Good News... maybe

Atrios is not quite as sanguine as Glenn is about Hamdan v Rumsfeld:

My quick take is that it's certainly an important symbolic victory, but this administration's contempt for the law, the constitution, and the balance/separation of powers that our system rests on isn't going to be very affected by what 5 people in black robes say. They've ignored Congress and they'll ignore the Court too, leaving our mainstream media with more time to deal with the impending threat of blogofascism.

Digby too offers a dissenting view. He's not so sure the SCOTUS good news will mean that much.

This decision will ultimately feed into conservative boogeyman number 438: judicial activism. Look for Justice Sunday IV: Vengeance is Mine Sayeth Delay. And expect many more calls to spike John Paul Stevens' pudding with arsenic. This is the beauty of the conservo-machine. When your primary political tools are both intimidation and victimization, you can spin anything to your advantage.

[...]

I think this could be used to the Democrats' advantage if they were willing to risk changing the terms of the debate for this midterm election and aggressively confront Karl Rove's "you talkin' to me?" trash talk campaign. The Supremes have provided a basis from which to assert congressional perogatives and a hook on which to hang the discussion. Perhaps they will. I hope so, because I am getting a terrible feeling that a lot of rank and file Democrats are going to take a pass on voting this time; no matter how much they dislike Bush and disapprove of his policies, it's very hard to see at this point what difference it will make if the congress changes hands.

Unless the Dems start making the case that Democrats will confront the president if they take power, it's hard to see why turnout will be high enough to offset the Karl Rove red-meat-travelling-salvation-show.

[...]

In much the same way, I think Democrats desperately need to see their leaders take it to this president. He's dramatically unpopular, his war is considered an abject failure by a large majority and he's obsessed with secrecy and power. I think the concept of presidential overreach, with its echoes of Nixon, are issues that speak to the rank and file and would give the base the assurance that if the Democrats take control of the congress, the congress will take back it's constitutional perogatives and provide oversight.

I doubt this will happen. Apparently a president mired in the mid-30's with a GOP Eunuch Caucus that has enthusiastically signed off on every crackpot policy he's put forth can still say boo! and the Dems will still believe it's in their best interest to be measured and moderate. What a shame.

The President's Song

Here's a parody by Phil Alexander based on "The Major-General's Song" from "The Pirates of Penzance" by Gilbert and Sullivan. Here's a link to a MIDI file so you can hear the tune while you sing it to yourself.

PRESIDENT:
I am the very model of a bible-bound creationist
A blinkered, blind and narrow-minded dumb-ass revelationist
I find it hard distinguishing religious from political
And so I make decisions that are highly hypocritical

I try and change the law to save the life of someone comatose
While ordering a war and killing anyone who come too close
The latest body count was twenty-thousand-plus civilians
But I've got policies that could cause carnage by the millions

ALL:
But he's got policies that could cause carnage by the millions
But he's got policies that could cause carnage by the millions
But he's got policies that could cause carnage by the millions

PRESIDENT:
I know the world was made for us, and has been since it first begun
It says so there in Genesis, and God knows I'm a Christ-ee-yun
In short, in matters biblical, a congregagginationist
I am the very model of a bible-bound creationist

ALL:
In short, in matters biblical, a congregagginationist
He is the very model of a bible-bound creationist

PRESIDENT:
My country's use of gasoline is profligate and decadent
It's harming our economy and the whole world's environment
Global warming morons warn of crises so hysteric and
It makes me thank the Lord that I was born to be American

Like anyone in power who wants to show their adherence
I pick and choose the bits I use from both Old and New Testaments
The Satanic secular types show how much they fear me
When I announce that evolution's no more than a theory

ALL:
When he announces evolution's no more than a theory
When he announces evolution's no more than a theory
When he announces evolution's no more than a theory

PRESIDENT:
Then I can draft a scary bill that's more than taking liberties
But arguing impugns your patriotic sensitivities
In short, in matters patriotic, criminal or terrorist
I am the very model of a bible-bound creationist

ALL:
In short, in matters patriotic, criminal or terrorist
I am the very model of a bible-bound creationist

PRESIDENT:
In fact, when I know what is meant by true religious parity
When I don't think the West is under threat from secularity
When my lack of brain-power's not undermined by literacy
And when my foreign policy's less gunboat, more diplomacy
When I have learnt the difference 'tween sandwiches and sand wedges
When I can use with confidence the whole damn English lang-u-wedge
In short, when I can state a statement oh, so very statedly
You'll say no president's ever misunderestimatedly

ALL:
You'll say no president's ever misunderestimatedly
You'll say no president's ever misunderestimatedly
You'll say no president's ever misunderestimatedly

PRESIDENT:
I know there ain't much knowledge that's contained within my cranium
I went to see the Wizard, but he can't give me a brainium
But still, in things political or educa-ca-cationist
I am the very model of a bible-bound creationist

ALL:
But still, in things political or educa-ca-cationist
He is the very model of a bible-bound creationist

The significance of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

Phew! I just heaved a sigh of relief. Glenn Greenwald explains the significance of the recent decision from the SCOTUS. What is scary about this otherwise great news is that the decision was 5-3 -- actually 5-4 because "Roberts ruled in favor of the administration in the appellate court (right before he was nominated to the Supreme Court) and therefore did not participate in the ruling]" . As Glenn says: "The Justice who wrote the majority opinion, John Paul Stevens, is 86 years old, and as Justice Blackmun once famously warned, he "cannot remain on this Court forever." If the Bush administration is permitted to replace Stevens with yet another worshipper of executive power, the next challenge to the Bush administration's theories of unchecked power could very easily result, by a 5-4 vote, in the opposite outcome." That's scary!

Glenn makes many points in his analysis but his final one (#7) stands nicely on its own. But by all means read the whole thing here.

7) The more I read and think about this opinion, the greater a death blow I think it deals -- at least on the legal front -- to the administration's Yoo theory of unlimited executive power. Not only Justice Kennedy in his concurrence, but also the Court's opinion itself, cited Justice Jackson's 3-prong Youngstown test to re-affirm the proposition that the President's constitutional powers must give way to duly enacted Congressional laws.

More importantly,the Opinion repeatedly places great emphasis on what it calls "the powers granted jointly to the President and Congress in time of war" (See, for instance, Op. at p. 27; emphasis added in all citations). And in a direct repudiation of the administration's claim that Congress is without power to limit or regulate the war powers granted by the Constitution to the President, the Court explained (Op. at p. 29, fn. 23):

"Whether or not the President has independent power, absent congressional authorization, to convene military commissions, he may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper exercise of its own war powers, placed on his powers. See Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 637 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring).

Whether intended or not, that paragraph, by itself, dispenses with the central misconception -- the myth -- most frequently relied upon by Bush followers in defending the administration's violations of FISA. Specifically, they assert that cases which, pre-FISA, held that the President has inherent authority to eavesdrop mean that Congress cannot regulate that power.

But as the Court today explained -- and as Youngstown held 50 years ago -- even with regard to inherent powers he possesses, the President "may not disregard limitations that Congress . . . in proper exercise of its own war powers" imposes. That principle is based upon "the powers granted jointly to the President and Congress in time of war." Thus, even if the President possesses the power "absent congressional authorization" to, for instance, eavesdrop (or torture people), "he may not disregard limitations that Congress" imposes on such powers.

To appreciate what a severe blow this opinion struck to the broad outlines of the Bush administration's theory of executive power, compare the Court's holding that the President "may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper exercise of its own war powers, placed on his powers" -- powers which include its own "war powers" -- with the authoritarian claim of unlimited power asserted in the infamous Yoo memorandum:

Neither statute, however, can place any limits on the President's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make.

More than anything else, the Court's opinion today is the opposite of -- a clear rejection of -- the crux of the Yoo Memorandum. The Court held that Congress most certainly does have a role to play in the exercise of war powers, and that such decisions are most certainly not "for the President alone to make."

Similarly, in his short one-page opinion -- signed by Justice Kennedy (as well as Ginsberg and Souter) -- Justice Breyer explained that absent emergency, the Constitution requires that the President comply with Congressional law even in areas which lay at the heart of national security:

Congress has denied the President the legislative authority to create military commissions of the kind at issue here. . . . Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation’s ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation’s ability to determine—through democratic means—how best to do so. The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means. Our Court today simply does the same.

The (fatal) applicability of that paragraph to the administration's general theory of executive power is manifest. Just as Congress denied the President authority to create military commissions which violate the law of war, so, too, has Congress denied the President the authority to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants (and to torture detainees, etc.), and -- just as is the case with military commissions -- there is simply no legal justification for the President to ignore those laws.

Understanding Terrorism

BooMan has written to reasoned response to one of the latest salvos in the War on the NYTimes being waged by RabidRight. This time it's Michael Barone in an article with the gripping title: The New York Times at War With America. BooMan begins:

Michael Barone is not a stupid, uninformed man. I know. My brother used to work with him at the U.S. News & World Report. So there is no innocent explanation for why he would write something so patently false and so obtusely misleading as the following. It's pure disinformation. Every single word of it is dishonest.

Why do they hate us? No, I'm not talking about Islamofascist terrorists. We know why they hate us: because we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, because we refuse to treat women as second-class citizens, because we do not kill homosexuals, because we are a free society.

No, the "they" I'm referring to are the editors of The New York Times. And do they hate us? Well, that may be stretching it. But at the least they have gotten into the habit of acting in reckless disregard of our safety.

BooMan then goes on to show, using Osama BinLaden's own words, why "they hate us" and:

Damn!! Nothing in there about hating our freedoms. Rather, he just noted our eagerness to destroy Iraq, and to fragment the other regional powers into 'paper statelets', powerless to destroy Israel.

[...]

In short, his critique of the Saudis was that they were corrupt, that they misallocated funds (especially on defense), that they set the price of oil with more regard to American desires than the benefit of the Saudi people, that they did not respect religious freedom (within the context of Islam), that they cracked down on academics, and that they used the media to spread disinformation.

This doesn't sound like the critique of a man that has a total disregard for the merits of liberty. It sounds like a man that sees the Saudis as corrupt and the American role in the Middle East as one that is inimical to the liberty of Muslims.

[...]

When we invaded Iraq we made bid-Laden's 1998 fatwa look less like the ravings of a lunatic than a modern day Les Propheties. Perhaps nothing could have lent bin-Laden more credibility than to have been proven right about America's intention to conquer and occupy and (in effect) destroy Iraq. And, it is the refusal of the neo-conservatives to be honest about why Islamists are targetting U.S. civilians that has led, more than anything else, to the total collapse of American credibility on the international stage.

The Islamists are not angry about the freedoms that Americans enjoy. They are perfectly content to let us go on enjoying them. But, they are not content to go on living under oppression in their own countries. Yes, if they gained power they would replace the current oppression with a new and different kind of oppression. But, at least it would not be bought and paid for by the American taxpayer.

Michael Barone knows these facts. He's a very smart man. But he doesn't get paid to tell the truth. He gets paid to brainwash right-wingers into thinking the fate of American liberty is on the line. It's not. Islamists will leave us alone the moment we leave them alone. And if we have good reasons not to leave them alone (and we do), then this fight will go on. It's a real fight, but it isn't an existential threat. It ain't armageddon, and it ain't a war on the tactic of terrorism. Tell America the truth.

Need some snark?

I read some great examples of literate snark today from two masters: James Walcott and Billmon. No excerpts, just go read them in their delicious entirety.

:-)

Star Crossed

When Worlds Collide

Good Treason and Bad

Gripes of Wrath

Rush Corks His Bat

Graham Crackers

These are traitorous (NY)Times

Dan Froomkin has a good column at the WaPo on the topic of those traitors at the NY Times that Glenn wrote about yesterday. Froomkin asks:

It's a monstrous charge for the White House to suggest that the press is essentially aiding and abetting the enemy. But where's the evidence?

[...]

But not once has the White House definitively answered this question: How are any of these disclosures actually impairing the pursuit of terrorists?

Terrorists already knew the government was trying to track them down through their finances, their phone calls and their e-mails. Within days of the Sept. 11 attacks, for instance, Bush publicly declared open season on terrorist financing.

As far as I can tell, all these disclosures do is alert the American public to the fact that all this stuff is going on without the requisite oversight, checks and balances.

How does it possibly matter to a terrorist whether the government got a court order or not? Or whether Congress was able to exercise any oversight? The White House won't say. In fact, it can't say.

By contrast, it does matter to us.

[...]

The potentially damaging political problem here is that the evidence continues to grow that the Bush White House's exercise of unchecked authority in the war on terror poses a serious threat to American civil liberties and privacy rights. It wasn't that long ago, after all, that an American president used the mechanisms of national security to spy on his political enemies.

The sum total of the administration's defense against this charge appears to be: Trust us. Trust that we're only spying on terrorists, and not anyone else.

But what if the trust isn't there? And what if they're breaking the law

I'll give the last word to Glenn:

That is why not a single person who ever sermonizes righteously about the traitors at the Times can ever identify what ought to be the first fact that is identified when accusing someone of harming national security -- namely, the disclosure of facts which (a) would enable the terrorists to avoid surveillance detection and (b) was not previously known. Those facts simply do not exist, which is why nobody ever identifies them.

[...]

Yet again, The Boston Globe demonstrates what real journalism is supposed to do -- subject claims by the Government and its loyalists (in this case, claims that the Times disclosed information that will help the terrorists commit terrorist attacks) to skeptical scrutiny, and then report facts which have been concealed that undermine the Government's claim. That's the definition of the core journalistic purpose.

This is not a complicated matter. Nobody who is making these accusations can identify a single specific act that Terrorists would have engaged in before that they will now avoid. That, by itself, does not merely undermine, but destroys, the claim that the Times harmed national security. Any "journalist" who allows those accusations to be made without pointing out that fact are, to put it mildly, acting quite irresponsibly.

The Terrorists at home

Acting like a true patriot, Glenn Greenwald is in great form today in an article called The Bush lynch mob against the nation's free press in which he debunks the wingnuts cries of "Traitor" against the NY Times for daring to criticizes the Bush in time of war.

The clear rationale underlying the arguments of Bush supporters needs to be highlighted. They believe that the Bush administration ought to be allowed to act in complete secrecy, with no oversight of any kind. George Bush is Good and the administration wants nothing other than to stop The Terrorists from killing us. There is no need for oversight over what they are doing because we can trust our political officials to do good on their own. We don't need any courts or any Congress or any media serving as a "watchdog" over the Bush administration. There is no reason to distrust what they do. We should -- and must -- let them act in total secrecy for our own good, for our protection. And anyone who prevents them from acting in total secrecy is not merely an enemy of the Bush administration, but of the United States, i.e., is a traitor.

A book could and ought to be written about the corrupt reasoning and truly unparalleled dangers characterizing this anti-media lynch mob. But for now, following are what I believe are the most noteworthy points:

He then lists these points and methodically makes them. Read the article.

(1) There is not a single sentence in the Times banking report that could even arguably "help the terrorists."

(2) The reason there is "no evidence of abuse" is precisely because the administration exercises these powers in total secrecy.

(3) The Founders unequivocally opted for excess disclosures by the media over excess government secrecy and restraints on the press.

(4) How can any rational person believe that the reporters and editors of The New York Times want to help terrorists attack the U.S.?

Personal History

Murray Waas has been one of the consistently bright lights among reporters covering the Iraq invasion and occupation. He has written a powerful and personal article at HuffPo called A Reporter's Bias explaining where he's coming from and why he does what he does.

Barbara O'Brien "going back in time a bit", perhaps inspired by Murray's article -- that's where I found the link, writes her own piece explaining what went before and how it informs, explains and motivates things today.

Disarray vs Debate

Paul Begala debunks the "Democrats in disarray" story and provides some good advice to counter it.

The media are hyperventilating about “Democrats in disarray” over the war in Iraq. ABC’s “The Note” captures the stupidity, vapidity and gullibility of the mainstream media perfectly: “Democrats can deny it all they want (and not all do. . .), but they are on the precipice of self-immolating over the issue that has most crippled the Bush presidency and of making facts on the ground virtually meaningless. In other words, they are on the precipice of making Iraq a 2006 political winner for the Republican Party.”

I’m sure I’ve read a dopier statement of conventional wisdom, a more perfect transcription of Karl Rove’s ignorant talking points, but I really can’t remember when.

As usual, the Smart Guys have it backwards. Democrats can and will win the Iraq debate if they embrace the fact that they disagree and contrast it with the slavish, mindless rubber-stamp Republicans.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is doing a Herculean job of herding cats onto the Levin proposal, which calls for a timetable to redeploy troops, but no strict deadline. Good for him. That’s what leadership is all about.

But it’s still a reality that Democrats like Russ Feingold and John Kerry support a date certain for America’s withdrawal from Iraq, while most of their Senate Democratic colleagues do not. So, rather than deny or ignore the disagreement, Democrats should highlight it, celebrate it, emphasize it.

The only place in the American government where there is an honest and spirited debate over Iraq is within the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are not on the same page – and that’s a good thing. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry disagree. Hooray for that.

If anyone tells you the solution to Iraq is easy or obvious, they’re a liar or a fool (a false choice in the case of our president). So why not feature the debate? At least someone is debating what to do.

The fact is the American people want a new direction in Iraq, and the Democrats offer several. The Republicans, on the other hand, offer nothing more than a four-word strategy: more of the same.

Democrats should seize this moment to attack the rubber-stamp Republicans for their lemming-like devotion to a failed strategy and a set of incompetent and dishonest leaders. Republicans have a faith-based Iraq policy. They have faith in Donald Rumsfeld, they have faith in Dick Cheney, they have faith in George W. Bush. We don’t. They are liars and nincompoops – and the lives of tens of thousands of our best are in their hands.

Every time the GOP says “cut and run,” Democrats should say, “rubber stamp.” Every time they say we’re weak, we should say real strength is standing up to your president and your party when American lives are on the line. When they attack our patriotism, we should challenge them to sign their kids up for the military: “Since when did the sons and daughters of working people corner the market on patriotism, Senator? If this war is so wonderful, so noble, so vital, why the hell is your son throwing up on his date at Ivy League frat parties?”

In short, Democrats can and will win the debate over the war in Iraq not by playing defense (pleading “We’re NOT for cut and run!”) but on offense: the Republican Congress has blindly backed a failed strategy that has left 2,500 Americans dead, 20,000 wounded, and put us $2 trillion in the hole.

Being part of a party that has three or four different new approaches to Iraq beats the hell out of being part of a party that marches in lockstep off a cliff.

Media lapdog bashing

The point can't be made often or strenuously enough that the media's failures have caused (or allowed) the Bush Administration to get away with their evil machinations. Eric Boehlert, author of "Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush", writes:

... it never ceased to amaze me the amount of extraordinarily bad, lazy and dishonest journalism that's been produced during the Bush years, and produced by what are supposed to be the country's most elite, mainstream news organizations. Amazingly, I think the trend has only intensified since I completed my research and writing in March. The timidity--being afraid of the facts and the consequences of reporting them--is now everywhere you look.

Just take the latest edition of Newsweek currently on newsstands, and specifically just two articles from it (one on liberal Daily Kos and the other on conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt) which manage to embrace everything that's wrong with today's Beltway press corps. (Rule No. 1: GOP up, Dems down.) Let's count the ways.

Check out his list of examples...

Kosola exposed!

Billmon gets it! Gawd, I love it when he puts his mind to something. There has been much written lately about this business... the smears, the defenses, rinse, repeat, but what Billmon writes here is the best analysis and explanation of what's happening that I have read. Interestingly, I remember writing something like that on a different topic in December of 2003: "the most insightful article I've read about the role the neo-conservatives play inside the Bush administration".

Billmon nails one... again. Go read the whole thing...

Teaser:

In other words, he frequently uses words like "fuck" and "shit" and sometimes calls his opponents stupid wankers, or whatever. The rabble manning the barricades at Daily Kos can be even more, uh, direct at times. Of course, anyone who's ever poked a stick in the open sewers of Right Blogistan could spear some far worse scatalogical examples. But it's still pretty strong stuff for the delicate blossoms who inhabit the TNR's editorial offices. I can only shudder to think what would happen if they were ever exposed to the Rude Pundit (or vice versa.) Think of the analyst bills.

But the sweet young things of the TNR have their friends -- at the Times, Newsweek and wherever else Ivy Leaguers with mediocre intellects but good networking skills obtain journalistic employment. And so it didn't take long for Kos and his friends (i.e. the liberal blogger mafia) to make some highly venomous enemies among the lambs of the neoliberal punditocracy.

But none of this seething animosity would have mattered, or made it into print, if Kos hadn't committed the mortal sin of becoming too big and too visible to ignore. When you combine the relatively successful launch of his book -- which took a sawed off shotgun to the leeches attached to the Democratic Party's flabby underbelly -- the huge media coverage of this month's Yearly Kos convention, and (last but hardly least) the role of the netroots in boosting Ned Lamont's primary challenge to the TNR's pride and joy, it's clear that Kos has turned into a much more formidable opponent than the Dino* Democrats bargained for.

[* Democrats In Name Only -- bill]

Wrongly accused

I remember as a child watching a movie about someone wrongfully imprisoned and I was so outraged that I unloaded on my mum, shouting: that's wrong! that's unfair! that shouldn't happen! I can tell you that that response to injustice has persisted and, while I no longer have a mum to unload on, I do have my trusty blog! Ranking up there with being wrongfully accused is being guilty of wrongfully accusing someone else. This is why it is so important to try hard to get one's facts straight -- to ask questions -- before one makes accusations.

However, if one does get it wrong, then it becomes very important to do the right thing i.e. to come clean, to correct the mistake, to apologize and to take the heat for having erred. I've written about this before here and I've found that you can tell a lot about someone by observing how they deal with finding themselves in this uncomfortable situation.

One of my favourite bloggers, Glenn Greenwald, has found himself in the unfortunate position of being wrongfully accused of being a liar and an hysteric, and has suffered the slings and arrows of misfortune all weekend.

Personally, if I told my readers that another blogger was lying or was drowning in paranoia when making certain claims, only for those claims to turn out to have been true all along, I'd be quite eager to retract my accusations and apologize for them as clearly and prominently as I could. I can't think of anything that would be a more immediate priority than that. But it goes without saying that different bloggers have different ethical standards which guide them, and in the case of some of the above-named bloggers, some are entirely unburdened by such standards at all.

However, while one of his accusers has come clean: "the facts have borne out Greenwald'’s contention. I stand corrected. He is no liar", the majority has "moved on" (my favourite euphemism for refusing to be held accountable) or persists in the slander without supporting evidence and in the face of exonerating evidence.

I like to think that my conclusions are evidence-based and that my goal is to get it right, to do the right thing and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that anyone worthy of respect for intellectual honesty should have to do the same. Sadly, many don't share this view. But the fact that Glenn does, is just another reason why reading his blog is so worthwhile. I'm not interested in discussing things with people who are not prepared to be constrained by being evidence-based and rational. As Glenn says:

I have not addressed that accusation precisely because there is no "substance" to it [...] Anyone who believes that is willing to believe accusations based on nothing, and is thus, by definition, someone who is not amenable to rational persuasion.

You're a good man, Glenn. You deserve better.

Determined to be wrong

Hume's Ghost says that the Bush Administration was determined to be wrong. In an article in the Wapo today, Joby Warrick tells of veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller (whom I wrote about here) and his struggle to warn the administration before the invasion of Iraq that they had their facts wrong -- that the aptly named Curveball couldn't be trusted. In spite of his efforts, he was ignored, the fiasco was unleashed and... the rest is history.

It has become pretty clear to everyone that these weren't innocent mistakes but, rather, they were deliberate efforts to have facts suppressed if they conflicted with their pre-determined course of action (I can't bring myself to say: plans).

This seems to be a recurring theme for this administration. It just doesn't seem to hear objections until it's too late. It has an uncanny ability to not hear information that discredits its beliefs.

[...]

But this is part of an even larger pattern of not being able to confront reality which conflicts with its political ideology. This is why it might be the most anti-scientific administration is US history, since science is the best method that humanity has to investigate and determine objective truth. But wishful thinking does not change inconvenient truths, and eventually reality must be confronted.

He then ends with a quote from an article by Dylan Otto Krider called The Politicization Of Science in the Bush Administration.

The troubles in Iraq are not so much proof of the failure of the neocon vision for democratizing the Middle East, as they are a reminder of the disastrous consequences of removing empiricism from deliberation. All the problems that have popped up in Iraq were predicted long ago—from troop strength to the resilience of the insurgents—and available to anyone who cared to look. The administration not only chose to look away but actively swept them under the rug. When CIA war games were discovered to be training personnel to deal with the eventuality of civil disorder after the fall of Baghdad, The Atlantic Monthly reported the Pentagon forbad representatives from the Defense Department from participating because “detailed thought about the postwar situation meant facing costs and potential problems.” 29 Our refusal to face reality hasn’t been giving democracy much of a chance.

“Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue,” George Will wrote recently. “Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.” 30 Bush has finally met his match. The Universe is the one foe more steadfast than he is. It cannot be bullied or intimidated. The laws of physics know no compromise. This is a game of chicken Bush will lose. If he doesn’t take his foot off the accelerator, then the only question is: how will we recover from the crash?

Why I like Russ Feingold

Russ Feingold was on the Sunday talk shows today and it would appear that he acquitted himself well, and demonstrating once again why he's my favourite Senator. If only more elected officials would speak up the way he does. Crooks & Liars has some video of him on Tim Russert's Meet the Press.

What I can't find is the quote of his that I read earlier today wherein, when he was asked to comment on Cheney's pronouncement about how ill-advised cuttin 'n runnin' would be, he responded that nobody should pay any attention to anything Dick Cheney and, with approval at 20%, apparently no one does.

Update: it was Sen. Joe Biden on Wolf Blitzer via Atrios [H/T The Liberal Journal]

BIDEN: No, I don't want to respond to him. He's at 20 percent in the polls. No one listens to him. He has no credibility. It's ridiculous.

Permanent Bases - Oil

I read Kevin Drum's post about the permanent military bases being built in Iraq. This is something I've wondered about before and written about elsewhere but, in short, I think that this is PNAC stuff. They know they couldn't keep troops in Saudi Arabia much longer and yet their plans required that they stay in the Middle East because of the oil and (to a lesser extent, IMHO) because of Israel. So Iraq became the location of choice -- unpopular, marginalized, secular ruler sitting on the world's second largest known oil reserves and then that propitious event on 9/11 "some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor" -- and the rest is history. Anyway, I followed this topic into the comments and there were lots of worthwhile ones but here are three I especially liked.

The first is from Steve Duncan and is a bit harsh but, sadly, too true.

Hell, Bush could tell everyone to stay indoors for a few weeks, mail them all free iodine tablets and then commence to nuke the entire planet. As long as the public was assured American Idol would be televised as scheduled they'd shrug, pop open a beer and wait for the all clear. Americans don't give a shit about any other nation. They've had it pounded into them since childhood this nation is ordained by God as superior by any measure to all other nations and all other peoples. Therefore other peoples are nearly subhuman, rating no more respect than the cattle we slaughter for our double cheeseburgers. Permanent bases? Hell, put one on every corner in every country, the public could not care less.

The second, from Linus, hints at what I mean.

"I'm continually baffled, however, as to why Democrats don't seem to want to make a bigger deal out of the permanent bases question. That, I would think, is an issue the party could be fairly unified on."

Because Democrats are just the other party of empire, who want American dominance to have the imprimatur of the UN and the permission of France and bureaucrats in Brussels, but say and do nothing about the more than 700 American bases around the world, 24/7 patrols of the world's seas and skies, and multiple occupations of foreign countries (except Iraq, and then only kinda-sorta) because they don't fundamentally object to the American Empire. They've reconciled themselves to the spread of laissez faire capitalism, and even favor the spread of bourgeois cultural liberalism, despite its nasty side effects - the decline of the family, rising crime, the growth of the police and prison state, the people who get left behind (the incorrigible poor and incarcerated). Liberalism today doesn't give a damn about the most vulnerable and hated in this society. Why should it object to an emerging worldwide American civilization that doesn't give a damn about the most vulnerable and hated around the world?

The third, from tbaum, gets at what's really happening, I think. Enjoy!

The issue of permanent bases and the issue of a "Broad Based Time-table For Exit" are directly related because their resolution depends upon the underlying objectives the Bush crowd had for our attack on Iraq. To accept their framing of our purpose in being there as being the development of a free, democratic Iraq is both silly and self-defeating since it causes all discussion to miss the central issue.

We attacked Irag, primarily, to carry out the PNAC/NEOCON dream of world empire, starting with the Middle East, and we did so in order to estabilsh an imperialistic presence there and to begin the process of gaining control of OPEC oil, starting with Iraq's which is believed to be the second largest estimated reserves in the world. The original plan called for Iran to be next and then probably Venezuela. Our presence there would assure our continued influence over the largest and the additional second largest reserves in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. That is why you have seen the unending demonization of both Iran, with the manufactured nuclear emergency, and Chavez of Venezuela, with the claim of Communism.

Not withstanding the mess they have made in Iraq, I believe they still see success being the establishment of a client government and the privatization of the oil and its sale to US international corporations. Also, not withstanding all of the warnings of dire consequences to be expected, if we attack Iran, I believe to do so is still their intention and all the talk about nuclear programs will have nothing to do with that decision. It is all about oil and direct control of the world's oil heartland. He who has it, not only will be able to keep their own economy going when all others fail, but they will also have a death grip on the throat of everyone else.

If you question why we would need to gain control of all of this oil, I suggest you become knowledgeable about the imminence and the predictable impact of "Peak Oil" in the world. You can be assured that Cheney and those oil CEOs with whom he worked on that secret Energy Commission were only too aware of the economic catastrophy that is approaching us.

Some have suggested that we do not need to attack Iraq for their oil since we can purchase all we need on the open market. In a world where there is enough oil for all needs, such a view would be reasonable, but that is not the world we will soon be living in.

Experts have suggested that as little as a 10% shortfall between oil supply and oil demand would collapse the US economy. Now consider that when "Peak Oil" occures (And it might well already have occured, but not been recognized yet.) there will be an inevitable 3% to 5% decline per year in the amount of oil that will be available. Even if today's demand held steady, and it won't, that will mean a 10% short fall between our need and our supply in as little as two years.

Make no mistake about it, oil is what almost all of our recent foreign affairs decisions and actions have been about. That includes the Caspian Sea area, the proposed oil pipeline through Afghanistan, the attack on Iraq, the threatened attack on Iran and the demonization of Chavez with the possibility of either his assassination or an attack by us on Venezuela. We are not yet demonizing or threatening to attack our other major supplier of oil, Canada, I guess, because the Bush cabal probably cannot come up with a way to sell it to the American people.

There is another critical issue that is driving the movement towards an attack on Iran and that is the need to prevent the establishment and effective operation of an Iranian oil Bourse that would sell Iranian oil based upon EUROs and not dollars. If such a Bourse become operational and if the Russians, the oil producers of the Caspian area and the Venezuelans all succeed in following suit, the status of the dollar as the standard of exchange for the world would be destroyed and that too would be a catastrophy for the US economy, particularly in view of our humongous foreign debt.

What this all means is that the Bush gang has no intention to leave Iraq , or even to not attack Iran at this point. Those large permenent bases are being built to house the US military force, that will essentially function as the private militia that will remain in Iraq in order to protect the private property of those Bush friendly oil corporations. Because they have no intention to leave, they will continue to reject any and all calls for a time table for withdrawal, no matter how reasonable they might be. They will also reject any proposed negotiated solution to the nuclear emergency they have manufactured with respect to Iran.

I submit that until we force the Bush cabal to acknowledge their real plans and objectives, and so long as we continue to discuss and debate these issues based upon their framing, we will accomplish virtually nothing.

The Cocktail That Saved Karl Rove's Ass

Arianna Huffington, at her own HuffPo, has an interesting explanation for how Karl dodged his bullet. She points to Viveca Novak, formerly a "reporter" at Time who didn't reported on her own involvement in the case (or even tell her bosses... kinda like Bob Woodward) and who eventually "quietly took a buyout". As Arianna puts it: "She was his human stay-out-of-jail-free card".

The sad truth is that Novak's perfidy did more to stymie the indictment of Karl Rove than anything else, and while it would be nice to believe that Rove may yet face criminal justice for his actions, it's unlikely that he will.

But even if he's never charged, Rove still confirmed the identity of a covert CIA operative to Bob Novak who then published it. He leaked it to Matt Cooper who, unlike either Novak, tried to expose what the Bush White House was up to. Rove then lied about being the source of the leak for a year, in the process hanging Scott McClellan out to dry by letting him tell the press and the American public that Rove had assured him he had no involvement with the leak.

And, even if you believe Rove's improbable tale that his conversation with Cooper had somehow slipped his mind, he was reminded of it by Viveca Novak via Luskin by the spring of 2004 and could easily have ended Cooper and Time's prolonged fight to protect him as a source and told the president that he had been one of the leakers (saving his boss from the embarrassment of vowing to fire anyone involved, then pulling back on that pledge once it became clear that that would mean cutting loose his beloved Turd Blossom).

But Rove kept his mouth shut, preferring swift boating and rousing the country to the threat of gay marriage. For all these reasons, Rove should not be allowed to remain a part of the administration and Bush should not be allowed to keep him on without shame.

National Reconciliation Plan

Oops! Newsweek has a draft copy of the National Reconciliation Plan and it appears that that pesky independent government in Iraq has come up with a plan that may just provoke a Bush/Cheney hissy-fit. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is trying to put together something that can work in the fiasco that he has inherited and, like all compromises, it will not be what all parties want but it just may be what all parties can live with... literally. Newsweek says that he'll announce it Sunday and that it includes:

A timetable for withdrawal of occupation troops from Iraq. Amnesty for all insurgents who attacked U.S. and Iraqi military targets. Release of all security detainees from U.S. and Iraqi prisons. Compensation for victims of coalition military operations.

Those sound like the demands of some of the insurgents themselves, and in fact they are. But they're also key clauses of a national reconciliation plan drafted by new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who will unveil it Sunday. The provisions will spark sharp debate in Iraq—but the fiercest opposition is likely to come from Washington, which has opposed any talk of timetables, or of amnesty for insurgents who have attacked American soldiers.

I wish him luck and I hope that George doesn't screw up Maliki's attempt to deal with George's screw-up.

American Weakness courtesy of Bush/Cheney

Joe in DC at AmericaBlog makes the same sort of point that I made last weekend about Bush sneaking into Baghdad and what that says about how well things are going in Iraq. Cheney has claimed that if the American troops were to leave Iraq it would make America look weak. Joe responds:

Cheney's fears of the United States looking weak have already been realized -- and it's because of the failed policies of the Bush/Cheney administration. The Iraq debacle and the actions of the past few weeks have reinforced that perception to the rest of the world.

What does it say when the leaders of the world's "lone superpower" (as Dan Bartlett described us repeatedly the other day on the Today Show) practically declared a national holiday because we killed one bad-ass terrorist? Al-zawqari was an extremely dangerous and bad man. He got what he deserved. But by making it seem like it took the entire concentration of the world's "lone superpower" to take out one terror leader in a country we occupy, well, frankly, that made us look weak -- and terrorists like Al-zarqawi strong. All this is set against the backdrop of a country that cannot locate the one terror leader, Osama Bin Laden, who killed Americans on American soil.

Also, Bush's secret photo op trip to was considered a great p.r. move here. Of course, it was viewed solely through a political lens. What message did it send to the rest of the world that the President of the U.S. had to sneak in to a country he claimed to have vanquished three years ago? If Iraq was the success Bush claimed it would be, there would have been a parade from the airport to downtown Baghdad. Instead, the President was covered with body armor -- and he didn't even tell his good friend, the Iraqi Prime Minister, that he was coming. That's supposed to show strength to the world?

The Bush team is obsessed with not making America look weak. Their failures in Iraq have produced just that result.

War on Democrats

The New York Times has an article entitled G.O.P. Decides to Embrace War as Issue which I find troubling for many reasons. First, it's not a war. The war part ended with "Mission Accomplished". The US is now occupying Iraq and many Iraqis are not happy about this and many of those are well armed. However, the bulk of the violence doesn't involve Americans -- it's Sunni against Shia and vice versa. Though Americans are certainly dying at the hands of Iraqis who resist the occupation and they may find themselves in the middle of an Iraqi civil war precipitated by their deposing Saddam Hussein, they can hardly be said to be fighting a war "at least in the old-fashioned sense of a declared conflict between two sovereign states".

They are a much-resented occupying force and occupations ultimately fail. I can't think of one example where an occupying force succeeded against resistance from those occupied. It often takes a long time, but it just doesn't work. This fiasco, so accurately predicted by me and millions of others before it began, was wrong and still is wrong (both technically and ethically) but what the NYTimes article indicates is the cynical lengths to which the Pentagon is willing to go in order to prop up this corrupt Bush administration.

The Pentagon has produced a "74-page briefing book" and White House officials have distributed it to Congressional offices...

to provide ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections: that the withdrawal being advocated by Democrats would mean thousands of troops would have died for nothing, would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire and would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam.

Republicans say the cumulative effect would be to send a message of weakness to the world at a time of new threats from Iran and North Korea and would leave enemies controlling Iraq's vast oil reserves, the third largest in the world. (The book, including a chapter entitled "Rapid Response" with answers to frequent Democratic charges, was sent via e-mail to Republican lawmakers but, in an apparent mistake, also to some Democrats.)

A senior adviser to Mr. Bush said the White House had concluded that it was better to plunge aggressively into the debate on Iraq than to let Democrats play upon clear, public misgivings about the war.

That's right! The Pentagon is helping plan attacks... against Democrats! This is outrageous (not to mention that it will prove a little awkward when a Democratic president becomes Commander-in-Chief in 2008). But there are two lines that really stick out for me and which I highlighted. One is the admission that oil is indeed a big factor in this occupation but the other is this idea that, if we leave now, all this cost will have been in vain.

Deal with it! It has already all been in vain, whether you acknowledge it now or later. This is not about making something work. It's about Bush ducking responsibility for screwing up and being willing to let people die for his mistakes so that he can save face. Standard operating procedure for Bush who has a history of screwing things up leaving it for others to clean up. So typical of a this spoiled frat boy -- no accountability.

As my wife once said, if you're going the wrong way down the road, the proper thing to do is to stop, turn around and go back the other way. But, I can just hear the wails: "if we do that, we'll have driven all this way for nothing". The answer, of course, is: "If you don't, you'll just drive even farther for nothing". Not acknowledging a mistake doesn't make the mistake or its consequences go away. In response to the Pentagon's talking-points: it's already true that thousands of troops have died for nothing, Iraq has already become a launching pad from which extremists can build an Islamo-fascist empire and the United States has already blundered into its most humiliating defeat since Vietnam. It's just that the people in charge refuse to acknowledge it.

It's not Disneyworld. Even if you really, really want something to happen, it doesn't make it more likely that it will occur. Hope is not a plan. It's time for someone with some sense to take charge and try to extricate the US from a criminal invasion and occupation of a foreign country. No one is going to turn this sow's ear into a silk purse.

Battling the Ghosts of Vietnam

Arthur Silber has a great post on the similarities between Vietnam and Iraq and the lessons not learned by those in charge in Washington who are battling Vietnam's ghosts in Iraq. So people keep dying because Bush is too stupidly proud to admit that he screwed up.

If you want to provoke an especially heated reaction from the supporters of our current foreign policy -- those who proclaim that we must stay in Iraq for the indefinite future, and until an impossible series of events miraculously transforms a bloody, murderous failure into something they might finally dub a "success" -- there is one guaranteed method of achieving that end: compare Iraq to Vietnam. Almost without exception, the hawks instantly burn with white-hot anger. Their moral outrage is palpable.

[...]

Cheney: "We can win -- we are winning -- but we've got to stay at it," the Vice President said.

[...]

It has been clear for some time that, in very significant part, many supporters of the Iraq catastrophe are fighting two wars: the war in Iraq -- which hasn't been a war since the Saddam regime was toppled, but only a bloody and futile occupation -- and the war in Vietnam. More precisely, they are fighting the ghost of the Vietnam defeat, and what they fear that defeat signifies about U.S. foreign policy ever since World War II.

[...]

Put it another way: no other country and no one else at all can ever defeat the United States. Only we can defeat ourselves -- which is precisely what Steyn himself says. It should be obvious how this leads into a messianic conception of the United States' role in human affairs: we are gods on earth -- or at least God's representatives on earth -- here to bring enlightenment to the inferior cultures and peoples who surround us. This conception of ourselves is not only dangerously wrong, but dangerously destructive and brutal: if we and only we have the key to humanity's future, then what are the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of inferior people -- or even the deaths of millions? If the world is to be saved, no price is too great and no pile of corpses, no matter how high, should deter us from our mission.

The parallels to Vietnam are striking and numerous.

[...]

In the illusion of omnipotence, American policy-makers took it for granted that on a given aim, especially in Asia, American will could be made to prevail. This assumption came from the can-do character of a self-created nation and from the sense of competence and superpower derived from World War II. If this was "arrogance of power," in Senator Fulbright's phrase, it was not so much the fatal hubris and over-extension that defeated Athens and Napoleon, and in the 20th century Germany and Japan, as it was failure to understand that problems and conflicts exist among other peoples that are not soluble by the application of American force or American techniques or even American goodwill.

"Nation-building" was the most presumptuous of the illusions. Settlers of the North American continent had built a nation from Plymouth Rock to Valley Forge to the fulfilled frontier, yet failed to learn from their success that elsewhere, too, only the inhabitants can make the process work.

Wooden-headedness, the "Don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts" habit, is a universal folly never more conspicuous than at upper levels of Washington with respect to Vietnam. Its grossest fault was underestimation of North Vietnam's commitment to its goal.

[...]

Not ignorance, but refusal to credit the evidence and, more fundamentally, refusal to grant stature and fixed purpose to a "fourth-rate" Asiatic country were the determining factors, much as in the case of the British attitude toward the American colonies. The irony of history is inexorable.

[...]

Change the names, and we are in Iraq today. And Cheney's remarks, as well as those of all the others who insist we must "stay the course," reveal that these dynamics are exacting their awful toll still one more time.

[...]

For our political leaders, in terms of the methodology they bring to bear on questions of foreign policy, it is as if the United States is a country without a history. In this respect, they are like the most dangerous of nihilist revolutionaries: they believe they can make the entire world anew, writing on a blank slate. But when you completely disregard the realities of history and culture, when you set aside facts and the complexities of men and the societies they create, you will achieve only what such revolutionaries have always achieved: destruction. Tragically for all of us, and for the world, they have failed to learn that lesson as well.

Santorum is pathetic

News Flash! WMD found in Iraq!

Poor Rick Santorum. He's getting pounded in his re-election attempt and he's brought up this crock and he's getting trashed big-time by almost everyone for this pathetic attempt to elevate these Weapons of Mild Distraction to any level of significance. Apparently they were buried and forgotten in the desert in the 80's. Check out Olbermann's video here.

Samples:

Olberman: Independent experts and the level-headed, staggering in amazement today, that deteriorated mustard gas canisters -- at least fifteen years old and as much as "eighteen" years old -- could be "palmed off" by desperate politicians as some kind of rationale for the deaths of 2500 American servicemen in Iraq.

Republican Senator, Rick Santorum, down 18 percent in the polls in his own re-election bid... "joined" by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Pete Hoekstra of Michigan... in pimping part of a two-month old military intelligence report describing the existence of old munitions shells with chemical weapons that are degraded, unusable, and non-threatening....

[...]

Rumsfeld: They are harmful to human beings.

Olbermann: So was any exposure to the **sun** endured by whoever went searching for them.

[...]

And the former chief U-N Weapons Inspector and President Bush's Iraq Survey Group Chief -- David Kay -- telling Countdown that Senator Santorum's comments are -- quote -- wrong as to the facts and exaggerated beyond all reason as to the interpretation of the 'facts'."

He continued, "There is no surprise that very small numbers of chemical canisters from the Iran-Iraq War have been found. "The ISG found them and in my testimony in 2004 I said that I expected that we would continue to find them for a very long time. "These are in very small numbers and are scattered. The nerve agents have long since degraded to the point that they no long pose any substantial threat.

"In most cases the mustard agent has substantially degraded, but will burn you if skin comes in contact with it."

More "More of the Same"

Josh Marshall writes a passionate appeal to Democrats and (in a manner similar to what TRex did) advises that they be "much more aggressive. [...] It means making your point forcefully, on your own terms, repeatedly". He also says that this post can be considered an open letter to the Senate Democrats:

You're really doing a poor job in the public debate over Iraq.

Luckily, unlike what's imagined by the imbeciles who write The Note and others in Washington, reality is not simply a DC media and politics confection. The Dems can muff this several times before coming back and getting it right. And they'd still be more or less fine. Because the Iraq War is still really unpopular. And the great majority of the country has lost faith in President Bush's conduct of the war.

But that's still no excuse for handling this so poorly.

The Democrats have to be much more aggressive. But 'more aggressive' doesn't mean a quicker withdrawal. It means making your point forcefully, on your own terms, repeatedly.

But they're not doing that.

What I see is Republicans on TV repeating their 'cut and run' charges. And to the extent I see Democrats, it's Democrats denying the charge. No, we're not for cutting and running.

The president wants to stay in Iraq for at least three more years. It's not that he won't set a date to withdraw. He doesn't even have a plan that gets to the point where the US could end the occupation. In practice he wants to stay in Iraq forever. What Repubicans are voting for is More of the Same, More of the Same failed policy.

Let's work through a bit of this. If the president had a plan for success he would say, 'I plan to get X, Y and Z done and then we're going to bring American troops back home. I expect those three things will be accomplished by the middle of 2007.' Or maybe he'd say 2008 or the beginning of 2009.

But he doesn't say any of those things. When he says we're staying in Iraq as long as he's in the White House he makes clear that he doesn't have any plan other than staying in Iraq. Other than staying there indefinitiely or basically forever. Isn't it possible his 'plan' could work and have us out in 2008? Obviously, he's discounted that possibility because, again, he has no plan.

For my part, I'd rather put more troops into Iraq than leave the status quo, as long as there was a clear plan for bringing the war and occupation to a satisfactory conclusion. The thing is that the status quo is morally indefensible because it just means continue to burn through men and money for a failed policy because President Bush isn't capable of admitting his policies have failed.

He's like an owner of a business that's slowly going under. He doesn't know how to save the situation. So he won't get more money or resources to fix the business. That's throwing good money after bad. And he won't just liquidate and save what he can, because then he'd have to come to grips with the fact that he's failed. So his policy is denial and slow failure. Here of course the analogy to President Bush is rather precise since he only has to hold out until 2009 when he can give the problem to someone else, just as he did in his past life with other businesses he drove into the ground.

But for the country that's not acceptable. We don't have a policy except for slow burn and denial. And the president's ego isn't enough to ask men and women to die for. We need an actual plan. And the president doesn't have one.

Democrats need to hammer this point again and again and not get tripped up in the president's bully-boy rhetoric. The president has no plan. He wants to stay in Iraq forever. He says for at least three more years. All the Republicans agree they want more of the same.

No one wants that in this country. All the Democrats have to do is get up on the airwaves and say it. Again and again.

Even the side with an insipid argument can take the day if the other side remains unheard.

[emphasis is mine --bill]

Digby hammers away on this same theme:

They can hammer us with "cut 'n run" all they want, but they can't "cut n' run" from the fact that they are telling the American people there is no end in sight and there is nothing they can do about it. That's the reason why Dems must step up now and aggressively pound this message home that the president has no plan. In order to win, the people must believe that by electing Democrats they are taking action to change the status quo. Democrats need to hammer the fact that for all the president's bluster --- he's paralyzed by his inability to admit that he's made a mistake.

Democrats may not have all the answers. The administration has got us in a hell of a mess and it's not easy to get us out of it. But the Republicans have made it quite clear that their intention is to keep doing exactly what they are doing until somebody stops them. Democrats need to stop them --- and they need the American people to understand that they are the only ones who can stop them. The Republicans can't stop themselves.

TRex says: Fight Back!

TRex is guest blogging along with many others at FDL while Jane is on bereavement leave and I like the advice provided in this post. I've long advocated doing the right thing, meaning the ethically correct thing, but it also means the technically correct thing... the thing that works. I'd never recommend cheating, or argue that winning at any cost is a worthy goal, but there are technically better ways to accomplish these ethically correct goals.

Trying to reason with someone, whose position is not based on reasons, is futile. Trying to provide factual information for the benefit of someone who's just making up stuff is pointless. The people we're trying to convince are not the right-wing shills but the voting public and there are more effective ways to convince them than by trying to be reasonable in the face right-wing spewing. Don't try to defend yourself, attack their hate-mongering lies with your own talking points. TRex says:

As long as we continue to form our strategies and sound bites around defending ourselves, the GOP will always win. They have consistently set the tone for every debate from gay marriage to the War in Iraq by arriving there first, seizing the moral high ground, and hurling accusations, which the vichy Dems seem more than willing to waste their time parrying, ducking and weaving around in a doomed effort to justify themselves to the electorate, no matter how absurd and disingenuous the accusations are. We always enter the debate on terms set by the Republicans. If we continue to do that, we will always, always lose.

Listen to me, Democrats! Never defend. Never explain. Attack, attack, attack! When a right-winger accuses you of something, back up, reframe, ignore the charges, just ATTACK. How hard can this be? Ann Coulter doesn’t waste her time defending herself against our accusations. Neither does Rush Limbaugh. They launch their attacks and the terms of the debate are set from there, and once again, as liberals, we are bringing knives to a gun fight.

To whit:

A Republican says, "All you liberals are cut-and-run traitors! You don’t support the troops!"

Instead of frantically beginning to tap dance and show that you’re not a traitor and that you do support the troops, you fire back, "Why are you Republicans such cowards? Your leaders are all draft-dodgers who’ve never fired a shot at anything but a bunch of canned quails and old lawyers. You’re using the troops as human shields against the midterm elections! Do you like seeing our brave men and women in uniform slaughtered and killed? Or are you just too much of a coward to face the consequences of your failed policies in Iraq? Which is it? Do you just hate the soldiers or do you hate your constituents?"

There. You have just put the burden of proof on the Repugnican that he/she isn’t a coward and that they don’t hate the troops. Then you set up a false dichotomy that they can’t answer without looking like a fool.

Or say you’re lucky enough to have squared off against Ann Coulter. (I dream of four minutes of live TV with Ann Coulter!) She says, "Liberals hate science! Liberals suck terrorist dicks! Liberals eat babies! *SQUAAAAAAAACK!! SCREEECH!! AWK!! AWK!!*"

You say, "Ann, why are you such a fascist?"

She, of course, will say, "I’M not a fascist! LIBERALS ARE FASCISTS!" (Which is exactly what she would say, trust me.)

You calmly respond, "But Ann, you advocate everything the Nazis did; internment camps, physical intimidation, silencing of media outlets, and murder. Everything the Nazi Party said about the Jews, you have said about liberals. You even look sort of like some kind of Aryan Dominatrix. You’re like a Brownshirt pin-up girl."

And then sit back and watch as she goes nuclear. Now, the onus is on her to prove she’s not a fascist, which is exactly what she can’t do. (Cos she is.) You don’t respond to charges by Ann Coulter. You attack. You treat her with all the respect and courtesy that she would treat you.

It doesn’t really even matter if your accusations are true, just whether or not they’re truthy. (We can play that game too.) It helps, of course, if what you’re saying is true, but it’s not a requirement. Study the work of Karl Rove sometime.

Republicans are cowards. They’re soft. They grew up sleeping on huge billowy piles of other people’s money, tucked in by their immigrant nannies, while Mumsy and Daddy were off at the The Club getting stoned on whiskey sours and arrogance. They won’t have the stomach for this fight. But if we continue to equivocate, back-pedal, and sputter in frustration at the outrageousness of their assertions, we will remain the party of Juan Williams, Mara Liasson, Alan Colmes, and all the other Whiny Little Bitch liberals.

Is this clear? Any liberal pundits or Democratic strategists reading this, you hear me?

NEVER defend.

NEVER explain.

ATTACK! ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTAAAAACK!!!!

We have a reputation as a bunch of weak-kneed cowards because we keep trying to answer the charges against us and failing, because the charges simply aren’t true. You can’t defend yourself against baseless accusations. "Why don’t liberals support the troops?" is a question like, "When did you stop beating your wife?" Unanswerable, because it issues from a set of false precepts, and any attempt to answer it is going to be like, as my brother says, "boxing a turd". And that’s the number one lesson that we can take from the right wingers. They don’t waste their time answering our charges. Don’t dignify their charges with an answer. It’s time to seize the narrative, by force. Stop trying to justify yourself to those people. Treat them with contempt and disgust. Flick their accusations aside and then go for the jugular.

"Reverend Dobson, you’re afraid of homosexuals because of your own secret homosexual tendencies, aren’t you?"

"Ms Malkin, would it be fair to say that you hate immigrants because you yourself are an ‘anchor baby’ of immigrant parents?"

"Mr. Hinderaker, this discussion of the DHS is interesting, but what I really want to know is why your kids aren’t fighting in Iraq and supporting the troops in a meaningful way?"

See how easy it is, kids? The fact of the matter is that the people we are fighting are hurting our country and others. Their ignorance and arrogance is costing us our democracy and our lives, not to mention the lives of thousands of innocent people in other nations. We do not have to answer to them. We only have to call them to account. Stop defending yourself. The only real defense against this crowd is a good offense.

Now, go get em.

Murtha v. Rove

Gene Lyons writes a good editorial in Arkansas Democratic Gazette about Rove & Murtha.

...maybe U. S. Rep. John P. Murtha ought to run for president. He may be 74, but the man knows how to handle himself in a fight, a skill too many genteel Democrats appear to have forgotten.

[...]

For the record, Rove’s military experience, like Vice President Dick Cheney’s and that of virtually all the neo-conservative architects of this ill-conceived utopian fantasy, is absolutely zero.

Murtha knows about war. A native of the coal-mining and steel-making region of western Pennsylvania, he volunteered to fight in Korea and Vietnam, where he won two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star with Combat “V” and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. I’m confident that even at 74, he could kick Rove’s pasty posterior with one leg—assuming he could outrun the little creep.

As history, this cut-and-run business is nonsense. It wasn’t Democrats who made peace in Korea. It was President Dwight Eisenhower. Democrats didn’t dispatch Henry Kissinger to whisper to China in 1972 that the U. S. could live with a communist Vietnam. President Richard Nixon did. He began the long, bloody retreat that ended with the North Vietnamese taking Saigon under President Gerald Ford.

Maybe the oddest thing about the legacy of Vietnam is that the worst thing that could happen, from a rightwing perspective, did happen. The U. S. lost the war. Communists conquered much of Southeast Asia. And the effect on national security ? Well, we got lots of good Vietnamese restaurants out of it. Otherwise, none.

The communists soon fell to fighting among themselves, with Vietnam invading Cambodia, China attacking Vietnam, and the Chinese and Soviet Russians entangled in a blood feud. Next, Russia invaded Afghanistan. Domestic fallout from that bloody fiasco helped cause the collapse of the U. S. S. R. and the demise of communism almost everywhere—also because nobody but a few crackpot professors in the West believed in it anymore.

Exactly why so many like Rove, Bush and Cheney, who avoided Vietnam, subsequently metamorphosed into countryclub Napoleons is mysterious. Personal psychodrama appears to be involved.

It’s past time to get real, Murtha says. Invading Iraq was an unnecessary folly.

[...]

Murtha didn’t say so, but there’s no chance of an Iraqi democracy friendly to the U. S. That’s a delusion. Bush’s photo-op visit merely underscored the point. Three years after “Mission accomplished,” and the mighty conqueror flies into the fortified “Green Zone” unannounced and can’t trust Iraq’s prime minister enough to give him, oh, an hour’s notice ? That’s not how Alexander the Great did it. [emphasis added by me --bill]

Digby comments:

No it's not. One of the most infuriating things about the triumphal coverage of the Baghdad trip is the fact that the media didn't seem to think it was noteworthy that after all this time the president (or anybody else) still can't make a planned visit because he can't trust anyone and the situation on the ground is so dangerous. Why that's considered "good news" for him is anyone's guess. Rational people are right to conclude that there has pretty much been no progress since Bush dropped in exactly the same way for that stupid Turkey stunt. By this time we should have been able to have a state visit and a parade.

Lyons continues:

Meanwhile, Murtha says, the U. S. is spending $ 8 billion a month while American soldiers are being killed and maimed, physically and psychologically, mainly to provide political cover for Bush. Intimidated by Rove ? Not hardly. “You can’t sit there in the air-conditioned office,” Murtha said, “and tell these troops—they’re carrying 70 pounds on their back inside these armored vessels and hit with improvised explosive devices every day, seeing their friends blown up, their buddies blown up—and he says, ‘stay the course.’ Yeah, it’s easy to say that from Washington, D. C.”

So much muck to rake...

Paul Kiel at TPMmuckraker has his hands full with the so-called McCain Report. It doesn't look good for lots of people including Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Michael Scanlon, Bob Ney and Federici, Griles and Norton at the Department of the Interior. Looks bad for pretty much everybody being investigated, in fact, as Josh Marshall put it, "As long as you're not one of the lawmakers McCain is protecting, it's something of a bloodbath".

Sample:

Let's remind ourselves of who Ms. Federici is. She heads up a group called the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), a rightwing front group that, as Michael Scherer put it, "argues it is healthy for forests to clear-cut trees, good for the air to weaken air-quality controls, and "environmentally responsible" to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness."

More importantly, Federici had "juice" (as Abramoff put it in an email) at Interior, because she'd worked closely with Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who'd founded CREA. So Abramoff directed his clients to pump money into CREA and asked for a steady stream of favors from Federici. Abramoff's clients gave $500,000 -- a substantial portion of CREA's funds came from Abramoff.

Go with War

With the Senate Republican's voting in lockstep with the White House (again) against the troop redeployment bill, it would appear that Republicans up for re-election are going to "run on Iraq". This appears to be Karl Rove's plan for the fall election -- the old "dance with the girl what brung ya" advice, I guess. Dan Froomkin at WaPo, in an article called Rove's Risky Embrace, has this to say:

Karl Rove is a master of high-stakes brinksmanship, as he has proven time and time again.

But his latest venture may be his riskiest yet.

Rove is betting that he can reframe the war in Iraq as a battle between courageous Republicans and pusillanimous Democrats.

The stakes: Congress. (And subpoena power.)

Rove believes that this strength vs. weakness rhetorical construct, combined with continued attacks on the media, will be enough to counterbalance whatever negative news about the actual war continues to emerge between now and the mid-term elections.

The actual war remains one in which people die every day, sometimes in the most gruesome ways, for reasons that aren't entirely clear. It's a war that according to the polls the public now thinks was a mistake, feels it was misled into supporting, and would like to see ending on some sort of timetable. It's a war that has raised questions about American devotion to human rights. It's a war we may not be able to win.

But Rove thinks he can win the war over the war.

And although his plan appears highly susceptible to events on the ground in Iraq and/or assertive media coverage, betting against Rove -- thus far, at least -- has been a sucker's move.

The latest evidence of Rove's plan comes in a New York Times story this morning by Jim Rutenberg and Adam Nagourney , in which they write about what's behind the congressional Republicans' vigorous embrace of Bush's war strategy.

"That emerging Republican approach reflects, at least for now, the success of a White House effort to bring a skittish party behind Mr. Bush on the war after months of political ambivalence in some vocal quarters," Rutenberg and Nagourney write.

"[P]eople who attended a series of high-level meetings this month between White House and Congressional officials say President Bush's aides argued that it could be a politically fatal mistake for Republicans to walk away from the war in an election year.

"White House officials including the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, outlined ways in which Republican lawmakers could speak more forcefully about the war. Participants also included Mr. Bush's top political and communications advisers: his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove; his political director, Sara Taylor; and the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett. Mr. Rove is newly freed from the threat of indictment in the C.I.A. leak case, and leaders of both parties see his reinvigorated hand in the strategy. . . .

"A senior adviser to Mr. Bush said the White House had concluded that it was better to plunge aggressively into the debate on Iraq than to let Democrats play upon clear, public misgivings about the war. 'This is going to be a big issue in this election,' said the adviser, who was granted anonymity in exchange for agreeing to describe strategic considerations about the war. 'Better to shape and fight it -- as good and strongly as you can -- than to try to run away from it.' "

Absurd!

Digby says:

It's ballsy and it's "bold," but what would you expect from a party that is looking at losing its majority in the fall? Of course they are going to try to run on some faux, patriotic, don't "cut n run" crapola. What else have they got? It's their tried and true playbook and the best they can hope for is to trash talk the Democrats into cowering into the corner.

But just because they are running their game again that doesn't mean that Democrats need to run theirs and get all flustered trying to find a way to appear to support whatever the Republicans say without actually supporting them so they don'tlook soft --- and end up looking soft. That is losing politics and never more than now when we have these bastards on the run for the first time in decades.

As U.S. Grant famously said "it's time to stop worrying about what Bobby Lee is going to do to us and start thinking about what we are going to do to him."

Go on the offensive on the war, Democrats. Hard. Do not fall for this nonsense again. This is Karl Rove at his most obtuse and obvious. He is not magic (although his latest escape certainly adds to his mystique on that count) and he is not a genius. He's a cheap thug who is going to try to squeeze one more narrow win out before he retires to teach and lecture younger cheap thugs in how to win by cheating and character assassination.

The best approval rating Bush gets on Iraq is below 40%. Independents are breaking heavily against his policies. There is nothing to be afraid of. The country's desperate for some leadership. Give it to them. I'm begging you.

Death and dying

A good friend of mine died Tuesday and the more this happens the more I realize how important it is to appreciate what we have while we have it. Almost all of us are wonderfully fortunate, if we only had the "eyes to see". Jane Hamsher, founder of FDL, has been away from her blogging recently with her dying mother (she just died today) and my thoughts are with her and all of those who have lost loved ones.

However, her sad times exposed yet another example of how the media doesn't do a good job of getting the facts straight. Here's Jane...

I got a call this morning that Christy and I had been attacked in The New Republic for staying silent on some particular matter because Kos had ordered us to do so. I have not posted since last Friday night, have not had internet access at the hospital and have only had moments at home when I could grab quick glances at the blog. I have no idea what's going on in the world, let alone the internecine politics of greater blogistan. Christy is working like a dog just trying to keep the blog going. Had TNR bothered to ask or even take a passing glance at FDL they could have figured that out, but they didn'’t. They obviously did no research --— just took someone'’s word for this particular smear. As did the Hotline Blogometer. I'’m not quite sure how I became the poster girl for something I wasn'’t even around for, but the attack is obviously not grounded in anything having to do with us. Or Kos. Or responsible journalism, for that matter.

More of the same...

Josh Marshall doesn't think that more of the same is very attractive.

I'm a bit confused. I'm hearing a lot of reports about Republicans chanting about staying in Iraq forever, the danger of ever withdrawing our troops. There's Cheney. There's Frist. I can't say I've done a systematic scan of all media. I'm just saying what I've happened across during a day of work. And I'm not seeing any Dems. Not hearing any clear message.

What Republicans want is More of the Same.

That's the motto. More of the Same.

The president says he wants to stay in Iraq for at least three more years. Virtually every Republican agrees. Three more years. They approve the course the president has set.

They're for More of the Same. They don't have a plan. They just want to stay indefinitely.

They're just for More of the Same.

I must say it drives me to distraction that Democrats aren't saying this more clearly. Get on TV. Get on the radio. Why cede all the ground to the likes of Dick Cheney?

Late Update: Sherrod gets it.

Taylor Marsh at FDL repeats the point that Bush has already said that he won't take the troups out -- that's for "future presidents".

REPORTER: Will there come a day, and I’m not asking you when — I’m not asking for a timetable — will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?

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

Al Franken Show on Air America (quote replayed today)

If you want out of Iraq before 2010, you better vote for Democrats in November.

I can’t say it any plainer than that, because even the Levin-Reed non-binding amendment demanded a change of course on Iraq. Democrats are united on that fact, so now’s not the time to be silent.

The Republicans had no debate. They voted in a block, like the good little rubber stamp Republicans they are, afraid to voice dissent in public. Or is it that they don’t have an original thought in their heads on how to get out of Iraq? One thing is certain, their talking points all sound the same. Stay the course. Stay the course. Stay the course! Oh, unless you’re listening to Silly Ricky Santorum, who’s scraping the bottom of the WMD barrel, in order to save his sorry Senate seat. The wingnuts are all on board.

Amnesty?

Digby has a post today about the amnesty bill:

There has been quite a debate in blogging circles about the "amnesty for insurgents" bill that was defeated in the Senate yesterday and I'm a little surprised that there is even a discussion about it. As you probably know, the administration has been supportive of an idea by the fragile Iraqi government to give amnesty to killers of American troops in exchange for their laying down their weapons.

[...]

19 Senators voted for this amnesty yesterday. All Republicans. No Democrats. Those are the "right and honorable" men to whom this soldier is referring. And they aren't just any Republicans. They are the leading national figures of the party, including John McCain.

But a really powerful part of his post is the "letter from a soldier serving in Iraq who makes a very eloquent argument, from his perspective, as to why this is wrong".

I am one of the soldiers that these proposals are dishonoring.

Did any of these men ever serve??? Have to go through memorial service after memorial service day after day for comrades they knew and loved???

Have they had to live in fear every moment of every unchanging, horrible day, waiting for a never-seen rocket or a mortar to kill them--or worse, kill those to whom they are close???

Have they bore body armor in 120 degree heat in the face of an unrecognizable enemy, one who uses terrified civilians as shields?

Have they seen the remains of tanks, HMMWVs, BODIES!!! that were rent asunder by invisible bombs, planted by fanatical zealots???

Have they truly seen the shatter[ed] lives of Iraqis, these lives broken by the very people they propose to grant amnesty?

Have they had to pull the trigger with the aim of killing another human being, someone you have never met or seen before, never knowing if the target was truly an enemy?

Do these gentlemen wrestle at night with the nightmares of guilt and second-guessing?

Every IED that injures or kills an American soldier exacerbates the normal soldiers' attitude toward those who he is sent to help and protect. Every sniper shot hardens our hearts.

Propose accolades for those who have lived through this hell, not for those who have opposed them in the shadows, in the dark.

When an insurgent--a terrorist--an enemy combatant--call them what you will--strikes at an American, he attacks Iraq.

When these "right, honorable" gentlemen realize that we are in a war we should have never entered--one where our very presence provokes and increases the enemy's resolve and recruitment--perhaps then I will consider their words.

But until then, tell these paper warriors to go to Walter Reed, to Landstuhl, to Sam Houston and face the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen whose lives have been drastically altered or ended.

Tell them to face the families of the fallen and propose their accolades to our foes.

Instead of resolutions that honor those who are trying to kill us, these senators, these congressmen should devote their efforts, their words, their very lives to try and figure out how we can extricate ourselves from this war.

Perhaps then they can look themselves in the eye and admit Iraq was a mistake and commit all our energies to saving American lives, instead of worrying about mollifying our enemies' rage.

--Sean Frerking, a soldier serving in Iraq