with respect to current and former House Pages, and he assured us he would do so. I received no subsequent complaints about his behavior nor was I ever made aware of any additional emails.

“It has become clear to me today, based on information I only now have learned, that Congressman Foley was not honest about his conduct.

“As Chairman of the House Page Board, I am working with the Clerk to fully review this incident and determine what actions need to be taken.

“The House Page Program has been an integral part of the House of Representatives for many decades. Preserving the integrity of the House Page Program is of utmost importance to me and to the House of Representatives, and we intend to uphold and protect its values and traditions.”

The whole matter has been turned over to the House ethics committee.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/gop-house-page-board-chair-may-have.html
[John Aravosis] What was the extent of Shimkus' investigation of whether a member of Congress was soliciting sex with a minor, or at the very least bordering on sexually harassing a minor? Shimkus asked Foley if he was hitting on the kid, Foley said no, so Shimkus said "okay," and let it go. Obviously sex with children is a real big concern to the Republican house. . .

First off, nice that Shimkus, who according to the Associated Press wrote this statement with the help of GOP Speaker Denny Hastert's office, after avoiding reporters for hours, spins Foley's creepy emails to sound totally benign. In fact, Shimkus doesn't bother mentioning the most damning parts of the email exchange, Foley commenting on the underage kid's apparently underage friend's hot body, and also somewhat creepy, asking the kid for a picture and asking how old he is. I'm sure it was an oversight. Oh that's right, there is no oversight in the Republican house. You simply ask someone a question and believe whatever answer they give you, then the investigation is over.

Interesting that the pages now say they were routinely warned about Foley by their page overseers. Did Shimkus bother talking to the page overseers, or any of the pages, to find out what was up with Foley? How is it that in just 24 hours ABC was able to get a copy of Foley's sex-talk instant message chat with an underage page, yet Shimkus found nothing? . . .

More from Roll Call, "According to a senior House GOP leadership aide, Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-Ill.) office was informed of the interview shortly after it occurred, but Hastert himself was not told." Right. A male Republican member of Congress is being investigated for possibly sexually harassing an underage male page and Denny Hastert's office is notified and nobody tells Hastert? Right. And the matter is considered so important that the Clerk of House gets involved and joins in the interview with Foley. Yet still no one tells Hastert. Uh huh.

We still don't know when the kid's congressman, Rodney Alexander (R-LA), was told about the incident, and what he did about it. He claims he found out from a reporter. But at the same time he says his staff found out when the kid contacted them and was creeped out. Which one was it? Did Alexander sit on the information until the press finally contacted him and he was forced to act?

What are the House procedures for dealing with an allegation of this kind? Simply to pass it to the Page Board, having Foley's own Republican peers investigate him? There are no House rules whatsoever about having someone independent look into whether a member of Congress sexually harassed a minor page? . . .

So the Republicans are telling us that they never heard anything else about Foley in all the time he was in Congress. Very interesting. Because I certainly heard some rumors about Foley over the years . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/30/0642/65697
[Hunter] [Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi, furious that the Democratic leadership were not informed of the situation for nearly an entire year after the emails were discovered, has already demanded and gotten a House Ethics investigation -- her resolution passed the House 410 to zero. The House committee on Official Conduct now has ten days to issue a preliminary report on what the Republican leadership knew, when they knew it, and what they did or didn't do about it. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010060
Though I haven't seen the point made explicitly, it's clear from the late ABC News reports that there are multiple pages in question. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/29/21480/3482
[Hunter] This is huge. The number of Republican representatives who knew about the Foley advances towards young pages nearly a year ago appears to include House Speaker Dennis Hastert; Tom Reynolds; John Shimkus; Alexander; and as Josh Marshall points out, Tom Delay and/or Roy Blunt.

Jesus. They knew for nearly a year, and covered it up. The "corruption" frame just got a hell of a lot more serious. Today, Dennis Hastert said an investigation would be forthcoming. I'll bet he's right, and I'll bet he's going to be one of the ones investigated -- because he knew of it ten months ago.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/29/23241/3623
Republican Majority Leader John Boehner was also informed by Alexander of Foley's behavior.

That makes between seven and nine Republican Congressmen, minimum, that had been informed.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/09/30/house_leadership_knew_of_foleys_emails.html
Roll Call says "at least four Republican House Members, one senior GOP aide and a former top officer of the House were aware of the allegations about Foley that prompted the initial reporting regarding his e-mail contacts with a 16-year-old House page. They include: Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and Reps. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.), as well as a senior aide to Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and former Clerk of the House Jeff Trandahl."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010059
House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him "we're taking care of it."

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/today-gop-house-speaker-denny-hastert.html
[John Aravosis] GOP House Speaker Denny Hastert has asked for an investigation to make sure other pages weren't sexually harassed or abused. But the House leadership was told almost a year ago about Mark Foleys' hanky-panky online communications with underage pages and Hastert did nothing. Why didn't Hastert do an investigation at the time to make sure the pages were all right? Why did Hastert leave Foley in charge of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children when he knew Foley had some possible personal issues involving the exploitation of children? Why did Hastert let Foley remain in the House leadership for a good year after he knew about these accusations? Cruising underage kids isn't a disqualifier for being in the House leadership? Why did Denny Hastert let Foley remain anywhere near underage pages at all?

Would you let your kids near someone like Foley if you had been warned a year ago? Then why did Denny Hastert? The parent of every kid who was a page in the last year should be livid at the Republicans right now.

And where is our wonderful religious right? Or doesn't the sexual exploitation of children bother them when it's their own politicians who are doing the exploiting and the covering up?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010062
[Roll Call] Boehner strongly denied media reports late Friday night that he had informed Hastert of the allegations, saying "That is not true."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010065
Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/cl-with-abc-news-report-on-foley.html
[Chris] Did the GOP not learn anything from the massive Vatican cover up with pedophilia? Sweeping this under the rug and hoping it goes away is not a strategy. Helping a pedophile and sexual predator is not a positive value. Choosing to prop up a pedophile and predator for campaign purposes tells me this crowd, who seems to have known about the Foley abuses for a long time, tells me that the GOP will say and do anything to hold power.

It is especially disturbing to hear that everyone seemed to know that Foley was a child predator yet it continued to happen without helping the children involved. How morally bankrupt is the GOP leadership when they just sit there and let this happen?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/saturday-morning-open-thread_30.html
[Joe] In most of these scandals involving elected officials, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. In the Foley case, it's the crime AND the cover-up. . . .

So, let's get it started....

The Woodward hits keep a’coming

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092900368.html
Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card on two occasions tried and failed to persuade President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to a new book by Bob Woodward that depicts senior officials of the Bush administration as unable to face the consequences of their policy in Iraq.

Card made his first attempt after Bush was reelected in November, 2004, arguing that the administration needed a fresh start and recommending that Bush replace Rumsfeld with former secretary of state James A. Baker III. Woodward writes that Bush considered the move, but was persuaded by Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, that it would be seen as an expression of doubt about the course of the war and would expose Bush himself to criticism.

Card tried again around Thanksgiving, 2005, this time with the support of First Lady Laura Bush, who according to Woodward, felt that Rumsfeld's overbearing manner was damaging to her husband. Bush refused for a second time, and Card left the administration last March, convinced that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam and that history would record that no senior administration officials had raised their voices in opposition to the conduct of the war. . .

Last May, Woodward writes, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence estimate predicting that violence will not only continue for the rest of this year in Iraq but increase in 2007.

"Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year," said the report, which was distributed to the White House, State Department and other intelligence agencies.

The report presented a similarly bleak assessment of oil production, electricity generation and the political situation in Iraq. . .

Woodward writes that Rice and Rumsfeld have been warned repeatedly about the deteriorating situation in Iraq.

Returning from his assignment as the first head of the Iraq Postwar Planning Office, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner told Rumsfeld on June 23, 2003, that the United States had made "three tragic mistakes" in Iraq.

The first two, he said, were the orders his successor, L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, had given banning members of the Baath Party from government jobs and disbanding the Iraqi military. The third was Bremer's dismissal of an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term.

"There's still time to rectify this," he said. "There's still time to turn it around."

But Rumsfeld dismissed the idea, according to Woodward. "We're not going to go back," Rumsfeld said. . .

A year later, Rumsfeld received an even more blunt criticism from Steve Herbits, a longtime friend who according to Woodward has served as an informal adviser to Rumsfeld since he became defense secretary. . .

Herbits . . . described "Rumsfeld's style of operation," which he said was the "Haldeman model, arrogant," referring to Nixon's White House chief of staff H. R. "Bob" Haldeman. "Indecisive, contrary to popular image. Would not accept that some people in some areas were smarter than he. . . . Trusts very few people. Very, very cautious. Rubber glove syndrome---a tendency not to leave his fingerprints on decisions." . . .

Some of the highest-ranking officers serving under Rumsfeld had similar misgivings about Iraq.

Last March, Gen. John Abizaid, head of the Central Command, met privately with Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who had criticized the Bush administration for its approach to Iraq as "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion" and called for withdrawal. Murtha was then attacked by the White House for "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party."

According to Murtha, Woodward writes, Abizaid raised his hand for emphasis and held his thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch from each other and said, "We're that far apart."

But, according to Woodward, Rumsfeld made sure that the two men who he has chosen to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- Air Force Gen. Richard Myers and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace -- were not people who would directly challenge him. . .

Woodward describes Rice as frequently at odds with Rumsfeld when she served as national security adviser and her staff as increasingly concerned about the lack of a strategy for winning the war in Iraq.

When she became secretary of state in 2005, Rice asked Philip Zelikow, an old friend, to travel to Iraq to assess the situation. On February 10, Rice's 14th day as secretary, Zelikow presented her with a 15-page, single-spaced memo.

"At this point Iraq remains a failed state shadowed by constant violence and undergoing revolutionary political change," Zelikow wrote.

"State of Denial" adds new information about Rice's role in the Bush administration's efforts to combat terrorism in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks. . .

Woodward writes that on July 10, 2001, then-CIA director George Tenet became so concerned about the communication intelligence agencies were receiving indicating that a terrorist attack was imminent that he went to the White House with counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black . . . But Tenet and Black felt that Rice gave them "the brush-off," according to Woodward, telling them that a plan for coherent action against bin Laden was already in the works. Woodward writes that both Tenet and Black felt the meeting was the starkest warning the White House was given about bin Laden. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/washington/29account.html
Robert D. Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, is said to have issued his warning about the need for more troops in a lengthy memorandum sent to Ms. Rice. The book says Mr. Blackwill’s memorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as 40,000, were desperately needed.

It says that Mr. Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Ms. Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops during a secure teleconference from Iraq. It says the White House did nothing in response.

The book describes a deep fissure between Colin L. Powell, Mr. Bush’s first secretary of state, and Mr. Rumsfeld. . .

Vice President Cheney is described as a man so determined to find proof that his claim about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was accurate that, in the summer of 2003, his aides were calling the chief weapons inspector, David Kay, with specific satellite coordinates as the sites of possible caches. None resulted in any finds. . .

[More on that wild Cheney story: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001103.html]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009588.php
[Kevin Drum] Bottom line: Powell didn't get along with Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld didn't get along with Rice, Cheney didn't get along with anyone, the war was going to hell the entire time, and Bush was sleeping through the whole thing. Cheers!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/us/30account.html
The White House on Friday dismissed a new book’s portrayal of division and discord inside the Bush administration, suggesting that the account by Bob Woodward had been provided by former aides who believed that their advice on troop levels and other questions of strategy in Iraq had been ignored.

[NB: Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not true!]

Even as the White House scrambled to obtain a few copies of the book, “State of Denial,” to be released Monday, administration officials were rebutting specific examples in Mr. Woodward’s account, which described sharp clashes and long-running feuds fueled by the debate over the war. But other administration officials, speaking only if they were not identified, said the details in the book reflected a breakdown of discipline in an administration that once prized its ability to keep its disputes in-house. . . .

Mr. Snow had difficulty explaining why President Bush had failed to listen to such a broad range of officials who had called for more troops, including Robert D. Blackwill, the former top Iraq adviser, and L. Paul Bremer III, the senior American official running the occupation. Nor did Mr. Snow explain why Mr. Bush’s upbeat assessments of a “Plan for Victory” in Iraq, laid out in speeches late last year, contrasted so sharply with the contents of classified memorandums written by officials who warned that failure was also a significant possibility.

Some of those memorandums were written by Philip D. Zelikow, a counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, including one in early 2005 in which Mr. Zelikow characterized Iraq as “a failed state” two years after the invasion, and another in September 2005, in which he said there was a 70 percent chance of success in achieving a stable, democratic state. That meant, Mr. Zelikow said, that there was a 30 percent chance of failure, including what he called a “significant risk” of “catastrophic failure,” meaning a collapse of the state Mr. Bush has tried to create. . .

The book contends that Andrew H. Card Jr., as White House chief of staff, urged Mr. Bush to replace Mr. Rumsfeld. In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Card confirmed that he had raised the issue, but suggested that Mr. Woodward had ignored the context. “Right after the election, I went to Camp David and talked to the president, and we talked about a lot of changes, starting with the chief of staff,” Mr. Card said, recounting how he used to tote around what he called his “hit by a bus book,” a notebook of lists of potential replacements for senior White House staff members and top cabinet officials.

“It’s not inaccurate to say that we talked about Rumsfeld,” he said. “I can understand why Bob would try to create a climate around these conversations.” But he added: “There was no campaign, and I didn’t go out and solicit others to back any view about getting rid of anyone. I could talk about these things with the president, and plant seeds, because there is a cadence to life in Washington and you raise these issues periodically.”

Mr. Card acknowledged that he renewed the question of replacing Mr. Rumsfeld this year, but again insisted that it was not part of a specific effort to single out the defense secretary for removal. . .

The White House went to extra lengths to dispute Mr. Woodward’s portrait of Mr. Bush as a president who viewed news from Iraq through the best possible lens and who failed to come to grips with reports of a deteriorating security situation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/29/BL2006092900657.html
[Dan Froomkin] After two books that made President Bush look pretty good, Bob Woodward is out with a new one that comes awfully close to calling the president a liar. . .

This snippet is interesting. It suggests that Woodward partly composed his latest book by taking material that wasn’t used in the previous two – which came out when Bush was riding high. Now that he’s not, and the disaster of Iraq is becoming apparent to all, Woodward is taking the out-takes that didn’t fit the “Bush as hero” narrative, and reconstructing an alternative view of history that suits the current mood. But it seems apparent that he must have had a lot of this material before, and buried it (either that or a lot of people are suddenly changing their stories)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/washington/29account.html
Mr. Woodward’s first two books about the Bush administration, “Bush at War” and “Plan of Attack,” portrayed a president firmly in command and a loyal, well-run team responding to a surprise attack and the retaliation that followed. As its title indicates, “State of Denial” follows a very different storyline, of an administration that seemed to have only a foggy notion that early military success in Iraq had given way to resentment of the occupiers. . .

Or, as Susan Madrak puts it. . .

http://susiemadrak.com/2006/09/28/13/09/drum-major/
Bob Woodward senses the massive problems with the Iraq war, and runs to the front of the parade. . .

Two can play that game

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003188885
Snow ignored a question from one reporter who asked why the White House had hailed Woodward's two previous books on Bush and the war as accurate but now they say the new one has many errors. . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2150755/
White House spokesman Tony Snow, meanwhile, says the book and its tales of dysfunction, deceit, and backstabbing is "sort of like cotton candy—it kind of melts on contact." . . .

More on the emerging struggle to rewrite history

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/29/114822/157
[E.J. Dionne] We remember the period immediately after Sept. 11 as a time when partisanship melted away. That is largely true, especially because Democrats rallied behind President Bush. For months after the attacks, Democrats did not raise questions about why they had happened on Bush's watch.

But not everyone was nonpartisan. On Oct. 4, 2001, a mere three weeks and a couple of days after the twin towers fell and the Pentagon was hit, there was Rush Limbaugh arguing on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page: "If we're serious about avoiding past mistakes and improving national security, we can't duck some serious questions about Mr. Clinton's presidency."

To this day I remain astonished at Limbaugh's gall -- and at his shrewdness. Republicans were arguing simultaneously that it was treasonous finger-pointing to question what Bush did or failed to do to prevent the attacks, but patriotic to go after Clinton. . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8617.html
[Steve Benen] The debate, for quite a while, has been rather one sided — Bush's allies have said simultaneously that we can't play the "blame game," and in the next breath, have said everything is Clinton's fault.

It's not only contradictory, it's plainly, demonstrably wrong. It's no wonder the Bush gang is sensitive about it. . .

Add to this today's revelation that the Bush White House was presented with a plan to kill Osama bin Laden months before 9/11, but Condi Rice and the Bush gang blew off intelligence officials, and we see that this isn't an argument the president and his supporters really want to have.

Indeed, it's been an odd week in this regard. The Bush gang fueled the fight over pre-9/11 counter-terrorism, even though they knew they'd end up looking bad. The same Bush gang responded to the NIE leak with a bogus defense, even though they knew the NIE would make them appear foolish.

I wonder what the weather is like in the Bush gang's reality?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115956608566473296
Olbermann examines the recent claims that Bush in his first 8 months was as aggressive in going after bin Laden as Clinton. Guess what? It's all lies and Olbermann has compiled the facts and footage to prove it, including stuff I suspect is quite new to most of us (such as that the Taliban offered Bush, yes Bush, to hand over bin Laden to the Saudis and he ignored the offer). And guess what? It's on MSNBC and nobody will see it. . .

And in Iraq. . . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2150755
[Barbara Raab] In Iraq, the minority Sunni Arabs have long been pissed off about the problem of rogue militia members and criminals infiltrating the Shiite-dominated national police and security forces, and Iraqi leaders' unwillingness or inability to purge the worst offenders. In May, Iraqi and American inspectors found a house of horrors at the police prison in eastern Baghdad known as Site 4—1,400 prisoners crowded into a small space, some with "lesions resulting from torture," others beaten, bound, and hung by their arms. The Times reports the U.S. is warning Iraqi leaders that if they do not crack down on the abuses, the U.S. will withhold funding for the police forces under a law, known as the Leahy law, that prohibits the financing of foreign security forces that commit "gross violations of human rights."

The Times makes no mention of what feels like the elephant in the (news)room: the administration's high road stand on human rights comes just two days after the Bush administration succeeded in getting Congress's permission for all but the most extreme types of interrogation techniques for terror suspects in U.S. custody. Moreover, TP notes that it was just 10 days ago that the Times gave front page real estate to senior Iraqi and American officials' strong doubts about Maliki (note: subscription required); is the paper merely reporting on, or is it being used to help create, a dump-Maliki movement?

The WH has been flirting with this new mantra for a while: now it bursts forth in full blossom. Questioning the war – or even referring to THE GOVERNMENT’S OWN EVIDENCE that the war is going badly – is succumbing to the “propaganda” of the enemy

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010045
[Josh Marshall] I think we're getting down to that true last refuge of the scoundrel marrow.

According to the president, those who think he's created a mess in Iraq which is making us less rather than more secure are "buy[ing] into the enemy's propaganda."

Isn't this what the president's own intelligence agencies are telling him? I guess they're buying into the enemy's propaganda. From what the polls seem to say, more than half the country is buying into the enemy's propaganda too. Pretty much everybody does, I guess, beside the president and those who sign on to his dogmas. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009589.php
[Kevin Drum] You have to give the hawks credit. Here is Robert Kaplan on why George Bush will have trouble getting support for a war with Iran:

Though they may not admit it, the political elites beyond loyal administration circles, and particularly in Europe, simply do not trust Bush's ability to wage another war. Here is where the real problem lies; by delegitimizing his ability to wage war, they delegitimize his right to wage war.

That's a helluva triple gainer, isn't it? The problem, apparently, lies not in the actual fact that Bush has prosecuted the Iraq war with astonishing incompetence, but in the fact that non-Republican "political elites" have peevishly decided to take note of Bush's performance. Wow.

Believe it or not, though, it gets worse later on in the piece:

As someone who supported the invasion of Iraq, I know that the problem with grand assumptions is that they're nice when they succeed; otherwise you require a Plan B. The idea that there is no alternative to diplomacy in dealing with Iran, even after it achieves nuclear status, is another grand assumption, but without a Plan B.

The president and his hawkish enablers are rather plainly trying to maneuver the country into a position where military force will be the only plausible option available to us against Iran. Not only do they have no Plan B, but they're actively trying to close off even the possibility of a Plan B in the future. Is this a problem? You'd think so, but in a breathtaking piece of table-turning chutzpah Kaplan declares that the real problem lies with those who are trying to keep our options open. Apparently they suffer from the unforgivable stain of having been right about Iraq.

Bush logic

http://voanews.com/english/2006-09-28-voa71.cfm
"The Democrats can't have it both ways," said President Bush. "Either they believe that Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror, or they agree with the intelligence community and the terrorists themselves that the outcome of Iraq is important in the war on terror. The truth is the Democrats are using the NIE to mislead the American people . . .

Desperate whitehousewives

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004950.html
"It's hard to overstate how frantically the White House has swung into damage control in response to the NIE on terrorism. It's the biggest deal here this week - not the escalation in Bush's rhetoric on terrorism, not Abramoff, not Bob Woodward's new book, not the housing picture. Bush has not discussed Iraq without trying to spin the NIE. For quite some time, we'd heard Bush use his speeches to challenge the idea that attacking Iraq had stirred up a "hornet's nest." And he'd been offering up variations on "some say Iraq made terrorism worse, I disagree." Now we know who "some" were: The US intelligence community."

The Abramoff case starts to bear fruit – will the press take the time to lead people through the details of systemic Republican corruption?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001635.php
[Paul Kiel] There's already a lot of evidence out there that Ken Mehlman was Jack Abramoff's prime favor man in the White House -- but this new congressional report provides the most damning example yet.

[WP] One exchange of e-mails cited in the report suggests that former Abramoff lobbying team member Tony C. Rudy succeeded in getting Mehlman to press reluctant Justice Department appointees to release millions of dollars in congressionally earmarked funds for a new jail for the Mississippi Choctaw tribe, an Abramoff client. Rudy wrote Abramoff in November 2001 e-mails that Mehlman said he would "take care of" the funding holdup at Justice after learning from Rudy that the tribe made large donations to the GOP.

So in exchange for political contributions, Mehlman made sure the Choctaw got their $16 million contract. I believe that's called a quid pro quo.

It's by no means the only example of Mehlman's favors.

In 2001, he made sure a State Department official wasn't re-nominated for his post -- the official, Allen Stayman was a long-time foe of Abramoff's.

And according to a report from the Justice Department's Inspector General, Mehlman ordered one of his suboordinates at the White House to keep Abramoff updated on issues related to Guam; Abramoff was keen to see the U.S. Attorney there replaced. . .

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001636.php
[Paul Kiel] In an email exchange subject-lined "were you able to whack mccain's wife yet?" Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff discuss derailing the nomination of a woman named Angela Williams to an Interior post.

Williams was up for head of the Office of Insular Affairs in the Department of the Interior, which has authority over decisions affecting the Northern Mariana Islands, an Abramoff client.

With the White House's help, Abramoff's effort was successful. Ralph Reed emailed Abramoff, "talked to rove about this and I think I killed it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901434.html
A top aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove passed along inside White House information to superlobbyist Jack Abramoff at a time when she was also accepting his tickets to nine sports and entertainment events, according to e-mails released yesterday in a bipartisan congressional report. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009594.php
[Kevin Drum] "BETTER TO NOT PUT THIS STUFF IN WRITING...."
The House Government Reform Committee has released a bipartisan report on the Jack Abramoff scandal, including hundreds of emails between Abramoff and various GOP luminaries, including Karl Rove's assistant, Susan Ralston. And why not? Ralston used to work for Abramoff, after all.

You can see 'em all here. Mostly they seem to be obsessed with the giving and getting of skybox tickets to various sporting events, but Abramoff's bilking of Indian tribes and other clients is an ongoing favorite too. I haven't read the whole bunch, but I've reproduced my favorite exchange below. I wonder how many emails to "Susan's mc pager" didn't get into the White House system? . . .

The press: http://mediamatters.org/items/200609300003
CBS and NBC have almost completely ignored Roll Call's revelation that a House committee is preparing to release a bipartisan report documenting closer ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff than the Bush White House previously acknowledged.

The kind of people they are

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/mark-steyn-and-hugh-hewitt-reveal-true.html
[Glenn Greenwald] These two coddled authoritarian cultists are giggling about people who have been put into cages for the last five years on an island, away from their lives and their families, with little hope of ever being released. Many of them have attempted suicide. . . To sit around chortling about how great these detainees have it and how grateful they should be requires a sociopathic derangement that is nothing short of grotesque. . .

Didn’t I predict this? Republicans voted for the torture/tribunal bill KNOWING it would be overturned by the courts

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/washington/29detaincnd.html
And even some Republicans who voted for the bill said they expected the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation because of the habeas corpus provision, ultimately sending the legislation right back to Congress. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010041
[Paul Kiel] How long before the torture bill the Senate passed yesterday is challenged in court? "Days." . . .

Having cowed the media, the Congress, and half the population not to dare question their war and terror policies, or be branded as traitors, the Bush gang now prepares to browbeat the courts. (They REALLY ARE totalitarians.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092900511.html
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime. . .

http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8KEOMA80.html
Supreme Court decisions that are "so clearly at variance with the national will" should be overridden by the other branches of government, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says. . .

The Senate caves (again)

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015871.html

The drip, drip, drip of George Allen (R-VA) N-word anecdotes is becoming a flood

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/09/29/allen_sabornie/
Edward J. Sabornie, a special education professor at North Carolina State University. . . remembered Allen using the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," Sabornie said in that article.

Sabornie said he has now decided to let his name be known because he was upset by how Allen responded this week to the Salon story. "What George said on Monday really kind of inflamed me -- that it was 'ludicrously false' that he ever used the N-word," Sabornie told Salon. "I don't know how George can look himself in the mirror after saying that."

Since Sunday, four other named acquaintances of Allen have told news organizations that they witnessed Allen using a racial epithet or demonstrating racist behavior. Allen, and his campaign staff, have denied each of the claims. . .

Sabornie said his opinion of Allen dimmed after the senator called an Indian-American student "macaca" at a recent campaign rally. "That was the catalyst," Sabornie said. "I saw the old George." . . He said he remembers Allen also referring to blacks as "roaches," and using the word "wetback" to refer to Latinos.

And now Allen’s getting it from the other side!

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1522.html
Now, Even Allen's Apologies Are Getting Him in Trouble
Sons of Confederate Veterans Is the Most Recent Group Offended by Senator's Comments . . . [read on!]

Theocracy watch

http://pandagon.net/2006/09/29/another-conservative-turns-on-the-bible-beaters/

More on Bush’s “comma” http://www.prospect.org/horsesmouth/2006/09/post_385.html#010131

Yes, the 2000 election was stolen, and no, I’m not willing to let it go and get over it

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/353

Bonus item: Rush Limbaugh is a racist pig (I know, I know – stop the presses)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609300001

***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).

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 @ 7:45 AM

 
WARNING

Let me warn you: this is an angry posting today. Read on, and see if it doesn’t make you angry too.

I had a lot of post mortems to choose from, commenting on the criminal act the Republicans pulled off yesterday (with some Democratic culpability). Here are a few of the best

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8601.html
[Steve Benen] Listening to today's floor debate in the Senate on Bush's detainee bill, and reading various commentaries and analyses, I keep hoping to find that one summary that will magically help the nation understand that the legislation under consideration isn't just another piece of right-wing nonsense, it's an assault on our democracy. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/28/162239/426
History Will Not Absolve Us
[McJoan] Today, the Congress has forever stained its reputation and that of the United States of America. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009583.php
[Bruce Ackerman] The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States....It also allows him to seize anybody who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison. . . What is worse, if the federal courts support the president's initial detention decision, ordinary Americans would be required to defend themselves before a military tribunal without the constitutional guarantees provided in criminal trials.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115944912295724580
[Tristero] The truth is that the United States government is presently holding, torturing, and even murdering countless numbers of people who have no chance in hell of obtaining a lawyer, let alone anything resembling a trial. The government is doing this under the direct orders of George W. Bush. There is no law, no bill, and no legislature who can stop him. If Congress were to pass a law unequivocably banning torture and send it to him, he'd use it for toilet paper. If the Supreme Court were to rule against Bush in the harshest and bluntest language, he'd yawn.

The truth is that there is a rogue presidency . . .

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/legalization-of-torture-an_115945829460324274.html
[Glenn Greenwald] There really is no other way to put it. Issues of torture to the side (a grotesque qualification, I know), we are legalizing tyranny in the United States. Period. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/28/BL2006092800790.html
[Dan Froomkin] Today's Senate vote on President Bush's detainee legislation, after House approval yesterday, marks a defining moment for this nation.

How far from our historic and Constitutional values are we willing to stray? How mercilessly are we willing to treat those we suspect to be our enemies? How much raw, unchecked power are we willing to hand over to the executive?

The legislation before the Senate today would ban torture, but let Bush define it; would allow the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant; would suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus; would immunize retroactively those who may have engaged in torture. And that's just for starters.

It's a red-letter day for the country. It's also a telling day for our political system.

The people have lost confidence in their president. Despite that small recent uptick in the polls, Bush remains deeply unpopular with the American public, mistrusted by a majority, widely considered out of touch with the nation's real priorities.

But he's still got Congress wrapped around his little finger.

Today's vote will show more clearly than ever before that, when push comes to shove, the Republicans who control Congress are in lock step behind the president, and the Democrats -- who could block him, if they chose to do so -- are too afraid to put up a real fight.

The kind of emotionless, he-said-she-said news coverage, lacking analysis and obsessed with incremental developments and political posturing -- in short, much of modern political journalism -- just doesn't do this story justice. . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2150595
[Alexander Dryer] The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times all lead with the Senate's approval of rules for the interrogation and prosecution of terror detainees. . . Amazingly, only the LAT fronts a substantive account of what the detainee bill actually says. . .

The Post, citing constitutional scholars, argues that "the bill pushes at the edges of so much settled U.S. law that its passage will not be the last word on America's detainee policies." As Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh tells the paper, "it's not clear that most of the members understand what they've done."

The Bill of Rights: what’s left of them

http://sideshow.me.uk/ssep06.htm#09280114

What CNN cares about

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_24_atrios_archive.html#115947095291289224
[Atrios] I know getting upset over the quality of cable news is really a waste of emotion, but CNN has spent the entire day repackaging pointless local news stories as if they mattered. . .

What Republicans care about

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8594.html
In June, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said, with a straight face, that a constitutional amendment on "flag desecration" was the single most important issue facing the nation. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/musgrave-exposes-gops-warped-agenda_28.html
[Think Progress] Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), the lead sponsor of the constitutional ban on gay marriage in the House, . . . declared that gay marriage "is the most important issue that we face today."

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/republican-senator-trent-lott-says.html
[CNN] Trent Lott told reporters today that George Bush and GOP Senators barely mentioned Iraq when they met this morning and that they don’t obsess over the war. . . “You're the only ones who obsess on that. We don't . . .”

[BONUS] On the sectarian violence in Iraq, Lott said: “Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.”

Angry yet?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8602.html
[Steve Benen] Paul Kiel raises a point that's been bothering me all day.

Over the last two days, the Senate has been considering a bill that, just about everyone can agree, is of singular importance.

The Senate has allotted itself ten hours of debate to consider the bill and five amendments offered for it.

Compare that to the three days of debate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) provided in June, to consider the Marriage Protection Amendment (and even after that, the amendment failed). At the time, Democrats complained that Frist was eating up precious floor time with a political stunt.

Of course it was a stunt. GOP leaders knew in advance they didn't have the votes, but they scheduled three days of debate anyway, because they needed to drag it out as long as possible to satisfy the extremist base.

In one sense, the debate over the detainee bill might as well be cancelled — proponents of this bill aren't going to be swayed by evidence or reason — but on principle alone, what does it say about a Senate that devotes three days to an anti-gay bill that they know can't pass, but 10 hours to a measure to discard habeas, undercut due process, and embrace torture?

Kiel added, by the way, Rick Santorum argued, back when the anti-gay amendment was under consideration, that the three days of scheduled debate had nothing to do with exploiting homophobia for partisan gain.

"If it was purely politics, Santorum said, "let me assure you we'd be debating this in September."

Good point, Rick. When the GOP majority really wants to abuse the process and manipulate Senate debate for purely political reasons, they wait until September, when more voters are likely to notice.

Remind me, what are they debating today?

Republican moderates? I’ll never use the expression again

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092800824.html

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/george-bushs-vast-new-powers-of.html

If there is any cosmic justice, this cynical travesty will gain the Republicans ZERO congressional seats they wouldn’t have won anyway, and cost them Joe Lieberman

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/torture_/2006/09/referendum_on_torture.php
[Mark Kleiman] With Joe Lieberman voting for the torture and arbitrary detention bill on final passage, Ned Lamont has the chance to turn the Connecticut Senate race into a referendum on whether we intend to remain the United States of America, or give in to the terrorists by shredding our Constitution and sacrificing our national honor to our fears. . .

Bob Woodward is about to throw a huge stink bomb into the middle of the “we are winning the war in Iraq” party

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/washington/29account.html
The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war. . .

As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq. . .

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/28/60minutes/main2047607.shtml
[CBS] Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year. . . .

According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. "It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That's more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces," says Woodward.

The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. "The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better,'" he tells Wallace. "Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know," says Woodward.

"The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are. Who doesn't know? The American public," Woodward tells Wallace.

Woodward also reports that the president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, "Now what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'" Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."

President Bush is absolutely certain that he has the U.S. and Iraq on the right course, says Woodward. So certain is the president on this matter, Woodward says, that when Mr. Bush had key Republicans to the White House to discuss Iraq, he told them, "I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me.”. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_24_atrios_archive.html#115946305615624953
[Atrios] I've been saying it for a very long time, but perhaps now it will penetrate the consciousness. Bush will never leave Iraq. . .

Now don’t you really want to know what’s in that “unfinished” NIE on Iraq the Bush gang is sitting on?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010015
[Josh Marshall] Anybody in the White House press corps want to ask Tony Snow why he lied to you guys yesterday? . . .

[Tony Snow] What happened is, about a month ago Director Negroponte informed the committees that he was, in fact, going to do an exhaustive review on Iraq. That's a month ago. These reviews take about a year to do, so the idea that it is in "draft" form -- they're just beginning to do their work on it. [T]here is not a waiting Iraq document that reflects a national intelligence estimate that's sitting around gathering dust, waiting until after the election.

[Marshall] Well, that's just a crock. Justin Rood looked into this yesterday. And according to the 2004 Senate intel committee report, most NIEs take between two weeks (for a rush job) and two months to complete. And how long did it take to complete the Iraq WMD NIE. Less than three weeks. (Amazing what you can accomplish when your heart is really in it, isn't it?)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001624.php
[Justin Rood] "This is -- you don't pull an all-nighter. It's not like a college term paper that you slap together," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters today, trying to brush off nagging questions about why it's taking so damn long for the administration to assemble an intelligence report on the situation in Iraq.

Snow incorrectly noted that the Director of National Intelligence "just started [the report] a month ago." In fact, DNI John Negroponte announced his effort on Aug. 4, exactly eight weeks from tomorrow. That's an awfully long month, isn't it? . . . [read on]

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004938.html
Senators Reid/Schumer/Durbin letter to President Bush: "We are growing increasingly concerned about reports that your Administration is withholding important information about the war in Iraq from the American public. In order to succeed in Iraq and the war on terror, the Congress and the American people need and deserve the truth. We received an important part of the truth this week when you decided to declassify a portion of the intelligence community’s National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism. Congress requested a similar intelligence assessment on Iraq nearly three months ago. Given the stakes in Iraq, we believe the American people deserve to see the results of this assessment as soon as possible."

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004934.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115940897793076264.html

IT’S NOT GETTING BETTER. Why isn’t this front-page, screaming headline news?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html
[T]he past week saw the highest number of suicide bomb attacks of any week since the American-led invasion in 2003, according to the chief United States military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV. . . .

More bloody news: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/28/123217/456
The bodies of 40 men who been tortured were found in the capital in a span of 24 hours, police said Thursday. Bombings and shootings killed at least 21 people in and around Baghdad, including five people who died from a car-bomb explosion near a restaurant. . .

Here’s another indicator of what a total mess they have made out of rebuilding Iraq

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8599.html
[Steve Benen] In 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority (run by unqualified Bush lackeys) hired Parsons Corp., the U.S. construction giant, to rebuild and revitalize the Baghdad Police College. The WaPo described the old academy as "a ramshackle collection of 1930s buildings," which Parsons would transform into a functioning, modern facility, equipped to train thousands of Iraqi police officers . . . [T]op U.S. military commanders declared 2006 "the year of the police," in an acknowledgment of their critical role in allowing for any withdrawal of American troops. The Baghdad Police College was touted as a success story by administration officials.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

"This is the most essential civil security project in the country — and it's a failure," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. "The Baghdad police academy is a disaster."

And if the Parsons Corp. name sounds familiar, there's a good reason.

It's the same company that screwed up the reconstruction of Iraq's public health care system. . .

And while we're at it, Kevin Drum reminds us that Parsons screwed up Iraqi prison projects as well.

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/iraq-reconstruction-on-par-with-iraq.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1518.html
[Ezra Klein] Following this bit of good news out of Iraq, there is a new congressional analysis showing that we're spending $2 billion a week on the war -- more than twice as much as it cost per week during the first year of operations. The change in spending is coming both from increased combat, but also from "the building of more extensive infrastructure to support troops and equipment in and around Iraq and Afghanistan."

[NB: And what THAT tells you is that they’re settling in for a long stay . . .]

Britain wants out

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009587.php

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004940.html

Freedom on the march

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/world/middleeast/29media.html
Ahmed al-Karbouli, a reporter for Baghdadiya TV in the violent city of Ramadi, did his best to ignore the death threats, right up until six armed men drilled him with bullets after midday prayers.

He was the fourth journalist killed in Iraq in September alone, out of a total of more than 130 since the 2003 invasion, the vast majority of them Iraqis. But these days, men with guns are not Iraqi reporters’ only threat. Men with gavels are, too.

Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein’s penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year. . .

You just watch: Iraq PM Maliki, just a few weeks ago hailed as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln, the great hero of democracy, is about to get thrown to the wolves

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html
Senior American military officials are warning that time is growing short for Iraq to root out militias inside and outside the government and purge ministries of corrupt officials who are diverting large sums of money to their own political parties.

“We are now at a time when we have a little bit of influence there,” a senior military official said. Referring to the problem of militias, he added, “There is going to come a time when I would argue we are going to have to force this issue.” . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8596.html
Last week, senior American officials leaked word to the New York Times that they're no longer confident that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has what it takes to hold the country together. Patience, the NYT reported, is "wearing thin." . . .

Theocracy watch

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/09/28/did_bush_blow_his_dog_whistle.html
[Taegan Goddard] In a recent CNN interview, President Bush suggested history would judge the Iraq war as "just a comma." He repeated the statement today in Alabama. While it seems an odd thing to say, a Political Wire reader suggests it's designed to speak to the religious right while not unnecessarily alarming others. In other words, it's a classic example of "dog whistle politics" used to energize his base.

The Christian proverb Bush was evidently referring to is "Never put a period where God has put a comma." In essence, trust in God to make a bad situation better.

I know the geopolitical world is a complex pattern of shades of grey, but do we really have to buddy up to these people?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/28cnd-britain.html
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan came to London today and found himself facing accusations that his country’s intelligence service had indirect ties to Al Qaeda.

He arrived after a rocky visit in Washington, where President Bush used a White House dinner to try to mediate between the Pakistani leader and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan over their mutual accusations of responsibility for the resurgence of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s former rulers. . .

485 contacts between Abramoff and the White House – and every one of them completely innocent

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/485-contacts-between-jack-abramoff.html

http://susiemadrak.com/2006/09/28/22/15/love-for-sale-4/
[Roll Call] 485 contacts . . . from January 2001 to March 2004, with 82 of those contacts occuring in Rove’s office, including 10 with Rove personally.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001632.php
WHITE HOUSE INTERVENED FOR ABRAMOFF CLIENTS

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001634.php
On learning in July 2002 that Mr. Rove planned to dine at Signatures with a party of 8 to 10 people, Mr. Abramoff wrote to a colleague: “I want him to be given a very nice bottle of wine and have Joseph whisper in his ear (only he should hear) that Abramoff wanted him to have this wine on the house.” In another e-mail message, Mr. Abramoff directed his restaurant staff to “please put Karl Rove in his usual table.”

Alphonso Jackson (HUD Sect’y) should be hounded from office – but these days there are so many bigger issues of incompetence and corruption, the man’s flying under the radar (just like Ken Tomlinson)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001628.php
New revelations from the report show that Jackson himself admitted to investigators that political affiliation was a factor: "I’m not going to go out of my way to help somebody who’s castigating the President…Now, if that’s my bias, I have it."

A back-door UN appointment for John Bolton?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004939.html

Another person comes out and says George Allen (R-VA) used the N-word – and every one of them is lying, right?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/woman-says-george-allen-repeatedly.html

GOP Congressman and 16 year-old page. Nope, no problems here

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8603.html
As a rule, when a member of Congress sends personal emails to a 16-year-old page, and asks how old he is, what he wants for his birthday, and requests a photo of him, there's something not quite right about the situation. . .

More: http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/09/pen_pals/

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/gop-congressman-admits-to-says-nothing.html

Bonus item: America Is Better Than This

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/nyt-on-torture.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/28/23614/7306
"The issue isn't whether we are the same as the Nazis. The issue is, we aren't different 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).

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 @ 6:38 AM

 
A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY

I really can’t decide which of two big stories to lead with today – the impending passage of a bill that is Congress’s lowest moment since the Alien and Sedition Acts, or the collapse of support for Bush’s war in Iraq.

The Big Paper editorials slam Congress

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opinion/28thu1.html
[NYT] Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/28/02153/8957
[WP] What's important is that any legal system approved by Congress pass the tests set by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) months ago: that the United States can be proud of it, that the world will see it as fair and humane, and that the Supreme Court can uphold it.

The compromise legislation cobbled together in the past week by administration officials and a group of Republican senators, including Mr. Warner, doesn't pass those tests. . .

[Andrew Sullivan] Put all that together and you really do have the danger of taking emergency measures for wartime and transforming a peace-time constitution into an essentially martial system, where every citizen or non-citizen can be apprehended at will and detained without charge. I repeat: this is a huge deal. It really should be a huge deal for conservatives who care about restraining government power. Its vulnerability to abuse is enormous; sanctioned torture, history tells us, never remains hermetically sealed. It always spreads. It eats away at decency and law and civility. If the president sincerely believes that torture is our most potent weapon in this war, and that habeas corpus is a quaint relic from the past, then we are in far greater peril than even the most dire pessimists believe.

“Pep rally”??!!??

http://susiemadrak.com/2006/09/28/07/59/go-team-torture/
[WP] Bush is scheduled to meet today with GOP senators in the Capitol for a final pep rally before the measure’s expected passage.

Are the Republicans voting for a habeas corpus measure that they KNOW is unconstitutional, and which will be overturned by the Supreme Court, just so they can look tough on the eve of the elections (and damn the consequences later)?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15002431

There might still be a chance to block this bill: here are the two pivotal votes

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/27/22449/0130

And what are the Democrats doing? Not enough

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/09/spineless-democrats-deserve-to-lose.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/27/dems_and_torture/index.html

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2006/09/dear_senator_reid.html

Oh, for more Louise Slaughter’s (D-NY)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/27/104659/485
We are at a crossroads today, and I fear that we will not by judged kindly by future Americans for what my Republican friends want us to do today.

This bill sends a clear message to both our friends and our enemies about what kind of people we are. . .

The myth of Republican moderates

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115939774685941073

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8591.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8589.html

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/26/AR2006092601138.html
[Harold Meyerson] Sen. Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, is seeking reelection in his heavily Democratic state by insisting he's not really a Republican, or at least not part of the gang responsible for the decade's debacles. He didn't even vote for George W. Bush in 2004, he protests. He cast his vote for George H.W. Bush -- a kinder, gentler, more prudent, less strident Republican.

Big deal. . .

Will Bush trash the Republicans for failing to pass the other bills he has described as absolutely essential for national security before the election? (yeah, right)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/26/america/NA_GEN_US_Congress_Terrorism.php
Half of President George W. Bush's anti-terror legislative agenda stalled Tuesday when discord among Republicans forced the party's leaders to give up on trying to legalize his warrantless wiretapping program before the Nov. 7 election. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010010
[Shaun Waterman] Two key must-pass defense and homeland security bills are being blocked in a row between Republican lawmakers over border and immigration security measures.

The homeland security appropriation bill and the defense authorization bill are among the handful of pieces of legislation that lawmakers had hoped to complete this week before heading home for the elections. Now both are stalled because GOP House leaders want to include a series of measures passed in their chamber designed to strengthen border security and toughen immigration enforcement.

Support for Bush’s war collapses (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13306
Fewer adults in the United States believe their government’s handling of the coalition effort has been adequate, according to a poll by Harris Interactive. Only 20 per cent of respondents are confident that U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful, down nine points in two years. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/28/64157/7383
[DarkSyde] Pundits and political operators would have Americans believe the midterm election is between Republicans and Democrats. It's not. It's between a tiny band of powerful, incompetent extremists who have hijacked the conservative movement and the rest of the country . . .

Iraq is on the verge of complete chaos

http://www.slate.com/id/2150529
[Alexander Dryer] The NYT and the Post both stuff sobering reports on U.S. military officials' assessment of the worsening situation in Iraq. Commanders are questioning whether Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has the will or the ability to end corruption and rein in militias. The concerns come as the country sinks ever-deeper into chaos. The NYT reports that "the past week saw the highest number of suicide bomb attacks of any week since the American-led invasion in 2003." Yet violence is so out of hand that the bombings failed to displace murders and executions as the No. 1 cause of civilian deaths in Baghdad. (And in still more bad news from Iraq, the Post fronts a report on the Baghdad Police College, which cannot train recruits because "feces and urine rained from the ceilings" of barracks that were built by U.S. contractor Parsons Corp.) . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/middleeast/28sadr.html
The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has lost control of portions of his Mahdi Army militia that are splintering off into freelance death squads and criminal gangs . . .

The first (war on terror) NIE: what does it really tell us?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#010004
[Josh Marshall] The deeper point is that Iraq is simply not a key part of the War on Terror, as the president routinely claims. We've actually done fairly well in the actual War on Terror, in the sense of taking down the organization that attacked us on 9/11. Simultaneously we've both squandered hundreds of billions of dollars and a lot of valuable time and good will creating a new threat with the fiasco in Iraq. . .

Fran Townsend, “Homeland Security Advisor,” talks to the press (they often roll out the women on these occasions – why?)

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7290
Q Hi, thank you for doing this. I just have one question. You were going through a lot of the judgments in the document. The one that you didn't go over was I guess in paragraph two, where it says that activists identifying themselves as jihadists are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion. And that seems to answer the question that Secretary Rumsfeld posed back in 2003 -- are we capturing, killing or dissuading more terrorists than are being trained and deployed every day? One, do you agree with that? And doesn't this say that more jihadists are being created every day than we're capturing or killing?

MS. TOWNSEND: Well, I guess, George, what I would say to you is, one, we have killed -- I think the -- you know, it's hard to make precise estimates, but we've captured or killed thousands over the course of the conflict. It's difficult to count how many have been added. I mean, there's no -- as you know, they hardly carry membership cards, and they are dispersed and they do hide in the shadows. It would be very difficult to count them. . .

The second, “grim” and “bleak” NIE (on Iraq): is it being stalled?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001615.php

A new UN report confirms that the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist problem, and the Bush gang is scrambling . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060927/pl_nm/security_usa_dc_3

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/thank-you-president-bush.html
[John Aravosis] Sometimes you just have to let an idiot hang himself.

As you all now know, George Bush made public the executive summary of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq late yesterday. Bush claimed that the NIE was going to exonerate him and show how peachy everything was in Iraq and in the war on terror. In fact, the document was horrifically pessimistic, and said just what the NYT said it said - namely, that Bush's quagmire in Iraq is fueling more terror and making us less safe.

The thing I can't fathom is what possessed Bush to make this document public AND to claim that it was going to be a really happy and peppy assessment. . .

Buried in the NIE, a disturbing association

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8590.html
[NIE] Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. . . .

[Steve Benen] Did you catch that reference to "leftists"? I thought you might. How about the reference to dangerous right-wing or anti-government groups? They seem to have been left out of the report.

It prompted Glenn to ask, "Are 'leftist' groups one of the principal targets on the anti-terrorism agenda of the Bush administration, and if so, aren't the implications rather disturbing?" It hardly seems like an unreasonable question. . .

So, in summary, all Americans need to watch what they say; if you criticize the president you're helping al Qaeda; liberal blogs should be considered inherently suspect, and that never mind that cool breeze you're feeling — it's just a little chilling effect.

Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Bush’s sock-puppet

http://makeashorterlink.com/?B3BB12CDD
[Greg Sargent] Even the news about the National Intelligence Estimate, which found that the Iraq war had spread terrorism, did not deter Lieberman.

"Are there terrorists in Iraq? Of course there are. That's a reason we went in," he said. . .

The terrorists were in Iraq before "we went in"? Anybody have any idea who Lieberman's referring to? Our best guess is that he's talking about al Zarqawi, whose presence in Iraq has been held up at times by various Bush administration officials as proof of "ties" between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. But the recently-released Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded that there were no ties between the two men, that Saddam didn't "harbor" him, and that Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as an enemy.

More on how Lieberman got to be Bush’s favorite “Democrat”

http://lamontblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/lieberman-wont-call-for-full-nie.html
[Paul Bass] Leading Democrats Wednesday, like U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, called on Bush to release the entire document in order to give the public "the full story." The Bush administration refused, saying that to release the full report would endanger lives by revealing classified secrets.

Asked during the conference call where he stood, Lieberman declined to join the Democrats' call.

"Look, it's a shame that this was leaked," he said. "But I think in the context of this being leaked [to the press], it was important that the essence of it be" released. . .

The Iraqis REALLY don’t want us there

http://makeashorterlink.com/?J46C62CDD
About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, and slightly more than that want their government to ask U.S. troops to leave within a year, according to a poll in that country. . .

Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents. . .

Three-fourths say they think the United States plans to keep military bases in Iraq permanently. . .

This could be big

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-bases27sep27,1,1122264.story
Congress is on the verge of barring the construction of permanent bases for U.S. forces in Iraq, a move aimed at quelling concerns in the Arab world that American forces will remain in the war-torn country indefinitely. . .

Pentagon and State Department officials have insisted that the U.S. military is not building permanent American bases in Iraq and that all facilities under construction will be handed over to the Iraqi government.

But the massive American bases in Iraq have long fueled speculation that the United States plans to maintain a military presence there, as it does in other parts of the Arab world. . .

Bounty payments (thanks to A.G. for the link)

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/09/america_paid_us.html
[London Times] PRESIDENT Musharraf of Pakistan says that the CIA has secretly paid his government millions of dollars for handing over hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects to America. The US government has strict rules banning such reward payments to foreign powers involved in the war on terror. General Musharraf does not say how much the CIA gave in return for the 369 al-Qaeda figures that he ordered should be passed to the US.

The US Department of Justice said: “We didn’t know about this. It should not happen. These bounty payments are for private individuals who help to trace terrorists on the FBI’s most wanted list, not foreign governments.” . . . [read on]

Snake oil salesmen (thanks to Ahmad for the link)

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeffrey_sachs/2006/09/fighting_the_wrong_war.html
It always comes back to oil. . .

Condi Rice, caught in another lie about the Bush gang’s pre-9/11 failures

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015840.html
In the pants on fire department, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she doesn't recall seeing this memo from Richard Clarke in January, 2001, describing the severity of the al-Qaeda threat.

In it, Clarke advocates for a principal level review of Al Qaeda threat, calling Al Qaeda "not some narrow, little terrorist issue" but a "transnational challenge." . . .

http://sideshow.me.uk/ssep06.htm#09271554
[Avedon Carol] Y'know, someone needs to do a campaign ad made up of all the times a member of the Republican leadership, including Bush and Cheney, answers a question by saying that they hadn't read some report, or otherwise didn't know something they should have known. People need to be reminded that their excuse for not being on the ball is that they just weren't on the ball.

Dan Froomkin nicely parses the lies, evasions, deceptions, and non-answers in a typical Bush press conference. Notice too something that Froomkin doesn’t highlight – how absolutely formulaic these responses have become. Bush has memorized about six answers, and all he can do any more is repeat them, virtually word for word, whenever the war in Iraq comes up

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/27/BL2006092701022.html
President Bush's angry nonanswers to two straightforward questions yesterday were among the best illustrations yet of his intense aversion to responding to his critics' actual arguments.

Rather than acknowledge and attempt to rebut the many concerns about his policies, Bush makes up inane arguments and then ridicules them. . .

"Q Thank you, sir. Even after hearing that one of the major conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate in April was that the Iraq war has fueled terror growth around the world, why have you continued to say that the Iraq war has made this country safer?"

"PRESIDENT BUSH: I, of course, read the key judgments on the NIE. I agree with their conclusion that because of our successes against the leadership of al Qaeda, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent. I'm not surprised the enemy is exploiting the situation in Iraq and using it as a propaganda tool to try to recruit more people to their -- to their murderous ways. . . I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe."

OK, that's straw-man number one. Nobody I've heard of is suggesting that going on the offense against terrorists is bad. The question at hand is whether going on the offense against Iraq -- which had nothing to do with 9/11 -- made us less safe. By using this absurd straw-man, Bush leaves that issue unaddressed.

Bush: "The terrorists fight us in Iraq for a reason: They want to try to stop a young democracy from developing, just like they're trying to fight another young democracy in Afghanistan. And they use it as a recruitment tool, because they understand the stakes. They understand what will happen to them when we defeat them in Iraq."

Here, Bush makes it sound like the fight in Iraq is between the United States and terrorists. But of course the vast majority of fighting is now sectarian in nature, with U.S. troops caught in the middle. . . .But his ensuing argument is bizarre.

Bush: "We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq, and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."

. . . No one is suggesting that the invasion of Iraq was responsible for terrorist act that predate that invasion! The argument is that invading Iraq has made the threat of terrorism since then worse than it otherwise would have been. Reciting past terrorist acts is almost laughably nonresponsive. . .

"This government is going to do whatever it takes to protect this homeland. We're not going to let their excuses stop us from staying on the offense. The best way to protect America is defeat these killers overseas so we do not have to face them here at home. We're not going to let lies and propaganda by the enemy dictate how we win this war."

And here, of course, Bush is planting the idea that his critics -- whose arguments he has refused to face head on -- are succumbing to the lies and propaganda of the enemy.

Later, Bush was asked this question:

"Q Thank you, Mr. President. Former President Clinton says that your administration had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after he left office. Is that factually accurate, and how do you respond to his charges?"

"PRESIDENT BUSH: You know, look, Caren, I've watched all this finger-pointing and naming of names, and all that stuff. Our objective is to secure the country. And we've had investigations, we had the 9/11 Commission, we had the look back this, we've had the look back that. The American people need to know that we spend all our time doing everything that we can to protect them. So I'm not going to comment on other comments."

But he used the question as a springboard to some familiar talking points -- and some more straw men.

Bush: "But I will comment on this -- that we're on the offense against an enemy that wants to do us harm. . . . You can't protect America unless we give those people on the front lines of protecting this country the tools necessary to do so within the Constitution. And that's where the debate is here in the United States. There are some decent people who don't believe -- evidently don't believe we're at war, and therefore, shouldn't give the administration what is necessary to protect us. "

But of course that's not where the debate is in Washington. Bush's critics acknowledge the battle against terrorists and want to give him the tools to win it. The debate is over how to conduct the war, and how to provide the executive branch with the necessary tools without violating the law and the Constitution. . .

What's even more astonishing than the fact that the president makes a mockery of legitimate criticism rather than confront it is the fact that the press corps routinely lets him get away with it. Aside from a few paragraphs here and there, like those from the Sanger story above, most reporters quoted Bush's statements without putting them in the appropriate context.

Hmmm. . . remember, not so long ago, reports about death and destruction in Iraq were a daily feature of the news? Well, the death and destruction haven’t stopped, certainly, but the coverage has . . .

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200609260008
[Eric Boehlert] There is, however, ample evidence that the American media, on the eve of the crucial midterm elections, have lost interest in the chaotic saga, with network news coverage in recent weeks plummeting and Page One newspaper dispatches from Iraq growing sparse. The media fade has come at a perfect time for the White House as it attempts to shift voters' attention away from Iraq and move it over to the war on terror.

What's so startling is that we've seen this exact media retreat before -- during the fall of the 2004 campaign. . .

Bush can spin the domestic coverage of his economic record, but you can’t fool the international investors who know a bad play when they see one

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060927/BUSINESS01/609270315/1066

More: http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7304

Manipulating gas prices on the eve of the election? (thanks to Ahmad for the link)

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=124698

George Allen (R-VA) is caught in that slow drip-drip-drip stage of his N-word scandal. Of course he deserves just what he gets – those stupid, blanket denials that he “ever” used the word were implausible on their face

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/us/politics/27allen.html
Another acquaintance of Senator George Allen said Tuesday that she heard him use a racial slur in 1976 . . .

The “deer head” story – if this turns out to be true, Allen’s political career is over

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2006/09/oh_deer.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/27/11324/8362

What’s he smokin’?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/27/john-boehner-still-believes-saddam-was-tied-to-911-and-had-wmd/
[Jamie Holly] On Hardball this afternoon, House Majority Leader John Boehner was asked questions about Iraq. Boehner insisted that Saddam had WMD and that we just "haven’t found them yet". Boehner also states that Saddam was supporting the terrorists for 9/11 and was "providing cover" for the training camps in Iraq. . .

Matthews was in shockingly good form during this interview. He would not back down from Boehner and in turn Boehner came off like a bumbling idiot. Boehner says that we will listen to the generals on the ground in Iraq, and Matthews responded by asking him why the generals come out and talk about how bad things are in Iraq once they retire. Boehner refused to answer that question.

Be glad that Tony Snow is such a terrible Press Secretary

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7298

But he’s a hell of a fund-raiser: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/25/ap/politics/mainD8KC4LNG0.shtml

Oh, this is rich: Roger Ailes, honcho of Fox News, whines that Clinton’s comeback after being blindsided in his Chris Wallace interview constitutes “an assault on all journalists” (I didn’t know Ailes HAD any journalists on his staff at Fox News)

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/roger-ailes-petulantly-protests.html

Idiots. IDIOTS! Which is worse: Bill Bennett’s bald-faced lie or the refusal of “news” professionals to question him?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609270015
BENNETT: [On whether Clinton did enough to catch or kill Bin Laden] I don't know why Clinton wanted to bring up these things. A lot of us didn't really blame Clinton, didn't blame Bush. We -- we -- we look at the CIA and some other parts.

LAUER: Mistakes on both parts.

BENNETT: Well, yeah, but, I mean, he brought it up, and now that he's brought it up, he's got to expect his record will be examined. . .

Remember? [Chris] WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I gotta say, I was surprised. Most of them wanted me to ask you this question: Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president? . . .

When the press does its job . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/27/215526/600
[Hunter] [I]t would be worth your while to catch the Countdown repeat later tonight on MSNBC. An extended report, of the sort that news programs used to do, once upon a time, clarifies in blistering fashion the Bush approach to terrorism, after taking office. The Bush administration did not simply do little, in anti-terrorism efforts: they did nothing. . .

Bonus item: You couldn’t make this up

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001617.php
[Paul Kiel] Boy, it's been a rough year for Jeanne Pirro. First her fledging challenge to Sen. Hilary Clinton (D-NY) exploded after the worst campaign launch ever.

Now she's under federal investigation for plotting -- with onetime NYPD chief, former Iraq security head, would-be DHS secretary and crook Bernard Kerik -- to illegally spy on her own husband. (Come to think of it, it hasn't been a great year for Kerik, either). Oh, did I mention that their conversations were recorded? . . .

***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).

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 @ 8:25 AM

 
SPREADING, OR SCATTERED?

Not a great couple of weeks for the Bush offensive to build support for his war: people aren’t paying attention to him any more, his military is in open revolt, and his own intelligence agencies tell him that Iraq has made the terrorist threat worse not better. He releases part of the NIE, and sure enough, it says just what people says it did – and there is ANOTHER NIE waiting in the wings . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/26/AR2006092600163.html
The Bush administration yesterday released portions of a classified intelligence estimate that says the global jihadist movement is growing and being fueled by the war in Iraq even as it becomes more decentralized, making it harder to identify potential terrorists and prevent attacks.

The NIE text: http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments.pdf

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/26/nie.iraq/
Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called on the White House to release a second, previously unknown national intelligence document that focuses solely on Iraq. Harman says the document has been kept in draft form so that it won't be seen before midterm elections.

"I hear it paints a grim picture. And because it does, I am told it is being held until after the November elections. If this estimate is finished, it should not be stamped 'draft' and hidden from the American people until after the elections," Harman said in a statement.

White House homeland security adviser Frances Townsend denied the claim, saying the report in question was commissioned in August and won't be complete until January. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009987.php
[Josh Marshall] We've been making calls all morning. And it turns there's another NIE the White House is apparently sitting on. This one's entirely on the situation in Iraq. And the word we keep hearing to describe the findings are "bleak." . . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#009991
[Josh Marshall] Hill sources tell TPMmuckraker that the administration has been sitting on the report, trying to prevent its dissemination before the election, presumably. And it turns out, from what we've heard, that this NIE actually hasn't been given the official "NIE" label because doing that would have required sharing it with various members of Congress. . .

Damn you, CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/26/nie.iraq/index.html
NIE: Al Qaeda 'damaged,' becoming more scattered

What the NIE actually says: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/nie-is-now-online.html
“We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate . . . We also assess that the global jihadist movement—which includes al- Qa’ida, affiliated and independent terrorist groups, and emerging networks and cells—is spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts.”

“Politics”

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/26/nie.iraq/index.html
Earlier Tuesday, President Bush angrily lambasted a media report that said the document asserted the Iraq war had increased the terrorist threat to the United States.

He added that media accounts of the leak of the intelligence report were meant to "create confusion in the minds of the American people" . . .

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003157296
[AP] President Bush on Tuesday said it is naive and a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, disputing a national intelligence assessment by his own administration. He said he was declassifying part of the report.

"Some people have guessed what's in the report and concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree," Bush said.

He asserted that portions of the classified report that had been leaked were done so for political purposes . . .

Yeah, you just can’t have leaks of classified NIE’s for political purposes

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014477.html
According to court documents released in the Scooter Libby case, the former chief of staff to the Vice President received "the specific permission of President Bush" to leak a highly classified intelligence document . . .

Our friend!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/09/26/musharraf.terror/index.html
The war in Iraq has not made the world safer from terror, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has told CNN . .

More analysis of the NIE

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/sep/26/the_facts_behind_the_nie

http://www.juancole.com/2006/09/partially-declassified-nie-bush-became.html

Tony Snow, MAJOR LEAGUE liar

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009969.php
"In short, the news reports [about the NIE] contain nothing that the President hasn't said. . . . reading the stories I thought, well, yes, I mean, this is what the President has been saying."

Let’s review

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/wednesday-morning-open-thread_27.html
[Joe] Okay, let's review. Bush and the GOP are claiming that they've made the world safer. Now the U.S. Intelligence entities -- all 16 of them -- have shown that they're lying.

Iraq has been a double whammy. Not only did that war distract the U.S. from the real war on terror, Iraq has mobilized the jihadists. We're further behind than we were in 2003.

We have a President who thinks violence in Iraq is a comma. For the jihadists, it's a "cause celebre."

And you gotta love the feigned outrage from the GOP that people are politicizing the terror issue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/26/BL2006092600692.html
[Dan Froomkin] President Bush's all-important terror-fighting credentials are taking a bruising this week. . .

But let’s just all put the past behind us, shall we?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115931921113331362
[Digby] I keep hearing from the right wing talking heads today that it's time to put all the arguments about how we got into Iraq behind us, that even though it's now official that it created more terrorists and made the nation less safe, we need to look to future and figure out where to go from here, not live in the past.

That's very compelling. But there's just one little thing we need to do before we move on. We need to figure out which people we should trust to lead us as we move forward to fix the mistakes of the past. . . [read on!]

Condi Rice gets dispatched to challenge Bill Clinton on his claim that the Bush gang did not have Bin Laden or terrorism as a priority until after 9/11

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/26/rice-clinton-terrorism/
[NY Post] “What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,” Rice added. . .

The 9/11 Commission Report contradicts Rice’s claims. . .

Those damn facts

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/2001_memo_to_Rice_contradicts_statements_0926.html
"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice told a reporter for the New York Post on Monday. "Big pieces were missing," Rice added, "like an approach to Pakistan that might work, because without Pakistan you weren't going to get Afghanistan."

Rice made the comments in response to claims made Sunday by former President Bill Clinton, who argued that his administration had done more than the current one to address the al Qaeda problem before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. She stopped short of calling the former president a liar.

However, RAW STORY has found that just five days after President George W. Bush was sworn into office, a memo from counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke to Rice included the 2000 document, "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects." This document devotes over 2 of its 13 pages of material to specifically addressing strategies for securing Pakistan's cooperation . . . [read on!]

More: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/26/rice-clinton-plan/

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115931449815598968
[Tristero] Y'know, sooner or later the press will have to consider whether it is in the country's interest to disseminate any info asserted by the administration that hasn't been independently verified for factual accuracy.

[NB: Well, we can dream . . . ]

Look, ANYTHING that refocuses attention on what the Bush gang did and didn’t do before 9/11 is devastating. Anything that puts him and Clinton in a comparative framework is at best a distraction, and at worse a reminder of those vacation-filled early days of the Bush administration, when it was already becoming apparent that he was more interested in BECOMING President than in BEING President

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8577.html
[Steve Benen] I think Rice misread the talking points. The right isn't supposed to believe Bush was "as aggressive" as Clinton on counter-terrorism; the line is that Bush was more aggressive than Clinton.

Not that it matters — in either case, Rice is simply, demonstrably wrong. Indeed, it's odd that she's pick this fight in light of the evidence.

I'll spare you a voluminous post, instead offering links to the key details:

* Rice's claims are flatly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission.

* Rice's claims are flatly contradicted by former Bush administration officials.

* And Rice's claims are flatly contradicted by a memo she received shortly after becoming National Security Advisor. . .

Why the administration and its allies would want to have this fight all over again is a mystery. Were the facts not clear enough the last time?

Report: Wiretapping bill stalled until after the elections – which means if the Dems get a majority it won’t be passed at all. (And what will Bush say if his own party is unable to give him the “tools he needs to keep us safe”?)

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y27A23ADD
[AP] Congress is unlikely to approve a bill giving President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program legal status and new restrictions before the November midterm elections, dealing a significant blow to one of the White House's top wartime priorities.

House and Senate versions of the legislation differ too much to bridge the gap by week's end, when Congress recesses until after the Nov. 7 elections, according to two GOP leadership aides who demanded anonymity because the decision had not yet been announced. . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/26/AR2006092601272.html

Maybe, just maybe, people are waking up to the habeas corpus provisions hidden in the torture and tribunal bill

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8566.html
Thomas P. Sullivan, a former United States attorney in Chicago who has represented detainees at Guantanamo, testified that it was "beyond my capacity to accept" that the Senate would push through a habeas provision "on the eve of elections" with so little public hearing.

"I believe that if this bill is passed with these habeas-stripping provisions in it, then after I am dead and the members of this Senate hearing are dead, an apology will be made," Mr. Sullivan said, "just as we did for the incarceration of the Japanese citizens in the Second World War."

"This is shameful," he added, to the applause of protesters dressed in the orange of Guantanamo jumpsuits, "and it is momentous." . . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_24_atrios_archive.html#115929208136172680
[Pat Leahy D-VT] Today we are belatedly addressing the single most consequential provision of this much-discussed bill, a provision that can be found buried on page 81 of the proposed bill. This provision would perpetuate the indefinite detention of hundreds of individuals against whom the government has brought no charges and presented no evidence, without any recourse to justice whatsoever. That is un-American, and it is contrary to American interests.

Going forward, the bill departs even more radically from our most fundamental values. It would permit the president to detain indefinitely—even for life—any alien, whether in the United States or abroad, whether a foreign resident or a lawful permanent resident, without any meaningful opportunity for the alien to challenge his detention. The administration would not even need to assert, much less prove, that the alien was an enemy combatant; it would suffice that the alien was “awaiting [a] determination” on that issue. In other words, the bill would tell the millions of legal immigrants living in America, participating in American families, working for American businesses, and paying American taxes, that our government may at any minute pick them up and detain them indefinitely without charge, and without any access to the courts or even to military tribunals, unless and until the government determines that they are not enemy combatants.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/26/AR2006092601638.html
White House national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley met with Republican senators yesterday in an effort to reach final agreement on legislation that would govern the military trials of terrorism suspects, but they did not resolve a dispute over whether the captives should have access to U.S. courts. . .

The hypocrisy of the Religious Republicans (and Lieberman)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115934106449183913
[Digby] Makes a tear come to the eye, doesn't it, the way men like McCain and Lieberman keep evoking Lincoln and the Bible as they work to institutionalize torture and continue a bloody, useless war that kills thousands and thousands of people? It's all very inspirational.

Keep your eyes on Holy Joe as the debate unfolds. If he bothers to show up at all, I will be shocked if his vaunted religious values lead him to vote against the bill. And that says everything you need to know about his sincerity. When it comes to lying about consensual sex he's all over it, leading the charge. Torture and endless imprisonment with no trial, not so much.

I'm with Atrios. If these religion scolds vote for this bill I will never stand for being lectured by them again about how liberals need to be more respectful of the faith and values crowd. The time is now for them show what they are made of. Let's see it.

What the torture debate has done to us worldwide

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12060
[Matt Yglesias] “The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture,” George W. Bush explained in a June 2003 speech, “and we are leading this fight by example.” Oh, the irony! . . .

Consequently, the United States now presents itself as what amounts to the globe's largest and most powerful rogue state -- a nuclear-armed superpower capable of projecting military force to the furthest corners of the earth, acting utterly without legal or moral constraint whenever the president proclaims it necessary. The idea that striking such a posture on the world stage will serve our long-term interests is daft. American power has, for decades, rested crucially on the sense that the United States can be trusted and relied upon, on the belief that we use our power primarily to defend the community of liberal states and the liberal rules by which they conduct themselves rather than to undermine them. . . [read on]

Torture, Inc.

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/torture_/2006/09/lies_secrets_and_torture_part_153.php
[Mark Kleiman] Back on the torture front, it now emerges that Canadian officials told the FBI that Maher Arar had no link to terrorism before the FBI arranged for the INS to send him off to the Syrian torture chambers. Indeed, it seems that Arar was deported precisely because the FBI doubted it had enough evidence to charge him with any crime. (But don't worry: the Syrians promised they wouldn't torture him. . . .)

The same old dubious sources of the Iran/Contra era, and then phony pre-Iraq war intelligence, keep coming back – and keep finding a friendly neo-con ear to whisper in

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12059

John Bolton will not be confirmed as UN envoy

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001660.php

Of course

http://makeashorterlink.com/?E11C25ADD
[AP] The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday. . .

The Goofus Files

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7284
We'll stop all the speculation, all the politics about somebody saying something about Iraq, somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of this enemy. . . [read on]

George Allen (R-VA), victim (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2006/09/soft-bigotry-of-bigotry-allen-family.html
[TBogg] From Dan Riehl we get the weakest defense yet of Senator George "Never Going To Be President" Allen. Riehl calls the stories about Allen a "lynching" . . .

More to come? http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1492.html#010072
[Tom Schaller] The sickest part of the latest reporting is the claim by R. Kendall Shelton that Allen -- who called Shelton the “Wizard,” because Shelton shared the surname of a former KKK imperial wizard -- once cut the head off a deer and asked where the nearest black person lived, and promptly shoved that head into the person’s mailbox. This may be the episode on which Allen’s Senate career (I think his presidential career has gone the way of the deer’s head) may turn, for two reasons. First, because an incident like this, if true, is not only grotesque and craven, but reveals a general hatred rather than an anger directed at a specific individual. . . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/27/320/75704
[Matt Stoller] I think it's unlikely, but Virginia blogs are watching for Allen to resign and/or drop out of the Senate race. Allen's in serious trouble, as is his campaign manager, Dick Wadhams.

Michael Steele (R-MD): try to find ANY reference to his party affiliation here

http://www.steeleformaryland.com/ideasVideo.htm

Great news

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/26/24740/7324
House Republicans Becoming Increasingly Worried
The most endangered House Republican lawmakers have been asked by their leaders to give $75,000 to party coffers, significantly more than was asked of rank-and-file members two years ago, a sign of how desperate party leaders are to raise money when their individual donor receipts are down and lobbyists are increasing their contributions to Democrats. . . . There is new urgency for Republicans to raise money from their members because the NRCC has raised nearly $20 million less from individual donors compared to 2004. Meanwhile, its counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has boosted individual receipts by $16 million. Adding to the pressure, lobbyists are reporting that their corporate clients are giving more to Democrats in case they recapture the House this fall. . .

Not-so-great news

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/26/12829/1112
Republicans Set To Go Nuclear
. . . What is happening, however, is that once again Democrats are shocked at just how vicious Republican attacks are going to be. . .

The Republicans can’t run a fair election even AFTER they get caught screwing around: New Hampshire, redux

http://makeashorterlink.com/?H15A21ADD
[AP] A top aide to U.S. Rep. Charles Bass resigned Tuesday after disclosures that he posed as a supporter of the Republican's opponent in blog messages intended to convince people that the race was not competitive.

Operators of two liberal blogs traced the postings to the House of Representatives' computer server. Bass' office traced the messages to his policy director, Tad Furtado, and issued a statement announcing Furtado's resignation Tuesday. . .

There was a similar controversy in New Jersey earlier this month, when a liberal blogger accused a campaign staffer for Republican Senate candidate Tom Kean Jr. of using aliases to pose online as an "ardent Democrat." Kean denied the accusation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_New_Hampshire_Senate_election_phone_jamming_scandal

The press at work

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1494.html
[Ezra Klein] Matt notes that Democrats actually held an unofficial oversight hearing on the Iraq War yesterday. "Naturally," he writes, "the press more-or-less entirely ignored this event, since people only report on the Democrats to mock them for being in 'disarray.'" True. Remember the Roll Call story from a couple days ago that Democrats were going to cease mentioning national security and the Iraq War and focus entirely on economic issues? That becomes a bit self-fulfilling if the press refuses to report Democratic events on national security and the Iraq War.

For all the complaints about Democratic messaging, it often seems less like they lack a message and more like they lack a press corps receptive to repeating that message. The apparent clarity of the Republican Party certainly isn't harmed by George W. Bush's ability to demand that all the networks cover his latest speech or press conference. This is a structural advantage for the GOP that's often mistaken for an expertise advantage. Without power or charismatic leaders, Democrats often speak and find that, with no press around to listen, they're not making a sound.

This is just common sense: but what they need is a paper backup to the whole electronic system. Look, it is just a matter of time before a wire gets pulled or a chip goes bad and a whole voting district’s votes disappear into the electronic ether – and whether that is by accident or design, it will be a fundamental crime against a democratic polity

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/washington/26cnd-ballots.html
Three Senate Democrats proposed emergency legislation today to reimburse states for printing paper ballots that can be ready at polling places in case of problems with electronic voting machines on Nov. 7.

The proposal is a response to grass-roots pressure and growing concern by local and state officials about touch-screen machines. An estimated 40 percent of voters will use those machines in the election. . .

Theocracy watch

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/26/AR2006092601486.html
The House passed a bill yesterday that would bar judges from awarding legal fees to the American Civil Liberties Union and similar groups that sue municipalities for violating the Constitution's ban on government establishment of religion. . . Though the bill would prevent plaintiffs from recovering legal costs in any lawsuit based on the Establishment Clause, House Republicans said during a floor debate that it was particularly aimed at organizations that force the removal of Nativity scenes and Ten Commandments monuments from public property.

"Liberal groups . . . scour the country looking to sue cities and states with any kind of religious display, regardless of how popular these displays are," said Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.). Because judges often require municipalities that lose such lawsuits to reimburse their opponents' legal fees, "citizens' precious monuments are being eroded with their own tax dollars," she added. . .


Bonus item: the Baghdad electrical system

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3397

***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).

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

 
OPEN INSURRECTION

Here’s the most interesting aspect of the NIE issue (at least until it actually gets released): Who leaked it, why, and why now? There are clearly people in this administration seriously ticked off with Bush’s failures in Iraq, his stubborn refusal to deal with Rumsfeld, and all of their head-in-the-sand attitude that things are going fine, just as long as they have “unlimited time and unlimited support”

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=124395
[David Corn] Times reporter Mark Mazzetti noted in his front-page article that he had spoken to "more than a dozen" U.S. government officials and outside experts who had either seen the NIE or who had participated in its creation. That's a lot of footwork. . . (An NIE is the intelligence community's most definitive assessment of a major strategic issue and is supposed to represent the consensus view of the government's various intelligence agencies. This particular NIE is the first evaluation of global terrorism since the invasion of Iraq.)

The White House has claimed that the Times's account of the NIE did not represent the complete document. . . . The White House could resolve this very quickly by declassifying the NIE. If the report contains nuances or success stories not conveyed by the Times report (and those of other newspapers), releasing the report will clear things up.

The report is classified. But an NIE of this sort is probably more of an analytical document than a run-down of secret intelligence. And, certainly, the real secrets in the report--particularly references to sources and methods--can be redacted.

There is precedent for a partial release of an NIE. Months into the war in Iraq, when no WMDs had been found and the Bush administration was being accused of having misrepresented the prewar intelligence to hype the Iraq threat, the White House did declassify portions of the NIE on Iraq's WMDs. The point was to show that the intelligence community had informed the White House that Saddam Hussein was sitting on stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. But that flawed NIE also contained dissents and conflicting information indicating there were serious questions about the WMD case. And before the White House released these slices of the NIE, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney authorized Scooter Libby to disclose potions of the NIE to friendly reporters--most notably, Judith Miller of The New York Times. Libby, though, made sure not to share the dissents and contradicting material. . .

http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2006/09/the_nie_report.html
[Ezra Klein] The NIE represents the consensus view of 16 spy agencies "are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue." Essentially, there's no more forceful or respectable analysis the US government could generate on the topic.

Love that headline: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2488177
Some Say Bush Made Terror Worse

I hope people understand how unusual it is for military people to act and talk openly like this

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-military25sep25,1,7815229.story
The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.

The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented . . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/abc-news-us-has-only-7000-to-10000.html
[ABC] The reason senior Army leaders want a bigger army, they are worried about the Army's ability to fight future threats. One official tells ABC News, other than the troops now in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are only about two or three combat brigades, seven to ten thousand troops, fully trained and equipped to respond quickly to a crisis. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092500731.html
Three retired military officers who served in Iraq called today for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, telling a Democratic "oversight hearing" on Capitol Hill that the Pentagon chief bungled planning for the U.S. invasion, dismissed the prospect of an insurgency and sent American troops into the fray with inadequate equipment. . . .

Watch: http://alternet.org/blogs/video/42137/
“[Donald Rumsfeld] violated fundamental principles of war... set the conditions for Abu Ghraib and other atrocities that further ignited the insurgency . . .”

Squeeeeeeal!

http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/092606/lott.html
Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is threatening to punish Democrats for using an Appropriations Committee room for an unofficial hearing on Iraq oversight if it happens again.

“They better stop this,” the Mississippi Republican said. “This will be the last one or there will be retribution.” . . .

Back to the NIE for a moment: I suspect some people are going to regret these statements once the report is released

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0609/25/sitroom.01.html
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, I talked to the counselor to the president, Dan Bartlett, earlier today who made a couple of important points. . .

DAN BARTLETT, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: And we fully recognize and have talked about the fact that the propagandas within the extremist movement use Iraq, other grievances, as a recruitment tool. It doesn't make any final judgments to say that America is less safe or not because of this. It's just saying that they use us to use it as a recruitment tool. . .

BLITZER: . . . And joining us now from the White House is the president's homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend. Thanks very much for joining us. This NIE, this national intelligence report generating lots of commotion as you well understand. Let me read to how the "New York Times" put it on Sunday.

"The NIE report asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat has metastasized and spread across the globe. An opening section of the report, 'Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,' cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology. The report says that the 'Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,' said one American intelligence official."

Is all that accurate?

FRANCES TOWNSEND, WHITE HOUSE HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISER: No. I mean, it takes -- what this does it is takes a single paragraph out of a more than a 35-page report and blows it out of context. . . Does it mention the jihad in Iraq as being used for propaganda purposes to spread Islamic extremism? It does, but it talks about it as being a single factor. . . .

BLITZER: But does the document specifically state, Fran Townsend, that the war in Iraq has worsened the terror situation for the American public?

TOWNSEND: We are certainly not safe -- we are certainly not more at risk as a result of the war in Iraq. And in fact, the thing that -- if we were to leave Iraq, that would make us less safe. There's no question the document does mention that jihad in Iraq as one source of propaganda. . .

BLITZER: But I know that they refer to a lot of different reasons why the terror problem is so acute right now. But does it specifically state that the war in Iraq has worsened the terror situation for the United States?

TOWNSEND: It does not say that. It does not say that the war in Iraq has worsened the terror situation for the United States. . .

It should come as no surprise to anyone that part of the Kabuki dance over torture is that McCain and the others can claim to have banned excessive interrogation techniques while the Bush gang quietly nods and just – keeps – doing them. If the bill bans certain techniques (waterboarding, etc.) why not just say so? I think you know the reason

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/torture_/2006/09/in_black_and_white.php
[Mark Kleiman] So it seems that Sen. McCain believes that his compromise torture legislation does in fact forbid waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and the cold cell. I'm glad to hear it. If so, however, he and his Republican colleagues should have no objection to saying so explicitly in the bill.

Right?

I'd like to see someone force votes on five or six separate provisions, each one banning a particular technique.

Frist lets the cat out of the bag: http://mediamatters.org/items/200609250008
Frist asserted that "no responsible person" is going to "comment on individual techniques" that would or would not be permitted under the new law, because doing so "helps the terrorists." . . .

And now, the bill gets even worse

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009570.php
[Kevin Drum] John McCain's compromise with President Bush on detainee legislation may not have accomplished much, but it did contain at least a few worthwhile measures. Now, though, Republicans in Congress apparently want to water it down even more. The plan is to redefine "unlawful enemy combatant" from someone who is

engaged in hostilities against the United States

to someone who is

engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States

"Supported" is a pretty far-reaching term that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with actual combat. And while this vagueness would be disturbing enough by itself, it's even worse than it seems because other provisions of the legislation prohibit someone accused of "supporting" hostilities from challenging their detention in U.S. courts — even if the detainee is a U.S. citizen. . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092501514.html

Arlen Specter (R-PA) is beneath contempt . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/washington/25cnd-detain.html
Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee sought to slow down the effort by President Bush and Congressional leaders to speed the passage of legislation on the treatment of terror suspects.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is the panel’s chairman, described as “inexplicable” a provision in the bill that would strip federal court of jurisdiction over detainees not formally charged with war crimes.

“If the courts are not open to decide constitutional issues, how is constitutionality going to be tested?’’ he asked. . .

[NB: Well, the Bush people have an answer to that. But read on]

http://susiemadrak.com/2006/09/25/19/38/the-man-of-principle/
[Reuters] “I believe it is unconstitutional to take away habeas corpus,” Specter of Pennsylvania told reporters after a hearing with a panel of experts who were divided on the issue. . . While Specter said he would try to amend the bill, he said he would not use procedural tools to block it and he would decide later how he would vote on it.

[Susan Madrak] Got that? He believes it’s wrong. He believes it’s unconstitutional. But he won’t try to block it, and he doesn’t know how he’ll vote on it.

. . . and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is in close competition

http://lamontblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/no-accountability_25.html
[Lieberman] But the fact is, as vexing and painful as this situation is today, we don't have the luxury of playing "what if" games with the past. . .

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/25/ap/politics/mainD8KBUPS80.shtml
"The clear choice before Connecticut's voters in this campaign is Ned Lamont's plan for giving up on Iraq versus my plan for getting the job done there. . . The Lamont plan for immediate withdrawal and an arbitrary deadline is doomed to fail and weaken our security. . . It will leave our troops more vulnerable to attack while they remain, and will leave Iraq to become a failed state and a terrorist breeding ground when were gone."

He also urged both sides to find common ground on the war.

"We have to realize that reasonable people can disagree on this difficult question, and that does not make you a terrorist sympathizer, on the one hand, or a warmonger, on the other."

[NB: I like that: reasonable people can disagree, but Lamont will “weaken our security. . . leave our troops more vulnerable to attack . . . and will leave Iraq to become a failed state and a terrorist breeding ground”]

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_24_atrios_archive.html#115921016808537815
[Atrios] Joe's a grown man, but when it comes to personal responsibility he's a pathetic little child.

His speech today was what we've come to expect from the last honest man: a bit of lying, a bit of buckpassing, and the millionth restatement of his apparent belief that if only wise men like him could get together and talk about stuff and agree on something, anything, without being criticized by pesky voters then the ponies would be found in Iraq. Never mind that the people in charge don't care what wise men, even wise men like Joe, think about anything. The real problem is the magical force created by critics which prevents them having their serious wise man discussion.

George Allen (R-VA): trapped by his own past

http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-sou--virginiasenate0925sep25,0,6241183.story
"The story and his comments and assertions in there are completely false," Allen said during an interview with AP reporters and editors. "I don't remember ever using that word and it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#009978
As you've probably heard, Larry Sabato, establishment political analyst and election forecaster, was on Hardball tonight. And he said whether Sen. Allen's denies it today or not, Allen did use the N-word in college. Here's a short video of the exchange in question. (Both men graduated from UVA in 1974.) . . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/another-person-comes-forward-and-says.html
[NYT] Christopher Taylor, an anthropology professor at Alabama University in Birmingham, Ala., said that in the early 1980’s he heard Mr. Allen use an inflammatory epithet for African Americans. Mr. Taylor, who is white and was then a graduate student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said the term came up in a conversation about the turtles in a pond near Mr. Allen’s property. According to Mr. Taylor, Mr. Allen said that “around here” only the African Americans — whom he referred to by the epithet — “eat ‘em.”

[John Aravosis] "I don't remember" is not a denial. And the phrase "never part of my vocabulary," what exactly does that mean? Does that mean he never used the word, ever? Come on. I could actually forgive someone admitting to having used the word a few times in their life decades ago - I think a lot of adults today would be hard pressed to say "never" - but we're to believe that George Allen NEVER used it, ever?

And now here comes another “compromise” on warrantless surveillance

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115924888430302631
[NYT] Republican leaders said Monday that they had reached a tentative agreement to garner political support for legislation on domestic surveillance, in part by sidestepping the question of whether the president has the constitutional authority to order wiretapping without a court order. . .

Some lawmakers and civil rights advocates said they believed that the three senators had mischaracterized or misinterpreted what they had agreed to and that the White House was retaining the right to order wiretaps without a warrant.

The administration declined to say when it would choose to seek warrants under the new plan. . .

[Digby] As Norman Ornstein said about the torture cave-in: "It sure doesn't look to me as if they stood up and did anything other than bare their teeth for some ceremonial barking, before giving the president a whole lot of leeway. I find it really troubling."

Yes, it is "troubling" to see three more brave Republican defenders of civil liberties (and Arlen Specter) pretend to be standing up for truth and the American way make yet another one of those last minute "deals" with the president that legalizes every heinous thing he's done and giving him explicit congressional authority to keep doing it.

I hear the Senate is planning to put the combined the torture and spying bill that Mitch McConnell introduced last Friday to the vote. It's much more efficient to destroy the constitution with one big bill they can hold over Democrats' heads like a samurai sword if they fail to vote for it. Very clever.

“Just a comma” – will Bush pay for this callous remark? (thanks to Atrios for the video link)

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/25/cafferty-sometimes-politicians-say-really-dumb-things/
[Jack Cafferty] “Sometimes Politicians Say Really Dumb Things”

Who “cut and ran” from Somalia?

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/who-wanted-to-cut-and-run-from-somalia.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/25/clinton_2/index.html
[Jonah Goldberg] "The notion that conservatives opposed Clinton as Commander-in-Chief in the pre-war on terror or in other military ventures is simply unfair ... Sure, there were some wag the dog voices -- like noted rightwing trogs [sic] Arlen Specter and Christopher Hitchens -- but generally even the most partisan Republicans supported Clinton."

[Glenn Greenwald] It is hard to overstate how false Goldberg's claim is, as even Byron York reported, in Goldberg's own magazine, National Review (emphasis added): "Instead of striking a strong blow against terrorism, the action [launching cruise missiles at Osama bin Laden] set off a howling debate about Clinton's motives. The president ordered the action three days after appearing before the grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair, and Clinton's critics accused him of using military action to change the subject from the sex-and-perjury scandal -- the so-called 'wag the dog' strategy."

Leading GOP political figures and pundits repeatedly voiced such criticisms against Clinton. . . [read on!]

More from Keith Olbermann: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/25/olbermanns-special-comment-are-yours-the-actions-of-a-true-american/

Microtargeting: another way in which data-mining is making your lives better

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092501414.html
There is no sexier topic in politics these days than "microtargeting." That's the new science (some say dark art) by which candidates use the latest data-mining technology to vacuum every last scrap of information about voters, then churn out custom-tailored messages designed to herd their supporters to the polls. . .

Green Party in Pennsylvania off the ballot (that’s what they get for relying on Republicans to collect signatures for them)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/25/132440/799

Fox News strikes back

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609260002
Fox News dedicated its coverage of an interview of President Clinton by Chris Wallace to portraying Wallace as the victim, while depicting Clinton as having a "complete meltdown," an "angry explosion," a "volcanic reaction," and as going on a "tirade" during the interview. . .

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609260001

Billmon takes another sabbatical from his blog – man, we will miss you

http://billmon.org/archives/002762.html

Bonus item: Molly Ivins, national treasure

http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=miv
A debate on torture. I don't know -- what do you think? I guess we have to define it, first. The White House has already specified "water boarding," making some guy think he's drowning for long periods, as a perfectly good interrogation technique. Maybe, but it was also a great favorite of the Gestapo and has been described and condemned in thousands of memoirs and novels in highly unpleasant terms.

I don't think we can give it a good name again, and I personally kind of don't like being identified with the Gestapo. . .

Bush's problem is that despite repeated warnings, he went ahead with "the program" without waiting for Congress to provide a fig leaf of legality. Actually, we have been torturing prisoners at Gitmo, prisons in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan for years.

Since only seven of the several hundred prisoners at Gitmo have ever been charged with anything, we face the unhappy prospect that the rest of them are innocent. And will sue. That's going to be quite an expensive settlement. The Canadian upon whom we practiced "rendition," sending him to Syria for 10 months of torture, will doubtlessly be first on the legal docket. I wonder how high up the chain of command a civil suit can go? Any old war criminals wandering around?

I was interested to find that the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition is so in favor of torture he told McCain that the senator either supports the torture bill or he can forget about the evangelical Christian vote. I'd like to see an evangelical vote on that one. I don't know how Sheldon defines traditional values, but deliberately inflicting terrible physical pain or stress on someone who is completely helpless strikes me as ... well, torture. And, um, wrong. And I've smoked dope! Boy, everything those conservatives tell us about the terrible moral values of us liberals must be true after all. . .

***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).

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 @ 6:40 AM

 
THE ABYSS

The abyss

http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/09/torture_as_investigation/
[Matt Yglesias] While you can obviously imagine or gerrymander or stipulate a situation in which torture might yield useful information, in practice the systematic authorization of torture creates an army of butchers, not a crack investigative team. Bush, Cheney, and those around them remind me of Nietzsche's line about staring too long into the abyss. They've become transfixed, hypnotized almost, by the evils they believe themselves to be fighting. Obsessed to the point where they've clearly developed an admiration for the brutal methods, ruthless dishonesty, and utter secrecy with which the enemies of liberalism conduct themselves. . . [read on]

How much of the urgency to pass the torture bill (before the Senate may change hands) is based on panic about legal liability – including that of Bush and his aides?

http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ref23b.html

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009941.php

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004915.html

Frist: McCain “helps the terrorists”

http://www.slate.com/id/2150329
[Joshua Kucera] The Post stuffs, and appears alone in reporting, Sen. John McCain naming some specific interrogation techniques that would be banned under a compromise bill now in the Senate: extreme sleep deprivation, forced hypothermia and "waterboarding," among others. Probable presidential campaign rival Sen. Bill Frist said McCain's disclosure of the techniques "helps the terrorists."

[NB: By the way, I do not believe that the law bans these – and a good question to the Bush gang would be whether they concede that it does]

Crank up the old Victrola once again. Arlen Specter (R-PA) says the denial of habeas corpus rights could jeopardize the torture/tribunal bill when it gets to his committee (right Arlen, we're sure you REALLY mean it this time)

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015809.html

Are the Democrats prepared to fight it?

http://mydd.com/story/2006/9/24/145927/510

Could any administration get away with the callous way in which they write off thousands of American and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8551.html
BLITZER: Let's move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public, a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war, if not already a civil war…. We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. . .

BUSH: Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. . . . I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma . . . [read on]

Well, now we know why the Bush gang tried so hard to keep that National Intelligence Estimate from going public

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/washington/25terrorcnd.html
An American intelligence assessment that the war in Iraq has increased Islamic radicalism, worsening the terror threat, set off a sharp debate today among lawmakers and other political figures over credit and blame for the war and the broader fight against terrorism.

“The National Intelligence Estimate provides jarring confirmation that the disastrous policy in Iraq is a giant recruiting poster for terrorists,” Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, acknowledged on CNN that “the war in Iraq has intensified Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism,” although he added “that’s a problem that nobody seems to have an answer to.”

But the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, used language that echoed that of President Bush, saying that “either we are going to be fighting this battle, this war overseas, or it’s going to be right here in this country.”

The White House, apparently concerned that reports of the intelligence assessment could undercut one of its most fundamental arguments for staying in Iraq, quickly issued a statement. . . . The statement pointed out that President Bush has often spoken of the decentralization and dispersal of terrorist groups around the world, and it reiterated his frequent cautions that the terrorist threat remained potent. It noted that Osama bin Laden had declared the war in Iraq to be the most “serious issue today for the whole world.”

The strong words illustrated the extraordinary sensitivity in the debate over how to deal with the threat of terrorism and the stormy political blame game about who has done more, or should have done more, or would do more, to fight it. . . .

[NB: Of course, one might note that this WH “response” in fact addresses NONE of the issues raised by the NIE]

http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/09/its_official/
[Matt Yglesias] Consequently, for months and months the administration has reacted to the report not by trying to improve its policies, but rather by covering up the NIE. Same sorry old story, but it's an absolute disaster for the country. Meanwhile, much of our press continues to identify national security "toughness" with stubborn refusal to see what's lying right before everyone's eyes: The invasion of Iraq has been a gigantic, years-long rolling catastrophe for American security.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/24/iraqi.soldiers.ap/index.html
[AP] The plan was simple: Iraqi troops would block escape routes while U.S. soldiers searched for weapons house-by-house. But the Iraqi troops didn't show up on time.

When they finally did appear, the Iraqis ignored U.S. orders and let dozens of cars pass through the checkpoints in eastern Baghdad -- including an ambulance full of armed militiamen, according to U.S. soldiers interviewed recently.

Senior U.S. military officers may have hailed the performance of Iraqi forces in the ongoing security crackdown against militias and insurgents in Baghdad.

But some American soldiers working the streets of Baghdad's flashpoint Shiite neighborhoods say the Iraqi troops serving alongside them are among the worst they've ever seen . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/24/95826/2745
[Dem From CT] John Abizaid says no troops are coming come. Maliki visits Iran and setting up a Hezbollah-in-Baghdad food distribution program. The National Guard is needed to fix the broken army (i.e., there aren't more troops). Iraqi troops not only have divided loyalties, they're not competent. . . .

That security crackdown, aka the "must-win" Battle of Baghdad, all part of the on-going Iraqi civil war, isn't going so well either. How Republicans think this is going to stay out of the news between now and November is beyond me. But whether redeployment (the Murtha plan) is embraced by all Democrats or not, "stay the course" is a disaster that is only creating more terrorists and making us less safe.

Note to Democrats: we expect that to be heard loud and clear. Note to Republicans: you have a lot of explaining to do about why your policies are failing so miserably.

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/bush-didnt-try-to-stop-bin-laden-in.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/world/middleeast/25terror.html

John Negroponte says this story doesn’t reflect the totality of the NIE. Okay, then: just release the whole thing

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/24/AR2006092400986.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#009954
[DK] Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte offers that the assessment concludes that if the U.S. succeeds in stabilizing Iraq "fewer jihadists will leave Iraq determined to carry on the fight elsewhere."

The implication of course is that regardless of whether we succeed in Iraq, jihadists will leave determined to carry on the fight. It's just that if we fail, more will leave determined to fight.

Excellent. Our strategic objective now is to demoralize some of the jihadists. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#009946
[Josh Marshall] Call up your representative and senators -- Republican or Democrat, it doesn't matter -- and tell them you want the April National Intelligence Estimate ("Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States") released to the public. Now. Before the election. So the public can know what the White House has been keeping from them. . .

Rebellion in the ranks

http://www.slate.com/id/2150329
[Joshua Kucera] The Los Angeles Times leads with news that top Army officers are withholding key budget plans in protest of the administration's unwillingness to give that service, bearing the brunt of combat in Iraq, a larger portion of the overall defense budget. . . The portion of the military budget that the Army gets has remained stable for years, even as it has assumed a much greater role than the Navy and Air Force. The army's chief of staff has become increasingly vocal about it, and argues that the army either needs a lot more money – he's asked for a 41 percent budget increase – or a reduced mission. But one analyst noted that a large portion of the army's budget "needs" include something unrelated to Iraq: fancy new armored vehicles whose cost is spiraling rapidly out of control. It's all setting up a battle between the Army and the White House that should be, in the words of one officer quoted in the piece, "a pretty sporting little event."

Living wills

http://www.slate.com/id/2150329
[Joshua Kucera] Over 250 troops have suffered injuries in Iraq "that left them — at least initially — comatose or unable to care for themselves or respond to people," USA Today reports on the front page, and the Army is looking into placing more attention on living wills. . .

The partitioning of Iraq has always been just a matter of time: now it looks like sooner rather than later

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/world/middleeast/25iraqcnd.html

Gary Hart: Bush really will invade Iran before the election

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015810.html

Will he, won’t he? (a debate)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009945.php

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#009953

The Republican Congress’s screwed-up priorities

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/washington/25cong.html
Procrastination, power struggles and partisanship have left Congress with substantial work to finish before breaking for the elections. The fast-approaching recess and the Republican focus on national security legislation make it inevitable that much of the remainder will fall by the wayside. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/24/AR2006092400861.html
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) -- in a showdown with Senate Republicans -- has vowed he will not bring a major defense policy bill to the chamber floor this week unless Senate negotiators add a federal court security bill and a controversial House anti-illegal-immigration measure . . .

Maybe the reason why people keep suspecting that George Allen (R-VA) is a racist is because. . . he is

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_24_atrios_archive.html#115915263883592801

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/24/2317/66269

Theocracy watch: Jesus camp

http://billmon.org/archives/002757.html

What’s wrong with this picture?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015808.html
[TChris] LA Times columnist Steve Lopez asks why the IRS is investigating the All Saints Episcopal Church, where Rev. George Regas imagined a debate between John Kerry, George Bush and Jesus, while the agency ignores the New Revelation Missionary Baptist Church, just two miles away.

[Pastor William Turner Jr.] has proudly boasted to President Bush about converting 80% of his congregation from Democrat to Republican . . .

Let’s see: Hugo Chavez compares Bush with the Devil, to howls that this is outrageous, unacceptable discourse – will we hear those same voices again?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/24/22328/3437
"I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate," [Jerry] Falwell said at a breakfast session Friday in Washington. "I hope she's the candidate, because nothing will energize my (constituency) like Hillary Clinton," he said. "If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."

Katie Couric still has time to grow into her responsibilities as a network news honcho – but so far she seems like a bad impression of Barbara Walters

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004917.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/couric-delivers-quality-on-60-minutes.html

Chris Wallace says Fox News has questioned Bush officials on their failures to deal with Bin Laden before 9/11 “plenty” of times. Media Matters gives us the numbers, and the questions they SHOULD have asked

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609240002

Bonus item: Bill Clinton gives Fox News what for (don’t miss it)

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/24/fox-clinton-interview-part-1-osama-bin-laden/

***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).

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 @ 6:47 AM

 
APRIL FOOLS

Well, let’s hope this becomes the story of the week (the month, the year). What a devastating indictment

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/world/middleeast/24terror.html
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe. . . .

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/this-report-alone-ought-to-dictate.html
[Glenn Greenwald] This report alone ought to dictate the outcome of the election . . . [read on]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009557.php
[Kevin Drum] The point of an anti-terror policy is not to look tough. The point of an anti-terror policy is to reduce terror. Republicans pretty clearly don't get this. . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/23/17311/5610

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115907621385168295

Gee, they wouldn’t be using the on-again/off-again story about Bin Laden’s demise to drive this other news off the agenda, would they?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#009939
[Josh Marshall] You do remember how OBL had kidney disease, right? And how he had kidney failure? And at one point he even died of kidney failure before he got better and turned out not to have any kidney disease at all.

Given how many interested parties have stuff to gain by stoking these tales, like I said: show me the body. . .

Despite doing everything in their power to admit less-qualified soldiers and force the ones they have to do more tours of duty, the Bush/Rumsfeld approach to troop management has damaged the military and left us incapable of responding to any new threats. After the election? Watch them reactivate the National Guard

http://www.intel-dump.com/archives/archive_2006_09_17-2006_09_23.shtml#1158687984

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1538579,00.html

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/22/america/web.0922army.php

Fox News, unable to nail Clinton with their accusations that he is to blame for the current terror threat, takes a more typically subtle approach

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/23/fox-clinton-promo/
“Clinton gets crazed”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009936
They have now changed it to "Strong Reaction."

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015798.html
Fox News' Chris Wallace thought he could pull a fast one of Bill Clinton during an interview that was supposed to be about Clinton's Global Initiative, which today announced the creation of a $1 billion renewable energy fund. Two questions into the interview, Wallace asked Clinton about his not having caught Osama bin Laden during his Presidency. Wallace got creamed. . .

Chris Wallace, liar: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/23/wallace-cole/
Fox News Host Chris Wallace asked Bill Clinton why he didn’t respond to the USS Cole. Clinton said it was a “legitimate question” but challenged Wallace: “I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked why didn’t you do anything about the Cole.” First, Wallace responded, “we asked.” When pressed further by Clinton, Wallace demurred: “I — with Iraq and Afghanistan there’s plenty of stuff to ask.” . . .

Watch them squeal

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115908726312826076

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/daddy-billy-clinton-was-mean-to-me.html

Clinton’s OTHER interview (crazed, huh?)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8549.html
[MSNBC] "Now, the way we play the game, at our best moments, is that we don't have an ideology with a predetermined outcome. We have philosophies. Dominantly, we have a conservative philosophy and a progressive philosophy, and it sort of tells kind of where we're likely to be, but we're all interested in evidence and argument and learning.

"And the great test of America has always been, does it work? Are people better off if we do it or not? And we just keep growing and learning in that climate, always with one dominant conservative stream, one dominant progressive. And the debate and the tension and the learning has been great for us.

"So what we don't want to do is, no matter how scared we get — and it's OK to be frightened by the prospect of horrible things happening — we don't want to respond to this terror threat in a way that fundamentally alters the character of our country or compromises the future of our children, because that's what makes it great being American. . .”

Here’s the truth about Bush’s failure to deal with terror in his first months in office

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/devastating-washington-post-analysis.html

We know Congress often doesn’t read the legislation they vote to approve – but with the torture bill they will really be voting in the dark

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009937
[Boston Globe] As lawmakers prepare to debate the CIA's special interrogation program for terrorism suspects, fewer than 10 percent of the members of Congress have been told which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.

[DK] But that doesn't stop the esteemed gentleman from Alabama: "I don't know what the CIA has been doing, nor should I know," said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican.

The piece points out that the Army Field Manual spells out in detail which interrogation techniques are acceptable and which are prohibited, which undermines the Administration's contention that the details of its interrogation techniques should remain classified.

It sort of fits that the same folks who let the Administration keep them constantly in the dark don't see anything wrong with keeping alleged terrorists in the dark about the evidence against them.

Does ANYONE understand what the torture bill actually says?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115902587837736775
[Digby] The point is that it is deliberately obtuse. . . While the "compromise" is incoherent, what's quite clear are the moral and legal issues involved. Whether you argue from within a faith or from a purely naturalistic standpoint without recourse to any higher deity or cause, torture is wrong. Always. It's wrong not because it doesn't work and leads to false and often dangerously misleading confessions. It's wrong because it violates the essence of what it means to be a human being, whether you define that essence as a gift from God or derive it from purely naturalistic principles.

It is that simple. And it is beyond mind-blowing that such a basic goes-without-saying moral principle as a ban on torture needs to be asserted in 21st Century America. . .

“The McCain, Graham, Warner trio really fought back and prevented the administration from winning its effort to reinterpret Common Article 3,” said Jennifer Daskal, the United States advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

The proposed law, at least if it is interpreted honestly, Ms. Daskal said, would prohibit interrogation techniques like sleep deprivation, forced standing for long periods and extreme temperatures.

"The proposed law, at least if it is interpreted honestly..." Now, that's funny. . . [read on]

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/everyone-including-democrats-agrees-to.html
[Glenn Greenwald] No matter where one stands on the ideological spectrum, there is nothing confusing or unclear or ambiguous about the so-called "compromise" on torture, nor is there a lack of clarity about who won. It couldn't be any clearer. On the interrogation issue, there was only one simple issue from the beginning -- the Bush administration, through the CIA, has been using an array of "interrogation techniques" (induced hypothermia, long standing, threats to harm families, waterboarding) which most of the world considers to be torture. The question was whether the U.S. would be a country that uses these torture techniques (as the administration wanted) or whether it would ban them. That was the only issue all along. . . [read on]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.php#009941
[DK] As was noted yesterday, we're engaged in this utterly surreal dance where the morally blind are leading the ignorant. We still don't know what has been done in our names. Were it up to them, we would never know. But trust us, they say, we did what we had to to protect you. We won't tell you what. And, oh, by the way, please pardon us for our misdeeds, if any. . . [read on]

http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2006/09/22/the-debate-is-over/
[eRobin] Barring a filibuster of the Great Torture Compromise, which, like Digby, I think is simply not going to happen, state-sanctioned torture will become the official policy of the United States of America. When we vote, we will be voting in support of torture. When we recite the pledge, we will be pledging our allegiance to waterboarding and other, undisclosed toture techniques. When we pay our taxes, we will be paying for torture. When our children, God, our poor children, write essays in praise of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, they will be writing in praise of torture.

That’s what these cowards in power have done to us all. . .

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3389
[Swopa] Democrats are going to get the worst of all worlds -- they're going to acquiesce to allowing officially-endorsed torture by the United States, look spineless to the public for not taking a stand, and get slandered by the Republicans just as they would. This is what learned helplessness gets you, folks.

At first, it seemed like the Senate Democrats might be attempting something like the drafting principle in stock car racing, lurking quietly behind in the slipstream as simian trio of McCain, Graham, and Warner absorbed the headwind of opposing the Fear President. Unfortunately, it's now obvious that they were comfortable staying in second place for the entire race... and if they're not careful, it's where they're going to up on Election Day, too.

At the end of last year, I made a simple observation: "Republicans are going to keep beating Democrats with the national-security stick until we grab it out of their hands and break it." If it hadn't been torture, it would (and may yet be) warrantless NSA spying, or Iran, or heaven knows what else. Regardless of the issue, Dubya is going to proclaim that he's doing what it takes to protect this country, and anyone who stands up against torture/spying/whatever just doesn't care as much about keeping American from getting blown up/raped/their throats slit by terrorists.

As I wrote on Wednesday, though, the Dems can make huge strides toward defeating this strategy simply by asserting, loud and clear, that there is a better way to defend the country. The recent Washington Post article on "security moms" changing their views showed how even Americans who worry about terrorism are absolutely heartsick at the path the Shrub-in-Chief has led us down.

These voters are begging to hear that there's a better way to make the U.S. safe -- a way that makes more sense, and doesn't debase our national conscience -- if only Democrats are brave enough to stand up and promise it, and to point out the corrosive effect that GOP "security" policies are having on all of us. The plain truth is, Dubya is saying he thinks we need to torture people to protect America. Democrats disagree, and the more bluntly they expose this contrast, the easier they'll make it for voters to side with them.

Instead of talking reverently about the sanctimonious troika of McCain, Graham, and Warner, Democrats should dismiss them as irrelevant: They're Republican senators who gave in to pressure from a Republican president. There's nothing surprising there. If Americans want a real second opinion to be heard in Washington, they're going to have to elect Democrats. That's the only way to put limits on a President who never knows when to stop. That's the only way the next two years are going to be different than the last four.

Imagine a television ad that expresses these points while revealing Dubya as the failure-prone, evasive-talking fraud he is... first, we see the Shrubster hysterically pleading for war against Iraq, talking of mushroom clouds, and then fade into images of post-invasion death and destruction there. A voiceover says, "Was this the best way to defend America?"

Then we see the Shrub talking about "grave breaches" and "lesser breaches" of the Geneva Conventions (or some other euphemism), contrasted with images of Abu Ghraib to remind us he's really talking about wanting to torture people. The voiceover says again, "Is this the best way to defend America?" . . .

Explain THIS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092200507.html
Draft legislation to create a new system of military courts for terrorism suspects would allow prosecutors to introduce at future trials confessions that were obtained through "cruel, unusual, or inhumane" interrogations by the CIA or the military before 2005, but not afterward. . .

A “rigorous process” (uh-huh)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115906089361546944

Bush’s poodle

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/intelligence-what-intelligence-i-never.html
[Chris] A note of a private meeting between Mr Blair and President Bush in January 2003 shows that Tony Blair failed to confront Mr Bush when he claimed Saddam Hussein had tried to buy aluminium tubes for nuclear weapons production.

Mr Blair did not contradict the President despite having received "private briefings" which indicated that the aluminium tubes were more likely to be for conventional weapons, according to the new edition of a book by the international lawyer Philippe Sands published tomorrow.

Quick, Republicans say, let’s cobble together a “Homeland Security” bill to show how much we’re doing to keep people safe

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092300909.html
Homeland Security Bill Is More Style Than Substance, Analysts Say

The war against the press continues

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092300947.html
The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed consideration of a federal shield law for journalists after hearing strong new objections to the measure from the Justice Department.

The postponement all but guarantees that there will be no Senate action on the measure until Congress returns after the November elections. Even then, passage of the legislation is doubtful given powerful opposition in the House and from the Bush administration . . .

How will Joe Lieberman (I-CT) vote on the torture bill? It will be interesting to watch – but this is what he SAID

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/23/14921/8405
[2005] You can agree with Judge Gonzales's position in this matter or not. I happen to agree with the ultimate decision made. And the decision was, in my opinion, a reasonable one, and ultimately a progressive one. The decision was that under the terms of the Geneva Convention, al Qaeda simply is not a state party to the Convention, is a terrorist group and as such its members were not entitled to prisoner of war status. And there's a sentence in Judge Gonzales's opinion that has been quoted with great derision, laughter, as if it was over the edge. He wrote, "The new paradigm war on terrorism renders "quaint" some of the provisions requiring that a captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, script advances of monthly pay, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments."

I think Judge Gonzales was being restrained and diplomatic in using the word "quaint" to offer these benefits.... Giving these benefits to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the attacks against us on September 11, wouldn't be quaint. It would be offensive. It would be ridiculous. It would be ultimately unjust. . .

Michael Steele (REPUBLICAN-MD) seems to have trouble with being identified as a member of the GOP. He has done everything possible to obscure and confuse that issue

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/23/161331/481

Republican rebound?

http://www.slate.com/id/2150325
[Jesse Stanchak] The WP says that strategists from both parties think the GOP is in better shape now than it was a month ago, as the election season heads into its final 6 weeks. The insider quotes amount to Republicans in damage-control mode and Democrats not wanting to sound over-confident. . .

The Sunday talk show line-up

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092301046.html
FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Former president Bill Clinton and JoGayle Howard of the National Zoo.

THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), New Jersey Senate candidate Thomas H. Kean Jr. (R), and comedian Bob Newhart.

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

LATE EDITION (CNN): Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Iraqi President Jalal Talibani, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), Republican strategist Matthew Dowd, Democratic strategist Stan Greenberg, former secretary of state Alexander M. Haig Jr. and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Richard C. Holbrooke.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Clinton, Karzai and former senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo.).

Bonus item: Wow, this is the Web at its best. A single site with all Democratic and Republican campaign expenditures, district by district

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/23/20155/3647

***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).

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 @ 8:21 AM

 
AN ORGANIZED CRIME FAMILY

The insipid coverage of the torture “compromise” can’t get past the hackneyed question of “who blinked first,” “who won,” etc – as if this little pas de deux hadn’t been enacted many, many times before. Republicans seem to be showing independence and integrity, and yet in the end they give the Bush gang EXACTLY what it wants. I am mostly convinced that this whole scenario was scripted, or at least steered, from the start: End with the plan for a jovial, feel-good compromise in which “everyone wins,” then arrange a certain degree of “loyal opposition” in which both sides get to posture as men of principle, but in which a fundamental challenge to Bush’s policy is never really in question. Generate a narrative of apparent conflict (guaranteed to get front and center coverage in every news forum), but conflict which never actually touches upon the underlying issues of torture and illegal imprisonment (“we all agree that we need to give the President the tools he needs. . .”).

At every stage keep the Democrats marginalized and on the side line of Great Decisions of State (a process in which the Dems are all too happy to cooperate). Sound like a Karl Rove production to you?

Meanwhile, I will say who lost in all this: this country lost, its self-conception as a moral exemplar for the world has lost, and the poor wretches (whatever they may have done) who are being, and will be treated, as subhuman creatures have certainly lost

http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/2006/09/andrew-sullivan-got-suckeredfrom-his.html
[Quiddity] This compromise, or whatever you want to call it, should be the death-knell for any notions that "moderate" Republicans will be anything other than enablers of Bush.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/22/BL2006092200703.html
[Dan Froomkin] Pay no attention to the news stories suggesting that the White House caved in yesterday. . . [read on]

http://americaabroad.tpmcafe.com/blog/americaabroad/2006/sep/22/delegating_to_the_president_on_torture
[Juliette Kayyem] Let's assume for the sake of argument that there ought to be a series of interrogation tactics that fall short of grave breaches but that ought still not to be permissible. That sounds right, indeed. But, the problem is the complete deferral to the President on this determination. . . It is this concession to the President that is mindboggling in almost all respects because the hold-outs could have given the President the less than grave tactics without giving him the sole authority to determine what they were.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009920
[JC] Right now, CIA are the bad guys. As far as I know, military interrogators were not using "coercive techniques."

However, if this bill passes, military interrogators will not only be ALLOWED to use them, they will be EXPECTED to use them.

Which is one reason so many military people have come out against it.

Thank you, Billmon

http://billmon.org/archives/002754.html

Glenn Greenwald, busy at Salon this week

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/22/eavesdropping/index.html
The McCain-Graham-Warner proposal concerning military commissions was, from the beginning, an awful bill that was quite radical in its own right. . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/22/gop_senators/index.html
If one good thing can come from our country's apparent decision to legalize torture, perhaps we can finally agree to kill off the "Myth of the Independent Republican Senators." To see how this myth plays out time and again, one can take a quick trip down recent memory lane. . .

Betrayed: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/torture_/2006/09/betrayed.php

Tell us how you REALLY feel, Charles

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1477.html
[Charles Pierce] You worthless passel of cowards. They're laughing at you. You know that, right?

The national Democratic Party is no longer worth the cement needed to sink it to the bottom of the sea. For an entire week, it allowed a debate on changing the soul of the country to be conducted intramurally between the Torture Porn and Useful Idiot wings of the Republican Party, the latter best exemplified by John McCain, who keeps fashioning his apparently fathomless ambition into a pair of clown shoes with which he can do the monkey dance across the national stage. They're laughing at him, too.

The New York Times has the right of it here, limning the pathetic gullibility at the heart of the "compromise." There is nothing in this bill that President Thumbscrews can't ignore. There is nothing in this bill that reins in his feckless and dangerous reinterpretation of the powers of his office. There is nothing in this bill that requires him to take it -- or its congressional authors -- seriously. Two weeks ago, John Yoo set down in The New York Times the precise philosophical basis on which the administration will sign this bill and then ignore it. The president will decide what a "lesser breach" of the Geneva Conventions is? How can anyone over the age of five give this president that power? And wait until you see the atrocity that I guarantee you is coming down the tracks concerning the fact that the president committed at least 40 impeachable offenses with regard to illegal wiretapping.

And the Democratic Party was nowhere in this debate. It contributed nothing. On the question of whether or not the United States will reconfigure itself as a nation which tortures its purported enemies and then grants itself absolution through adjectives -- "Aggressive interrogation techniques" -- the Democratic Party had…no opinion. On the issue of allowing a demonstrably incompetent president as many of the de facto powers of a despot that you could wedge into a bill without having the Constitution spontaneously combust in the Archives, well, the Democratic Party was more pissed off at Hugo Chavez.

This was as tactically idiotic as it was morally blind. On the subject of what kind of a nation we are, and to what extent we will live up to the best of our ideals, the Democratic Party was as mute and neutral as a stone. Human rights no longer have a viable political constituency in the United States of America. Be enough of a coward, though, and cable news will fit you for a toga.

However, because I know it is vital for the Democrats to "recapture" the good Christian folks, there's a passage from Scripture that seems apropos: "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it."

What next for the Democrats?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1478.html
[Sam Rosenfeld] [I]t was substantively a fool's game and a disgrace for Democrats to consciously refuse to engage the torture debate, and, as The Times puts it, "it’s time for them to either try to fix this bill or delay it until after the election." I totally agree with this. I will only note -- not by way of defending the Democrats, but merely of lamenting the state of the nation on this issue -- something Sandy Levinson said yesterday. He asked why, if the Democrats can openly be called the party of death, the Republicans shouldn't be known as "the party of torture" . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/22/225049/059
[Georgia10] The tragic consequence of inaction is that now, with a vote likely to be scheduled next week, there isn't enough time to organize a filibuster, even if the Democrats wanted to exercise their minority rights. Their procrastination leaves them with the Kerry-esque conundrum of having to drum up reluctant and wary Senators days before the vote, in an election season to boot.

And so, we lose another fight. Well, "lose" may not be the right word, as it implies we were in the fight to begin with. This isn't about the folly of bringing knives to a gunfight. Democrats aren't even bringing knives. A boxload of press releases? Yep. A lot of good that did us.

Look, I'm just a girl, writing on a blog. I'm not a consultant, I don't even pretend to be a political strategist, and I know that my advice, along with the advice of thousands others, carries little weight and falls upon deaf ears.

But a girl can dream.

And in my dream, in a world where Democrats let their blindfolds fall to the floor, in a world where they finally see what we see---where they see the irreversible consequence of their inaction thundering towards them like the darkest and most foreboding storm...in my dream, they would stand up. One by one. All as one. Standing up and turning their faces towards the hot air spewing from their adversaries and screaming back into the howling wind: No More.

No more. We will no longer tolerate the abrogation of human rights. We will no longer tolerate waterboarding. We will no longer tolerate secret prisons operating outside the purview of the law, or the practice of having humans whisked away in the dark of night to foreign lands where they can be tortured with impunity.

We will no longer tolerate the classification of a majority of Americans as traitors. We will no longer tolerate the notion that American citizens are by default suspects who must have their every phone call and email monitored.

We will no longer tolerate this decaying of due process, this perverted version of "justice" where a man can be detained indefinitely, or where he can be convicted by secret evidence.

Simply put, we will no longer tolerate the administration of this war in such a totalitarian manner. This is America, as the administration has evidently forgotten, and America doesn't do torture. Period.

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7255
[Holden] Were this bill to pass both houses of congress, I don't see how in hell it would hold up in court, particularly before the Supreme Court as it is currently configured. And this bill has not yet passed, it's not even out of committee yet.

It's time for Democrats to step up. . .

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2006/09/shame_and_horror.html
[Michael Froomkin] The Democrats, having until now largely chosen to stay quiet on grounds of political expediency, now face a moral choice about how hard to fight the destruction of habeas corpus and the ratification of de facto unreviewable power to torture.

First option, block this horror -- filibuster if needed -- and risk paying a political price. . .

What next for the press?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8541.html
[Steve Benen] In the wake of the "compromise" on torture between the White House and Senate Republicans, the media coverage has been a bit of a mixed bag. The WaPo and the NYT ran helpful, illuminating op-eds that everyone should read, but a lot of the coverage has been, sadly, more about the politics than the policy. We're getting a lot about who "won" the negotiations and how this will affect the midterm elections.

Dan Froomkin noted, accurately, that part of the problem lies in the fact that political reporters had paid almost no attention to the story until the intra-party rift added drama to the question of whether we'll continue to torture detainees. With the president having struck a deal with the Three Stooges, Froomkin predicts that "most reporters' tendencies will be to cover the issue mostly from the angle of its effectiveness as a political cudgel in the mid-term elections."

Froomkin makes a great case that it's up to reporters to flesh out the details and offer the public "a full and open debate on this important moral issue." In fact, he has a few suggestions of questions that need answers. . . [read on!]

A good start

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/us/23legal.html
The compromise reached on Thursday between Congressional Republicans and the White House on the interrogations and trials of terrorism suspects is, legal experts said yesterday, a series of interlocking paradoxes.

It would impose new legal standards that it forbids the courts to enforce.

It would guarantee terrorist masterminds charged with war crimes an array of procedural protections. But it would bar hundreds of minor figures and people who say they are innocent bystanders from access to the courts to challenge their potentially lifelong detentions.

And while there is substantial disagreement about just which harsh interrogation techniques the compromise would prohibit, there is no dispute that it would allow military prosecutors to use statements that had been obtained under harsh techniques that are now banned.

The complex, technical and often ambiguous language in the 94-page measure was a subject of debate, posturing and, perhaps, some wishful thinking yesterday. Each side in the hard-fought negotiations — the White House and the three opposing Republican senators — declared victory. . .

Why torture needs to stay illegal EVEN IF the “ticking time bomb” scenario is correct

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009924

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009921

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009915

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009917

Waterboarding, yes or no?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/john-mccain-john-warner-and-lindsey.html

More lies

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/09/22/fate_of_some_cia_detainees_still_unknown/
President Bush's announcement this month that the CIA has emptied out its secret prisons has raised new questions about what has happened to dozens of Al Qaeda suspects who were believed to have been in US custody.

One of them is Aafia Siddiqui . . .

“The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power”

http://makeashorterlink.com/?N2BB524DD
[AP] Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday. . .

As they stand up. . .Uh, guys? Guys?. . . this is supposed to be the STANDING UP part. . . Guys?

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html
The U.S. needs roughly 3,000 more Iraqi forces to join the battle in Baghdad, but requests for the troops have not been met because Iraqi soldiers are reluctant to leave their home regions, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad said Friday. . .

This – is – appalling

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_17_atrios_archive.html#115894598189262949
Me: But isn’t it the Supreme Court that’s supposed to decide whether laws are unconstitutional or not?

Tony: No, as a matter of fact the president has an obligation to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is an obligation that presidents have enacted through signing statements going back to Jefferson. So, while the Supreme Court can be an arbiter of the Constitution, the fact is the President is the one, the only person who, by the Constitution, is given the responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend that document, so it is perfectly consistent with presidential authority under the Constitution itself.

Don’t read this if you are prone to depression

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115898810938213828
[Digby] I have written often about how the Republicans are becoming what they railed against for decades: totalitarians. . .

In what universe is the Alphonso Jackson story NOT a front-page scandal? The man openly tells his staff at HUD that party affiliation should be a factor in awarding government contracts: an internal report confirms this fact – and he still has a job? Democrats: get busy!

The HUD report: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/22/jackson-blocked-democrats/

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009548.php
[Kevin Drum] Think Progress has the executive summary of the HUD Inspector General's report into Alphonso Jackson's apparent distaste for awarding federal contracts to Democrats. There's no smoking gun, but there is this:

Investigation did disclose some problematic instances involving HUD contacts and cooperative agreement grants, in particular, the cooperative agreement award issued to Abt Associates. . . Secretary JACKSON’s Chief of Staff also identified other instances of Secretary JACKSON intervening with contractors whom he did not like. Reviews of political contributions indicated these contractors had Democratic political affiliations.

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8536.html
[Steve Benen] A lot of us would like to get more details from the HUD report itself, but the inspector general's office said it would not release the full, 340-page report. (Gotta love that Bush administration respect for transparency in government.) The Dallas Business Journal has filed a FOIA request to obtain it. . .

As it happens, yesterday's news looked bad for Jackson. Today's news looks much worse. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/internal-review-shows-hud-secretary.html

Bush treats his education policies just as he treats Halliburton and his oil buddies: loyal contributors and cronies get the spoils

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8542.html
[Steve Benen] Reading First is not just another grant program in the Department of Education. According to the cabinet agency's website, it is "the academic cornerstone of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act." Reading First, the Department of Education has argued "is a prime example of the No Child Left Behind law's emphasis on programs and teaching methods that have been proven to work."

As the "academic cornerstone" of its education policy, the administration has funding the reading program with some enthusiasm. Over the last four years, about 1,500 school districts have received $4.8 billion in Reading First grants.

All of this matters because, as it turns out, the Bush administration ran the program the same way it does practically everything — with incompetence, corruption, and disregard for the law.

A scorching internal review of the Bush administration's reading program says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted.

The government audit is unsparing in its review of how Reading First, a billion-dollar program each year, that it says has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. It suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use.

It also depicts a program in which review panels were stacked with people who shared the director's views and in which only favored publishers of reading curricula could get money.

The Bush administration? Manipulating a multi-billion program while breaking the law? You don't say.

In one particularly amusing example, Chris Doherty, the Reading First director wrote an email to a staff member, urging the aide to come down hard on a company he didn't support. "They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the (expletive deleted) out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags," Doherty wrote.

(By the way, Doherty told a Senate committee his program did not give certain publishers preferential treatment. He was lying.)

While Bush's Department of Education insists Reading First emphasized programs that have "been proven to work," today we learned that the curriculum pushed by the agency was suspect. So, why'd Bush's cronies push it to the point of illegality? Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, has an idea.

The Bush administration pushed local school districts across the country to use a reading curriculum that had been developed by a company with close political and financial ties to the administration despite concerns about the quality of the curriculum […]

"Corrupt cronies at the Department of Education wasted taxpayer dollars on an inferior reading curriculum for kids that was developed by a company headed by a Bush friend and campaign contributor," said Miller. "Instead of putting children first, they chose to put their cronies first. Enough is enough. President Bush and Secretary Spellings must take responsibility and do a wholesale housecleaning at the Education Department. […]

McGraw-Hill's Chairman and CEO, Harold McGraw III, and its Chairman Emeritus, Harold McGraw Jr., contributed a total of over $23,000 to the Republican National Committee and to President Bush's campaigns between 1999 and 2006. The Bush and McGraw families have been personally and professionally close since the 1930's, according to published reports.

Some days, I'm amazed at the degree to which the Bush administration resembles an organized crime family.

By now we have to expect that the head of the EPA will be anti-environment, the head of the Labor Dept will be anti-labor, etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/us/22soot.html
The Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator on Thursday rejected the recommendations of his staff — and an unusual public plea from independent science advisers — choosing instead to tighten only one of two standards regulating the amount of lethal particles of soot in the air. . .

[NB: Scientific research? Ha! They only invoke it when it supports their policies]

And at the Food and Drug Administration. . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2150320/
[Conor Clarke] All the papers give big play to the bombshell report on federal drug regulations, which the FDA apparently requested. It might regret doing so, since, in the words of the NYT, the study describes the agency as "rife with internal squabbles and hobbled by underfinancing, poor management and outdated regulations." All the papers mention the report's laundry list of fixers, including a moratorium on consumer advertising, mandatory five-year drug re-evaluations, a government-run database for clinical trials, and a fixed term for the FDA commissioner. Most note that the report's concern is largely with newly released drugs, and all the papers—except the Post—mention a major reason why that's the case: Vioxx, the arthritis medication that Merck pulled after studies found it doubled the risk of heart attack.

A back-door UN appointment for John Bolton?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001656.php

These vindictive bastards. There is no end to what they will do to keep punishing those they see as disloyal (and isn’t it strange that mistakes keep being made by EX-Bush officials?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092200105.html
President Bush said today he was surprised by reports that a former top State Department official threatened heavy U.S. bombing of Pakistan if it did not cooperate with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Pakistan's visiting president declined to comment on the purported threat, citing a book deal. . .

[NB: Book deal!?!!? And all the press did was chuckle when Musharraf said his PUBLISHERS wouldn’t let him answer the question. Global politics reduced to the same level as a movie star’s kiss-and-tell autobiography]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009919
[Josh Marshall] At some level I almost have to admire the in-your-face, out in public and entirely brazen sort of payback the Bush White House metes out to those who are so villainous as to break the Bush code of silence. You can see it now in an almost comical mendacity about whether Dick Armitage was somehow off the reservation when he threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if the country didn't get religion, shall we say, on rooting out the Taliban in the days after 9/11. . . (I guess the president missed all those news reports at the time that bragged on our 'with us or against us' speech to Pakistan.)

Have the Democrats decided to run away from Bush’s failures in Iraq and his mangling of the Constitution and rule of law as issues for the fall?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1481.html#010038
[Ezra Klein] Bloggers are in an understandable uproar over a Roll Call article in which a hodgepodge of nameless Democratic aides reveal that the leadership is readying to party like it's 2002 and refocus the election on economic issues. I'm a bit skeptical. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi haven't proven themselves to be obvious idiots (indeed, quite the contrary) over the past couple of years. And given, as Kos says, that 2002 and 2004 were both disasters based on that very strategy, I have a tough time believing they're itching for a repeat. Add in that "unnamed Democratic" strategists and aides could be anybody and tend to be willing to spout whatever counterproductive pabulum reporter's want, and I'm a bit hesitant to jump on this one as gospel truth.

So I called up some folks in the Democratic leadership to ask them whether the story was truthful. The answer I got was "sort of" . . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/22/104446/786

Or not? http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/092106/iraq.html
Congressional Democrats plan to hold Iraq war hearings on Capitol Hill and around the country, turning an election spotlight on an issue much as the GOP did with immigration during the summer recess.

The Democrats’ will highlight the fact that they intend to go toe-to-toe with Republicans on the issue of national security, believing that this election cycle it can play to their advantage rather than to their detriment as it has in elections past. . .

http://mydd.com/story/2006/9/22/131838/670

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/22/182812/638

Hey, maybe the Dems SHOULD run on the economy

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/22/172648/691
[McJoan] The NYT is reporting that Bush and the Republicans are going to run against, get this, the Clinton years:

"The Democrats have made their position clear," Mr. Bush said. "I want you to remember the last time they had control of the United States Congress back in 1993, they passed a massive tax increase."

Yep. Those 1990s were an economic disaster weren't they? 25 million jobs. Record budget surpluses. No military debacles. Who would want that?

Or, as the The Onion so succinctly put it for posterity:

Bush: "Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over"

Jean Schmidt (R-OH): “embarrassing”

http://www.dccc.org/stakeholder/archives/005317.html

Things you can do

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/22/182246/285

Don’t miss it! Fox News brings on Bill Clinton, tries to nail him with hostile questioning. The problem, they discover, is that when you ask questions, you actually might get answers

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_17_atrios_archive.html#115897527666447420
[Chris Wallace] Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and al-Qaeda out of business when you were president? . . . [read on]

Bonus item: This is priceless – cable news is SO stupid about some things, and so easily distracted by right-wing talking points

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/22/11130/1428
[Kos] I just got a call from an MSNBC booker. She wanted to know if I wanted to go on the air to talk about Hugo Chavez. Apparently, he went off on some rant at the UN.

I said, "Why would I? Who cares about Hugo Chavez?"

The booker said, "well, it's all over talk radio and the blogs." Talk radio, of course, being Rush Limbaugh and company. The blogs, of course, being the wingnutosphere, happily promoting the latest Horrible Dictator Who Says Mean Things About Bush (unlike the ones in the Middle East, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan who are our "allies").

I said, "Well, this is a stupid topic. It means nothing. I am focused on things that actually matter to us."

"Is there another liberal blogger who is writing about it?"

"No. We're all focused on important things."

She was incredulous -- "Really?"

"Really. Do you actually think this is important?" I asked, suddenly incredulous myself.

"I don't have time to talk about this," she sniffed.

***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).

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 @ 8:41 AM

 
DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL

Hey, the system works! The inevitable “compromise” on torture is announced with great fanfare

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115887905021624458
[Digby] The "compromise" will, as I predicted, allow the "tough interrogations" by amending the war crimes act. And they will reportedly create a new JAG office to review classified information and determine if terrorist suspects can see it if it's being used against them in a trial. We already know they have devised some habeas corpus loophole to keep innocent people imprisoned without any due process. . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2150234
[Alexander Dryer] [T]he WSJ's quote from Sen. John McCain is typical: "We're all winners because we've been able to come to an agreement through a process of negotiations and consensus." But the details—not to mention crowing from the White House—indicate that the administration is walking off with a major victory while allowing the Senate to save face. . .

On the surface, the senators seem to have beaten back President Bush's efforts. The Los Angeles Times certainly plays it that way, calling the agreement a "major concession" on Bush's part and citing the approval of at least one major human rights group.

But the New York Times explains that while the Bush administration agreed not to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, an international treaty, the senators agreed that the War Crimes Act, a domestic law, should define what constitutes "grave breaches" of the Conventions. As for less serious violations of the Conventions ("those lying between cruelty and minor abuse," as the Post puts it), the senators agreed Bush should be given the authority to judge the Conventions' "meaning and application." (He will have to publish his interpretation, but details remain sketchy.) In short, the deal seems to be redefinition once removed, and the Post indicates that may have been all the McCain side wanted from the beginning. The "biggest hurdle" in negotiations, the paper reports, "was convincing administration officials that lawmakers would never accept language that allowed Bush to appear to be reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions" [emphasis added]. Certainly Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett views the "compromise" as one of perception only: "We proposed a more direct approach to bringing clarification. This one is more of the scenic route, but it gets us there," he says in the pages of the NYT.

As for the other main point of contention—secret evidence—the senators made more headway; the Post reports defendants will be allowed to see it in "summary or redacted form." . .

Unfortunately the major papers don't dig into what may prove to be a significant issue with the compromise legislation. As the Christian Science Monitor reports, even before negotiations began, both the administration and its senate opponents had provisions in their respective bills that would strip detainees of their right to file an application for a writ of habeas corpus. Apparently the goal is turning the prison at Guantánamo Bay back into a legal black hole.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009913
[Josh Marshall] The senate won't formally reinterpret the Geneva Convention or explicitly sanction the president's torture policies. But they'll allow him to keep using them.

That's the compromise.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/09/senators-snatch-defeat-from-jaws-of.html
[Marty Lederman] It's not subtle at all, and it only takes 30 seconds or so to see that the Senators have capitulated entirely. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101647.html
THE GOOD NEWS about the agreement reached yesterday between the Bush administration and Republican senators on the detention, interrogation and trial of accused terrorists is that Congress will not -- as President Bush had demanded -- pass legislation that formally reinterprets U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions. Nor will the Senate explicitly endorse the administration's use of interrogation techniques that most of the world regards as cruel and inhumane, if not as outright torture. Trials of accused terrorists will be fairer than the commission system outlawed in June by the Supreme Court.

The bad news is that Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/opinion/22fri1.html
Here is a way to measure how seriously President Bush was willing to compromise on the military tribunals bill: Less than an hour after an agreement was announced yesterday with three leading Republican senators, the White House was already laying a path to wiggle out of its one real concession. . .

But there’s more . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/washington/21habeas.html
Although the effort has been partly obscured by the highly publicized wrangling over military commissions for war crimes trials, the Bush administration and its allies in Congress are trying to use the same legislation to strip federal courts of their authority to review the detentions of almost all terrorism suspects. . .

Pentagon: we won’t tell you what we’re doing, and we won’t tell you who we’re doing it to

http://makeashorterlink.com/?K1BD212DD
[Reuters] A federal judge ordered the Pentagon on Wednesday to identify some detainees who say they were abused by U.S. military personnel at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff rejected arguments by the Defense Department that it needed to black out the names and other identifying information of detainees to protect their privacy and he ordered the redactions removed within a week.

Alberto Gonzales gets caught in a lie

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/americas/21canada.html
In an embarrassing turnabout, the Department of Justice backed away Wednesday from a denial by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales of responsibility for the treatment of a Canadian who was seized by American authorities in 2002. The man was deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned and beaten.

[NB: Excuse me, TORTURED!]

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales disputed Canadian findings that the United States was responsible for deporting an innocent man.

Asked at a news conference on Tuesday about a Canadian commission’s finding that the man, Maher Arar, was wrongly sent to Syria and tortured there, Mr. Gonzales replied, “Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria.” He added, “I’m not aware that he was tortured.”

The attorney general’s comments caused puzzlement because they followed front-page news articles of the findings of the Canadian commission. It reported that based on inaccurate information from Canada about Mr. Arar’s supposed terrorist ties, American officials ordered him taken to Syria, an action documented in public records.

On Wednesday, a Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Gonzales had intended to make only a narrow point: that deportations are now handled by the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice.

The spokesman, Charles Miller, said the attorney general forgot that at the time of Mr. Arar’s deportation, such matters were still handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was part of the Department of Justice.

“He had his timeline mixed up,” Mr. Miller said.

Asked why Mr. Gonzales appeared to cast doubt on the Canadian finding that Mr. Arar had been tortured, Mr. Miller said, “I wouldn’t go beyond what he said.” . . .

Don’t bother me with the facts!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/21/BL2006092100764.html
[Dan Froomkin] On the dominant issue of our time, the president is in denial.

By most reliable accounts, three and a half years into the U.S. occupation, Iraq is in chaos -- if not in a state of civil war, then awfully close. But President Bush insists it's not so.

He says the people he talks to assure him that the press coverage about how bad things are in Iraq is not to be trusted.

You might think that the enormous gulf between Bush's perceptions and reality on such a life-and-death topic would be, well, newsworthy. But if members of the Washington press corps consider it news at all, apparently it's old news. They report Bush's assertions about Iraq without noting that his fundamental assessment of the situation is dramatically contradicted by the reporting from their own colleagues on the ground.

Why haven’t Bush’s generals formally asked him for more troops, when everyone knows they need them?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009541.php

“October surprise” coming?

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Newsmax_Rove_promises_GOP_insiders_October_0921.html

Iran war planning pushes ahead

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Pentagon_moves_to_secondstage_planning_for_0921.html

Bush just discovered global warming – a potentially cataclysmic threat to human society – and addresses it with all the seriousness it demands

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092001697.html
The Bush administration yesterday laid out a long-term "strategic plan" for using technology to curb the impact of global warming, reiterating its position that basic scientific research and voluntary actions can curb greenhouse gases linked to climate change. . .

You might remember, a few months ago, that HUD Sect’y Alphonso Jackson got caught telling a minority contractor that he wasn’t going to get a govt contract because he wasn’t a Bush supporter. A tough, thorough investigation was launched (uh-huh). The result?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8524.html
Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson urged top aides to take contractors' politics into account when handing out grants and deals, an internal department review has found, though there is no "direct evidence" that favoritism actually occurred. . .

Mr. Jackson, former head of the Dallas Housing Authority, claimed full exoneration. But detractors called it a scathing portrait of cronyism that cast doubts on his judgment and integrity. . . [read on, it gets even more unbelievable]

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009542.php

[NB: “Full exoneration”? Good thing no one is paying attention, isn’t it?]

Avedon Carol explains the urgent need for voter ID to prevent vote fraud

http://sideshow.me.uk/ssep06.htm#09211630
Ah, now I understand. You don't need to show ID if you vote by absentee ballot, so that's why Republicans are encouraging their voters to use absentee ballots while simultaneously trying to force people who actually go to the polls to show ID. And guess where the real voter fraud is occurring? . . .

It's all okay, because You have no right to vote - "The Constitution doesn't guarantee it, the Republicans know it, and real democratic values in our country are under assault."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/09/21/no_right_to_vote/index_np.html
[Garrett Epps] The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly guarantee a right to vote, and our federal courts currently read the document not to include it. . .

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/opinion/21thu1.html

Well, we can’t say they aren’t open about it

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/21/13463/9900
[Donna Edwards (D-MD)] In the midst of all of this system failure and uncertainty, I wanted to share with you the transcript of an exchange that took place on Tuesday, September 19, between my opponent, Albert Wynn, and his colleague on the powerful House Energy & Commerce Committee:

BARTON: Down in Texas, we had a Democratic primary about 50 years ago that Lyndon Johnson won by 54 votes. And he got the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." We have Mr. Wynn next. He had a little bit of a tussle last week, but he did win. And so, I want to recognize "Landslide Wynn" for any opening statement that he wishes...
WYNN: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. In fact, they're still counting, but we're quite optimistic. And I did take a couple pages out of Lyndon's book, so if I win, it can be attributed to Texas know-how.
(LAUGHTER)
(UNKNOWN): Did you (inaudible)?
BARTON: I hope not. I hope you win fair and square.
(LAUGHTER)
WYNN: A win is a win. . .

More from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr on e-vote fraud

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_hacked/print

A silly question (not really)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_17_atrios_archive.html#115886823253139133
[Atrios] There are times I sit there trying to picture how our press corps would be behaving if, say, Democrats controlled all branches of government. Would the New York Times run the equivalent of Bumiller's (now retired) weekly love letter? Would Republican press conferences be almost entirely ignored? Would guests on Sunday shows lean liberal as much as they now lean conservative or would, as I suspect, the conservative tilt be maintained to provide balance to the "unfair" advantage the majority had?

I've said this before, I think, but our current press has been trained to follow the Republicans. It's hard to see that changing no matter what happens.

Theocracy watch: it should worry us all that James Dobson believes Bush and the Republicans haven’t done ENOUGH for the Christian Right

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8526.html

More: http://makeashorterlink.com/?E17E252DD

Bonus item: You can only laugh. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8528.html
[Steve Benen] I don't like to pick on PowerLine, a leading far-right blog, but as Jason Zengerle noted, this line from a post today is too amusing to ignore.

"We stand accused of being over-the-top partisans who worship President Bush as a visionary. Even if this were true…"

Please. In July, PowerLine ran an item that called Bush "a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius…. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another." . . .

***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).

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 @ 6:31 AM

 
PRIVATE ADVICE

The most dangerous man in America (if you don’t read anything else today, read this)

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19376
[Joan Didion] It was in some ways predictable that the central player in the system of willed errors and reversals that is the Bush administration would turn out to be its vice-president, Richard B. Cheney. . .

The Wise Men who are trying to fix poor George’s broken little war

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009535.php
"The object of our policy has to be to get our little white asses out of there as soon as possible," another working-group participant told me. To do that, he said, Baker must confront the president "like the way a family confronts an alcoholic. You bring everyone in, and you say, 'Look, my friend, it's time to change.'"

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.dreyfuss.html

http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=39370

Atrios predicts, Na Ga Do It: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_17_atrios_archive.html#115877711277694442

Now Arlen Specter’s Judiciary committee also (and rightly) insists on reviewing any torture legislation “deal.” Looks like Bush may not get either of the authorizations he’s looking for, on tribunals and torture, or on warrantless surveillance, before the election (which means he may not get either one at all)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001568.php

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001571.php

McCain’s motives: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115878194665269280

http://www.slate.com/id/2150048

Bush pisses off another ally

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115879319677909948
Blitzer: Osama bin laden is still at large. Ayman al Zawahiri is still at large. What went wrong? . . .

Bush: (more agitated) Well, no question Osama bin Laden is at large, but the men who ordered the attack and about 75-85% of the Al Qaeda that was involved in the planning and operating the attacks are in jus...

Blitzer: But the United States is the most powerful country in the world

Bush: (pissed) ... can I just finish?

Blitzer: Why can't we find these guys?

Bush: (red-faced) Wolf, Wolf. Thank you. Give me a chance to finish... Uuuh...

Osama bin Laden is in hiding.

And we're still spending a lot of time trying to find him. But the key thing the American people have gotta know is that security comes not only with getting him which I'm convinced we will, but also doing other things to protect 'em. One is to dismantle Al Qaeda. Two is to listen to phone calls of Al Qaeda calling the United States and responding to that. Three is to get information so we can prevent attack.

Getting bin Laden is important but doing, putting thins in place, putting procedures in place that protect you is equally important and we're doin' both.

[Digby] Did everyone get that? Bin laden is in hiding which is why we can't find him. And we'll put "KSM" on trial if Bush can get a "good bill" out of the senate. Otherwise ... he'll have to keep him at Gitmo forever without a trial . . . Bush went on to say that he thinks Musharref is a good guy who wants to bring Al Qaeda to justice because they tried to kill him. Several times. (This is how the decider thinks of all global politics --- it's all about the leaders' personal feelings.) . . . Blitzer asked if he would give the order to kill or capture bin Laden if they had actionable intelligence that he was in Pakistan. Steely-eyed rocket man looked in the camera and said "absolutely."

Musharref was not amused, apparently. He was asked about this at a press conference and said:

We would not like to allow that at all. We will do it ourselves. We would like to do it ourselves.

BIG mistake: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009892
[Josh Marshall] It's hard to know where to begin in trying to disentangle the knot of jingoism, recklessness, bad faith and bamboozlement that is President Bush's latest boast that if he had good intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts he would send US troops into Pakistan to catch him whether the Pakistanis agreed or not.

On Friday he suggested that he wouldn't because "Pakistan is a sovereign nation." . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/20/222243/955

More grist for the corruption meme (thanks to Ahmad S. for the link)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060920/ap_on_go_pr_wh/abramoff_white_house
Republican activists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed landed more than 100 meetings inside the Bush White House, according to documents released Wednesday that provide the first official accounting of the access and influence the two presidential allies have enjoyed.

The White House released the Secret Service visit records to settle a lawsuit by the Democratic Party and an ethics watchdog group seeking visitors logs for the two GOP strategists and others who emerged as figures in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Earlier this month, the White House suggested to the judge in that lawsuit that such records need not be disclosed because the information was privileged and might reveal how Bush and his staff get private advice . . .

[NB: I LOVE that excuse!]

Another issue begging for Democratic exploitation: Iraq war profiteering

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/20/17023/6194
[Chris Bowers] [T]his is the most the clear-cut, winning political issue for Democrats in a generation. If we take even one house of Congress, we need to immediately set up a second Truman commission to investigate and prosecute war profiteering. If this issue stays in the headlines for an extended period of time, it will negatively brand Republicans for decades. It has everything. . .

Another insufferable pundit (the once “liberal” Morton Kondracke) says that the insurgents in Iraq are plotting to “help the Democrats win”

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609200006

Remember what the wingnuts said, when Hillary Clinton as First Lady, got involved with policy issues (“who elected HER?” etc). What will they say now?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8519.html

Ned Lamont’s greatest asset in the Connecticut Senate race: Joe Lieberman’s spokesman and “strategist” Dan Gerstein

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/20/15351/6686

George Allen (R-VA): just doesn’t know when to shut up (lucky thing)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009882

(The Pope has Allen-itis)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/21pope.html
For 4th Time, Pope Clarifies Islam Remark

[NB: Isn't he supposed to be infallible?]

Another Republican racist

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z2BE630DD

“A Liberal’s Handbook”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115878861846219010

Bush’s big pushback on the “war on terror” did nothing, nothing at all, to shift public opinion on him or his war

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009891

Oh, heck: if the election leaves a closely divided House, there will be tremendous pressure on party-switchers to shift the balance of power. Here’s who the Democrats might lose

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8516.html

The polarization of the electorate

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1463.html

Karl Rove’s childhood: this explains SO much (thanks to Holden for the link)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/20/BL2006092000880_5.html
[Thomas Edsall] "Karl Rove was not yet a celebrity in 1997 when he told me the following story. In December 1969, during his freshman year in college, his father left his mother; and, shortly thereafter, his mother largely withdrew from his life. She 'packed up the car, had the house on the market, and moved to Reno and said good luck,' Rove recalled. After that, he was on his own. Rove put himself through two years at the University of Utah, working part time, earning a partial scholarship, and living in a makeshift bedroom under the attic eaves of his fraternity house. His father sent support checks, but his mother kept them, never telling her son. 'My mother was one of these people who really thought often of what it was that she wanted in life, and not necessarily what was good or right for her family,' Rove said. 'And that was just her way. She never grew up. She could never think long term. She was always in the moment.' When he was 21, Rove discovered that his father was not, in fact, his biological father and that he was the offspring of an earlier relationship. His real father had disappeared, and the man he knew as his father had adopted him. (Years later, he would track down his biological father, who refused to acknowledge that Karl was his son.) When Rove was in his mid-20s, his mother would call to borrow money. Occasionally, she sent him packages with magazines from his childhood or old, broken toys. 'It was like she was trying desperately to sort of keep this connection,' he recalled. Finally, in 1981, his mother 'drove out to the desert north of Reno and filled the car with carbon monoxide, and then left all of her children a letter saying, don't blame yourselves for this.' It was, Rove said, 'the classic [expletive]-you gesture.'"

Bonus item: Who said this?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19376
“Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in . . . Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? . . . How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?”

***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).

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 @ 6:52 AM

 
UNLIMITED

A tale of two headlines

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/world/middleeast/20military.html
No Cutback Likely in U.S. Troop Levels for Iraq Before Spring, Top Regional Commander Says

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060919/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_8
Gen. says U.S. may boost forces in Iraq

[NB: If the Democrats don’t recognize an opportunity like this. . . ]

http://www.slate.com/id/2150037
Gen. Abizaid was asked "point-blank" if the U.S. is winning, the Post writes. His response: "Given unlimited time and unlimited support, we're winning the war."

[NB: Now THAT'S what I call a "plan for victory"]

Talk about confusing the symptom with the cause

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/world/middleeast/20maliki.html
Senior Iraqi and American officials are beginning to question whether Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has the political muscle and decisiveness to hold Iraq together as it hovers on the edge of a full civil war.

Four months into his tenure, Mr. Maliki has failed to take aggressive steps to end the country’s sectarian strife because they would alienate fundamentalist Shiite leaders inside his fractious government who have large followings and private armies, senior Iraqi politicians and Western officials say. He is also constrained by the need to woo militant Sunni Arabs connected to the insurgency.

Patience among Iraqis is wearing thin. Many complain that they have seen no improvement in security, the economy or basic services like electricity. Some Sunni Arab neighborhoods seem particularly deprived, fueling distrust of the Shiite-led government.

Concerns about the toughness of the new government seemed reflected in President Bush’s comments when he met Tuesday with Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani. Mr. Bush said he wanted Iraqis to know “that the United States of America stands with them, so long as the government continues to make the tough choices necessary for peace to prevail.” . . .

[NB: “so long as”?! Are these the first hints of Bush’s “exit strategy”?]

Iran: coming up fast?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1454.html

Latest WH “compromise” on torture proposal rejected by the Senate Armed Services Committee

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_17_atrios_archive.html#115867187915138169
[Atrios] I have yet to figure out if this is a real conflict or an elaborate dance.

Dance: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115874017905197162

Will there be a “compromise” on warrantless surveillance too?

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/serious-problems-for-white-house-in.html

Thanks to Susan Madrak for this link

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091800995.html
[Eugene Robinson] It is not possible for our elected representatives to hold any sort of honorable "debate" over torture. Bush says he is waging a "struggle for civilization," but civilized nations do not debate slavery or genocide, and they don't debate torture, either. This spectacle insults and dishonors every American. . . [read on]

Orwell redux

http://billmon.org/archives/002746.html

Red Cross to meet with 14 secret prison detainees: will we find out what was done to them there?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091901430.html

Funny: if we applied the same criteria for justifying the Iraq War to Pakistan

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/19/104145/876

Michelle Malkin: “hypocrisy” isn’t a strong enough word

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/well-beyond-satire.html

Bill Frist (R-TN): Bush’s puppet from start to finish

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/19/233232/953
Frist struck a more jarring tone, telling reporters that the trio's bill is unacceptable despite its majority support.

For a bill to pass, Frist said, "it's got to preserve our intelligence programs," including the CIA's aggressive interrogation techniques, and it must "protect classified information from terrorists." He said that "the president's bill achieves those two goals" but that "the Warner-McCain-Graham bill falls short." . . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009876
[Josh Marshall] The Post, on the other hand, paints a decidedly bleaker picture for the White House. While noting that an agreement could come at any moment, the Post portrays a legislative clock rapidly running out on the president's plan to ram through torture and tribunal legislation to bludgeon the Democrats with in time for the November election. "Yesterday's actions significantly dimmed prospects that Congress can complete its national security agenda before adjournment." The paper also reports the rebellion moving to the House.

The Post piece even includes the telling and somehow touchingly feeble threat from Bill Frist that he, the Senate Majority Leader, may lead a filibuster against the Warner-McCain-Graham bill in the Senate.

I guess he'll show them who's boss. . .

Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would be worse. . . . (so can the Democrats steal a page from the Republicans and say, “Do you want this man to be Senate Majority Leader?”)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009532.php

Very strange, very ironic. George “Macaca” Allen (R-VA) encounters hostile questioning about his Jewish mother. Allen is, rightly, upset – but then he starts to talk, and the weirdness happens . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/19/114631/103
"To be getting into what religion my mother is, I don't think is relevant," Allen said, furiously. "Why is that relevant -- my religion, Jim's religion or the religious beliefs of anyone out there?" . . . [read on!]

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/19/123120/518

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/19/133249/051

The inevitable “explanation” – and why it doesn’t hold water

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/19/164828/708
"Some may find it odd that I have not probed deeply into the details of my family history, but it's a fact. We in the Allen household were simply taught that what matters is a person's character, integrity, effort, and performance - not race, gender, ethnicity or religion. And so whenever we would ask my mother through the years about our family background on her side, the answer always was, `Who cares about that?'

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009868

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009867

Allen’s anti-semitic pals: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/19/171327/231

It’s the bloggers’ fault: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009873

Bob Ney (R-OH), poster boy

http://www.dispatch.com/election/election.php?story=213364
Rep. Bob Ney yielded two U.S. House posts yesterday but again declined Republican calls to resign the congressional seat he has held since 1995.

Ney, who agreed Friday to plead guilty to federal corruption charges. . . .

Liberals for McCain? Look, I’m sure we could do worse, but every Presidential cycle people convince themselves that these guys are more moderate than they seem to be. People forget that BUSH was described that way before he took office. Don’t get fooled again

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1448.html#007304

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1451.html

Still, this is a good point

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1452.html
[Michael Tomasky] JUST REMEMBER. Every time McCain does something that Richard Cohen likes, his chances of winning the GOP nomination decrease. So, rather than get upset when center-libs throw themselves at McCain, you folks ought to rejoice, because every instance of such makes it that much less likely that the R’s most formidable man will gain his party’s support.

Evidence in support of Tomasky’s claim

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8504.html
[WP] Sen. John McCain's bid to position himself as the natural heir to President Bush as a wartime commander in chief and to court conservative leaders in advance of his likely 2008 presidential campaign has threatened to run aground in recent days . . . [S]ome prominent conservatives are branding him a disloyal Republican and an unreliable conservative because of his assertiveness on the detainee issue.

The senator's actions "are blocking our ability to gain from terrorist captives the vital information we need," said a front-page editorial Saturday in the Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., the largest newspaper in the state with the first presidential primary. Conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh said Friday that opposition to Bush's approach "is going to go down as the event that will result in us getting hit again, and if we do, and if McCain, et al. , prevail, I can tell you where fingers are going to be pointed."

[Steve Benen] That's right; Rush Limbaugh told his national audience that McCain will be at least partially responsible for future terrorist attacks on the United States.

McCain's resistance to Bush's plan is also drawing fire from so-called religious leaders in the conservative movement. The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition and a vocal supporter of the administration's proposal, said, "This very definitely is going to put a chilling effect on the tremendous strides he has made in the conservative evangelical community."

Think about that for a second — an alleged Christian minister is angry with a lawmaker for opposing torture. This is what today's right has come to. . .

Another Rick Santorum (R-PA) tantrum

http://santorumexposed.com/serendipity/archives/195-Senator-Santantrum.html

Pressure builds on Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) to cave on Bolton nomination

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001655.php

Georgia voter-ID law rejected by court

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091901382.html

Now the bad news on the 2006 elections: the Democrats only have a fraction of their money left for key races, the Republicans five times as much

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060919/ap_on_el_ge/political_parties_money

Bonus item: no comment

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7208
[Holden] It's like a perfect storm of hatred and ignorance. . .

A Maine couple accused of tying up their 19-year-old daughter, throwing her in their car and driving her out of state to get an abortion were upset because the baby's father is black, a Maine sheriff said Tuesday.

***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).

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 @ 7:25 AM

 
BEHIND OUR BACKS

“We are conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming”

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/18/gardiner-iran/

Well, we’ve had the five-year anniversary of 9/11 – now let’s review the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), also passed five years ago

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8496.html

Here’s why it matters: in the original AUMF, Bush was authorized “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” So the lies to link Hussein to 9/11 weren’t just about moving public opinion, but about creating a LEGAL basis for a war they had already decided to undertake -- in the end, it required a second AUMF to confirm it (and a nice bit of dishonesty it was)

http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/terrorism/sjres23.es.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Iraq_Resolution_of_2002

Depraved

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/09/kristols_advice.html
[Andrew Sullivan] Bill Kristol urges the Republicans to campaign on torturing military detainees. It could indeed shore up parts of the base. The capitulation of neoconservatism to the evil it once fought against is now complete.

Kristol: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/711lzwcj.asp

Paul Krugman: If they can get away with this. . . .

http://www.trueblueliberal.com/2006/09/18/king-of-pain/
A lot has been written and said about President Bush’s demand that Congress “clarify” the part of the Geneva Conventions that, in effect, outlaws the use of torture under any circumstances.

We know that the world would see this action as a U.S. repudiation of the rules that bind civilized nations. We also know that an extraordinary lineup of former military and intelligence leaders, including Colin Powell, have spoken out against the Bush plan, warning that it would further damage America’s faltering moral standing, and end up endangering U.S. troops.

But I haven’t seen much discussion of the underlying question: why is Mr. Bush so determined to engage in torture? . . .

To show that it can.

The central drive of the Bush administration — more fundamental than any particular policy — has been the effort to eliminate all limits on the president’s power. Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because it’s a violation of both law and tradition. By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, they’re asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary. . . [read on]

Reactions: http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2006/09/why_torture.html
[Ezra Klein] I think that's part of the explanation, but not the whole of it. The Bush administration's approach to the War on Terrorism has bespoke a profound immaturity on the subject. While the intelligence community easily separates the current conflict from an episode of 24, there's precious little evidence that Bush is similarly adept. I'd guess that some tough-talking hero-type from the CIA has Bush's ear and trust and has convinced him that torture is a necessary element of America's strength in this conflict.

While other spooks (and the US Army) deride the effectiveness of harsh methods, there's no doubt that they have a certain superficial claim to usefulness. In an administration with no interest in empiricism and a demonstrated proclivity towards favoring information that accords with their instincts, trumping the data dismissing torture's effectiveness probably wasn't hard at all.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1430.html
[Ron Suskind] What is widely known inside the Administration is that once we caught our first decent-size fish--Abu Zubaydah, in March 2002--we used him as an experiment in righteous brutality that in the end produced very little. His interrogation, according to those overseeing it, yielded little from threats and torture. He named countless targets inside the U.S. to stop the pain, all of them immaterial. . . What little of value he did tell us came largely from a more sophisticated approach, using his religious belief in predestination to convince him he miraculously survived his arrest (he was shot three times and nursed to health by U.S. doctors) for a reason: to help the other side.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8500.html
[Digby] It's pretty obvious that torture doesn't work. Indeed, it hasn't even worked for Bush, with his administration acting on bogus tips "coerced" from detainees, who felt compelled to tell officials what they wanted to hear, just to make the torture stop.

For the reality-based community, evidence like this matters. If we want reliable intelligence, and torture produces unreliable intelligence, there's no point in embracing torture. (This, of course, is purely a practical argument, and puts aside the fact that torture is morally repugnant under all circumstances.)

But this doesn't apply to the Bush gang at all — because they've proven that evidence and reality aren't terribly important to them. Indeed, these are the folks who create their own reality. "Why is Mr. Bush so determined to engage in torture?" Because he's convinced — or, more likely, someone has convinced him — that it's a necessary tool in his arsenal. Whether it is or not is irrelevant.

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3370
[Krugman] What torture produces in practice is misinformation, as its victims, desperate to end the pain, tell interrogators whatever they want to hear. Thus Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi — who ABC News says was subjected to both the cold cell and water boarding — told his questioners that Saddam Hussein’s regime had trained members of Al Qaeda in the use of biochemical weapons. This “confession” became a key part of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq — but it was pure invention.

[Swopa] So why is the Bush administration so determined to torture people? Well, duh, Paulie -- didn't you just answer this question in your previous paragraph?!? Sheesh.

Why the coming “compromise” on torture will be no improvement on the original Bush policy

http://www.liberaloasis.com/2006/09/sunday_talkshow_breakdown_8.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115861759995591806

Here it comes: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091801132.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060919/ap_on_go_pr_wh/congress_terrorism

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009849
[CNN] A spokesman for the Senate Armed Services chairman says draft legislation is headed to Capitol Hill with "new language," for a proposal that would allow the CIA to continue alternative interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists. . .

Colin Powell, it appears, isn’t buying into the sham opposition of McCain, Graham, et al.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091801414.html

Reader MK from Germany reminds me: the United States CAN’T change the Geneva Convention

“Without doubt the USA is the strongest country on earth in many regards - which more often than not scares me, when I watch the politics of this mighty country not only beyond its borders, but domestically as well. But however strong the country is, the US cannot /*change the Geneva Convention*/, though I have heard this phrase repeatedly in the last weeks. The government of the US cannot but declare unilaterally that the Geneva Convention is no longer binding for them, thus claiming that part of the international law and rules are no longer valid for this country. . .”

Torturing the innocent. This horrific tale makes two points: one is that the debate over whether WE torture means little if we just circumvent the law by outsourcing torture to countries not troubled by such niceties -- the other is that, as with capital punishment, you can't undo crimes against those falsely accused

http://www.slate.com/id/2149967/
[Alexander Dyer] The New York Times and the Washington Post lead with the Canadian government's conclusion that its law-enforcement services gave the United States faulty information about one of its own citizens that resulted in the man's capture and torture. Maher Arar, who spent 10 months in a Syrian prison after being seized and deported by American authorities, had no terrorist ties, an official report said. . . The Canadian government's report on the Arar case is perhaps the most detailed examination to date of "extraordinary rendition," the practice in which American agents take terror suspects to overseas prisons where they are sometimes tortured. . .

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/americas/19canada.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091800883.html

Keith Olbermann does it again: “The President of the United States owes this country an apology”

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q27452CCD

John Yoo, not just a lousy lawyer, but a pretty bad historian as well

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009840
[Josh Marshall] Yoo has now taken to arguing that the restraints on presidential power enshrined in the 1970s came about largely because the US faced no serious national security threats during that era. . . I and those my age are probably the last people who have any meaningful living memory of what the Cold War was like. Or in other words, what it was like living in a world where the primary geopolitical antagonism was between the United States and the Soviet Union and a full escalation of that conflict would result, for all practical purposes, in the end of the world. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_17_atrios_archive.html#115859606273343331
[Atrios] The Right truly has thrown its lot in with dishonest idiots. I guess it's all they have left. . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115860326344698713
[Digby] But there's something more important here than proving Yoo wrong, which any highschool kid with access to a stack of history books, or the Internets could do in five minutes.

Yoo knows he's lying here and he doesn't give a damn what you or I think. Why? Because he knows the New York Times has anointed him worthy of space on their editorial page and all that matters is that they print what he writes. It's the same con as "Intelligent Design" creationism: you gain mainstream cred merely by being included in the debate. And Yoo's little stunt is all of a piece with the far-right contempt for normal American citizens . . . [read on]

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1427.html
[Charles Pierce] And then there's this: "The White House has declared that the Constitution allows the president to sidestep laws that invade his executive authority." Well, that certainly settles that, doesn't it?

They're not even trying hard any more.

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8492.html

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/bush-followers-distort-history-to_18.html

The right-wing faith in Presidential infallibility

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/hinderaker-shows-us-central-defect-in.html

Can somebody please explain to me how these people have maintained the sham that they’re STRENGTHENING our national security?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-contractors17sep17,0,3821049.story
At the National Counterterrorism Center — the agency created two years ago to prevent another attack like Sept. 11 — more than half of the employees are not U.S. government analysts or terrorism experts. Instead, they are outside contractors. . .

Bush unveils a new reason for learning to read: it’s a national security issue (EVERYTHING is these days, apparently)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091800512.html
President Bush promoted his international "freedom agenda" today at a literacy conference hosted by his wife, telling an audience of education ministers and other dignitaries from around the world that teaching people to read helps advance democracy and resist terrorism. . .

Here come the jokes: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3370

Reuters runs a daily fact box on what is happening in Iraq: every day a litany of pointless death and destruction. I wish it was on the front page of every paper in the country (thanks to John Aravosis for the link)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO840395.htm
BAGHDAD - Fourteen bodies, tortured and with bullet holes in the head, were found in different districts of Baghdad on Monday, a Ministry of Interior source said. . .

Hey, it worked for Tenet and Bremer

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001548.php
Halliburton will help its combat-zone employees get the honors and recognition they deserve -- if they promise not to sue the company. . .

Ray Stannard was a truck driver in Iraq for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. In 2003, he was part of a fuel convoy that was ambushed by insurgents. Seven Americans died in the attack and 26 were injured, including Stanner. He is suing the company.

His company knew the convoy's route was dangerous and unprotected, he says, but sent the convoy through anyway. "What they did was murder," Stannard told CBS News recently. "And I stick by that."

The circumstances of his injuries qualified Stanner for the U.S. Defense of Freedom medal, the civilian equivalent to a soldier's Purple Heart. In offering to forward Stanner's medical records to the Department of Defense so they could confirm and approve his award, KBR required him to sign a release form. . . The document, sent to Stannard in November 2004, appears to be boilerplate -- but for one curious paragraph that appears to indemnify KBR from any wrongdoing that may have led to Stanner's injuries . . .

Let’s see, MSNBC fires Eric Alterman, Time signs a content deal with Real Clear Politics – what liberal media?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14784419/#ImFired

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1432.html#007275

House prospects still looking pretty good – and now the Senate is in play too

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/control-of-senate-up-for-grabs.html

Rick Santorum (R-PA), so angry, so dumb. Here he blurts out something very revealing

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003123505
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), in a bruising race for re-election, slammed a Pennsylvania newspaper -- literally -- this weekend.

The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., report that Santorum, who trails Democrat Robert Casey in most polls, referred to his "rocky relations with the press" . . . Later he refused to talk when a Patriot-News reporter, Brett Lieberman, approached with a question about Iran -- and again complained about what he called biased coverage.

"I have to raise tens of millions of dollars because of the junk you feed the people of Pennsylvania," he said, according to the paper. It added that he "then used an expletive to describe the coverage and slammed down a newspaper."

[NB: Yeah, if he had friendlier news coverage he wouldn’t have to do so much fundraising to put out deceptive ads against his opponent]

Bob Ney (R-OH), not going gently into the good night

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001552.php
GOP anxiety ran high over the weekend, thanks to Ney. While he sprang a bouquet of revelations on them last week -- admitting to felonies, revealing his alcoholism, publicly apologizing for his misbehavior -- an announcement he'd be leaving Congress wasn't among the bunch.

And despite public efforts by GOP leaders and anonymous bitter Republicans to convince him to leave on his own, Ney made it pretty clear today he's not gonna go along. . .

More on the Bush gang’s attempt to intimidate progressive churches (while they are giving free rein to conservative ones). The churches are fighting back . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8494.html
[Steve Benen] To put it mildly, the IRS is playing hardball. The agency recently ordered All Saints to turn over documents — including copies of sermons, emails, newsletters, even financial records — the church produced in 2004.

Bacon, however, on the advice of parishioners, may decide to refuse the IRS's demands and instead take the issue to court. "I believe we should respectfully decline to produce the documents," said Cathy Shearon, an All Saints parishioner said. "Being passive plays into the culture of oppression."

That's when things will likely get interesting.

A couple of days ago we had former GOP Majority Leader Dick Armey warning the Republicans that they were becoming too beholden to the Christian Right. Now, eminence gris John Danforth weighs in too

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8493.html
"Some people have asked me whether America is a Christian country. The answer must be no, for to call this a Christian country is to say that non-Christians are of some lesser order, not full fledged citizens of one nation."

Bonus item: Rallying the troops

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609180005
In a September 16 posting on his weblog, nationally syndicated radio host Neal Boortz wrote that he had been invited to "the West Wing of the White House" for a "30-minute meeting with the President in the Oval Office [which] turned into 90 minutes." Boortz added that the "other invitees were [conservative radio hosts] Sean Hannity, Mike Gallagher, Michael Medved and Laura Ingraham." As the weblog Think Progress noted, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in a September 17 posting on its website that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has been invited to the meeting but could not attend. . . .

***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).

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 @ 7:25 AM

 
THE TWILIGHT ZONE

Things no one is talking about:

When the Bush gang says, “if you don’t change the law, the CIA interrogation program can’t go forward,” they are admitting that what the CIA has been doing is against the law – and they want the law changed to fit the practices (not vice-versa).

(Cf. FISA)

The only reason we are having the current discussion about torture is that the Supreme Court ruled that detainees are subject to Geneva Convention protections – a premise the Bush gang has never accepted. Now, rather than acknowledge that, they want to change the Geneva Convention.

They say they are seeking greater “clarity” in what is and isn’t allowed, but their alternative language is just as vague and subject to interpretation (THEIR interpretation, which they won’t make public, and which they are trying to get Congress to endorse behind closed doors).

The statement that waterboarding will not be part of the new torture regime is an acknowledgment that it has been in the past – and abandoning it is clearly part of the compromise to get Congress to go along at all.

The Bush gang keeps saying they can't discuss their techniques because they need to be kept secret (so terrorists can't be trained to resist them). But at some point these people (unless they kill them or lock them away forever) are going to talk to lawyers, the Red Cross, etc. -- and eventually what was done to them will come out. I think we all know the REAL reason the Bush gang won't disclose what they're doing. Why can't the press challenge them on this?

Bush keeps threatening to end the CIA interrogation program if Congress won’t endorse it, but that is clearly a bluff. If we know anything about these people, it is that they will do what they think needs to be done regardless of the law. That should make Congress think twice about giving them all they are asking for now – because it won’t inhibit them a bit in the future if they decide THAT law is no longer binding on them.

Wake me up from this nightmare

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/17/192912/169
[Georgia10] We're five years into this War on Terrorism, and I cannot count the number of times I have asked myself The Question: "is this really happening?"

I thought it in 2001 as I watched the two towers fall. I thought it again in 2003 as I watched shock & awe light up my TV screen. I thought it in 2004 as I saw pictures of Abu Ghraib. And I questioned reality again in 2005 as I read about the scope of the domestic spying program . . .

In what universe is John Yoo even taken seriously, let alone given influence over the highest seats of power?

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/shrill-hysterical-lefty-partisan.html
[Glenn Greenwald] [A]t this point, anyone who fails (or refuses) to recognize that the President does not have the power in our system of government to violate laws by invoking national security concerns is never going to recognize that. Yoo's Op-Ed is so flagrantly frivolous that it ought not be taken seriously. He even goes so far as to claim that the "founders intended that wrongheaded or obsolete legislation and judicial decisions would be checked by presidential action." How can you be on the faculty of a major law school and say this? . . . [read on]

And this is what his FRIENDS say about him

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115846878588733497
[Fred] Barnes is so in the tank for Bush that he's grown gills, so I wouldn't expect even the tiniest bit of skepticism from him. But I assume he's accurately reporting what the president said. And he's reporting that Bush's plan to combat terrorism is to institutionalize torture, warrantless spying on his own citizens, indefinite detention, secret prisons, warrantless monitoring of bank transfers and legal immunity for those who carry out those tasks. . . [read on]

The compromise Republicans will reach on torture

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115853099161009430

Or not? http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/17/93438/9893

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/17/145650/247

How many have been captured and held in secret US prisons? 14? 114?


Some days you want to tear your hair out: Colin Powell says that torture, secret prisons, and tribunal policies that flout human rights and international law weaken our moral standing around the world – an obvious truth. Bush purposely mischaracterizes this in a vicious and slanderous way: he says Powell was “equating the US with the terrorists.” This is of course, standard procedure for the Rove gang: convert a reasonable and serious challenge into an outrageous slur. Obvious, right? They do it all the time, right? Of course the media will point this out, right? Fairness and accuracy demand it, right? Right?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609170002

You might think the media would get upset about this, too

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060917/ap_on_re_mi_ea/photographer_detained
The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing. . .

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/015758.html

Who really runs Iraq

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3367

Will Gentleman Jim Baker broker a face-saving Iraq pull-out after the election?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009828

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002738.html

Plan B for Iraq: Abandon all the talk about democracy, and back another strongman to enforce order and unity on a fractured nation (hmm. . . sound familiar?)

http://billmon.org/archives/002739.html

From Time magazine: hints of a coming blockade of Iran?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009834

How long it will take to undo Bush’s disastrous errors

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200610/bush

Will the Cunningham/Wade scandal eventually reach into Bush’s national security apparatus? (Looks like it)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001543.php
Retired three-star general James King, top deputy to Duke briber Mitchell Wade, is being investigated by the Federal Election Commission for $12,000 in what appear to be "straw" campaign donations to congressional campaigns . . . For a time, King worked as a top aide to Michael V. Hayden, then chief of the National Security Agency, on contract from MZM. Hayden is now director of the CIA.

The U.S. News piece is lengthy, and adds even more color to the established portrait of Mitchell Wade as corrupt, megalomaniacal, vengeful and petty. It also has some good details on King, too. For instance, the magazine reports that one of King's favorite aphorisms is, 'There are no lies; the truth keeps changing.'

Good question: why is the Washington Post now covering stories (“Fiasco”, incompetence and cronyism in the CPA, etc) that everyone else knew a long time ago – are they saving face by doing the tough investigative job they should have done from the very start?

http://susiemadrak.com/2006/09/17/12/18/better-late-than-never-7/

Bob Ney (R-OH) pleads guilty, enters substance abuse program, and prepares for prison – one thing he hasn’t gotten around to yet? Resigning his post in the Republican congress

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001544.php

Chris Shays (R-CT) favors withdrawal from Iraq -- but, oh no, not the way the DEMOCRATS want to withdraw from Iraq. And then the fun starts

http://www.prospect.org/horsesmouth/2006/09/post_365.html#007260

Once the proud nominee of his party for Vice President, now an echo chamber for Republican talking points

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/17/163739/194
Using apocalyptic imagery of civilization lost, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman blamed politics Friday for undermining the war on terror and leaving the U.S. vulnerable to "barbarians at our gates."

"We remain too divided as a nation, and in Washington, spend too much time fighting each other rather than coming together to make our country safer," Lieberman said. "At stake is the kind of world we will live in, not far away abroad but right here, home in Connecticut."...

Lieberman faulted the Bush administration for alienating potential allies in the war on terror, though he gave no examples of an administration miscue. He never mentioned the war in Iraq, a topic he intends to address with another policy speech.

The senator blamed the terror attacks of 9/11 on a generation of leaders lulled into complacency as tensions eased with the Soviet Union....

Lieberman said Congress and the president must work in a bipartisan fashion. Sprinkled through his speech was praise for Republican senators with whom he has worked cooperatively: Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, John McCain of Arizona, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. He singled out no Democrat.

Huh? http://www.nedlamont.com/?s=truthaboutjoe
LIEBERMAN: “A lot of people want to fight the other war [in Afghanistan], the one we’re not involved in.”

FACT: Lieberman made his comment the same day newspapers reported that ” U.S. and NATO troops are fighting a resurgent Taliban at the highest scale since the government was toppled in November 2001. Bin Laden remains at large, opium production is at a record high, and Afghanistan resembles a feudal hodgepodge of fiefdoms run by warlords instead of a centrally governed nation of 31 million people.”

Jim Webb (D-VA) doubles up on quotes of the day

On Bush’s torture policies: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/09/17/quote_of_the_day.html
"What you see here is a split between the theorists who have never been on a battlefield or never worn the uniform and those who have."

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/jim-webb-explains-real-iraq-terror.html
"We didn't go in to Iraq because of terrorism. We have terrorists in Iraq because we went in there."

Looking for a narrative: advice for the Democrats in focusing their energies in the fall (hint: “Had enough?” isn’t enough)

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3368

What to say about Iraq: http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2006/09/what_to_talk_ab.html

How much will the Republicans spend to keep control of congress? EVERYTHING

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/alerts/115

Bush’s bounce: the media story is always about Bush’s rebound, and the facts always get in the way

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/bushs-approval-has-dropped-6-points-in.html

More e-voting concerns

http://wilsonhellie.typepad.com/for_the_record/2006/09/evoting_concern.html

Interesting speculation: given that the Plame story has lain fallow for months, why the sudden rush now to get the Armitage story out?

http://libbydefensefund.com/news/06/0917.htm

Bonus item: WWJD?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_17.php#009836
[DK] If you were to pick the single greatest hypocrisy of the Bush Presidency, wouldn't it have to be this: that the man who ostentatiously claims Jesus as his favorite philosopher (he of "do unto others as ye would have them do unto you" fame) would say, in all seriousness, "Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'?"

[NB: Interestingly, Bush actually called Jesus his favorite POLITICAL philosopher, which even compounds the ironies]

***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).

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 @ 7:23 AM

 
A FOOLISH CONSISTENCY

You know it’s a bad sign when you’ve even lost Peggy Noonan

http://billmon.org/archives/002736.html
[Noonan] I think that Americans have pretty much stopped listening to [Bush]. One reason is that you don't have to listen to get a sense of what's going on. He does not appear to rethink things based on new data. You don't have to tune in to see how he's shifting emphasis to address a trend, or tacking to accommodate new winds. For him there are no new data, only determination.

[Billmon] The Rovians have always acted like they believe constant, mind-numbing repetition is an absolute virtue -- the key to drowning out any competing message. But the problem is that this gets really BORING after awhile. And thanks to the invention of the remote control, modern TV is all about changing the channel as soon as a flickering images fail to entertain.

But War President has become an extremely predictable show. The writers seem to think plagiarizing old Mike Gerson speeches is the sum total of their job description . . . [read on!]

What have they done to us?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009819
[DK] The torture debate in Congress--I never expected to write such words--is as surreal to me as watching the collapse of the Twin Towers. If the Democrats are able to take control of at least one chamber in November, then surely the President's pro-torture bill will be viewed in hindsight as the nadir of the Bush presidency. If not, how much lower can things go?

I am beyond being able to assess the political implications, one way or the other, of this spectacle. Regardless of which version of the bill finally passes, this debate is a black mark on the soul of the nation. Of course passage of a pro-torture bill will diminish U.S. standing internationally and jeopardize the safety and well-being of U.S. servicemen in future engagements. But merely having this debate has already accomplished that. Does anyone honestly believe that if Congress rebuffs the President in every respect that the rule of law and the inviolability of human rights will have been vindicated? Of course not.

The Republicans have defined deviancy down for the whole world, including every two-bit dictator and wild-eyed terrorist.

In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick writes of the pro-torture presidency:

[L]egal obfuscation is enormously attractive to President Bush. It means all but the most highly credentialed law professors and government lawyers are constantly confused; it means subsequent legal claims that interrogators "did not know that the practices were unlawful" have real credibility. And perhaps, most importantly to this White House, it obscures where things have gone awry up and down the chain of command. One possibility, then, is that all these eleventh-hour redefinitions of torture are presidential attempts to "afford brutality the cloak of law," in the words of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. But increasingly, it seems clear that its real purpose is simply to brutalize the law.

And to brutalize people.

Only the weak, scared, and evil torture. Those who order and sanction torture, but leave the dirty work to others, are an order of magnitude more culpable morally. (A special place is reserved for the lawyers who give legal cover for such orders.) In their fear and their weakness and their smallness, the President and those around him stepped over the line. To do so in the heated days after 9/11 is understandable to a point, though not justifiable. Yet they persisted, first in saying that they did not step over the line and now in seeking to redraw the line. So which is it?

They are descending from the morally reprehensible to the morally cowardly.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/16/182011/597
[ABC] Amid a debate between President Bush and bipartisan members of Congress over how harshly to question terror detainees, a former FBI agent said some of the most aggressive interrogation techniques in dispute are rarely effective anyway. "Generally speaking, those don't work," said Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent and an ABC News consultant. . . [read on]

John Yoo: creepy

http://www.slate.com/id/2149848
[Roger McShane] In an interesting NYT op-ed, John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who said to hell with the Geneva conventions, defends the president's broad assertion of executive power. Yoo says "the inescapable fact is that war shifts power to the branch most responsible for its waging"—the presidency. Moreover, the president can ignore laws that "invade his executive authority." And who decides if a law invades the president's executive authority? The president, of course. (In case you disagree, know you are not alone. "Much of the public misunderstands the true role of the executive branch," says Woo. Don't you feel better now?)

Harry Reid (D-NV) says what needs saying

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/16/20439/5154
Five years after September 11, not a single terrorist has been brought to justice under the President's flawed policy. There is a bipartisan process underway in the United States Senate to fix the failed Bush Administration system that was struck down by the Supreme Court. Instead of picking fights with Colin Powell, John McCain, and other military experts, President Bush should change course, do what the American people expect, and finally give them the real security they deserve.

[McJoan] To reinforce Reid's message about the failures of this administration to protect national security and Bush's double-speak on administration torture policies, his office sent the following fact checking of Bush's assertions during the press conference . . .

More lies: http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2006/09/frank-rich-longer-war-larger-lies.html

Frist says he will get rebellious Repubs back in line

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060917/ap_on_go_co/republicans_terrorism

Arlen Specter (R-PA) lies about his own FISA bill

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/arlen-specter-is-lying-about-his-own.html

This has been known for a long time, but the details are stunning. Major expose on corruption, mismanagement, and cronyism in the CPA and early efforts to rebuild Iraq

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html
But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon. . . To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade. . .

A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation that sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort. . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115843663116577460
[Digby] (Jim O'Beirne, by the way, is the husband of wingnut welfare queen Kate O'Beirne, naturally. There's never more than one degree of separation between these taxpayer scam artists.)

The Republicans are telling us that they should be re-elected because the Democrats aren't serious about national security and only they can be trusted to keep the terrorists from killing us in our beds.

But the way the administration went about creating the CPA illustrates everything you need to know about the childlike sciolism of these so-called grown-ups. They insisted on invading a well contained country of 25 million people, ripped its society to shreds, and then put a bunch of low level cronies and inexperienced schoolkids in charge of creating a Club for Growth wet dream in the desert. And they spent billions and billions of dollars failing to do anything but lay the groundwork for civil war. I don't know if it's possible to screw up on a grander scale than that.

Here's the question for the American people. Let's, for the sake of argument, say that you don't like Democrats. You have the vague feeling in the pit of your stomach that they just don't have the cojones to do "what needs to be done." You can't get over the feeling that they aren't serious enough.

But if you are a thoughtful person of any political persuasion who is concerned about national security or the economy, you simply cannot read that story above and have even the slightest faith that such people can be trusted to continue to run the government with no oversight.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/16/13177/2324
[Georgia10] This is what happens when you put the Republican Party in charge. Whether its the United States or the Iraq, Republicans simply can't govern, can't manage, and can't produce results. They have the Midas touch of mistake, transforming any minor crisis into catastrophe. They ignore any calls to rectify their wrongs, choosing instead to stand on piles of debris and death, pointing out just how damn glad we should be that they're in charge.

So this is your liberated Iraq, America, in shambles and in shame, brought to you by the GOP.

Party above country. Any country.

Party above any logic. Party above any need.

Always. . .

Interesting: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009824
[DK] It's another one of a string of reports in recent months that fall into a strange category of news-gathering: stories already known to be true but for which the specific facts weren't yet available.

I know that sounds flip, but there really is something going on here worth noting. For instance, any reasonable person's reaction to the Post story will be a variation on, "Duh!" Bush placed a premium on political fealty rather than competence and effectiveness? Who is surprised by that? No one. . .

Isn't it usually the other way around? Reporters, and their readers, look for the facts in order to constuct a larger picture. Ideally the facts are pieced together into a mosaic in which discrete bits of information that may otherwise be meaningless standing alone now contribute to a greater level of understanding.

Not so with many Bush era stories. The President's modus operandi is so well established, but the cloak of secrecy so tightly closed, that the broad outlines of a story may be known months or years before the particular facts are uncovered to flesh out the details. . .

The theological dimensions: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115849365600236836
[Tristero] Perhaps the most difficult thing for normals like you and I to understand is the myth that "The Good Person can do no wrong" to which rightwing nuts, especially the religious, are so prone. But it is quite real. When Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, a woman with absolutely no legitimate qualifications for such an intellectually demanding job, he defended her by insisting on her Goodness. And had she been found to be truly Good by the extreme right, she would be sitting on the court right now, in way, way, way over her head. . . To the right, if you are Good, then you simply cannot, by definition, do wrong. So, when you're looking to fill a position of authority, you don't look for the most qualified in terms of experience. You look for the person who is the most Good. Since being a "Christian" means you're Good, since being a Republican loyal to Bush means you're Good, that is far more important than Arab language skills. . .

Billmon, of course: http://billmon.org/archives/002737.html
My own personal favorite f-ck up was when the CPA couldn't even get its own name right on its own web site, and thus informed the world that it was the Coalition Provincial Authority -- no doubt to demonstrate its intention to turn Iraq into the Canada of the Middle East. But that was an example of ruthless Prussian efficiency compared to the CPA's performance of its other responsibilities, such as fixing the power grid, getting the oil flowing, rebuilding the health care system, etc. etc. etc. Aside from the Pentagon, no single entity did more to give us the Iraq we know today. And they'd better hope God has mercy on their souls. I know I wouldn't.

Bush says we are locked in a desperate struggle for the survival of civilization itself – now excuse me while I spend the whole month of October out on the campaign trail

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/09/16/bush_will_hit_campaign_trail.html

Just don’t call it a civil war

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y2DF128CD
[Reuters] Iraqi police have found the bodies of 47 more death squad victims in Baghdad, the latest in a wave of sectarian killings which prompted the United States to divert troops from other parts of Iraq to the embattled capital.

The bodies were found early Saturday. Most victims had been bound, tortured and shot, bringing the toll from such killings to nearly 180 in four days. . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/iraq_dc
Four blasts killed 23 people in Iraq's ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk on Sunday, including a huge suicide truck bomb, a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged divided Iraqis to embrace reconciliation.

In the deadliest blast, a suicide attacker driving a truck rigged with explosives blew himself up outside the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the political party of Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, killing 17 people. . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/16/195641/169
[Jim Webb, D-VA] "The political conundrum that the Republicans really like is that they want the Democrats to step forward and say here's the timetable so they can attack the timetable," Mr. Webb said in an interview last week. "But my question is, `What is your plan?' You say, `Stay the course.' What does that mean?"

Who polices the police?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/world/middleeast/17ministry.html
Shiite militiamen and criminals entrenched throughout Iraq’s police and internal security forces are blocking recent efforts by some Iraqi leaders and the American military to root them out, a step critical to winning the trust of skeptical Sunni Arabs and quelling the sectarian conflict, Iraqi and Western officials say. . .

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3365
[LAT] A senior American official said U.S. personnel were investigating sites where corpses were recently found. U.S. officials are concerned that the killings may have been committed by Shiite-dominated government security forces in areas already secured by U.S. and Iraqi troops — inside jobs, in effect.

Our good friends

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7182
[Stars and Stripes] U.S. operations around Sadr City met with increased resistance this weekend, as soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team continued clearing operations in the poor, restive neighborhoods around the Shiite mega-slum.

But rather than resist with bullets and bombs, residents took a decidedly grass-roots approach, hurling rocks and shouting obscenities. . . . The movement’s unlikely foot soldiers, a rowdy band of little boys and adolescents, slung insults and rocks with impunity as adult Iraqi soldiers and policemen stood by and watched. . .

Stovepiping 2.0

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004890.html
Interesting Warren Strobel/John Walcott piece on an eerie echo of phony pre-war Iraq intelligence from discredited exile groups and figures being injected into the system via unconventional US government offices, this time on Iran . . .

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/warren_p_strobel/15529884.htm
In an echo of the intelligence wars that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a high-stakes struggle is brewing within the Bush administration and in Congress over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program and involvement in terrorism.

U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran's nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran's role in Hezbollah's attack on Israel in mid-July. . .

Some officials at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department said they're concerned that the offices of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney may be receiving a stream of questionable information that originates with Iranian exiles, including a discredited arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who played a role in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

. . . Adding to the unease, Rumsfeld's office earlier this year set up a new Iranian directorate, reported to be under the leadership of neoconservatives who played a role in planning the Iraq war.

Current and former officials said the Pentagon's Iranian directorate has been headed by Abram Shulsky. Shulsky also was the head of the now-defunct Office of Special Plans, whose role in allegedly manipulating Iraq intelligence is under investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general.

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115842127414545162

The hobgoblin of missile defense: a complete failure and waste of money

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/09/nuclear_armaged.html

Learning from our mistakes?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600885.html
An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat -- this time on a national scale -- of last week's Election Day debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines, and a third of all precincts this year are using the technology for the first time. . .

The poll numbers are encouraging – but everyone knows that especially in an off-year election the key is turnout. Right now, the Republicans have a big advantage

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009821

Price tag for the 2008 Presidential campaign - $1 billion!

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/09/16/presidential_race_may_cost_hopefuls_500_million.html

Theocracy watch: no one has done more than this administration to enlist evangelical churches as an arm of the Republican party, channeling public monies to them under “faith based programs,” supporting fundamentalist schools, and giving them privileged access to shaping the policy process. But now we learn this:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009818
[DK] This is just unbelievable. The IRS is suddenly ramping up its investigation of whether All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena violated its tax-exempt status with an anti-war sermon just before the 2004 elections.

On Friday an IRS investigator served a summons on the current rector, Rev. Ed Bacon, ordering the church to turn over all documents and e-mails it produced during the 2004 election year that referred to political candidates . . .

So the IRS holds its fire in an investigation of allegedly improper political activites just before the 2004 elections until just before the 2006 elections. How about an investigation of that?

The kind of people they are

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8489.html
[Steve Benen] The Family Research Council, DC's most powerful religious right lobbying group, is hosting a major conference this Friday called the "2006 Values Voter Summit." For a mere $95, attendees can hear three days worth of far-right, theocratic rhetoric from nearly all of the movement's most prominent leaders and activists, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Tony Perkins, and Don Wildmon.

Perhaps most importantly, a featured guest will be none other than Ann Coulter. Will she be enough to keep high-profile politicians away from the summit? As Pierce explained, not so much . . .

How on earth is this considered politically acceptable? . . [L]eading conservative lawmakers seem to think nothing of an appearance — six weeks before nationwide elections, no less — in front of a thousand fringe activists, hate-filled personalities, and theocons anxious to establish a Taliban-west like government in the United States. . .

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600876.html
FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte and House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

THIS WEEK (ABC): National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and singer/songwriter Jewel.

FACE THE NATION (CBS): Hadley, and Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).

MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) and Virginia Senate candidate James Webb (D).

LATE EDITION (CNN): Hadley, Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.); Lt. Gen. Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, Pakistani provincial governor; investor George Soros; Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie.

Bonus item: this ombudsperson needs an ombudsperson

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609160006?src=newsbox-atrios.blogspot.com

***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).

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 @ 8:19 AM

 
MORAL CLARITY

Testy

http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=testy&x=0&y=0
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: irritable
Synonyms: annoyed, bad-tempered, bitchy, cantankerous, captious, choleric, crabbed, cranky, cross, crotchety, edgy, exasperated, fretful, grouchy, grumpy, impatient, irascible, mean, ornery, peevish, peppery, petulant, po'd, quarrelsome, quick-tempered, ratty, short-tempered, snappy, splenetic, sullen, thin-skinned, touchy, uptight, waspish

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1416.html#007242
[Ezra Klein] This is by far the pissiest press conference Bush has given. He's furious. I assume his feet are manacled behind the microphone. Otherwise, he'd be stalking across the stage, tearing apart the podium, and occasionally leaping into the crowd to rip out David Gregory's heart. . . . Where Bush is generally petulant and unhappy at these events, he's now snapping at reporters, straightforwardly insulting them, yelling from the podium, losing control, and generally evincing a combativeness and barely suppressed rage that I've never seen from him before.

More images from Bush’s testy press conference

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7172

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7175

Steve Benen rocks

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8482.html
I watched the president's press conference this morning and jotted down a quick note every time I heard him say something that I knew to be false. Needless to say, I went through more than a couple of sheets of paper.

* On the issue of military tribunals, Bush said, "We will work with members of both parties to get legislation that works out of the Congress."

That's not quite right. First, the White House isn't interested in working with congressional Dems at all, and second, the proposals with bi-partisan support are staunchly opposed by the president.

* In describing his concerns about Common Article III of the Geneva Convention, Bush said, "Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague. What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'? That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation."

Somehow, American presidents seemed to function just fine with the same interpretation for the last 60 years. Besides, the judge advocate general of the Army recently said, "[W]e've been training to that standard and living to that standard since the beginning of our Army, and we continue to do so." To hear Bush tell it, the standard doesn't even exist. Apparently, only he and his sycophants agree.

* Asked how he measures progress in Iraq with all the death and destruction, the president said, "Well, one way you do it is you measure progress based upon the resilience of the Iraqi people."

This was my personal favorite of the day. Apparently, we're no longer looking at progress in the war by indicators that we can actually measure (casualties, oil production, terrorist attacks, etc.), but instead by the amorphous concept of "resilience." Now all we need is a resilience-o-meter and we'll have some valuable data to consider.

* In a question about bin Laden being a modern-day Hitler, a reporter asked why the president hasn't sent special forces troops into Pakistan in order to capture or kill him. Bush responded, "Pakistan is a sovereign nation. In order for us to send thousands of troops into a sovereign nation, we've got to be invited by the government of Pakistan."

Here's a crazy idea — since Bush and Musharraf are friends, why doesn't the president ask him about it?

* On the same point, Bush added, "[T]here is a kind of an urban myth here in Washington about how this administration hasn't stayed focused on Osama bin Laden. Forget it. It's convenient throw-away lines when people say that."

Actually, it's not.

* As for actually bringing bin Laden to justice, Bush said, "[T]he best way to find somebody who is hiding is to enhance your intelligence and to spend the resources necessary to do that."

And to demonstrate his willingness to enhance our bin Laden intelligence, the president disbanded the CIA unit devoted to catching bin Laden. Good call.

* Bush was asked about House Majority Leader John Boehner's (R-Ohio) comment this week that he believes Dems are "more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people." A reporter asked Bush if Boehner's remarks were appropriate, and the president said, "I wouldn't have exactly put it that way, but I do believe there's a difference of attitude [between Republicans and Democrats]."

Classy move, Mr. President. Way to help "change the tone."

Bush added, "I'm confident the Leader, you know, meant nothing personal." He was simply accusing half the country of treason — but if we took that "personally," we just misunderstood.

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/sep/15/bush_admits_to_noise_machine_tactic
[Bush] "No one should ever question the patriotism of somebody who—let me just start over—I don't question the patriotism of somebody who doesn't agree with me."

[Eric Kleefeld] So did Bush just unwittingly give away the game by revealing that he'll happily look the other way while others question his critics' patriotism, as he remains above the fray?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091500483.html
Bush also emphatically rejected a statement by his former secretary of state, retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, that "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." Bush said it was "unacceptable" to compare the actions of America with those of Islamic extremists who commit mass murder to achieve their goals.

[NB: Of course, that isn’t what Powell was saying AT ALL, but no one – no one at the press conference, and clearly not the Washington Post here, dared to point that out]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/15/bushobl/index.html
[Tim Grieve] George W. Bush on Osama bin Laden, Sept. 15, 2006: "There's kind of an urban myth here in Washington about how this administration hasn't stayed focused on Osama bin Laden. Forget it. It's convenient throwaway lines when people say that."

George W. Bush on Osama bin Laden, March 13, 2002: "You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you ... And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure ... I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."

More: http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7174

Here’s the video of Bush going off on David Gregory (NBC), who had the temerity to ask him a question and actually expect him to answer it

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/15/bushpc/index.html
[Tim Grieve] NBC's David Gregory asked George W. Bush the obvious hypothetical question: How would he feel if a foreign government like, say, North Korea's or Iran's, captured a U.S. soldier or CIA officer, subjected him to torture, then tried and convicted him with evidence he wasn't allowed to see?

Bush didn't -- Bush couldn't -- answer the question. . .

Watch: http://susiemadrak.com/2006/09/15/16/35/hissy-fit/

Bush says we owe it to military and CIA interrogators to “clarify” what Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention does and doesn’t allow, so they can know what is permitted without worrying about potential legal liability down the road. Let me put on my other professional hat for a moment and say that this sounds like a reasonable moral stance, but isn’t.

First, there is a reason why standards like this must be vague: they express an international consensus on a broad intention about prisoner of war treatment – subject to interpretation, yes, but necessarily so when one considers the broad range of situations, actions, actors, and national/cultural contexts it must encompass. As Wittgenstein said, sometimes you can aspire to TOO MUCH clarity as well as too little.

A list of do’s and don’ts can’t serve as a moral instruction manual, because it simply invites people to invent new practices that aren’t on the list. The idea that a higher degree of specification removes ambiguity and wriggle room sounds good at first glance, but actually the opposite is the case.

Simply put, there isn’t any alternative here to laying out a broad intention that emphasizes erring on the side of kindness rather than cruelty. That’s what Common Article 3 tries to do. Ironically, this is the basic approach of Christian morality generally – but there’s no point in talking with Bush about Christian morality.

An alternative that is even more vague, and for that reason perhaps even more useful, would go something like this: Don’t treat prisoners from other armies in ways that you aren’t prepared to have them treat YOUR troops when they are captured. That’s what David Gregory’s question was getting to, and it’s death to the Bush position on torture – of course he couldn’t answer it.

Finally, “moral clarity” is in fact not what is going on here anyway: if it were, Bush would be giving Congress more than a few weeks to figure this out. As you will see in the next link, the alternative wording proposed by the Bush gang is JUST as open-ended and subject to interpretation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091501252.html
The administration says its intent is to define the explicit meaning of Common Article 3 so that CIA officers know exactly what they can do. But the senior official who addressed the legal issue yesterday said the standard the administration prefers is "context-sensitive," a phrase that suggests an endlessly shifting application of the rules.

The reason is that the administration's language would in effect ban only those interrogation techniques that "shock the conscience." That phrase, drawn from a judicial interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, is a "flexible" standard, the official said. Others have said that standard would allow interrogators to weigh how urgently they felt they needed to extract information against the harshness of their techniques, instead of following rigid guidelines.

The official did not try to explain how embracing such an inherently flexible standard would actually create clarity, the watchword of the administration's public campaign for its version of the bill.

Another irony lies in the fact that the congressional rules for interrogations that the Bush administration now seeks to embrace in the new legislation -- the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 -- were vigorously opposed by the White House before their adoption by Congress. Bush disliked them so much that when he signed the law Dec. 30, he appended a statement objecting to some of its provisions and explicitly reserved his right to interpret them "in a manner consistent" with his constitutional authorities as president and commander in chief. . . .

More: http://sideshow.me.uk/ssep06.htm#09160051

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/bush-says-powell-is-unacceptable-for.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/15/bushtechniques/index.html
[Tim Grieve] George W. Bush said repeatedly today that if Congress doesn't adopt his plan for the treatment of detainees, the "professionals" in the U.S. intelligence community will have to stop "the program." Bush never said what "the program" was exactly, and that's because he'd rather not. What he'd like you to think is that, absent some further "clarity" from Congress, interrogators just won't be able to ask questions of even the highest-level terrorism suspects out of fear that they'll end up on the wrong side of the law.

That's nonsense, of course, but it's par for the course: When anyone suggests that the administration actually follow the law and get a warrant when it engages in wiretapping, Bush and his surrogates immediately claim the critics want to prevent the United States from listening to al-Qaida altogether. We know that's not true, they know that's not true, but they're hoping that there are just enough people out there who don't know any better to keep the Republicans in control of the House and Senate come November.

So what's really at stake here? What interrogation activities does the White House want its "professionals" to be able to use that they lack the "clarity" to use now? Marty Lederman has a partial list of what we should assume we're actually debating here: "'Cold cell,' or hypothermia, where a prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees, during which he is doused with cold water; 'long time standing,' in which a prisoner is forced to stand, handcuffed and with his feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours; other forms of 'stress positions' and prolonged sleep deprivation, perhaps akin to 'long time standing'; and threats of violence and death of a detainee and/or his family."

Billmon: today’s must-read http://billmon.org/archives/002731.html

Then there is this: while Bush went on and on about the good, loyal men of the CIA and how he doesn’t want to see them subject to war crime tribunals, the fact is that the most vulnerable people on those charges are HIM and his people

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7170

Ugh

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009817
CNN anchor Tony Harris: "We have to take the president at his word when he says that the problem with Common Article 3, which prohibits outrages against personal dignity, is that it is unclear. And we can't have our interrogators trying to get information that we need to protect this country under a bit of language here that is this vague. We can do better than this."

The politics of all this (and of course, there is always a political angle)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009813
[Josh Marshall] The aim here was to unite Republicans behind a bill and then force Democrats either to vote for or against -- demoralize the supporters of those who vote for and crush with 30 second ads those who vote against.

But if the White House actually gets tripped up in a fight with members of his own party over what kind of torture we should use, and that's the last legislative story out of Washington going into the election, that really seems like it would be a big disaster for the White House. . .

The question is, Am I really supposed to believe that Republican senators are willing to hand their party leader that kind of reverse on the eve of a critical mid-term election? I have a hard time believing that's going to happen. And yet, who's going to blink?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009811
[Josh Marshall] The president is now warning that "time is running out" for Congress to pass his Kangaroo Court bill.

It is of course more or less a perfect replay of 2002. At least then there was a notional, if bogus, argument for urgency. Now? Time is running out to set up military tribunals to try suspected terrorists who we've had in custody for two, three, four, in some cases I think even close to five years with no particular need or urgency to try them at all. But right now, seven weeks before the election time is running out because when Congress comes back in December it'll be too late.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/16/03840/5151

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115835585674646033

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/16/8562/23814

Putting the screws to McCain, Warner, and Graham (will it work?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/us/16bush.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091500483.html

Military lawyers too: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/washington/16jags.html

Bush on why he hasn’t captured Bin Laden yet

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009810

Silly questions

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_10_atrios_archive.html#115834391105604915
"Terrorist Surveillance Program"
[Atrios] I know this obvious will never manage to struggle through the clouds, but if we're eavesdropping on so many actual terrorists - you know, as in evidence exist which is sufficient to call them that - and it's so critical that we do so that the administration can't even be bothered to get a warrant 72 hours after the fact as FISA allows - ... why don't we arrest some of them?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009807
[Josh Marshall] "The president wants us to forget the mistakes he's made in Iraq. He says capturing bin Laden isn't a priority for him. And now he's off caught up in a fight with senators of his own party about which kinds of torture we should use. This president just can't or won't keep his eye on the ball. President Bush took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan when bin Laden was in our grasp because he wanted to hurry up and get into Iraq. And now he wants us to forget about Iraq because he doesn't want to take responsibility for all the mistakes he's made in Iraq. The American people have a choice on November 7th. If you think our country is going in the right direction, if you think Iraq is making us safer, vote Republican. If you've had enough and thinks it's time for a change, vote Democratic." -- quoted from a (fictional) congressional candidate.

OK, here is something positive I can say about Bush: his comments on Ann Richards at the press conference were gracious, heartfelt, and touching (not that this forgives what he and Rove did to her in winning the Texas governorship in 1994)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091500794.html
BUSH: I know this is a tough time for her children. She loved her children and they loved her a lot.

Running against Ann Richards taught me a lot. She was a really, really good candidate. She was a hard worker. She was -- she had the capacity to be humorous and yet make a profound point. I think she made a positive impact on the state of Texas.

One thing's for certain: She empowered a lot of people to be -- to want to participate in the political process that might not have felt that they were welcome in the process.

She is -- I will miss her. She was -- she really, kind of, helped define Texas politics in its best way. You know, one of the things we have done is we -- in our history, we've had characters, people larger than life, people that could fill the stage; you know, when the spotlight was on them, wouldn't shirk from the spotlight but would talk Texan and explain our state.

And she was really good at that.

And so I -- you know, I'm sad she passed away, and I wish her family all the best -- and all her friends. She had a lot of friends in Texas. A lot of people loved Ann Richards.

When you are trying to get out of a deep hole, rule #1 is, Stop Digging!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060915/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_060915121821
Iraqi security forces will dig trenches around Baghdad and set up checkpoints along all roads leading into the city to try to reduce some of the violence plaguing the capital, the Interior Ministry said Friday.

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3364

Here’s a good rule of thumb: before we start listening to anybody’s advice on Iran, let’s see what they said about Iraq

http://susiemadrak.com/2006/09/15/19/32/track-records/

On the wrong side: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1412.html
[Ezra Klein] I was impressed, reading the latest Charles Krauthammer column, to see that he'd included a relatively accurate assessment of what an attack on Iran would cause . . . a death spiral for America's economy, worldwide instability, a vast and rapid increase in retaliatory terrorism, and lots of killing. I was less impressed, and depressingly unsurprised, to watch Krauthammer pull off the predictable pivot to supporting war. . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1414.html

http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/09/krauthammers_war/

http://billmon.org/archives/002732.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009816

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8477.html
'I had the feeling they were high-five-ing each other'

On the right side: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115832956746087261

Rumsfeld’s fake news operation in Iraq – just as successful as his other post-war efforts

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/41512/

Two good analyses of the political context for the 2006 fall elections – the first of which emphasizes something we’ve been saying here: put Social Security front and center and say “If you give Bush a Republican Congress, he will dismantle the program – he has said so repeatedly”

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/sep/15/election_endgame

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1425.html
The old model of political affiliation, according to [Bush strategist Matthew] Dowd, is that people have stances on issue that lead them to identify with a political party, which then leads them to chose candidates. The new model, which is particularly something you see at work in the exurbs, is that people make lifestyle choices and then look for candidates who seem in tune with their lifestyle choices. Those candidates happen to have a party, and that party has issue positions, but the first mover is lifestyle choices and cultural identification, not issue positions. . . [read on]

Another (missed?) opportunity for the Democrats

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1424.html
[Ben Adler] Many, including this blog, have criticized Rich Lowry and Bill Kristol for their recent proposal to continue and expand the American military presence in Iraq. Some raised the question of whether there are actually troops available to fulfill that mission. Now, two experts have definitely answered that question. Surprise! The answer is no. . .

While this renders the debate over more troops in Iraq moot, it raises a more disturbing question: How exactly would the United States respond to a military crisis in another part of the world?

Also, on a tangential note, doesn't it seem like this issue would be the logical talking point for congressional Democratic candidates struggling to frame redeployment as the more security-conscious position?

There was a time when I thought the DLC played a useful role in the Democratic party, challenging orthodoxies and looking to build new coalitions: lately they have seemed more and more like traitors from within (exemplified by Marty Peretz saying recently that he hoped the Democrats DIDN’T win this fall). Now this:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/15/212342/902

What Bush and the Republicans have done to the 9/11 responders with health problems

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/senate-republicans-kill-proposed-2bn.html

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_10_atrios_archive.html#115834636235713351

More on the earmark law just passed by the House and Senate – it’s less, much less, than meets the eye

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8480.html
[Steve Benen] As the NYT noted, "The resolution would address only a small fraction of such [spending] provisions and, as an internal rule, would expire at the end of the current session in just a few weeks."

So, in summary, this "earmark reform" doesn't apply to special-interest tax breaks, includes loopholes large enough to drive a truck through, and won't even be in effect when lawmakers start working again in January. . .

[NB: So, clearly it’s only being passed for the sake of the election]

Like any good Republican, Bob Ney pleads guilty – but with an excuse

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/16/MNG30L6VNN1.DTL
Ney, 52, admitted in a plea agreement that he had accepted tens of thousands of dollars in illegal favors from Abramoff and from a Syrian businessman nicknamed "the Fat Man." . . . In a statement, he said that alcohol abuse had contributed to a downward spiral in his life and that he had checked himself into a rehabilitation facility for treatment.

Who’s next on the Abramoff chopping block?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/15/19215/9838

How the Armitage story, which Bush’s supporters have trumpeted ends the Plame matter, has actually given it new life

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/091506.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20060913/cm_uc_crjcox/joe_conason20060913

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-corn/wsj-and-toensing-_b_29562.html

As California goes, so goes the nation?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1390.html
[Ezra Klein] Over the past couple of decades, California's per capita energy usage has actually declined, even while the nation's shot up. Our smog levels have fallen and our air is cleaner. Why? Because we passed laws -- regulations -- making it so. And while the corporate community howled and promised us economic Armageddon if we dared regulate their activities, the state's done just fine. What a shocker.

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009505.php

Theocracy watch: a former Republican Majority Leader says. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8481.html
[Dick Armey] "Where in the hell did this Terri Schiavo thing come from? There's not a conservative, Constitution-loving, separation-of-powers guy alive in the world that could have wanted that bill on the floor. That was pure, blatant pandering to [Focus on the Family President] James Dobson. That's all that was. It was silly, stupid, and irresponsible. Nobody serious about the Constitution would do that. But the question was will this energize our Christian conservative base for the next election. […]

"Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies. I pray devoutly every day, but being a Christian is no excuse for being stupid. There's a high demagoguery coefficient to issues like prayer in schools. Demagoguery doesn't work unless it's dumb, shallow as water on a plate. These issues are easy for the intellectually lazy and can appeal to a large demographic. These issues become bigger than life, largely because they're easy. There ain't no thinking."

Katie Couric inaugurates a segment on her show called “Free Speech.” Her guests so far have been Rush Limbaugh, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Michael Gerson, former advisor and speechwriter to President Bush. Notice anything?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200609150002

Current Senate prospects look GREAT

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/15/134234/774
[Kos] We are leading in the polls in six races and are competitive in a seventh. Democrats will likely hold all their endangered seats. . . We need five pickups for a 50-50 Senate (forcing Cheney to drag his ass into the Senate to cast tie-breaking votes), and six for an outright majority. It would be nice if we got add another race to this list (Nevada or Arizona?) to further expand the playing field and spread Republicans even thinner. But as is, this is a stunning turn of events in a year where the map clearly favored the GOP. . .[read on]

I didn’t know Joe Lieberman (I-CT) was handicapped, did you?

http://mydd.com/story/2006/9/15/135544/850

Joe Lieberman, whiner

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/15/124733/873
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont Thursday said his opponent, U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, skipped almost 400 votes since 1999, including 33 of the 63 total votes taken on the Iraq war.

Earlier in the week, Lamont focused on a smaller slice of the senator's Iraq war voting tallies, but expanded that Thursday to cover a seven-year period, the same amount of time Lieberman used almost two decades ago when he ran critical ads against then-incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker.

Lieberman won his first of three terms in the Senate in 1988 after beating Weicker. Lamont beat Lieberman last month for the Democratic nomination for the Senate and Lieberman is now running as a petitioning candidate.

"It is astonishing that Senator Lieberman has missed the same amount of votes that he criticized Weicker for, in half the time," Lamont said, which includes 25 percent of all votes in the Senate in the last 3-1/2 years.

Lieberman, in a conference call with reporters, said Lamont was "hypocritical" and "persistently negative." . . . [read on]

Bonus item: Krauthammer nails it (for once)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115839232301401001
[Charles Krauthammer] Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days.

[Tristero] If ever there was an argument for voting against Republicans and other rightwing lunatics, this is it. We should all take this to heart.

Oh...But wait a minute...Did I possibly misread this? . . .

***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).

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 @ 8:39 AM

 
A DEFINING MOMENT

One thing that Bush doesn’t seem to understand (or maybe he just doesn’t care): the discourse that he finds convenient to use for domestic political advantage (a “struggle for civilization against evil,” talk of a religious – i.e. Christian -- awakening and crusade, terms like “Islamofascism,” justifications of torture against “these people”) provide tremendous leverage to the arguments of those groups who are working to turn popular sentiments in the Middle East against the US and the West – it isn’t an original point, but the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld approach to war completely neglects these considerations, and focuses only on tough-guy talk about “force” and “will”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115820954229994577
[Digby] I love this. He and his administration want to try people for treason for leaking to the papers about his illegal spying on US citizens and then he blurts out some babble that validates every stupid thing bin Laden preaches to his deluded followers. He might as well just call it a Christian Crusade and get it over with. He just framed his War On Terror in religious terms, which is very, very dumb.

Perhaps everyone has forgotten, what with all the idiotic hyperbole about "The Ideological Struggle of the 21st century" but al Qaeda framed this jihad from the very beginning as being a religous war against the "Jews and Crusaders." I don't know about you, but I don't think it's very smart for the president of the United States to keep helping him make that case. It's the basis for bin Laden's demagogic appeal. . . [read on!]

Bush invokes Bin Laden the other night as emblematic of everything we are fighting against. Plus, there’s the small matter that he directly ordered a plot that killed 3000 Americans. But Bush’s attitude today? “He’s not a priority.” Where is the outrage?

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/14/barnes-osama/
Fred Barnes appeared on Fox this morning to discuss his recent meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office. The key takeaway for Barnes was that “bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism.” Barnes said that Bush told him capturing bin Laden is “not a top priority use of American resources.” . . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_10_atrios_archive.html#115827876072682656
[Atrios] It's unclear if taking Bin Laden off the world stage would really reduce any threats of terrorism - how would I know - but for some reason I thought bringing a mass murderer to justice might be a wee bit important. . . But, more than that, Bush has equated Bin Laden with Hitler. Then said he's no big deal. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009794
[JO] The President launches a series of speeches that repeatedly quote the words of Osama Bin Laden to highlight how terrorists want to kill Americans. Then, a week later, he says that catching Osama Bin Laden is not a priority. Words vs. action. Rhetoric vs. reality. The Bush presidency. If only the Democrats knew how to take advantage of the glaring inconsistencies. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009793
[CB] The President has handed the Democrats a gift. They have to consistently and daily say: "The President said that getting the guy who masterminded 9/11 is not a top priority, if you elect a Democratic Congress, we will make it a top priority. That is what is riding on this election. If you want Bin Laden captured or killed (need to use the word "killed"), you have to vote for a change." Over and over and over again.

[Josh Marshall] Can you imagine what it would be like if the shoe were on the other foot?

More like this please: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8469.html
[Mary Landrieu, D-LA] "In light of the rantings that went on for 30 minutes here, in the chamber, by two colleagues from the other side, I'd like to state for the record that America is not tired of fighting terrorism; America is tired of the wrongheaded and boneheaded leadership of the Republican party that has sent six and a half billion a month to Iraq while the front line was Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. That led this country to attack Saddam Hussein, when we were attacked by Osama bin Laden. Who captured a man who did not attack the country and let loose a man that did.

"Americans are tired of boneheaded Republican leadership that alienates our allies when we need them the most. Americans are most certainly tired of leadership that despite documenting mistake after mistake after mistake, even of their own party admitting mistakes, never admit they do anything wrong. That's the kind of leadership Americans are tired of.

"I'm didn't come to the Senate to have partisan rantings on the floor, but I am most certainly not going to sit here as a Democrat and let the Republican leadership come to the floor and talk about Democrats not making us safe. They're the ones in charge and Osama bin Laden is still at loose."

More: http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/09/does_obl_matter/

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115826013732748066

This is part of a larger pattern: Bush has to keep hatred of Bin Laden alive, while not drawing attention to the fact that he has FAILED to bring him to justice. He has to convince people that he has played Big Daddy to keep us safe, while fanning the flames of fear and anxiety that something else bad could happen at any moment (“safer, but not yet safe”). He uses the most exalted language to describe the importance and necessity of the war he has fomented (a battle to defend civilization itself, the decisive struggle of the 21st century, a fight against the worst enemy we have ever faced, etc) – while not wanting to explain why we’re doing it with too few troops and with no great national sacrifice or commitment beyond those families who have given up their members to the campaign (to say nothing of his own lengthy vacations and generally half-assed attitude toward things).

From any standpoint this is all incoherent, yet Bush talks this way every single day and the media drapes his speeches with seriousness and solemnity – while the only truly appropriate response is “WTF?”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091301575.html
Why We Can't Send More Troops

All of Bush’s speechifying leading up to and on 9/11 did almost nothing to change public attitudes about the Iraq war, about terrorism, or about him

http://makeashorterlink.com/?B614155CD

Or did it? http://billmon.org/archives/002730.html

Who knows where this will end up, but after a couple of days when it looked as if the Bush gang would get everything they wanted on the two bills that expand Bush’s war powers (on military tribunals and torture, and on FISA), recent developments indicate that they may get NEITHER of them

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/washington/15detaincnd.html
President Bush went to Capitol Hill today to rally Republican support for his anti-terrorism policies, but a Senate committee dealt him a serious setback after a former member of his cabinet broke with him on a crucial issue. . . [The] Senate Armed Services Committee endorsed legislation that would give suspected terrorists more legal protections than the president desires.

Four of the panel’s 13 Republicans joined all 11 Democrats in rejecting Mr. Bush’s proposal to keep defendants from seeing classified evidence against them. The vote came a day after the House Armed Services Committee adopted a measure that more closely parallels what the president wants.

Mr. Bush said after conferring with Republican House members that he had “reminded them that the most important job of government is to protect the homeland.” As part of his plan, the president wants Congress to enact legislation that would authorize tougher interrogations of suspected terrorists.

And that is what Congress must not do, said Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state. “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” Mr. Powell said in a letter to Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the Republicans who differ with Mr. Bush’s policies. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/us/politics/15assess.html
It is one of those rare Congressional moments when the policy is as monumental as the politics.

On one side are the Republican veterans of the uniformed services, arguing that the president’s proposal would effectively gut the nearly 60-year-old Geneva Conventions, sending a dark signal to the rest of the world and leaving United States military without adequate protection against torture and mistreatment.

On the other are the Bush administration and Republican leaders of both the House and Senate who say new tools are urgently needed to pursue and interrogate terror suspects and to protect the covert operatives who play an increasingly important role in chasing them.

Republicans concede that the fight among themselves is a major political distraction, particularly given the credentials of the Republican opposition, led by Mr. McCain, the former prisoner of war in Vietnam who was tortured in captivity.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8468.html
Andrew Sullivan captured the landscape nicely: "The president has decided to drive a huge divide within his own party in order to make war crimes legal. He must be stopped…. Some things matter more than your re-election strategy, Mr President. Why is he going against the advice of the entire military leadership, the most respected Senators on defense matters, and the conscience of his own party? Are the polls that dire?"

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009785
So at least two former Chairman of the Joints Chiefs -- Vessey and Powell -- think the president's proposal for Kangaroo Courts to try accused terrorists is wrong. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/14/10551/5044
Compromise efforts are still ongoing and fluid, and it's hard to get a sense, reading all the news reports of the past few days, of where things precisely stand. . .

[NB: Plus, of course there is the likelihood of shenanigans once these competing House/Senate bills go to conference]

A defining moment

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401587.html
A Defining Moment for America
The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture.
PRESIDENT BUSH rarely visits Congress. So it was a measure of his painfully skewed priorities that Mr. Bush made the unaccustomed trip yesterday to seek legislative permission for the CIA to make people disappear into secret prisons and have information extracted from them by means he dare not describe publicly. . .

Arm-twisting

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001524.php
More details emerge about the allegations that the White House pressured top military lawyers to drop their opposition to its favored torture legislation. . .

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001521.php

Here is the simple point that keeps getting lost in the debate: even if torture is a “useful tool” in the intelligence gathering process (an assumption disputed by many interrogation experts), and even if one doesn’t grant weight to the moral arguments – the reason for the U.S. not to torture is that we lose the standing to criticize when others torture OUR troops. We extend rights to others not because they “deserve” it, but to defend a principle that protects US. Military men like Powell and McCain realize this – how hard is it to understand?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091400160.html
Administration efforts to "redefine Common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions, which bars inhumane treatment of war prisoners . . . Powell said. . . “would put our own troops at risk." . . .

The White House later denied that it was attempting to redefine the Geneva Conventions provision, insisting instead that it simply wants to spell out in U.S. law what is prohibited under the treaty and what is not.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009788
[Josh Marshall] The Tony Snow press conference, going on now, is really a classic of our age. . . It's Tony Snow going back and forth with, I think, David Gregory, with Snow arguing that they're not gutting article 3 of the Geneva Convention. It's just no one has defined it before. It's just no one has realized there was a problem over the last 59 years until the Bush White House realized we were all flying blind. . .

The problem hadn't occurred to anyone before because, says Snow, the issue 'hadn't come up' before. In other words, we hadn't really been in the torture business until now. So there wasn't as pressing a need to lawyer the Geneva Convention. Fascinating.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_09_10.php#009790
[Josh Marshall] Snow argued that the White House doesn't want to gut or reinterpret the minimum level anti-torture protections under Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. They just want to help clarify the vague language. . .

The Post spoke to Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn, who until recently was chief of the war law branch of the Army's Office of the Judge Advocate General. . . . Corn told the Post ... "that Common Article 3 was, according to its written history, 'left deliberately vague because efforts to define it would invariably lead to wrongdoers identifying 'exceptions,' and because the meaning was plain -- treat people like humans and not animals or objects.'"

Snow job: http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7167

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/senate-republicans-protect-terrorists.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009499.php

Harry Reid (D-NV) says Specter’s FISA bill is “dead”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/14/184331/715
[McJoan] The GOP can't win on this one. If they try to push through the Specter bill, they have to twist the arms of too many GOP members who are running away from the Rubber Stamp Republican label we've stuck on them. And they get a very messy fight. The Democrats cannot effectively be labeled as obstructionist on this one, because they have a perfectly good alternative they, and even Republicans including Specter and Graham, are more than willing to enact. . .

More: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/sen-reid-specter-bill-will-not-be.html

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/weapons-for-stopping-specter-bill.html

The CIA knew in 2002 that there were no Hussein/Bin Laden ties

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401545.html

The Web tells all

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_09_10_atrios_archive.html#115826789415813177
[Atrios] While looking into something I decided to head to the web page of the House Armed Services Committee web page. . . . I noticed the "Victory in Iraq Caucus" link led to... nowhere.

Then I decided to see what's been going on under the title "Success stories - building freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan."

After clicking on the link we're helpfully informed that we should "Check back often - because there is a lot of good news to tell about Iraq and Afghanistan."

The last functioning update is from May 18, 2005. . .

Christo-fascists

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/question-for-disneyabc-are-christo.html

How dangerous is Karl Rove? Very, very dangerous (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?disc=149495;article=104570;title=APFN

Billmon: the U.S. as Roman Empire

http://billmon.org/archives/002728.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002727.html

It’s what they do

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/gop-senate-leader-bill-frist-is-trying.html
GOP Senate Leader Bill Frist is trying to put special interest gambling amendment on Iraq and Afghanistan funding bill

Bob Ney (R-OH), another Republican congressman brought down by corruption. Has the media noticed a pattern yet?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/washington/15ney.html

Plead guilty – but don’t give back the money

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060913/NEWS02/609130428
Tom Noe, the GOP fund-raiser at the heart of Ohio’s biggest political scandal in a generation, claimed that pressure from the Bush-Cheney campaign led him to commit the campaign-finance crimes for which he was sentenced yesterday to federal prison. . .

But he blamed it in part on pressure from unnamed campaign officials to become a Bush “Pioneer,” someone who raises more than $100,000 for the campaign. . .

“I alone accept responsibility for what I have done,” he said. “I’m going to repeat that. I knew it was wrong to do so. I alone accept responsibility for what I have done.” . . .

The biggest surprise was Noe’s statement about the pressure from the Bush-Cheney campaign. . . . Top Republicans in Washington and Columbus rejected Noe’s claim of pressure, saying he alone was responsible for the crimes. . .

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee said there was no pressure on Noe to raise the money or break the law.

Aaron McLear said he didn’t know if Noe’s comment was a parting shot at the Bush-Cheney campaign because the U.S. Department of Justice pursued the case against him.

As he has said before, the RNC will return the conduit money if authorities order it to do so. . .

Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said Noe’s conviction should trigger the return of the money that Noe laundered into the Bush campaign.

“I can’t possibly fathom why they won’t give it back,” he said. . .

Ken Tomlinson (CROOK!) keeps his job

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060913-112343-8645r.htm

Rick Santorum (R-PA), always the first to do the worst, provides a flavor of the kind of ads the GOP is going to be running this fall

http://www.attytood.com/archives/003728.html
GOP Pa. Sen. Rick Santorum's flagging re-election campaign has launched a new TV attack ad that can only be described as absurdist theatre, if not out-and-out absurd.

Using actors and interspersed with grainy black and white, the new 30-second spot seeks to tie his Democratic foe, state treasurer Bob Casey, to a shady cast of corrupt characters, without naming names. . .

DINO’s (Democrats in Name Only)

http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/09/euston_meets_the_new_world/
[Matt Yglesias] The combination of the roster of signatories with what can only be called the remarkable vacuity of the text suggests that this is another signpost on the road during which a certain number of liberal intellectuals will become conservatives. The doctrine spelled out explicitly -- that fundamentalist Islam provides a poor basis for governance, that terrorist attacks are immoral, that it would be better if Iran didn't build a nuclear bomb, that anti-semitism is bad, and that an Iranian nuclear first strike against Israel would be a very bad thing indeed -- is almost frightening in its banality. The inference that the reader is plainly intended to draw from the statement -- that those of us who've been agitating against those who are agitating to start a war with Iran are anti-semites, apologists for terrorism, and perhaps eager to see the population of Israel wiped out in an unprovoked nuclear first strike -- is offensive in the extreme.

The other “i” word (not “impeachment”) that Democrats have to learn to use again

http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2006/09/what_matters/
“inequality”

Wha. . . ?

http://www.slate.com/id/2149765
[Daniel Politi] USAT fronts a look at a trend of new cities hiring private companies to run their local government. Although it is common for certain city services to be privatized, a few cities have turned almost all of the bureaucracy to private companies. Advocates of this system say it is cheaper and more efficient, but some fear it could create a "shadow government."

Richard Armitage is now added as a co-defendant with Libby and Rove in the Plame lawsuit – and Bob Novak is calling him a liar. Maybe he knows more about the coordinated effort to smear Plame and Wilson than he’s admitting

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/novak-says-armitage-is-lying-about.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/novak-armitage-fighting-over-who-said.html

The liberal media

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009496.php
[Kevin Drum] Three weeks ago, conservative Republicans on the House intelligence committee released a report criticizing the U.S. intelligence committee for not being aggressive enough about gathering information on Iran's nuclear threat. . .

Today, the IAEA — which, you may recall, turned out to be right about Iraq — wrote Hoekstra a letter complaining that the report contained "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements."

I've reproduced the Washington Post's coverage of these two events below. Do you notice any differences? I've provided some subtle clues in case you're having trouble figuring it out. . .

Shredding party (thanks to Susan Madrak for the link)

http://rawstory.com/comments/19677.html
The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. received a copy of the report "indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made public," according to Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that "every last piece" of the report be destroyed. "The whole project was just stopped -- end of discussion," he said. . .

Bonus item: Don’t miss it – “Punctuation Punditry” from The Daily Show

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/index.jhtml

***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).

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 @ 8:47 AM

 
START PRAYING

Okay, now I really AM worried. This is not a man we want making decisions about the fundamental well-being of the country

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091201594.html
President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. . . "A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me," Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. "There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s -- boom -- and I think there's change happening here," he added. "It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening."

The First Great Awakening refers to a wave of Christian fervor in the American colonies from about 1730 to 1760, while the Second Great Awakening is generally believed to have occurred from 1800 to 1830.

Some scholars and writers have debated for years whether a Third Awakening has been taking place, although some identify other awakenings in U.S. history. Bush aides, including Karl Rove, have read Robert William Fogel's "The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism."

Bush has been careful discussing the battle with terrorists in religious terms since he had to apologize for using the word "crusade" in 2001. He often stresses that the war is not against Islam but against those who corrupt it. In his comments yesterday, aides said Bush was not casting the war as a religious struggle but was describing American cultural changes in a time of war.

"He's drawing a parallel in terms of a resurgence, in dangerous times, of people going back to their religion," said one aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was not open to other journalists. "This is not 'God is on our side' or anything like that." . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
[Dan Froomkin] Bush also injected a religious perspective into his address to the nation on Monday, the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when he said: "The attacks were meant to bring us to our knees, and they did, but not in the way the terrorists intended. Americans united in prayer."

Bush often calls attention to all the people who he meets who say they are praying for him, and that's how the subject apparently came up yesterday. As Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne blogged for the National Review: "He jokingly noted, 'Now maybe the only people who pray in America come to my events.'"

But Bush's disquisition about a "Third Awakening" is highly suggestive, and potentially of no small political significance.

National Review senior editor Jeffrey Hart touched on the issue of revivalism in an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last year. He wrote that Bush "has brought religion into politics in a way unknown to recent memory. And he has owed both of his electoral victories to his Evangelical Christian base. This indispensable base has profoundly affected his policies, foreign and domestic. . .

Hart wrote that the "Third Awakening of Evangelicalism believes all sorts of bizarre things, such as the imminent end of the world, the second coming of Christ, the sudden elevation of the just to heaven and the final struggle of Good versus Evil in Jerusalem: Armageddon. We thus have the immense popularity of the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins." . . .

More recently, journalists struggling to understand Bush's nearly absolute deference to Israel in the Lebanese conflict wondered if Bush's religious beliefs were a factor. See my August 4 column, What's the Motivation?, which includes the strange tale of the visit to a White House Bible study meeting by a writer of Christian apocalyptic fiction.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8456.html
[Steve Benen] Based on his comments yesterday, the president is under the impression that he's driving this "Third Awakening" personally, by allegedly launching a war on terror. In other words, Bush is not only taking responsibility for Americans turning to Christianity in greater numbers, he also believes the war on terror is a motivating factor, if not the motivating factor.

These remarks touch on a point that isn't entirely new, but is quite disconcerting. Kevin Phillips' most recent book, "American Theocracy," for example, based in part on the idea that Bush is heading "the first religious party in U.S. history," basing life-and-death policy decisions on the power of "the tens of millions of true believers viewing events through a Left Behind perspective." Shortly after the book was published, Bush reinforced Phillips' thesis.

Speaking to a business group in Irvine, Ca.,… Bush also explained, in unusually stark terms, how his belief in God influences his foreign policy.

"I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true," he said. "One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free. I believe liberty is universal. I believe people want to be free. And I know that democracies do not war with each other."

There's also recent reporting from Seymour Hersh.

Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.

Bush's closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush's first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President's religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that "God put me here" to deal with the war on terror. The President's belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that "he's the man," the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reelection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

Bush's policies have been frightening enough; the idea that he believes he's on some kind of religious crusade is simply breathtaking.

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1394.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/bush-thinks-that-as-commander-in-chief.html

A U.S. administration has terrorist leaders lined up and in the cross-hairs in Afghanistan, but fails to act. More Clintonian cowardice from “Path to 9/11”? Nope. . .

http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7153

The sorry state of the U.S. military

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060913/pl_afp/usmilitaryreadiness_060913214114
The US Army's combat readiness has fallen to levels not seen since the Vietnam War, undercutting its ability to sustain deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan or to respond to conflicts elsewhere, opposition Democrats warned in a report.

The report attributed the slide to critical shortfalls in equipment, which have made it more difficult for units back home to train with the tanks, armored vehicles and other weapons it will fight with.

"Army military readiness rates have declined to levels not seen since the end of the Vietnam War," said the report. . .

Bush always says he will give the commanders on the ground whatever they need to win. In Iraq, yesterday, they said they needed THREE TIMES as many troops as they have. Today, in Afghanistan. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/military-in-afghanistan-asking-for.html

BUT HE CAN’T. Despite lowering standards and repeatedly upping the age of eligibility, there is a real crisis in getting people to sign up to fight in Bush’s Big Desert Adventure. They certainly can’t initiate a draft. Where would more troops come from? And how does Rumsfeld keep his job?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009492.php

More: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_war_in_iraq_/2006/09/hollowing_out_the_military.php

We’re [NOT] winning

http://billmon.org/archives/002726.html
[Billmon] What's alarming (or encouraging, from bin Ladin's point of view) is that the original covert war against a transnational terrorist group appears to have morphed into a connected set of traditional Third World insurgencies, in which Islamist guerrilla fighters have managed to find or create relatively secure bases -- the Taliban in Afghanistan's Orzugan and northern Helmand provinces, the core of the old Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas and, just perhaps, Al Qaeda in Iraq in Anbar Province.

Col. Pat Lang, a former Middle East desk officer for the DIA, calls these "redoubt areas" -- perhaps harking back to the so-called Iron Triangle, an expanse of rubber plantations northwest of Saigon that was one of the Viet Cong's favorite stomping grounds. (Che Guevara's old concept of revolutionary foci might also apply.)

Such redoubts are essentially no go zones where the "legitimate" government has no presence and occupation troops rarely go (and then only in massive strength). This means they can be used as rear areas by the insurgents -- places to assemble units, rest and refit, build supply dumps, headquarters, hospitals, etc. Locals can be enlisted or dragooned into serving as porters, laborers, spies, etc. Redoubts are what southern Lebanon is to Hizbullah, and like southern Lebanon they may be honeycombed with tunnel complexes, command bunkers and underground ammo dumps and armories -- all the things a guerrilla army needs to survive a war with a vastly superior First World military. . .

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2006/09/political_stalemate_in_the_iraq_endgame.html
[Michael Froomkin] As far as I can tell, there is no longer any plan for 'victory' however defined in Iraq, not even of the Potemkin village variety. The military itself has begun to admit that the US has suffered a political defeat, even if it remains undefeated militarily . . . Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The US involvement in Iraq has now taken on the look of that kind of insanity.

No – more – war!

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004881.html
[Laura Rozen] I don't know if CNN domestic shows the same report as CNN International, but Michael Ware's report from Anbar Province today is just devastating. To see Marines choked up with tears for their miserable task and loss of one of their own as al Qaeda deepens its hold over al Anbar is devastating. . .

True? Maybe not, but what a delicious irony if another of his Daddy’s men has to dig Bush out of the Iraq mess that Daddy’s other men got him into

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Baker.htm
President Bush has acceded to his father's urging and has made former Secretary of State James Baker a leading adviser on Iraq.

Administration sources said Mr. Baker, head of the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group, has been discussing with the president recommendations on an exit strategy that could begin after the November elections. They said Mr. Baker's approach to Iraq differs sharply from that of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. . .

Bad news: Specter’s bill to turn the FISA laws on wiretapping from a requirement into an option moves toward approval. But there is still hope: they approved a Democratic version too (something is at play behind the scenes, clearly)

http://www.slate.com/id/2149641/
[Daniel Politi] The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to approve a plan that is seen as an endorsement of the administration's eavesdropping program, and it would allow a secret court to rule on whether the warrantless wiretaps are constitutional. As the WP emphasizes, the Bush administration could submit the program to a secret court for constitutional review, but it is not required. Confusingly, the Senate Judiciary Committee also approved seemingly contradictory legislation sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein from California, which reaffirms the 1978 law and would require court approval before any eavesdropping can take place. This contradiction is mentioned high up in the LAT's story, while the NYT leaves it for the end, and it is ignored by the WP. . .

More: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/specter-bill-much-closer-to-being.html

“Trust us,” huh?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091201443_pf.html
Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee are complaining that the National Security Agency has played politics in support of the secret program to intercept phone calls between alleged terrorists in the United States and abroad.

On July 27, shortly after most members of the committee were briefed on the controversial surveillance program, the NSA supplied the panel's chairman, Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), with "a set of administration approved, unclassified talking points for the members to use” . . . Among the talking points were "subjective statements that appear intended to advance a particular policy view and present certain facts in the best possible light," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said in a letter to the NSA director.

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8451.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115817206494898701

Good news: Bush’s demand that Congress invalidate the Geneva requirements and approve torture runs into strong opposition

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/09/post_1395.html
[Ezra Klein] It looks, rather surprisingly, like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner are readying to take substantive stands against the Bush administration’s attempt to torture by another name. The nu