HOW BADLY DO YOU WANT IT?

So vicious, so wrong. Take this story with a grain of salt, but the British press is reporting that Bush’s Pentagon is reopening an investigation into whether Kerry deserved his medals.

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2004/09/uk_telegraph_reports_bush_admin_makes_next_move_in_dirty_campaign.html
[UK Telegraph] [T]he Pentagon has ordered an official investigation into the awards of the Democratic senator’s five Vietnam War decorations…The highly unusual inquiry is to be carried out by the inspector-general’s office of the United States navy, for which Sen Kerry served as a Swift Boat captain for four months in 1968, making two tours of duty…He was wounded in action and subsequently awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star. But for the past month, the exact details of Mr Kerry’s military service in Vietnam have become shrouded in a controversy that the navy has now decided warrants a full-blown search for the truth…Last week, the Kerry campaign attempted to leave the Vietnam debate behind, as signs appeared that the controversy was damaging Mr Kerry’s standing in the polls. But to the consternation of campaign strategists, the US navy has now agreed to a request by Judicial Watch, a bi-partisan lobby group, for a full inquiry. Judicial Watch is calling for the Navy to report before the elections, but Navy officials are so far refusing to give any timetable for the inquiry…In an August letter to the Pentagon, the group’s president, Tom Fitton, requested an investigation into the “determination and final disposition of the awards granted to Lieutenant (junior grade) John Forbes Kerry, US Naval Reserve”, in response to the Swift Boat Veterans’ allegations…A navy spokesman confirmed on Friday that the inspector-general’s office at the Pentagon had authorised the inquiry. “It is the responsibility of all personnel to correct errors in official records,” said the spokesman. Another official said privately: “There’s a feeling that it’s time to deal with this thoroughly, once and for all.”

Why the Bushies are winning — and whether we should start fighting as dirty as they do

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004633.php
[Richard Cohen] The Bush campaign knows what it is doing. Bush is a minority president, elected with less than half the votes, and often 50 percent still eludes him in the polls. The campaign is engaged in hand-to-hand combat for just enough votes -- a mandate of one, if need be. It is infused with such a sense of righteousness that, like the Crusaders of old, it can commit atrocity after atrocity on the way to Jerusalem. All that matters is the goal. God understands.

He's right. For all the hatred of Bush among liberals, we still aren't as dedicated to our cause as conservatives are to theirs. After all, they're dedicated enough to figure that fighting fair is just a sign of weakness. For better or worse, we're not quite there yet.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_29_digbysblog_archive.html
Ok, Democratic girly-men and manly-girls, now is the time to show what we are made of. No 20/20 hindsight, nervous-nellie self loathing is acceptable. Nobody likes whiners. Bush got a good bounce and he's got momentum, but we have two months to go and worrying about spilled milk is worthless self-flagellation. The Republicans do not respond to adversity by turning on their candidate and neither should we. Take a deep breath and then get mad --- not at Kerry. At Bush. That's where the focus has to be. If we lose, we'll help Chris Matthews sort out where it all went wrong later. It's showtime.

First of all, the conventional wisdom about bounces is true. What goes up must come down. That's why they call it a bounce not a trend. Bush's double digit lead is very unlikely to stay double digit for very long. But, he is ahead, no doubt about it…So let's see if we can figure out the state of the electorate, what it was they liked so much about Bush's convention and what we can do to combat it.

First, I think it's pretty clear that many of us misread the allure of the red-meat, in-your-face macho rhetoric that emanated from the speakers and the delegates. The convention was unrelentingly negative toward the Democrats --- even the so-called moderates called us out. There is no escaping the fact that people seem to like what they were selling. Bashing Democrats is a very satisfying pastime that the whole American family can love. (Perhaps we Democrats could try to change that by not indulging in it with such relish ourselves, but that's another topic.)

After thinking about it for a bit, I realize that the Republicans have their finger on the pulse in a way I didn't understand. Right now, Americans are in the throes of a macho feeding frenzy. Combat, competition and manly virtues are being sold as the product everyone wants to own. One of the biggest shows on TV even features beautiful female models proving their manhood by eating bugs and allowing themselves to be near drowned in some sort of NavySeal hazing ritual. Popular culture is awash in masculine images.

And the 2004 version of heroic manliness isn't an honorable gentleman fighting a duel with elaborate rules and rituals. Today's hero is a guy who will stop at nothing, even scheming, backstabbing and cheating if necessary because winning is the only thing that brings manly respect…

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/election_2004_/2004/09/susan_estrich_goes_nuclear.php
[Susan Estrich] My Democratic friends are mad as hell, and they aren't going to take it any more…They are worried, having watched as another August smear campaign, full of lies and half-truths, takes its toll in the polls.

They are frustrated, mostly at the Kerry campaign, for naively believing that just because all the newspapers and news organizations that investigated the charges of the Swift Boat assassins found them to be full of lies and half-truths, they wouldn't take their toll. The word on the street is that Kerry was ready to fire back the day the story broke, but that his campaign, believing the charges would blow over if they ignored them, counseled restraint.

But most of all, activist Democrats are angry. As one who lived through an August like this, 16 years ago - replete with rumors that were lies, which the Bush campaign claimed they had nothing to do with and later admitted they had planted - I'm angry, too. I've been to this movie. Lies move numbers…

What do you do, Democrats keep asking each other…The answer is not pretty, but everyone knows what it is…The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough. Too much is at stake to play by Dukakis' rules and lose again. That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on.

Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up?…After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment.

What if Bush were to fall off the wagon? Then what? Has America really faced the fact that we have an alcoholic as our president?

Or how about Dead Texans for Truth, highlighting those who served in Vietnam instead of the privileged draft-dodging president, and ended up as names on the wall instead of members of the Air National Guard…Or maybe it will be Texas National Guardsmen for Truth, who can explain exactly what George W. Bush was doing while John Kerry was putting his life on the line. Perhaps with money on the table, or investigators on their trail, we will learn just what kind of wild and crazy things the president was doing while Kerry was saving a man's life, facing enemy fire and serving his country…Or could it be George Bush's Former Female Friends for Truth. A forthcoming book by Kitty Kelley raises questions about whether the president has practiced what he preaches on abortion. As Larry Flynt discovered, a million dollars loosens lips. Are there others to be loosened?

Are you shocked? Remember Dukakis? Now he teaches at Northeastern University. John Kerry has been very fair in dealing with the Swift Boat charges. That's why so many of my Democrat friends have decided to stop talking to the campaign, and start putting money together independently.

The arrogant little Republican boys who strutted around New York this week, claiming that they have this one won, would do well to take a step back. It could be a long and ugly road to November

[Mark Klieman] Well, you can't say Bush and Rove didn't ask for it.

Bush's return to drinking is apparently common knowledge in DC, though it seems unlikely anyone will talk on the record…The abortion story is old news, but seemed to be solid, at least by Swift Boat standards: the woman in question denies it, but the two then-friends who drove her to the (illegal) abortion mill have supposedly signed affidavits.

It's Stevenson's challenge to Nixon: if you don't stop telling lies about us, we're going to have to start telling the truth about you. Bush has been asked politely, and he hasn't. Now it's our turn.

Bush and the National Guard: What Barnes will say

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60319-2004Sep3.html

[Are we really supposed to believe that a close friend of the Bush family approached Barnes entirely on his own to make a request on behalf of W? That makes no sense whatsoever]

Personally, I think that we don’t have to go back to recycled stories about girlfriends’ abortions — the facts on the ground today are devastating enough, if the news gets out...

An Ayatollah for Iraq?

http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109436769234964834

The struggle for legitimacy: reconfiguring the transitional government

http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109436854665544959
Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says that the council first voted by a strong majority to alter the original plan of having two vice-chairs, increasing the number to four. 92 of the 100 members were present, and 12 persons put themselves forward for the offices. The winners (with vote tallies) were:

Jawad al-Maliki, Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Shiite) - 56
Hamid Majid Moussa, Communist Party, - 55
Rasim al-Awadi, Iraqi National Accord (Allawi's Party) - 53
Nasir A`if al-Ani, Iraqi Islamic Party (Sunni) - 48

Al-Maliki at least used to be a Khomeinist radical. The Iraqi Islamic Party is a Sunni fundamentalist outfit, the leader of which has denied that there is a Shiite majority in Iraq. The INA groups mainly ex-Baath officers and officials…So, this list is further evidence that the US invaded Iraq to install in power a coalition of Communists, Islamists and ex-Baathist nationalists. If you had said such a thing 3 years ago you would have been laughed at.

Bob Graham’s new book charges specific 9-11/Saudi government links, and a Bush cover-up

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9584265.htm
Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.

The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote.

And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/09/nonproliferatio.html
Readers may recall that about a month ago I was dumbfounded by reports that the Bush administration was scuttling the verification component of the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty. The Treaty would, if properly enforced, damage US interests not at all while making it harder for terrorists and rogue states to acquire nuclear weapons…The current issue of the Economist has a seriously buried lede explaining that the main motivation was, in fact, "the worries of Israel and Pakistan, two allies that want to keep the option of adding to their stockpiles." We scuttled a treaty that will keep bombs out of the hands of terrorists so that Israel and Pakistan (!) can build bigger arsenals? Israel and Pakistan! The same Pakistan whose chief nuclear scientist was operating a global proliferation market. The same Pakistan whose intelligence services built the Taliban and nurtured al-Qaeda in its early days. The same Pakistan whose military runs terrorist training camps.

On “Iran-amok”: involvement traced to Cheney’s office

http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109432849566104364

But the investigation is under severe political pressure

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001091.html
One measure of how seriously the Feds are pursuing an investigation into whether a Pentagon analyst leaked secret information to a pro-Israel lobbying group is the fact that FBI agents showed up unannounced at the offices of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington late on the morning of Aug. 27 armed with a search warrant. The bureau could only have obtained the warrant by demonstrating probable cause that AIPAC's offices contained evidence of a crime. . .

Law-enforcement sources indicated early last week that arrests in the case might be imminent. But officials later said the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria, Va., decided to hold up action to review the politically sensitive investigation. . .

If Bush comes up with a capture of Bin Laden now, it will be ESSENTIAL to spin the timing of this as a cynical manipulation of the electoral calendar (which is what it is, of course)

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/007787.html

Bonus item: Bush by the numbers

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/4/13340/71367

TRIUMPH OF THE “WILL”

Bush’s convention speech – Jon Stewart had this right: listening, you would have thought that someone else had been President for four years: mainly a litany of things he didn’t try to do, or tried to do and failed, in his first term

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000113.html
...guess what word—other than "a," "and," and "the"—occurs most frequently in the acceptance speech George W. Bush delivered tonight. The word is "will." It appears 76 times. This was a speech all about what Bush will do, and what will happen, if he becomes president…Except he already is president. He already ran this campaign. He promised great things. They haven't happened. So, he's trying to go back in time. He wants you to see in him the potential you saw four years ago. He can't show you the things he promised, so he asks you to envision them. He asks you to be "optimistic." He asks you to have faith.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59276-2004Sep3.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
But in substance, there was essentially nothing new last night, no detailed agenda -- and nothing remotely unscripted. Many lines were refugees from previous speeches and Bush meticulously stuck to his prepared text, even when interrupted by hecklers…Laying out his domestic policy, Bush was vague on the big stuff and otherwise small-bore. He didn't address the job losses that have plagued his tenure…Mired in an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, Bush defended his actions, but didn't describe a way out…Standing accused of having fudged the connection between the war on terror and the war on Iraq, he continued his attempt to conflate the two, without substantiation, leaving unclear where we go from here. [Read on for a fascinating list of the things Bush DIDN’T mention…]

Bush’s plan for a “flat tax”: sifting through the code words

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/09/index.html#003930

Bush trying to dodge one of the three debates (probably using this threat as leverage to get a friendly format: I’m sure they would like to have the questions in advance, if they could — or only questions that begin “How do you feel about…?”)

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0903gop-notebook03.html

More Bush 101: Accuse your opponent of what you are yourself actually guilty of

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/09/index.html#003926

Upcoming voter fraud: in the guise of “protecting the rights of our brave military personnel to vote” — an unobjectionable aim — new voting procedures are being put in place that (1) compromise the principle of a secret ballot, (2) are susceptible to widespread fraud, and (3) all run through the fingers of a company with strong GOP ties (thanks to Walter Feinberg for the tip)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03fri2.html

[More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36781-2004Aug26.html]

Boo! It makes a good story (but apparently, it isn’t true)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/09/feel-love.html
(AP) President Bush on Friday wished Bill Clinton ``best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery.''…”He's is in our thoughts and prayers,'' Bush said at a campaign rally…Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003427
I take this as a final, definitive word on the back and forth about whether there was booing at the Bush rally…This comes from a reporter on the scene whose judgment and honesty I completely trust ... “They didn't boo… AP got it wrong.”

[Watch for this to get trumpeted as an example of more liberal media bias]

Bush’s growing list of failures in domestic and foreign affairs

There goes the elderly vote: Medicare premiums to jump 17% next year

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-medicare4sep04,1,6389530.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
“the largest increase in the program’s history”

Terrorist attacks have INCREASED since the “war on terror” began

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003423

U.S. Military deaths in Iraq HIGHER this year than last

http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109411260427557669

Their October surprise…

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2004_09_04_bestof.html#109429470965795998
Less than a month to go…the White House continues its major diplomatic stroke job on Pakistan. President Bu$h praises strongman Gen. Parviz ”the pusher” Musharraf during his acceptance speech. And over in Islamabad, counterterrorism czar Cofer “Mr. October” Black is denying that the US has tasked Pakistan to capture Osama Bin Laden before the November election. “...it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen a month from now.” the ambassador mused. If it does, the Paks will own Osama, but probably lay him off on the Saudis. Bu$h will get credit for the win. That could be enough to send Sen. Kerry to the showers early. According to “Mr. October” everything is “in place.”

…and ours. This Franklin story (we need a new name for it as it grows in scope: perhaps an updating of the New Republic’s “Iran-amok” from the Iran-Contra days) — it ain’t going away, and it portends doom for Bush’s chances. People won’t accept a genial “I had no idea what these people underneath me were doing.” But it CAN’T be allowed to carry over past the election

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60497-2004Sep3.html?nav=rss_nation
FBI counterintelligence investigators have in recent weeks questioned current and former U.S. officials about whether a small group of Iran specialists at the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney's office may have been involved in passing classified information to an Iraqi politician or a U.S. lobbying group allied with Israel, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case…The investigators have asked questions about personnel in the office of Pentagon Undersecretary for Policy Douglas J. Feith as well as members of the influential Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to former U.S. officials who have been questioned and others familiar with the case…Investigators have specifically asked about a group of neoconservatives involved in defense issues, including Feith, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Iraq and Iran specialist Harold Rhode and others at the Pentagon. FBI agents also have asked current and former officials about Richard Perle of the defense board and David Wurmser, an Iran specialist and principal deputy assistant for national security affairs in Cheney's office, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case.

More

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8467
"Larry Franklin's name never came up, but several others did," he said…Green said the agents asked about several current or former Pentagon officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen, and Stephen Bryen.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/aipac_of_spies.php
Which “personnel” might want to assist both Israel and Chalabi? Now the point is, assisting Israel and Chalabi makes sense because they are the same thing. And of course Chalabi isn’t spying for Iran, unless you think trying to build up the already existing Iran-Israel axis (remember Iran-contra) means spying for Iran. Chalabi is on Israel’s team, and vice versa, and so are the neocons. For a decade, they’ve been scheming to topple Saddam Hussein, wreak havoc in the Arab world, and boost the security of Israel.

No connection

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4472946,00.html
Two former Vietnam prisoners of war who appear in ads attacking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry were appointed by the Bush administration to a panel advising the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Negative campaigning:

The Democratic view

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2004_09_03_bestof.html#109425251610078357
Katie Couric was working new Kerry media mayordomo Joe Lockhart on the Great Pontificator's slow response to the Swifties this morning. The best the former Clinton mouthpiece could do was say "the public doesn't like negative campaigning."

The Republican view

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_29_digbysblog_archive.html#109427217320909298
[Kevin Drum]
It's true that doom-and-gloom messages by themselves don't sell, but something similarly negative does: fear. And it sells big.

How to beat Bush

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004627.php

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/09/index.html#003937

Beyond Bush/Kerry: Eight Senate races to watch

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/007774.html

Porter Goss: his confirmation hearings should be interesting, given increased evidence of CIA involvement in Abu Ghraib torture

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1206087/posts
Goss took a hard line on interrogations in interviews with The Associated Press earlier this year, saying "Gee you're breaking my heart"…During one interview in May, the eight-term House Republican from Florida said he couldn't count the number of ongoing prison abuse investigations, but "we've got the circus in the Senate, which is always the likely place to look for the circus."

THE SPOUSAL ABUSE SYNDROME

So, the election has come down to this: “Most of you think the country is headed in the wrong direction, you think my policies have mostly failed and most of you don’t support the things I intend to do in a second term. You’re pretty convinced that I lied to you about Iraq and a lot of other things. But aside from all that, stay with me: I’m basically a nice guy.”

If the American people buy this, they will be acting like others in abusive relationships, who keep making excuses for the partners who abuse them and always ask for just one more chance…

The Bush speech

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/02/politics/campaign/03TEXT-BUSH.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Analysis

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040902_2245.html
[AP] Bush Leaves Out Complex Facts in Speech
Bush's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night brought the nation a collection of facts that told only part of the story, hardly unusual for this most political of occasions…

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004621.php
A few miscellaneous comments:

• The "ownership society" sure got passed over mighty quickly. Something tells me that his heart isn't really into Social Security privatization.

• His biggest applause line of the night came when he took a shot at trial lawyers. I don't quite get this. Sure, he's going to get applause, but the biggest of the night? Weird.

• He mentioned three former presidents by name: two Democrats and one Republican. Shouldn't he have at least figured out a way to mention his father to even things up?

• There was no mention in the speech of job creation. Something tells me this means that Friday morning's job numbers aren't going to be so hot.

And for all the talk about the war and terrorism, I still don't really know what he thinks his second term foreign policy would be like. He's against terrorism, but that was about the extent of it. I wonder if he has any clue himself?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/3/62559/89078
[Andrew Sullivan] I look forward to someone adding it all up, but it's easily in the trillions. And Bush's astonishing achievement is to make the case for all this new spending, at a time of chronic debt (created in large part by his profligate party), while pegging his opponent as the "tax-and-spend" candidate. The chutzpah is amazing. At this point, however, it isn't just chutzpah. It's deception. To propose all this knowing full well that we cannot even begin to afford it is irresponsible in the deepest degree.

http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109418733847016818
“The CEO Test”

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/election_2004_/2004/09/more_saletan_on_bush.php
“The NCLB Test” [very clever]
My favorite moment was when Bush touted the No Child Left Behind Act. No more social promotion, he promised. "We are transforming our schools by raising standards and focusing on results. We are insisting on accountability."…Wasn't this speech, full of unfulfilled promises and appeals to good character, basically a plea for social promotion? Isn't that the message of the entire Bush campaign? Shouldn't the president have to show results, too?

[More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003416]

Word count

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/007764.html
Bush's speech was 5,000 words. Here's the breakdown, according to an e-mail we just received (no link, so fact check if you must.)

0 mentions of Iran
0 mentions of North Korea
0 mentions of Osama
3 mentions of Al Qaeda
5 words on the current situation in Iraq

Or how about these numbers for the speeches over the last four days?

No 'debt' or 'deficit'
Unemployment - 0 mentions
Uninsured – 1
Outsourcing - 0
Premiums - 0
Middle-income families – 1

The campaign strategy, distilled into one sentence

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/09/index.html#003887
Matthew Dowd, the pollster for the Republican National Committee and an adviser to the White House, said in an interview Wednesday that the negative ratings Bush received on his handling of the economy -- with 52 percent disapproval and 45 percent approval in the Post-ABC News poll -- does not represent a major threat to his reelection effort…"There's a lot of people out there who say, 'I think the country is on the wrong track' or 'I'm not satisfied with this economy,' but 'when I look at these two men, I'd rather have George Bush in charge than John Kerry.'"

[I think this is remarkably candid. Right there it is.]

Fact-checking the GOP (and it ain’t pretty)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2106119/

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/007763.html

Kerry regroups, hits back hard

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57365-2004Sep2.html
"I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq," Kerry thundered at the midnight rally, in remarks that campaign aides say signals the debut of a more confrontational campaign style.

Transcripts of Zell Miller’s disastrous interviews with CNN and MSNBC

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/chi-zornlog.story#zell

Hilarious, and so typical: GOP backs off Miller so fast, your head will spin

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5897622/
After gauging the harsh reaction from Democrats and Republicans alike to Sen. Zell Miller’s keynote address at the Republican National Convention, the Bush campaign — led by the first lady — backed away Thursday from Miller’s savage attack on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, insisting that the estranged Democrat was speaking only for himself…Late Thursday, Miller and his wife were removed from the list of dignitaries who would be sitting in the first family’s box during the president’s acceptance speech later in the evening…

The Bush campaign stepped backed from Miller’s comments Thursday after it was received with almost immediate criticism, including complaints from prominent Republicans like Sen. John McCain of Arizona…A senior White House official, speaking to reporters before Bush’s address Thursday night, said, “Senator Miller was speaking on behalf of himself and obviously on behalf of himself.”

[More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/2/224312/2129]

[This is what the Dems cannot allow them to do: they need to fast-track an ad contrasting the Obama and Miller keynote speeches, and what this says about the vision and tone of the two campaigns.]

When the facts support your case, argue the facts — when they don’t support it, redefine the facts

http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df09012004.html
Last week, the Census Bureau released statistics showing that for the first time in years, poverty had increased for three straight years, while the number of Americans without health care increased to a record level.1 But instead of changing its economic and health care policies, the Bush administration today is announcing plans to change the way the statistics are compiled. The move is just the latest in a series of actions by the White House to doctor or eliminate longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods…In a Bush administration press release yesterday, the Census Bureau said next week it "will announce a new economic indicator" as "an additional tool to better understand" the economy. The change in statistics is being directed by Bush political appointees and comes just 60 days from the election. It will be the first modification of Census data in 40 years.

There’s no redefining this: a disappointing employment report due out today will undo a lot of the “good feeling” coming out of the GOP convention

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/02/politics/campaign/02econ.html?ex=1251864000&en=e57983b6796ee3a4&%2338;ei=5090&%2338;partner=rssuserland
About 10 hours after President Bush accepts his party's nomination tonight, the government will release an important report on the state of the economy. Even some of his allies say that if it is weak it could dampen Republican enthusiasm coming out of the convention and leave Mr. Bush on the defensive for a pivotal issue heading into the campaign homestretch…Economists do not expect the employment report tomorrow to show terribly strong growth in jobs…With economic statistics over the last month suggesting that the recovery has slowed or even faltered, Mr. Bush is heading into the final two months of the campaign vulnerable to any further bad economic news, especially in swing states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where employment losses have hit hard.

Reality bites. Advance news on the employment report — not good

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000111.html

And on Franklin: underneath the obscurity of Franklin’s own activities, the investigation draws together a number of threads — Plame/Wilson, Chalabi, AIPAC, etc. Laura Rozen calls this the “grand unified theory” of Bush foreign policy malfeasance. I still think this is going to turn out to be BIG

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001086.html
A grand unifying theory for all Bush administration foreign policy and intelligence malfeasance wrapped up in this one two year old FBI counterintelligence investigation probing AIPAC and Feith's office? So reports the Washington Post and Knight Ridder. "The whole ball of wax" is how one official put it to Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel:

FBI agents have briefed top White House, Pentagon and State Department officials on the probe in recent days. Based on those briefings, officials said, the bureau appears to be looking into other controversies that have roiled the Bush administration, some of which also touch Feith's office…They include how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the Niger claim in making the case for war against Iraq.

Further down, Strobel advances a theory I have also speculated about: the DoD-Ghorbanifar back channel was not just about getting intelligence from Ghorbanifar and his network of Middle Eastern and Iranian associates -- without the knowledge or participation of the US's lead intelligence agency, the CIA; it was also about exploring the forging of covert ties with groups like the Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK) and alleged Iranian dissident ranks within the Iranian security services (who I further suspect came to Rome with the full blessing and knowledge of Rafsanjani, but never mind) to advance covert assistance for regime change in Iran…

The Washington Post report, by Tom Ricks and Robin Wright, is more narrow but potentially more earth shattering, in my view, in its specificity:

FBI counterintelligence agents are investigating whether several [SEVERAL!] Pentagon officials leaked classified information to Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to a law enforcement official and other people familiar with the case…The FBI probe is actually much broader…Several sources familiar with the case say the probe now extends to other Pentagon personnel who have a particular interest in assisting both Israel and Chalabi, the former Iraqi dissident who was long a Pentagon favorite but who has fallen out of favor with the U.S. government…There appears to be at least two common threads in the multi-faceted investigation. First, the FBI is investigating whether the same people passed highly classified information to two disparate allies -- Chalabi and a pro-Israel lobbying group. And secondly, at least some of the intelligence in both instances included sensitive information about Iran.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be a very interesting ride. Faster, please.

[The K-R story: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9566773.htm]

[The WP story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57595-2004Sep2.html]

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/politics/9560493.htm
The secretive Office of Special Plans and a related project are being investigated over how they obtained top-secret intelligence and whom they shared it with, according to four federal sources…"It involves the improper transfer of information," said one source briefed on the case. "A lot more is going to come out."…Franklin is expected to testify about his activities next week before a federal grand jury, said a fifth federal source…U.S. officials were incensed by the Franklin leak. "It forced our hand much earlier than we had planned," said the source.

http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/09/iran-contra-ii-update-iii.html
Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst referred to below, continues to link the investigation to Plame/Niger:

He claimed that the Franklin affair derived from the investigation into which administration officials unlawfully "outed" CIA operative Valerie Plame by disclosing her identity to Washington Post columnist Robert Novak. The leak allegedly was orchestrated to retaliate against Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, after he undermined a key administration argument about Iraq's efforts to buy enriched uranium in Africa…"I think there are several grand jury investigations going on in the Plame investigation, and one of them is focusing on the activities of the neocons at the Pentagon and in the vice president's office," Johnson said. Investigators, he added, were exploring the possibility that forged documents showing Iraqi nuclear procurement activities in Africa could have originated in Israel.

Kerry continues to get slammed for saying most foreign leaders want to see him win, but guess what? Tony Blair seems to be one of them

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2004/09/02/does_blair_support_kerry.html

Bonus Item (c/o Comedy Central) – Bush’s newest campaign video

http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/dsbush.html

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

It certainly appears as if, after laboring mightily to present the face of “compassionate conservatism” at this convention, the mask slipped aside a bit last night. People are calling it a “Pat Buchanan” moment. Now the challenge to the Dems is to take advantage of what the Repubs have handed them.

Behind the mask: photo album

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/09/optimism.html

http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/003115.html

“Miller meltdown”

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/election_2004_/2004/09/the_miller_meltdown.php

Even CNN trashes Zell Miller speech (and he doesn’t take it very well)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_29_digbysblog_archive.html#109409483751585283
The good news is that they are challenging his lies. I'm beginning to think, watching him, that I was closer to the truth than I realized when I said he had a mental problem. He sounds ridiculous trying to defend his crazy talk…Blitzer is accusing him of sounding so angry that "some are saying" his speech may have backfired. Now he's babbling incoherently. I almost feel sorry for him…Cheney's speech was simultaneously dull and nasty, which isn't an easy feat. Tad Devine is doing just fine framing the difference between the two parties as between hope and fear. After tonight that claim has even more salience. The whole thing was discordant and ugly --- and the crowd was way over the top with the cheering at the Democrat bashing. It's not a pretty picture.

[More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/09/index.html#003852]

Miller blows a gasket on Chris Matthews show

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/007755.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/09/index.html#003856

Analyses

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004612.php
[Ezra Klein] Bush's advisors will not be sleeping well tonight. Going this negative on national television is always dicey, but tonight, they pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and, finally, fell backwards into backlash. Zell's speech crossed the line and Cheney's sneer sealed the impression…After Cheney, Zell was up in CNN's booth, and Blitzer, Greenfield and Woodruff brought out the knives, dismembering his various inconsistencies (noting that Zell praised Kerry a few years ago, bringing up the fact that Cheney voted against funding for the same weapons systems he criticized Kerry for opposing and reminding Zell that the president has called Iraq an "occupation" four times) and making him look like a bitter, rigid old man. Greenfield ended the interview wondering about backlash from the speech while Blitzer asked Zell why he was so unreasonably angry. Apparently Chris Matthews eviscerated Zell just minutes later. The media's getting sick of these guys, and swing voters who tuned in tonight -- the voters who don't mind either candidate and just haven't decided who to vote for -- are going to find themselves turned off by the Republican's brutality.

Tomorrow night, I have no doubt Bush will attempt to be positive, hopeful and even uplifting. But tonight, on their last chance to take on Kerry, they roared too loud and I think it hurt everybody's ears. Voters aren't always informed, but they're almost always decent and they well know that no party's candidate is that singularly wrong, exclusively evil, and determined to bring America to its knees. The right insisted on a caricature of Kerry too satanic for any reasonable person to believe, and that dissonance will say all that needs to be said. The media responded with unexpected anger (though they originally planned to respond with almost all right-wing guests) and the moderates (like McCain) condemned the vituperation. The meme is out: tonight, the Republicans went too far.

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_08_29_dish_archive.html#109409893313020605
[Andrew Sullivan] Zell Miller's address will, I think, go down as a critical moment in this campaign, and maybe in the history of the Republican party. I kept thinking of the contrast with the Democrats' keynote speaker, Barack Obama, a post-racial, smiling, expansive young American, speaking about national unity and uplift. Then you see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his eyes blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats. Remember who this man is: once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the negroes. His speech tonight was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric. As an immigrant to this country and as someone who has been to many Southern states and enjoyed astonishing hospitality and warmth and sophistication, I long dismissed some of the Northern stereotypes about the South. But Miller did his best to revive them. The man's speech was not merely crude; it added whole universes to the word crude…What's remarkable about the Republicans is their utter indifference to fairness in their own attacks. Smearing opponents as traitors to their country, as unfit to be commander-in-chief, as agents of foreign powers (France) is now fair game. Appealing to the crudest form of patriotism and the easiest smears is wrong when it is performed by the lying Michael Moore and it is wrong when it is spat out by Zell Miller. Last night was therefore a revealing night for me. I watched a Democrat at a GOP Convention convince me that I could never be a Republican. If they wheel out lying, angry old men like this as their keynote, I'll take Obama. Any day.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8445
Marc Racicot, chairman of Bush-Cheney '04, succinctly summed up this theme in an e-mail to Bush supporters back in December…“They are making this one of the nastiest, vicious and negative campaigns in history,” Montana’s former governor wrote. “Democrats are reduced to personal slams on our President and outright lies about his record because they lack a positive agenda and hate -- hate -- what he has done for America.”

The Republican national convention, supposedly, would combat this visceral hatred of President Bush with upbeat, substantive policy discussions. Karl Rove told New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney that the president’s speech on Thursday would “lay out a forward-looking, positive, prospective agenda.”…But to lead up to Thursday, the Republicans are providing nothing but negativity…“Remember, just a few months ago, John Kerry kind of leaked out that claim that certain foreign leaders who opposed our removal of Saddam Hussein prefer him,” Giuliani said. “This raises the risk that he might well accommodate his position to their viewpoint.”…Elsewhere in Madison Square Garden, beyond the view of a national audience, this kind of tasteless negativity has continued among the delegates on the floor…The anti-Kerry tirades that have filled the convention, however, are less of a diversion from an otherwise terrorism-themed convention than a purposeful and coordinated assault on Kerry himself. The Republicans want to convince America that the public hates John Kerry, that the public thinks John Kerry is pathetic…Despite Republican assertions to the contrary, the personal slights and Bronx cheers that have accompanied the first two days of the convention have exposed how thin Rove’s forward-looking positivism truly is. There is an agenda to this convention, all right. It’s just all negative.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2106109/fr/rss/
The 2004 election is becoming a referendum on your right to hold the president accountable…That's the upshot of tonight's speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney and Zell Miller, the Republican National Convention's keynote speaker.

The case against President Bush is simple. He sold us his tax cuts as a boon for the economy, but more than three years later, he has driven the economy into the ground. He sold us a war in Iraq as a necessity to protect the United States against weapons of mass destruction, but after spending $200 billion and nearly 1,000 American lives, and after searching the country for more than a year, we've found no such weapons…When Bush addressed Congress after 9/11, Democrats embraced and applauded him. In the Afghan war, they gave him everything he asked for. Most Democratic senators, including John Kerry and John Edwards, voted to give him the authority to use force in Iraq. During and after the war, they praised Iraq's liberation. Kerry has never said that any other country should decide when the United States is entitled to defend itself…But the important thing isn't the falsity of the charges, which Republicans continue to repeat despite press reports debunking them. The important thing is that the GOP is trying to quash criticism of the president simply because it's criticism of the president. The election is becoming a referendum on democracy.

In a democracy, the commander in chief works for you. You hire him when you elect him. You watch him do the job. If he makes good decisions and serves your interests, you rehire him. If he doesn't, you fire him by voting for his opponent in the next election…When patriotism is impugned, the facts go out the window. You're not allowed to point out that Bush shifted the rationale for the Iraq war further and further from U.S. national security—from complicity in 9/11 to weapons of mass destruction to building democracy to relieving Iraqis of their dictator—without explaining why American troops and taxpayers should bear the burden. You're not allowed to point out that the longer a liberator stays, the more he looks like an occupier. You're not allowed to propose that the enormous postwar expenses Bush failed to budget for be covered by repealing his tax cuts for the wealthy instead of further indebting every American child.

If you dare to say these things, you're accused—as Kerry now stands accused by Cheney and Miller—of defaming America and refusing "to support American troops in combat." You're contrasted to a president who "is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America." You're derided, in Cheney's words, for trying to show al-Qaida "our softer side." Your Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts are no match for the vice president's five draft deferments.

So now you have two reasons to show up at the polls in November. One is to stop Bush from screwing up economic and foreign policy more than he already has. The other is to remind him and his propagandists that even after 9/11, you still have that right.

[More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54597-2004Sep1.html]

And how about those Bush twins? Here’s just a sample…

http://slate.msn.com/id/2106116/fr/rss/
The papers all ponder the Bush daughters bombing Tuesday night. "How bad were the twins?" asked one conservative commentator. "Way bad."

Talk about trying to win the unwinnable, Bush Co. should stop trying to explain away his gaffe of the other day — each attempt just makes them look sillier and sillier

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2004_09_01_bestof.html#109408450031648026
[Rove] “This is going to be more like the conflict in Northern Ireland, where the Brits fought terrorism, and there's no sort of peace accord with al-Qaida saying, 'We surrender.'”

http://www.davidsirota.com/2004/09/gop-on-winning-war.html
Earlier this year, the Republican Party attacked Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) for saying that "the direction [of the Iraq war has] got to be changed or it's unwinnable." It was a far more harmless comment than President Bush who stated flatly this week that the War on Terror could not be won. Yet, here is what the GOP had to say about Murtha. Will they say the same about Bush?

“In a calculated and craven political stunt, the national Democrat Party declared its surrender in the war on terror...That position – that baseless, partisan, shocking position – is that American troops aren’t up to the job...It tells our enemies that if it’s unwinnable to us, it’s winnable to them.” – Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), 5/7/04

“In a world of instantaneous global communication, we need to be very sensitive to what we say…. We should be very careful not to encourage our enemies. This war is winnable, but if insurgents heard his words, it was harder to win than before he spoke.” - Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), Floor Statement 5/19/2004

This Soros business doesn’t make them look very good either

http://mediamatters.org/items/200408310010
In a discussion on the August 30 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes of unregulated "soft money" contributions by 527 groups, former speaker of the House and FOX News Channel political contributor Newt Gingrich claimed that financier and philanthropist George Soros "wants to spend $75 million defeating [President] George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003400
Denny Hastert just sent a letter to Soros in which he writes that groups that support drug legalization, which Soros has helped fund, are "the drug groups that I referred to in my comments on the Fox News Sunday program. Chris Wallace said, 'drug cartels.' I did not."…A couple problems with this comment. First of all, Hastert spoke of where Soros gets his money, not which groups he funds -- a rather important distinction, and not an accidental one, given what Hastert was trying to imply. If Hastert doesn't recognize the distinction, I'm not sure we want him voting on the nation's economic policy. More seriously, this was not an accidental slip, but clearly an intentional one. See the original exchange…And in his letter there's even more dreck like this: "I also believe that 527 political organizations set a dangerous precedent for political discourse because we don't know where the money comes from. For all we know, funding for some of the 527s might come from foreign sources or worse."

The GOP’s Manichean world view (a.k.a. the state of politics today)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003399
[Oklahoma] Following up from a debate on Monday where Tom Coburn called this race, “as the battle of good versus evil”, Patrick Davis, Political Director for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee (NRSC), echoed those comments today speaking to a breakfast of Oklahoma delegates at the National Republican Convention saying, “we also view this race as good versus evil”.

CNN refuses to run ad from Log Cabin Republicans

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003401

Pentagon censors govt video entitled “The People’s Right to Know”

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/09/01/pentagon/
Citing the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, The Associated Press asked the Pentagon for a copy of the video nearly 18 months ago. The Defense Department released an edited version of the tape and acknowledged the irony of censoring a video promoting government openness…"We knew it would be embarrassing," said Suzanne Council of the Army Office of the Chief Attorney, which gave advice to censor the scenes because of copyright concerns.

Bush better enjoy his moment in the spotlight tonight — it may be the high point of the campaign to come. As soon as the confetti gets swept up, the focus will return to his National Guard “duty”

Barnes upcoming on 60 Minutes

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/01/barnes60minutes/index.html?source=RSS
The Republican campaign gets ready for shock waves, as the former Texas official who says he pulled strings to get George W. Bush into the Air National Guard finally goes public…With Barnes now being featured in a sit-down interview with "60 Minutes," the highly rated CBS news magazine, reporters may finally be forced to address the consistent curiosities of Bush's National Guard record. Such as why, after nearly a decade of sifting through military records, neither Bush nor his team of longtime advisors can piece together a coherent explanation for his whereabouts, particularly after April 1972 when Bush inexplicably stopped flying and moved to Alabama, failed to take his physical exam, was grounded by his superiors, and by all accounts failed to show up for weekend training for months at a time. Bush received an honorable discharge in 1973 in order to attend Harvard Business School. Bush supporters insist the honorable discharge proves his service was above reproach. But military legal experts note honorable discharges, particularly in the early '70s as the Vietnam War was winding down, do not indicate unblemished military records.

New details starting to emerge

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003403
According to his widow, that spring the president's father, George H. W. Bush, called up Allison and asked if he could find his son a job on the campaign to get him out of Texas and out of trouble. "The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing ... I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him."…Asked if she'd ever seen the younger Bush in uniform during his time in Texas, Allison's wife Linda said, "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way."

[See “George W. Bush’s Missing Year” http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/02/allison/index.html]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004613.php
Is it good for America to choose our president based on what John Kerry did in 1968 vs. what George Bush did in 1968? Nope. But between the Swift Boat smear artists and tonight's convention speeches, the Republicans have made it very clear that they think this election is going to be won in the gutter. I suspect that by the time it's all over, they're going to rue that decision.

Just by coincidence, another article called “Bush’s Lost Year” (this one on his failed Iraq policies)

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000094.html
Over the past two years I have been talking with a group of people at the working level of America's anti-terrorism efforts...no partisan ax to grind with the Administration…they have so far been proved right. In the year before combat started in Iraq, they warned that occupying the country would be far harder than conquering it...[A]mong national-security professionals there is surprisingly little controversy...America's response to 9/11 [was] a catastrophe. I have sat through arguments among soldiers and scholars about whether the invasion of Iraq should be considered the worst strategic error in American history—or only the worst since Vietnam...."Let me tell you my gut feeling," a senior figure at one of America's military-sponsored think tanks told me recently, after we had talked for twenty minutes about details of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. "If I can be blunt, the Administration is full of shit. In my view we are much, much worse off now than when we went into Iraq. That is not a partisan position. I voted for these guys. But I think they are incompetent, and I have had a very close perspective on what is happening. Certainly in the long run we have harmed ourselves. We are playing to the enemy's political advantage. Whatever tactical victories we may gain along the way, this will prove to be a strategic blunder."...

The “decisiveness” debate. Does Bush really want to frame the campaign on his leadership style? (what else does he have, I suppose)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-decisive2sep02,1,5729583.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Kerry gives a good speech in front of the (hostile) American Legion, drawing distinctions with Bush’s Iraq policies (which the Bushies have been trying to blur)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52400-2004Sep1.html
“When it comes to Iraq, it's not that I would have done one thing differently, I would have done almost everything differently," Kerry told the national convention of the American Legion here…Coming off what even his aides acknowledge has been a bad month for the candidate, Kerry is scrambling to regain momentum -- sharpening his critique of Bush's policies and shaking up his communications team to be more responsive to attacks on the Democrat and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.)…After huddling with top staff in recent days in Nantucket, Kerry plans a more aggressive campaign style in the final two months -- starting with Wednesday's speech, aides said.

DoJ mishandles terrorism convictions

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror2sep02,1,4472892.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
The Justice Department conceded Wednesday that in its zeal to win convictions in a terrorism case in Detroit last year, prosecutors engaged in "a pattern of mistakes and oversights" that may constitute criminal misconduct…The case was the first major terrorism prosecution after the Sept. 11 attacks and had been hailed by U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft as an example of the government's successful campaign to disrupt terrorist "sleeper cells" in the country…The filing details a wide range of misdeeds, while offering a rare glimpse inside the government's war on terrorism. It includes allegations that the main prosecutor in the case — Richard G. Convertino — disregarded dissenting views from experts and suppressed or withheld evidence that might have been helpful to the defense.

Allawi screws up the ceasefire negotiated by al Sistani

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/01/international/middleeast/01shiite.html?ex=1251777600&en=79dd7dfb5015e575&%2338;ei=5090&%2338;partner=rssuserland
"Last night there was a deal," said Yusef al-Nasiri, the leader of the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. "This morning there was supposed to be a press conference. But then Allawi surprised us, and he has taken us back to zero."

Franklin scandal: the state of play (very confusing – read on)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54494-2004Sep1.html?nav=rss_nation
The counterintelligence probe, which is different from a criminal investigation, focuses on a possible transfer of intelligence more extensive than whether Franklin passed on a draft presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran, the sources said. The FBI is examining whether highly classified material from the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic intercepts of communications, was also forwarded to Israel, they said…The investigation of Franklin is coincidental to the broader FBI counterintelligence probe, which was already long underway when Franklin came to the attention of investigators, U.S. officials and sources said. Franklin, a career analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who specializes in Iran, is suspected of passing the proposed directive on Iran to AIPAC, officials said, which may have forwarded it to Israel.

In the Franklin probe, a law enforcement official said the government does not expect to bring charges against anyone this week or next…The FBI's counterintelligence investigation was underway for some time before the Franklin case was brought to the U.S. attorney's office, which happened fairly recently, according to a source knowledgeable about the case.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001080.html
Government lawyers, according to Tuesday's New York Times, are preparing to make the first arrests in the case by issuing a criminal complaint against one or more figures who are said to be involved. The case is being handled by federal prosecutors in Virginia…But experts suggested that the rush to file a complaint could be a sign that the charge will be less severe than that of espionage, as was originally reported…"The fact that they're going to file a complaint instead of an indictment is an indication of the weakness of their case," said one criminal defense expert. A criminal complaint would allow the government to proceed with arrests more quickly.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001084.html
According to sources familiar with the investigation, the U.S. district attorney in charge of the probe, Paul McNulty, has ordered the FBI not to move forward with arrests that they were prepared to make last Friday when the story broke on CNN and CBS. "He put the brakes on it in order to look at it," a source familiar with the investigation told the Sun. "To see what was there. Basically the FBI wanted to start making arrests and McNulty said 'whoah, based on what? Let's look at this before you do anything.'"…"Ashcroft wanted to make sure this case was being handled properly," the source familiar with the probe said. "I would not expect any action on this for at least three weeks." This source added that a grand jury is now being selected, but it was likely the charges, initially reported as espionage, would be scaled back to the mishandling of classified information.

Will Congress get more involved?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001082.html

[More: http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/09/iran-contra-ii-update-ii.html]

Bonus item: Here’s something I bet you don’t know (and perhaps you’re wondering why…)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/e1698.htm
Details in a 1963 accident report say that Laura Bush, then 17, ran a stop sign in the Texas crash that killed a friend in another car. The report, adding information to previous reports of the crash, was released to The Associated Press on Wednesday…Mrs. Bush now is the wife of Republican presidential nominee-to-be George W. Bush, the Texas governor.

''It was a very tragic accident that deeply affected the families and was very painful for all involved, including the community at large,'' said Mrs. Bush's spokesman, Andrew Malcolm. ''To this day, Mrs. Bush remains unable to talk about it.''…There had been published accounts of the accident, but city officials had declined to release the records because those involved were under 18. The police report was released Wednesday in response to an open-records request that was submitted to Midland officials in March.

According to the two-page accident report, Laura Welch was driving her Chevrolet sedan on a clear night shortly after 8 p.m. on Nov. 6, 1963, when she drove into an intersection and struck a Corvair sedan driven by 17-year-old Michael Douglas.

[Her ex-boyfriend, reportedly — and if you Google this story, you will find web sites that speculate it wasn’t an accident]

…The speed of Laura Bush's car was illegible on the report. The speed limit for the road was 55…The police report indicates no charges were filed. That section of the report was left blank.

OPEN SECRETS

All that needs to be said about the GOP convention (unfortunately, it isn’t being said openly enough)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2106033/fr/rss/
An analysis stuffed inside the NYT calls the convention's sugar and vinegar mix the result of a "carefully modulated strategy." Bush's advisers told the paper it "reflects what they say is the necessity of running a negative campaign against Mr. Kerry—and the difficulty of doing that when the relatively few voters in play are likely to be disengaged independents who have historically been alienated by sulfurous politics." Farther down the piece explains that the aides think "Bush almost certainly cannot win unless voters are convinced that they cannot vote for Mr. Kerry."…In what amounts to simulacra of accountability coverage, the Times seems to check in on whether the White House has delivered on "compassionate conservatism." But it's ping-pong reporting, just bouncing back and forth between Bush "supporters" and "critics." The Post did it with more guts and information about two years ago: "PRESIDENT'S COMPASSIONATE AGENDA LAGS."…A piece inside the Post says GOP convention officials have given "virtually all their top jobs to registered federal lobbyists." Of course, lobbyists have long lurked around conventions. But the WP says, "Rarely has one party granted industry advocates so central a part in nominating a presidential and vice presidential candidate."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_08/004595.php
I don't really care about immigration policy all that much, but Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo does. So he tried to get his views adopted in the Republican party platform…When that failed, he decided to see if he could gin up a floor fight at the convention. This was more political theater than anything else, but even so he ran into an unusual problem:

There are two ways to bring a matter to the floor: One is to convince six state delegations to support the motion for a floor debate—a virtual impossibility, Tancredo realized; the other is to get 19 members of the platform committee to support bringing a matter to the floor. This latter route seemed doable to Tancredo, save for one problem: The congressman couldn't find out who, exactly, was on the platform committee. Running the platform process with all the discipline and secrecy that's come to be expected from the Bush White House, the RNC, citing security concerns, refused to divulge the identities of the handpicked delegates who served on the platform committee—even, in some cases, to other members of the platform committee.

The names of the platform committee members are a secret? For "security reasons"? Has the party leadership gone completely insane? (That's a rhetorical question, of course. No need to answer.)…I have lately been having trouble finding the words to describe the current state of the leadership of the Republican party. This is one of those times. All I can do is shake my head and wonder when the rank and file of the Republican party — many of whom I count as friends and most of whom are decent and honorable people — are going to wake up and realize what the Texas ideologues are doing to their party…At some point, they're going to have take the same hard look at George Bush that so many Democrats took at Jimmy Carter in 1980, and decide that enough's enough. But will they do it this year, when the damage is still repairable, or will they give Bush another four years, at which point the party will be in such ruins that they'll probably have to wait a couple of decades before they win another election? That's the decision facing an awful lot of adult Republicans this year.

Bush and his surrogates try to clarify his comments about the unwinnable war against terror — and only make it worse

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush1sep01,1,1868714.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Bush, as a call-in guest on the Rush Limbaugh show Tuesday, said, "Really what I was saying to Lauer was, is that this is not the kind of war where you sit down and sign a peace treaty. It's a totally different kind of war. But we will win it."

[Clearly this is NOT what he meant. His words have plain meaning. But the fact that he was rushed (sorry) onto the friendliest interview format available to correct himself shows how concerned the Bushies are with this. It’s the sort of thing that could still cost him this election: Bush saying what he REALLY thinks in an unscripted situation.]

Scottie: Can’t win but will “prevail”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003385

[Gee, and I thought these plain speaking guys didn’t play semantic games. But let’s be clear here: what would it mean to “win” such a war anyway? Like the “war on drugs” or “the war on crime,” the “war on terror” isn’t really a war, but a range of skirmishes on many fronts trying to stem a multifaceted threat. “War” is a trope about urgency, not really a plan of attack. Clearly it IS a war that can’t be “won,” and the real story is that Bush’s assertions — before and after his moment of lucidity — are the real scandal. You can’t PROMISE victory in such a situation.]

Rather than stem the controversy, Bush’s interview with Rush only provided an occasion for still more bone-headed comments

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003384
I should have made my point more clear about what I meant. What I meant was that this is not a conventional war. It is a different kind of war. We're fighting people who have got a dark ideology who use terrorists, terrorism, as a tool. They're trying to shake our conscience. They're trying to shake our will, and so in the short run the strategy has got to be to find them where they lurk. I tell people all the time, "We will find them on the offense. We will bring them to justice on foreign lands so we don't have to face them here at home," and that's because you cannot negotiate with these people. And in a conventional war there would be a peace treaty or there would be a moment where somebody would sit on the side and say we quit. That's not the kind of war we're in, and that's what I was saying. The kind of war we're in requires, you know, steadfast resolve, and I will continue to be resolved to bring them to justice, but as well as to spread liberty ... There's no doubt in my mind, so long as this country stays resolved and strong and determined, and by winning, I just would remind your listeners that Pakistan is now an ally in the war on terror.

The president deserves every whack he gets for changing his position twice in three days on the issue he has made the centerpiece of his campaign. But folks should also start using his bobbling to make the point that the issue is less whether the president thinks the 'terror war' is winnable than the fact that he doesn't even have any clear idea of how to fight it.

(A reader makes a good point: Reading the above, you can see why President Bush doesn't 'do nuance.' It ain't his strong suit.)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/08/index.html#003791
This bit from the president's interview with Rush Limbaugh is such a cavalcade of nonsense that I sincerely hope transcription errors are to blame:

I think so. On the other hand, we're making great progress. Today at the Legion I said, "We're winning the war on terror, and we will win the war on terror." There's no doubt in my mind, so long as this country stays resolved and strong and determined, and by winning, I just would remind your listeners that Pakistan is now an ally in the war on terror. Saudi now takes Al-Qaeda seriously, and they're after the leadership. Libya is no longer got weapons of mass destruction. Afghanistan, I don't know if you've discussed this on your program, but there are over ten million people who have registered to vote in Afghanistan, which is a phenomenal statistic when you think about it. And then of course Iraq is now heading toward elections as well, and we're making progress.

Here's the thing. While it's quite true that over 10 million Afghans have registered to vote (10.35 million, to be exact), there are only 9.8 million eligible voters in the country. What we're seeing isn't an unprecedented outpouring of democratic enthusiasm, it's massive fraud. Registration cards are selling for as much as $100 a pop…

[More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/8/31/174422/936]

Denny Hastert continues outrageous slander against Soros — and now Soros threatens a lawsuit

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_29.php#003387
Now Soros has written this letter to Hastert, asking him to put up or shut up, or, more specifically "either substantiate these claims -- which you cannot do because they are false -- or publicly apologize for attempting to defame my character and damage my reputation."…Whatever you think of Soros, this is the sort of slur that only comes from a real pig. And to think that the author of it is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and out in the light of day.

How No Child Left Behind is failing

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html#paige
But really, the worst of it is that schools just can't satisfy the law's demands with the restrictions they're facing. It's not because they're "underestimating" themselves, either. Bush refuses to fully fund No Child Left Behind -- by billions. The Center for Education Policy, a nonpartisan group, says in this report on the law: "Over half of the nation's school districts will receive fewer Title I dollars this coming school year than they did last year, even though the No Child Left Behind Act is demanding more of all school districts." Title I is federal money set aside for disadvantaged students.

Conventional wisdom feeding into itself: mixed poll results on whether Bush has actually gained in recent weeks or not

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2004/08/31/polls_bush/index.html
ABC News makes some sweeping assumptions today about the presidential race based on the most recent ABC News/Washington Post polling data. ABC's bold conclusion -- ricocheting around the media echo chamber -- that President Bush made clear gains last month is somewhat baffling considering the poll shows Bush actually lost some ground over the past 30 days. According to the data, the race today stands at a dead heat, 48-48. Yet during the survey ending July 25, Bush held a four-point lead, 50-46.

That's just the first of many head-scratching tidbits ABC comes up with. Because what really seems to catch ABC's eye is the supposed swing toward Bush on a whole host of issues (ability to deal with terrorism, healthcare, economy, etc.), and how he was able to "reclaim an advantage" while Kerry "lost ground." According to ABC, "The real action this year is beneath the surface. While the overall horse race holds essentially steady, the issue and character judgments underlying it show ongoing reassessment."

Not really…The fact is, despite ABC's spin, Bush has not improved on a host of issues.

Friendly fire: Tucker Carlson on Karen Hughes

http://www.slapnose.com/archives/2004/04/27/karen_hughes_is_evil/
Then I heard that [on the campaign bus, Bush communications director] Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she'd heard -- that I watched her hear -- she in fact had never heard, and she'd never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane…I've obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness.

Friendly fire: Will Saletan on George W. Bush

http://slate.msn.com/id/2105914/
Now the Republican National Convention is showcasing Bush's own heroic moment. As John McCain put it last night: "I knew my confidence was well placed when I watched him stand on the rubble of the World Trade Center with his arm around a hero of September 11 and, in our moment of mourning and anger, strengthen our unity and our resolve by promising to right this terrible wrong and to stand up and fight for the values we hold dear."

Pardon me for asking, but where exactly is the heroism in this story? Where, indeed, is the heroism in anything Bush has done before 9/11 or since?

Two days ago at an Ellis Island rally, Dick Cheney described Bush's 9/11 leadership this way: "In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on America, people in every part of the country, regardless of party, took great comfort and pride in the conduct and the character of our president. They saw a man calm in a crisis, comfortable with responsibility, and determined to do everything necessary to protect our people."

Calm and comfortable. I appreciate that. This was a major selling point of Bush's 2000 campaign: He would allow us to "look at the White House with pride." But isn't a president supposed to, um, do things? Isn't it a bit strange to praise a man's leadership not for doing something, but for maintaining a certain appearance?

Bush partisans point out that he did do things in the 9/11 aftermath. In his convention address last night, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik recalled Bush's famous visit to New York, "inspiring a nation as he stood on hallowed ground, supporting the first responders."

OK, so Bush stood there. He "supported," in a Clintonesque sense, the people who were doing something. He touched the mayor. As Rudy Giuliani told the New York Times over the weekend, "When he got off the helicopter, he put his arm around the back of my neck and said, 'What can I do for you?' It was a personal thing: 'I know what you've been through, and what I can do to support you?' "

Amid all this touching, did Bush put himself in any peril? He certainly did. As Giuliani explained to the convention audience:

When President Bush came here on September 14, 2001, the Secret Service was not really happy about his remaining in the area so long. With buildings still unstable, with fires raging below ground of 2,000 degrees or more, there was good reason for their concern. Well, the president remained there. And talked to everyone. ... [A construction worker] grabbed the president of the United States in this massive bear hug, and he started squeezing him. And the Secret Service agent standing next to me, who wasn't happy about any of this, instead of running over and getting the president out of this grip, puts his finger in my face and he says to me, "If this guy hurts the president, Giuliani, you're finished."

This is Bush's heroism? Showing up three days later, "remaining in the area," and enduring a hug?

The only moment of physical bravery any of last night's speakers could find in Bush's life was his secret trip to Iraq. "As I think about his leadership," Kerik recalled, "I think of the courage it took for our commander in chief to land on an airstrip in the dark of night, a world away, to be with our troops on Thanksgiving."

Thanksgiving? You mean, six months after we captured the airport and Bush declared victory?

And isn't "the dark of night" normally a term we use to describe the preferred arrival and departure time of people who aren't exactly overflowing with courage?

Or is Kerik pointing out the difficulty of landing a plane in the dark? Is he unaware, perhaps, that Bush wasn't flying the plane? That once again, as in Vietnam, somebody else was doing the hard part and Bush was along for the ride? That Air Force One has more security systems than any other vehicle on Earth? That Bush went to Baghdad to "be with" the troops in the same way he went to New York to "be with" the firefighters? That waiting for a safe time and place to "be with" people who have braved unsafe places at unsafe times is the difference between heroism and a photo op?

Maybe Bush's courage is moral rather than physical. Maybe it lies in the conviction Giuliani extolled last night: "President Bush sees world terrorism for the evil that it is."

Calling terrorism evil? Answering a deed with a word? This is courage?

Not fair, says the Bush camp. Bush has answered terrorism with far more than words. "He worked effectively to secure the cooperation of Pakistan," McCain pointed out last night. "He encouraged other friends to recognize the peril that terrorism posed for them and won their help in apprehending many of those who would attack us again and in helping to freeze the assets they used to fund their bloody work."

Ah, diplomacy. Now, that's courage.

The ultimate testament to Bush's manhood, supposedly, is the two wars he launched. As McCain put it, "He ordered American forces to Afghanistan" and "made the difficult decision to liberate Iraq." But the salient word in each of those boasts is the verb. Bush gives orders and makes decisions. He doesn't take personal risks. He never has.

I don't mean to be unfair to Bush. Vietnam was a lousy war. He wanted a way out, and he found it. But isn't it odd to see Republicans belittle the physical risks Kerry took in battle while exalting Bush's armchair wars and post-9/11 photo ops? Isn't it embarrassing to see Bob Dole, the GOP's previous presidential nominee, praise Bush's heroism while suggesting that Kerry's three combat wounds weren't bad enough to justify sending him home from Vietnam?

Watching the attacks on Kerry and the glorification of Bush reminds me of something Dole said in his speech to the Republican convention eight years ago. It was "demeaning to the nation," Dole argued, to be governed by people "who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered and never learned."

You tell me which of this year's presidential candidates that statement best describes.

Franklin scandal updates

Story goes back to 2002 leak of secret Iraq war plans

http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/08/new-york-sun-article.html

Excuse-making continues: Franklin supposedly didn’t realize what he was doing

http://gadflyer.com/warandpiece/index.php?Week=200436#695

Franklin’s running buddy, Harold Rhode

http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109401628914300067

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/nest_of_spies.php
Now Franklin, we all know, and perhaps Rhode, are under investigation by the FBI. Franklin is a minor cog in the Israeli nest of spies, who allegedly passed U.S. secrets on Iran to AIPAC, the Zionist lobby, who then passed it to the Israeli embassy. There are lots of details—but, so far, no one that I’ve seen has attempted to really analyze this. The basic paradox is: Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of Franklin’s neocon pals, is under investigation in Iraq and in Washington for spying for Iran. Franklin is under the FBI gun for spying for Israel, against Iran. Does this make any sense? Of course not…Let’s assume that Chalabi and Franklin, two lower-level operatives for the same machine, are still working together. And that the machine, the great Neoconservative Empire Machine and its Israeli right-wing allies, is what needs to be investigated.

…A former U.S. intelligence official has this to say about [Franklin]:

Anyone who knew Franklin from DIA and from the past few years in OSD knows that the "incompetent fool way out of his depth" description fits. The Newsweek story of his walking, "out of the blue," into a private FBI-surveilled lunch meeting is pure Franklin: clueless. His DIA colleagues and supervisors knew he could not be depended upon for important tasks; some suspected he was mentally unbalanced. Taking him on missions abroad was asking for trouble: unaccounted absences, flaky "special case" demands, embarrassments with US embassy staffs and foreign personnel. He should have been fired long ago. Franklin was notoriously sloppy with security, never could be relied upon by his colleagues or supervisors to pull his weight on assigned projects or even to be found, repeatedly left messes behind for others to clean up, almost never met a suspense, and shamelessly bowed and scraped to the powerful and influential of the day. Days after a buddy from Net Assessments brought him into the former [Near East and South Asia office] with a promotion, it was "Paul" this and "Paul" that, referring to the [Deputy Secretary of Defense]. He ingratiated himself to OSD seniors by trafficking poison on intelligence seniors they already believed to be ideologically unreliable. Add to that deep draughts of the Kool-Aid and you have a prescription for disaster. Mostly, though, this one looks like his own personal one, and not entirely undeserved.

Of course anyone as “clueless” as Franklin would be sloppy with classified material. The pro-Ariel Sharon clique in the Pentagon (and elsewhere in the U.S. government) is so tightly bound and incestuously linked to Israel that having to draw boundaries between what’s American and what’s Israeli must boggle their small minds. So this time Franklin got caught. (P.S. Don’t expect any big indictments, or any sweeping probe of Israel’s spy apparatus in the United States. Reports the New York Times: "American counterintelligence officials say that Israeli espionage cases are difficult to investigate, because they involve an important ally that enjoys broad political influence in Washington. Several officials said that a number of espionage investigations involving Israel had been dropped or suppressed in the past in the face of political pressure.”) For the last two years I’ve watched Franklin, Rhode, Michael Rubin and others in the clique at meetings at the American Enterprise Institute, and what stands out above all is the fraternity-like bond that links them to one another, almost like a street gang.

For 25 years, this little clique has maintained sub rosa ties to Iran. They, and Israel, had multiple lines into Iran’s mullahs long before the Shah fell. Israel armed Iran throughout the 1980s, including during the 444 days when thugs held U.S. diplomats hostage. They were behind Iran-contra, trying to push the United States into a closer relationship with Iran when we were, sensibly enough, backing Iraq. And they’ve never let up. Since 2001, when they took power with the Bush administration, they’ve plotted war against Iraq and plotted how to establish ties with Iran’s national security apparatus and its military again, even if it meant undermining U.S. policy. A key figure in all this is Michael Ledeen, an AEI stalwart who’s long had intimate ties to Israeli intelligence. And then there is Ahmad Chalabi, another Mossad-linked creature…

So the question is: What connects Ledeen, Richard Perle, Chalabi and Franklin? We know that the United States doesn’t really have an “Iran policy,” unless hoping that nothing happens qualifies as a “policy.” But what is the policy of Ledeen and Co.? They believe that Israel, Turkey, Iran, the Kurds, the Lebanese Christians and Pakistan can all be tied together in an alliance against the Arabs. That’s been true since the 1950s. What’s new is that Iraq presented them an opportunity: The Israel-Turkey-Iran et al. axis could take over and occupy part of the Arab bloc, thanks to the United States. Like the python who ate the deer, they are still struggling to digest it—though some, including myself but also including the CIA, believe they will choke on it. In any case, the gobbling up of Iraq hasn’t gone too well, but at least they’ve accomplished their secondary objective: the destruction and dismantling of Iraq as a nation and as a military force that could threaten Israel. And Ledeen, who organized Franklin’s secret missions to Iran since 2001, and Chalabi, who has secret missions of his own to Iran (both long exposed now), still believe that Iran is a useful partner in the anti-Arab axis.

I think the focus on Franklin and whether he will be charged or not misses a wider point. The decision to charge him with a serious crime is certainly linked with the effort to “turn” him: this investigation is starting to unravel other activities in Feith’s office. Basically, they created a parallel CIA that they could control (and whose intelligence they could filter and spin to fit their policies). But what is becoming more clear is that this secret group also undertook activities of an “operational” nature – with or without the approval of higher-ups. One key element, apparently: the transfer of sensitive technologies to Israel.

http://gadflyer.com/warandpiece/index.php?Week=200436#699

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ips/lobe122.html
The office in which Franklin has worked since 2001 is dominated by staunch neo-conservatives, including Feith himself. Headed by William Luti, a retired Navy officer who worked for DPB member Newt Gingrich when he was speaker of the House of Representatives, it played a central role in building the case for war in Iraq…Part of the office's strategy included working closely with the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by now-disgraced exile Ahmad Chalabi, and the DPB members in developing and selectively leaking intelligence analyses that supported the now-discredited thesis that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had close ties to al-Qaeda.

Feith's office enjoyed especially close links with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, to whom it "stovepiped" its analyses without having them vetted by professional intelligence analysts in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the DIA, or the State Department Bureau for Intelligence of Research (INR).

Since the Iraq war, Feith's office has also lobbied hard within the U.S. government for a confrontational posture vis-à-vis Iran and Syria, including actions aimed at destabilising both governments – policies which, in addition to the ousting of Hussein, have been strongly and publicly urged by prominent, hard-line neo-conservatives, such as Perle, Feith and Perle's associate at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael Ledeen, among others…Franklin, who is an Iran specialist, is considered both personally and ideologically close to several other prominent neo-conservatives, who have also acted in various consultancy roles at the Pentagon, including Ledeen and Harold Rhode, who once described himself as Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz's chief adviser on Islam.

In December 2001, Rhode and Franklin met in Europe with a shadowy Iranian arms dealer, Manichur Ghorbanifar, who, along with Ledeen, played a central role in the arms-for-hostages deal involving the Reagan administration, Israel and Iran in the mid-1980s that became known as the "Iran-Contra Affair."…Ledeen set up the more recent meetings that apparently triggered the FBI to launch its investigation, which has intensified in recent months amid reports that Chalabi's INC, which has long been championed by the neo-conservatives, has been passing sensitive intelligence to Iran.

Feith has long been an outspoken supporter of Israel's Likud Party, and his former law partner Marc Zell has served as a spokesman in Israel for the Jewish settler movement on the occupied West Bank…He, Perle and several other like-minded hardliners participated in a task force that called for then-Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to work for the installation of a friendly government in Baghdad as a means of permanently altering the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel's favour, permitting it to abandon the Oslo peace process, which Feith had publicly opposed.

Previously, Feith served as a Middle East analyst in the National Security Council in the administration of former President Ronald Reagan (1981–89), but was summarily removed from that position in March 1982 because he had been the object of a FBI inquiry into whether he had provided classified material to an official of the Israeli embassy in Washington, according to Green's account…But Perle, who was then serving as assistant secretary of defence for international security policy (ISP), which, among other responsibilities, had an important say in approving or denying licenses to export sensitive military or dual-use technology abroad, hired him as his "special counsel" and later as his deputy, where he served until 1986, when he left for his law practice with Zell, who had by then moved to Israel.

Also serving under Perle during these years was Stephen Bryen, a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the subject of a major FBI investigation in the late 1970s for offering classified documents to an Israeli intelligence officer in the presence of AIPAC's director, according to Green's account, which is backed up by some 500 pages of investigation documents released under a Freedom of Information request some 15 years ago…Although political appointees decided against prosecution, Bryen was reportedly asked to leave the committee and, until his appointment by Perle in 1981, served as head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a group dedicated to promoting strategic ties between the United States and Israel and one in which Perle, Feith and Ledeen have long been active.

In his position as Perle's deputy, Bryen created the Defence Technology Security Administration (DTSA) which enforced regulations regarding technology transfer to foreign countries…During his tenure, according to one source with personal knowledge of Bryen's work, "the U.S. shut down transfers to western Europe and Japan (which were depicted as too ready to sell them to Moscow) and opened up a back door to Israel" – a pattern that became embarrassingly evident after Perle left office and the current deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, took over in 1987…Soon, Armitage was raising serious questions about Bryen's approval of sensitive exports to Israel without appropriate vetting by other agencies.

"It is in the interest of U.S. and Israel to remove needless impediments to technological cooperation between them," Feith wrote in Commentary in 1992. "Technologies in the hands of responsible, friendly countries facing military threats, countries like Israel, serve to deter aggression, enhance regional stability and promote peace thereby."

Perle, Ledeen, and Wolfowitz have also been the subject of FBI inquiries, according to Green's account. In 1970, one year after he was hired by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, an FBI wiretap authorised for the Israeli Embassy picked up Perle discussing classified information with an embassy official, while Wolfowitz was investigated in 1978 for providing a classified document on the proposed sale of a U.S. weapons system to an Arab government to an Israeli official via an AIPAC staffer…In 1992, when he was serving as undersecretary of defence for policy, Pentagon officials looking into the unauthorised export of classified technology to China, found that Wolfowitz's office was promoting Israel's export of advanced air-to-air missiles to Beijing in violation of a written agreement with Washington on arms re-sales…The FBI and the Pentagon are reportedly taking a new look at all of these incidents and others to, in the words of a New York Times story Sunday, "get a better understanding of the relationships among conservative officials with strong ties to Israel."

It would be a mistake to see Franklin as the chief target of the current investigation, according to sources, but rather he should be viewed as one piece of a much broader puzzle.

http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109402382850329928
By the way, I personally do not expect any dramatic developments from all these investigations. AIPAC has powerful protectors on Capitol Hill, and past charges that it was involved in espionage for Israel have always been buried. As for the Neocon cult in the Pentagon, even if they did something illegal, they will not suffer much because of it. Look at where the Iran-Contra criminals are, who subverted the US Constitution and stole arms from the Pentagon to sell illegally to Khomeini. One Iran-Contra figure, who lied to Congress, now serves in the National Security Council as the person in charge of the Israeli-Palestine issue. That is Elliot Abrams, who was pardoned by Bush the elder and now sets White House policy on among the more important issues affecting US relations with the Muslim world.

[I don’t like to disagree with Prof. Cole, who knows ten times as much about these matters as I do. But it is far from obvious to me that this scandal doesn’t have legs — and the involvement of Iran-Contra figures from the Reagan days could HEIGHTEN the sense of scandal (Do most people even know that these folks, Abrams, Poindexter, et al., are back in government?)]

Bonus item: the rules of the game

http://www.electablog.com/2004/08/ruling-parties.html
There is a creeping fear among some Democrats that they are up against a party that knows and lives by the following:

First Rule of Politics: "It ain't beanbag."

Second Rule of Politics: "Never lose control of your public image, but force your opponent to lose control of his."

Third Rule of Politics: "In times of battle, all hands on deck."

Fourth Rule of Politics: "Keep your candidate above the fray, but force your opponent to debate and defend against surrogates and shadowy, ferocious enemies."

Fifth Rule of Politics: "Say thing that get under your opponent's skin, and which will sound so implausible to his ear that at first he won't bother to defend himself."

If this is true, then the Dems only have two reasonable options.

First Option: Start playing by these rules.

Second Option: Make new rules.

Not an Option: Playing by these rules but not playing that well.