Blogs and the establishment media

Glenn Greenwald shares sheds some light on the relevance of blogging and why it "can't get no respect" from the MSM.

One can debate the true influence of blogs and whether they will continue to grow in size and influence. But what seems beyond reasonable dispute is the fact that nothing can match bloggers and their readers in terms of political interest, intensity and energy. And, most importantly, the ability of blogs to be self-sustaining is growing rapidly.

Blogs are increasingly able to engage in their own in original reporting and widely and effectively to disseminate opinion and information without reliance on establishment media organs. If anything, establishment media organs are growing increasingly dependent upon blogs to sustain interest in their products. And one should not underestimate the vital role this development plays in so much of the establishment media's hostility towards bloggers and their endless reliance on caricature to belittle and demonize blogs.

[...]

There is simply no question that so much of the establishment media's hostility towards (and purported "concern over") blogs is grounded in the role blogs play in scrutinizing their conduct and offering an alternative to replace the opinion-making monopoly they held previously.

[...]

In almost every case, media figures who lash out at bloggers -- purporting to offer some sort of objective, terribly worried critique about the "recklessness" of bloggers -- were themselves the subject of criticism and exposure by blogs. Zengerle is not alone. From Jonathan Chait to Dan Gerstein to Richard Wolffe (seen here valiantly defending the integrity of the White House Correspondents Dinner from the criticism of bloggers), those who have assigned themselves the role of warning about the Dangers of Bloggers are clearly fueled, at least in part, by having been the target of blogger scrutiny and critique.

"Bloggers," like every other group, include some irresponsible members, and can benefit from meaningful and vigorous criticisms. But the vast bulk of anti-blogger hostility -- particularly the criticisms offered by establishment media figures -- are motivated not by any genuine concern over journalistic ethics and responsibility (witness how steadfastly they ignore their own breaches), but instead by the fact that bloggers have shined light on the mistakes and corruption in their profession which previously festered in the dark, and by the fact that blogs are increasingly rendering what they do less important, and in some instances, even irrelevant. This amazingly whiny and substance-free attack on bloggers by Joe Klein in Time -- following months of constant criticism from bloggers about Klein's "journalism" -- illustrates this self-absorbed process perfectly.

For the foreseeable future, large media organizations will be necessary to enable cetain types of critically important investigative journalism. There are some truly superb and courageous journalists whom bloggers cannot replace. Indeed, so much of the blogger critique of the media is grounded in a desire for more of that. And there are many journalists who are receptive to the work of bloggers and use it as a resource. But the overwhelming sentiment towards the work of bloggers from media figures, especially our media stars, is to scorn it except when they ignore it. Their self-interest in relegating blogs to the "unserious" fringes is obvious and overwhelming.

But blogs are on their way to becoming self-sufficient, to enable -- entirely apart from media institutions -- the widespread dissemination of ideas, narratives, and viewpoints that the media excludes from our rotted public discourse. That development plays no small role in the increasing hostility one witnesses towards blogs from those who thought they had an entitlement to conduct and shape -- without any challenge or criticism -- how our political discussions proceed.

Ship of Fools or Titanic

Digby comments on the story in the New Republic by Johann Hari who signed up for the National Review cruise and shares a bizarrely frightening insight into the lizard brains of those who claim to be conservatives today. As Digby says: "It's so disturbing and yet so funny" and she concludes:

They were all there, Kate O'Beirne, Kenny boy Starr, even William B Fuckley himself, dyspeptic as ever, proclaiming victory over communism (again) while trying to sidle away from the modern nazi generation he spawned as quietly as possible.

If there is ever any doubt in your mind as to what truly gets these people up in the morning, this lays it to rest. They are so afraid of dark people they must have a supply of Depends on hand at all times. Dinesh D'Souza, who is quite dark himself, tries awfully hard to be one of the "Real Americans" but he must wonder what they think when they see him out of the corner of their eye when they are alone in a ship's corridor after a few too many martoonis. (If he doesn't, he's an even bigger fool than he seems.)

It nearly impossible to believe that these are the people who have been running the world for the last six years --- and they are. These are Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld's people. We put a bunch of rich, deluded, paranoid racists in charge of the most powerful nation on earth. It's a miracle we're still alive.

Republicans, ready... set... jump?

Josh Marshall sees the writing on the wall...

The front blurb on the new CNN Iraq poll is sufficiently to-the-point that I'm going to quote it in its entirety ...

Public support for the war in Iraq has fallen to a new low and Republican support is beginning to waver, a poll published Tuesday found. In the latest CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll, 69 percent of those polled believe things are going badly in Iraq, and anti-war sentiment among Republican poll respondents has suddenly increased.

Dick Lugar's very public pulling of the plug on the president's policy is an indicator of the trend.

The number referenced toward the end is 38% -- the number of self-identified Republicans who say they oppose the war. (I wasn't able to find a partisan break-out of the numbers in the CNN data. So I'm not clear what the number jumped up from.)

This all puts in stark terms the intense anxiety now palpitating Republican hearts in Washington, DC. One number is 38%. Another number is 17, the number of months before the 2008 election.

[...]

The truth is that the president is playing a very high-stakes game of chicken with his fellow Republicans. He's driving a hundred miles an hour toward the cliff, way too fast to jump out of the car without risking serious injury. But as the cliff gets closer, they'll start to jump.

A Tragic Legacy

Glenn Greenwald's latest book A Tragic Legacy has been released today. Glenn's track record makes me feel confident about recommending it without having read it...yet.

Says Glenn:

I wrote the book for the same reason I blog: because I believe that arguments can be advanced, evidence marshalled and facts revealed which can serve as an antidote to our deeply dysfunctional political discourse and, through reasoned-based (though impassioned) persuasion, constructively influence our political process. A book's success can force media outlets to provide a platform for the book's arguments and to expand the range of voices and perspectives which are heard.

The book begins:

A Tragic Legacy
How a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the Bush presidency.

By Glenn Greenwald

Jun. 20, 2007 | We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell.

-- Sir Karl Popper, twentieth-century British philosopher of science

One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness -- who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a crusade against Evil -- is that the moral imperative driving the mission will justify any and all means used to achieve it. Those who have become convinced that they are waging an epic and all-consuming existential war against Evil cannot, by the very premises of their belief system, accept any limitations -- moral, pragmatic, or otherwise -- on the methods adopted to triumph in this battle.

Efforts to impose limits on waging war against Evil will themselves be seen as impediments to Good, if not as an attempt to aid and abet Evil. In a Manichean worldview, there is no imperative that can compete with the mission of defeating Evil. The primacy of that mandate is unchallengeable. Hence, there are no valid reasons for declaring off-limits any weapons that can be deployed in service of the war against Evil.

Equally operative in the Manichean worldview is the principle that those who are warriors for a universal Good cannot recognize that the particular means they employ in service of their mission may be immoral or even misguided. The very fact that the instruments they embrace are employed in service of their Manichean mission renders any such objections incoherent. How can an act undertaken in order to strengthen the side of Good, and to weaken the forces of Evil, ever be anything other than Good in itself? Thus, any act undertaken by a warrior of Good in service of the war against Evil is inherently moral for that reason alone.

It is from these premises that the most amoral or even most reprehensible outcomes can be -- and often are -- produced by political movements and political leaders grounded in universal moral certainties. Intoxicated by his own righteousness and therefore immune from doubt, the Manichean warrior becomes capable of acts of moral monstrousness that would be unthinkable in the absence of such unquestionable moral conviction. One who believes himself to be leading a supreme war against Evil on behalf of Good will be incapable of understanding any claims that he himself is acting immorally.

These principles illuminate a central, and tragic, paradox at the heart of the Bush presidency. The president who vowed to lead America in a moral crusade to win hearts and minds around the world has so inflamed anti-American sentiment that America's moral standing in the world is at an all-time low. The president who vowed to defend the Good in the world from the forces of Evil has caused the United States to be held in deep contempt by large segments of virtually every country on every continent of the world, including large portions of nations with which the U.S. has historically been allied. The president who vowed to undertake a war in defense of American values and freedoms has presided over such radical departures from the defining values and liberties of this country that many Americans find their country and its government unrecognizable. And the president who vowed to lead the war for freedom and democracy has made torture, rendition, abductions, lawless detentions of even our own citizens, secret "black site" prisons, Abu Ghraib dog leashes, and orange Guantánamo jumpsuits the strange, new symbols of America around the world.

In sum, the great and tragic irony of the Bush presidency is that its morally convicted foundations have yielded some of the most morally grotesque acts and radical departures from American values in our country's history. The president who insists that he is driven by a clear and compelling moral framework, in which the forces of Good and Evil battle toward a decisive resolution, has done more than almost any American in history to make the world question on which side of that battle this country is fighting. The more convinced President Bush and his followers become of the unchallengeable righteousness of their cause, the fewer limits they recognize. And America's moral standing in the world, and our national character, continue to erode to previously unthinkable depths.

Check out Matt Stoller's partial review here.

Reading about Bush's Presidency with some distance is a strange experience, since the events are so clearly etched in my memory. And yet this book puts distance between the reader and Bush, almost as if he is out of office. And with that distance, I'm beginning to appreciate just how destructive his Presidency has been, how thoroughly he has corrupted our system of laws and our political fiber. When put together like Greenwald has done, it sort of feels like another country, only one whose history is very familiar. Bush is accurately portrayed as a President whose sole motivating ideology is a sure-fire belief that whatever he does is good, and any opposition or disagreement - even by former allies - represents an evil that must be crushed. The vicious behavior towards enemies is actually a need for enemies, a Manichean culture devouring itself.

Dick "no oversight for me" Cheney

More from Digby on the "Cheney answers to no one" issue.

This looks like a week for action, which is always a good thing. It's difficult getting our representatives to move on the things we care about but it can be done.

First of all, Move-On is working to push our representatives to restore habeas corpus. (I can hardly believe I have to write that.) If you have a few minutes, make a phone call or two. Christy at FDL has all the particulars. (And here's a YouTube of Chris Dodd giving a rousing speech at the ACLU Rally today.)

Second, while you are dialing your congressman, give a thought to calling the members of the Financial Services Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, who will be deciding whether to pass out Rahm's proposal to cut off fund for Cheney. This is a very nice moment to make a statement about Cheney's nonsense, and with Sally Quinn reporting that the sycophantic courtier phone tree is ready to toss Dick overboard, this is a propitious time to keep this in the press.

Todd Gitlin made the case for pushing this yesterday over at TPM Cafe:

Rahm Emanuel has introduced a bill to delete spending for Cheney's office on the ground that Cheney claims, when convenient, that the vice-president's office is not "an entity within the executive branch." Rep. Emanuel, who's taken a beating from the liberal wing of the Democrats for refusing to stand up, is standing way up. The House is supposed to vote later this week.

Is this not one of those extraordinary moments when the people's representatives will actually vote on whether to fund the horrific farce that is this administration?

The Republicans keep daring the Dem majority to stop funding the things they object to and the Democrats keep getting tied up in knots over it. I don't know if this is constitutional or if it is practical, but I do know that a debate on the floor of the House over Vice President Cheney's assertion that he answers to no one is the kind of thing that might be able to compete with Paris Hilton and some roid-raged killer wrestler on the evening news and bring home the fact that our government has gone completely batshit crazy.

Survey says...

I can just hear Edna Krabappel saying: "The children a right to laugh at you" when I read stuff like the following. Willful ignorance, once again. I feel contemptuous.

Steve Benen at TPM shares this depressing bit of polling data:

As part of its cover story on "what you need to know now," Newsweek conducted a broad poll on a variety of political and cultural affairs. There were plenty of interesting results, but one section was particularly noteworthy.

Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in ten Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein's regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection. A majority of Americans were similarly unable to pick Saudi Arabia in a multiple-choice question about the country where most of the 9/11 hijackers were born. Just 43 percent got it right -- and a full 20 percent thought most came from Iraq.

For that matter, one in five Americans (20%) believe that we did find chemical/biological weapons "hidden by Saddam Hussein's regime."

Perhaps most troubling, the number of people who are confused about Iraq's non-existent role in the 9/11 attacks has gone up in recent years. When Newsweek asked the same question in the fall of 2004, 36% said Saddam Hussein was "directly involved" with the attacks. Nearly three years later, that number is 41%.

Sure, Bush administration officials have been careless with their rhetoric, leading to some confusion. And sure, there were probably some Fox News viewers included in the poll, skewing the numbers.

But that still doesn't explain a result like this one.

Treated As: Top Secret

Steve Benen at TPM has read chapter one of the WaPo piece and observes...

That Dick Cheney is secretive is hardly news, but seeing just how secretive is striking.

Stealth is among Cheney's most effective tools. Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI." Experts in and out of government said Cheney's office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to "sensitive compartmented information," the most closely guarded category of government secrets. By adding the words "treated as," they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause "exceptionally grave damage to national security."

Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that "the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance.

Stick it in a time capsule; future generations won't believe it.

You don't know Dick.

The Wapo has quite the story about this special V.P. It begins thusly...

Just past the Oval Office, in the private dining room overlooking the South Lawn, Vice President Cheney joined President Bush at a round parquet table they shared once a week. Cheney brought a four-page text, written in strict secrecy by his lawyer. He carried it back out with him after lunch.

In less than an hour, the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, according to witnesses, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review. When it returned to the Oval Office, in a blue portfolio embossed with the presidential seal, Bush pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and signed without sitting down. Almost no one else had seen the text.

Cheney's proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court -- civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed "military commissions."

"What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part.

Vice President Cheney, standing behind the president's desk during a July 2003 meeting, circumvented Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in 2001 on the military commissions order.

The episode was a defining moment in Cheney's tenure as the 46th vice president of the United States, a post the Constitution left all but devoid of formal authority. "Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him, has approached the levers of power obliquely, skirting orderly lines of debate he once enforced as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford. He has battled a bureaucracy he saw as hostile, using intimate knowledge of its terrain. He has empowered aides to fight above their rank, taking on roles reserved in other times for a White House counsel or national security adviser. And he has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did not assert.

Over the past six years, Cheney has shaped his times as no vice president has before. This article begins a four-part series that explores his methods and impact, drawing on interviews with more than 200 men and women who worked for, with or in opposition to Cheney's office. Many of those interviewed recounted events that have not been made public until now, sharing notes,e-mails, personal calendars and other records of their interaction with Cheney and his senior staff. The vice president declined to be interviewed.

Two articles, today and tomorrow, recount Cheney's campaign to magnify presidential war-making authority, arguably his most important legacy. Articles to follow will describe a span of influence that extends far beyond his well-known interests in energy and national defense.

In roles that have gone largely undetected, Cheney has served as gatekeeper for Supreme Court nominees, referee of Cabinet turf disputes, arbiter of budget appeals, editor of tax proposals and regulator in chief of water flows in his native West.

Branches of Government

Eli at FDL comments on the latest Cheney fiasco.

I am, to put it mildly, not Rahm Emanuel’s biggest fan, but his response to Dick Cheney’s claim to be exempt from executive branch oversight is priceless:

Today, we discovered that everything we learned in U.S. government class was wrong. Evidently, the Vice President does not consider himself a part of the executive branch, and therefore believes he can obstruct meaningful oversight and avoid being held accountable. If the Vice President truly believes he is not a part of the executive branch, he should return the salary the American taxpayers have been paying him since January 2001, and move out of the home for which they are footing the bill.

CREW piles on, and their take might be even better:

Under his argument, if Mr. Cheney is not subject to executive branch security requirements, surely he must be subject to Senate rules.

To safeguard sensitive information, in 1987 the Senate created the Office of Senate Security, which is part of the Secretary of the Senate. The Security Office’s standards, procedures and requirements are set out in the Senate Security Manual, which is binding on all employees of the Senate.

(…)

In addition, Mr. Cheney and his staff would be subject to investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee, which has the responsibility to investigate allegations of improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate, including violations of law and the rules and regulations of the Senate.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said Mr. Cheney’s arguments raise new questions:

“Since there is no fourth branch of government to which Mr. Cheney could belong, by claiming the Office of the Vice President is within the legislative branch does Mr. Cheney agree that he is subject to Senate security procedures?”

Now, it seems to me that, as CREW observes, Cheney must be in one branch or the other (or both) but there’s no way he can be in neither. And if he has to pick just one branch to belong to, I would think it would behoove him to pick the one controlled by his own party. Not to mention, y’know, the one that his nominal boss is in. Because, call me crazy, but Cheney’s claim that he does not belong to the executive branch sounds like an admission that he does not work for the President. Or, indeed, for anyone. While this is probably accurate, I’m pretty sure it was never intended to be common knowledge.

If you want a little more serious coverage, check out this LA Times story (registration required). My favorite bits:

In his letter to the vice president, Waxman said two Cheney staffers — including Libby — have been criminally prosecuted in the alleged illegal disclosure of classified information.

(…)

“Your office may have the worst record in the executive branch for safeguarding classified information,” Waxman wrote.

(…)

“Here’s a guy who raises ‘executive privilege’ to historic levels to exempt himself from all rules and oversight, and now he says he’s not part of the executive branch?” said [Berkeley Constitutional scholar Gordon] Silverstein. “Here we have a subordinate part of the executive branch asserting independent constitutional authority even against its own superior. It is flabbergasting.”

You’d think that this is the sort of thing that a bold, decisive leader like Dubya would want to clear up boldly and decisively, but so far the official White House line appears to be, “We don’t really know if he’s right or not, but it’s none of the legislature’s business how we enforce executive orders.” But if Cheney’s part of the legislature…

Of course, the simplest explanation is that the Bushies just make shit up so they don’t have to come right out and admit that they find the Constitution too confining, but what are the odds of that?

In your face Dick!

Atrios shares this gem of a response from Rahm Emanuel.

Washington, D.C. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel issued the following statement regarding his amendment to cut funding for the Office of the Vice President from the bill that funds the executive branch. The legislation -- the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill -- will be considered on the floor of the House of Representatives next week.

"The Vice President has a choice to make. If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch. However, if he demands executive branch funding he cannot ignore executive branch rules. At the very least, the Vice President should be consistent. This amendment will ensure that the Vice
President's funding is consistent with his legal arguments. I have worked closely with my colleagues on this amendment and will continue to pursue this measure in the coming days."

Steve Benen at TPM provides some context:

The background details are surprisingly straightforward. In 1995, the Clinton White House issued an executive order establishing uniform rules for protecting classified information. In 2003, the Bush White House revised it. The order plainly includes any executive-branch agency, any military department, and "any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information." The entire branch of government, the order said, is subject to oversight.

This week, however, in light of revelations about the White House ignoring its own E.O., the Bush gang started spinning like a top.

The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney's office, President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information.

An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 -- amending an existing order -- requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.

Look, I can appreciate the fact that the White House is in a jam here. Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the gang repeatedly mishandled classified materials during a time of war, got caught, ignored their own rules, and is now struggling to rationalize their conduct. When the federal agency responsible for oversight tried to do its job, the Vice President reportedly tried to abolish the agency. This isn't a fact-pattern that's easy to spin.

But the explanations thus far have been transparently ridiculous, up to and including the notion that the Vice President, as defined in Article II of the Constitution, isn't actually part of the executive branch of government.

Benen again:

In yesterday's painfully-amusing White House press briefing, spokesperson Dana Perino argued, without explanation, that the president exempted Dick Cheney from an Executive Order on preserving classified materials. In fact, she got rather specific about it, telling reporters that on page 18 of the E.O., "There's a distinction regarding the Vice President versus what is an agency." Perino added that this is "clear."

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's staff looked at page 18. Take a wild guess what they found.

"No exemption at all for the Vice President on page 18. So we emailed the White House, which referred us to section 1.3 -- which is about something else altogether -- and 5.2 -- which makes no mention of the Vice President. In fact, there is no exemption for the President or the Vice President when it comes to reporting on classified material.

Faiz added that the language of the E.O. is rather sweeping: "Sec. 6.1(b) of Bush's 2003 executive order governing classified material explicitly states that it applies to any 'Executive agency...any 'Military department'...and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.'"

Sounds "clear" to me.

Digby outs himself as... herself!

Digby has long been one of my blogospheric heroes and the only thing that will have to change as a result of her coming out on Tuesday is my use of pronouns when I gush about her in the future. Digby accepted an award on behalf of all liberal bloggers at the Take Back America Conference in Washington. Her acceptance speech is here.

Digby:

Now that I'm back in my (heavenly coastal cool) secure bunker, I want to get back to regularly scheduled programming. But first I have to thank all of you who have sent me kind emails and written comments here and around the blogosphere. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I feel much better now --- not just because it's over, but because I realize that my tribe is filled with such generous, warm hearted people that I should never have been so terrified in the first place.

Back at it:

I hate to retreat so quickly to my vituperative blogger persona, but this is just outrageous. Via Julia, I see that George Bush once again shows his philosophical depth:

Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical -- and it is not the only option before us.

Right. That's a perfectly respectable philosophy that's been held by many great people for centuries. It's called pacifism and it's about as far from the philosophy of this bloodthirsty boor as you can get.

In fairness, he may not realize that because when his briefers discuss the wanton killing of little Iraqi or Afghan children, it's not called "destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life" it's called "collateral damage."

This man led an invasion of a country that posed no immediate threat in the name of "giving birth" to a new democracy and saving the Iraqis from a madman. He is responsible for a whole lot of killing of fully formed human lives which he constantly claims was in the hopes of saving other human lives. In fact, he continues to insist that all this Iraqi carnage will be worth it one day because the US will have brought all the survivors freedom, which is a wonderful value, but since George W. Bush's idea of freedom could more accurately be defined as chaos, it's likely that many Iraqis hardly find the trade-off worthwhile.

I'm not sure we need to hear any more lectures on ethics from a man who thinks that blastocysts in a petri dish cannot be destroyed in the interest of saving the lives of others, but hundreds of thousands of people can be violently killed in order to carry out a deluded American Enterprise Institute political science experiment.

Keeping the lights off

The incomparable, indefatigable, Glenn Greenwald nails it with this post on the complicit media enablers.

Richard Cohen's Washington Post column this morning is a true tour de force in explaining the function of our Beltway media stars. Cohen's column -- which grieves over the grave and tragic injustice brought down upon Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- should be immediately laminated and placed into the Smithsonian History Museum as an exhibit which, standing alone, will explain so much about what happened to our country over the last six years. It is really that good.

One could write media criticisms for the next several years and not come close to capturing the essence of our Beltway media the way Cohen did in this single paragraph:

With the sentencing of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker -- Richard Armitage of the State Department -- but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.

That really is the central belief of our Beltway press, captured so brilliantly by Cohen in this perfect nutshell. When it comes to the behavior of our highest and most powerful government officials, our Beltway media preaches, "it is often best to keep the lights off." If that isn't the perfect motto for our bold, intrepid, hard-nosed political press, then nothing is.

That is the motto that should be inscribed at the top of Fred Hiatt's Editorial Page in pretty calligraphy. And let us acknowledge what a truly superb job they have been doing in keeping the lights off.

Eric Boehlert (h/t Attaturk) previously documented just a few of Cohen's heroic light-blocking efforts over the years ("The case for war is a good one," pronounced Cohen in February of 2003), and my personal favorite is here, where Cohen mocked Howard Dean as a "fool or a Frenchman" for daring irreverently to question the obviously conclusive case made by the Serious Colin Powell about Iraq's massive WMD stockpiles. As is true for so many of our Beltway elite, the fact that war opponents turned out to be so right, and our serious Beltway geniuses so wrong, has increased the contempt for those who were right; hence, in defending the pro-war Libby, Cohen hurls one insult after the next at war opponents and blames the Libby injustice on "them."

Beyond coining the perfect motto for our political press, Cohen -- in that special paragraph quoted above -- also manages to pack in multiple falsehoods in service of his Libby defense. He tells his readers, for instance, that a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate the Plame leak "at the urging of the liberal press," and later on in the column he pins the blame for Libby's terrible plight on "Antiwar sanctimony." So sayeth the individual who plays the role of "liberal columnist" at the Washington Post, whose script on the Libby case would seem notably zealous even if it were published in National Review.

The Libby prosecution clearly was the dirty work of the leftist anti-war movement in this country, just as Cohen describes. After all, the reason Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate this matter was because a left-wing government agency (known as the "Central Intelligence Agency") filed a criminal referral with the Justice Department, as the MoveOn-sympathizer CIA officials were apparently unhappy about the public unmasking of one of their covert agents.

In response, Bush's left-wing anti-war Attorney General, John Ashcroft, judged the matter serious enough to recuse himself, leading Bush's left-wing anti-war Deputy Attorney General, James Comey, to conclude that a Special Prosecutor was needed. In turn, Comey appointed Fitzgerald, the left-wing anti-war Republican Prosecutor and Bush appointee, who secured a conviction of Libby, in response to which left-wing anti-war Bush appointee Judge Reggie Walton imposed Libby's sentence.

In other words, it all happened exactly the way Cohen described it this morning (Plame investigation and Libby conviction occurred because of "the liberal press," "an unpopular war," "opponents of the Iraq war," "a vestigial Stalinist-era yearning for abasement," and "Antiwar sanctimony"). Perhaps the most revealing part of Cohen's column is this gem, where he protests how unfair it is that Patrick Fitzgerald was so mean and threatening in his investigation, and made all of those poor journalists so scared ("Much heroic braying turned into cries for mercy"):

As any prosecutor knows -- and Martha Stewart can attest -- white-collar types tend to have a morbid fear of jail.

Indeed, it is so terribly unfair to investigate powerful government officials because, as "white-collar types," they have a "morbid fear of jail" -- in contrast, of course, to blue-collar types, and darker ones still, who really do not mind prison at all. Why would they? It's their natural habitat, where they belong. That is what prison is for.

That has been the real point here all along. The real injustice is that prison is simply not the place for the most powerful and entrenched members of the Beltway royal court, no matter how many crimes they commit. There is a grave indignity to watching our brave Republican elite be dragged before such lowly venues as a criminal court and be threatened with prison, as though they are common criminals or something. How disruptive and disrespectful and demeaning it all is.

The most valuable lesson of Cohen's column -- almost certainly the same lesson of the forthcoming pro-Libby book by Time's Norman Pearlstine, a book hailed by Cohen as a "vigorously written account" of the "train wreck" of the Libby investigation -- is that the overriding allegiance of our permanent Beltway ruling class is to the royal court which accords them their status and prestige. That overarching allegiance overrides, easily, any supposed partisan, ideological or other allegiances which, in their assigned roles, they are ostensibly defending.

Thus, neoconservative Lewis Libby and "liberal pundit" Richard Cohen are peers and colleagues and comrades in every way that matters, which is why Cohen (and Hiatt and Pearlstine and all their friends) have so vigorously protested the Libby injustice. High members of the royal court are, first and foremost, defenders of their bloated and insulated swamp. And particularly the most revered and highest-ranking among them should never be punished, let alone imprisoned (said with whispered disgust), for their "dark politics" -- whether that comes in the form of illegal eavesdropping, illegal torture, or illegal obstruction of justice.

And what is to be avoided first and foremost is any light being shined on the underbelly of how the royal court functions. How dare Patrick Fitzgerald, urged on by International A.N.S.W.E.R. and the other rambunctious anti-war street protestors, stick his nose into their business. It is often best to keep the lights off.

If even our Beltway media -- rather, especially them -- argues that criminality by government officials should not be punished, and that light should not be shined on what they do, then pervasive government corruption and deceit are inevitable. That is just obvious. And that is why Cohen's column so perfectly captures what has happened in our country and the truly indispensable role which most of our political press has played in all of it.

Our media stars have not merely stood idly by while our highest government officials engage in endless deceit and corruption. They actively defend it, enable it, justify it, and participate in it. Keeping the lights off is their principal function, one which -- with rare and noble exceptions -- they perform quite eagerly.

Taguba talks

Think Progress excerpts (see below) some of Seymour Hersh's latest article in the New Yorker. As is usually the case, Hersh's piece is well worth reading. Taguba is one of the good ones and has been victimized as a result. The article ends with Taguba saying:

“There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

Think Progress:

In a New Yorker article today, Seymour Hersh interviews Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Pentagon’s investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib. This article is the first time that Taguba has publicly spoken out about the scandal, revealing that the Pentagon forced him to retire early because of his aggressive pursuit of the issue.

Taguba also reveals that he believed high-level military officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, knew about the abuses but feigned ignorance, putting all the blame on low-level soldiers. Key highlights:

Taguba was threatened by Gen. John Abizaid:

A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid. … Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.“

White House “didn’t think the photographs were that bad”:

The former senior intelligence official said that when the images of Abu Ghraib were published, there were some in the Pentagon and the White House who “didn’t think the photographs were that bad” — in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, “Guys on the inside ask me, ‘What’s the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?’” A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the “basic strategy was ‘prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.’”

Taguba was demoted and eventually forced to retire because of his investigation:

Taguba had been scheduled to rotate to the Third Army’s headquarters, at Fort McPherson, Georgia, in June of 2004. He was instead ordered back to the Pentagon, to work in the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs. “It was a lateral assignment,” Taguba said, with a smile and a shrug. … A retired four-star Army general later told Taguba that he had been sent to the job in the Pentagon so that he could “be watched.” Taguba realized that his career was at a dead end. …

In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. “This is your Vice,” he told Taguba. “I need you to retire by January of 2007.” No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, “He offered no reason.”

Pentagon pressured Sen. John Warner (R-VA) “to back off” the investigation:

A former high-level Defense Department official said that, when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Senator John Warner, then the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was warned “to back off” on the investigation, because “it would spill over to more important things.” A spokesman for Warner acknowledged that there had been pressure on the Senator, but said that Warner had stood up to it — insisting on putting Rumsfeld under oath for his May 7th testimony, for example, to the Secretary’s great displeasure.

U.S. commander in Iraq “knew exactly what was going on”:

Taguba came to believe that Lieutenant General Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, and some of the generals assigned to the military headquarters in Baghdad had extensive knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib even before Joseph Darby came forward with the CD. Taguba was aware that in the fall of 2003 — when much of the abuse took place — Sanchez routinely visited the prison, and witnessed at least one interrogation. According to Taguba, “Sanchez knew exactly what was going on.”

Rumsfeld’s claims of ignorance about the abuse were “simply not true”:

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld, in his appearances before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees on May 7th, claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse. “It breaks our hearts that in fact someone didn’t say, ‘Wait, look, this is terrible. We need to do something,’” Rumsfeld told the congressmen. “I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn’t.”

Rumsfeld told the legislators that, when stories about the Taguba report appeared, “it was not yet in the Pentagon, to my knowledge.” As for the photographs, Rumsfeld told the senators, “I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them”; at the House hearing, he said, “I didn’t see them until last night at 7:30.” …

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him — if he wanted to see them,” Taguba said.

National Republican Treasonal Affective Disorder

driftglass tells us that...

Sunday, June 17th is “National Republican Treasonal Affective Disorder” Day.

Here is the story behind the day we honor.

You see, once upon a time -- I know this is hard to believe -- a Republican President obsessed with a disastrous war that his every lie and surge made worse, obsessed with his enemies, obsessed with power, tried to set himself up as a king.

In his paranoia, he illegally wiretapped American citizens.

He abused the US intelligence system to achieve his own, petty, partisan ends.

He made a joke out of the Justice Department.

His nationalized and routinized slander. smear, race-baiting, crying “traitor” and backstabbing as the acceptable political wetwork and the calling card of the GOP.

He gave Lincoln the boot, and welcomed the Klan with open arms.

He targeted the press for GOP-brand abuse and intimidation.

He was protected by a shield wall of degenerate, morally-dead, robot-loyal political Myrmidons who ass-raped the Constitution three times before breakfast from onside the White House and smiled.

And his Party wuuuuuved him: even though he had a clear, decades-long record of being a degenerate monster, they elected and then re-elected him anyway.

Because the other guys were Dirty Fucking Hippies who obviously Hated America.

A man whose departure in humiliation and disgrace was perfectly summarized by Saint Hunter Thompson thusly:

"Jesus! How much more of this cheap-jack bullshit can we be expected to take from that stupid little gunsel? Who gives a fuck if he's lonely and depressed down there in San Clemente? If there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark. "

Amen.

And on June 17, 1972, the Nixon Administration nicked itself while shaving. Something it had to do six, seven times a day.

Nicked itself near an artery.

Of course they didn’t realize it; In their Pride and Paranoia (The admittedly least-brilliant novel of Jane Austen) they assumed it was something trivial. Something they could lie or cheat or bribe or blackmail their way out of as they had so many, many, many times before.

Because that is how Republicans do business.

But the wound bled. And it bled. And an infection set in. And after a year the skin began to slough and breach enough for everyone but the 27% to see the writhing horror underneath.

And it all began 25 35 years ago this Sunday (thanks, anonymous) when this guy -- Frank Wills – a security guard at the Watergate Hotel discovered a break in in-progress and called the cops. The PD arrested five men -- Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez and Frank Sturgis – and then we were off to the races.

Make no mistake, Nixon laid down the political DNA of the modern Republican Party: What came after was no accident, kids, and they aren’t going to just up and disappear simply because they’re evil and stupid and wrong about every single fucking thing in the Universe.

They are a disease.

So this “National Republican Treasonal Affective Disorder” Day, please give generously of your time and money to a Progressive cause or candidate, so another generation won’t have to wake up to a Constitution again left in tatters by the Traitor Right. To more American’s dying in an illegal and catastrophic war. To a nation kept deliberately terrorized and divided because that is how fascists hang on to power.

Because isn’t 25 35 years of Republican treachery, deceit, slaughter and contempt for the rule of law enough?

Neocon II: Lie Hard with a Vengeance

Matt Taibbi explains that there is no stake through the neocons' heart yet.

Call it the Leslie Nielsen effect. Your first attempt at a show-biz career fizzles out and dies, but your failure is so quirky and charming that it wins you a whole second career. Think Robert Goulet, Bill Shatner, even John Travolta. America loves a brave second act, particularly one that doesn't mind doing a take or two with egg still on his face.

What the Zucker brothers did for actors, the neocons are now doing for politics. In the first six years of the Bush presidency the administration's ideological nucleus -- a tribe of humorless conservative revolutionaries led by Dick Cheney and including the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Elliott Abrams -- racked up a startling record in matters of official policy. From their juking of the case for the Iraq War to their Jacobin-esque purges within the government's intelligence apparatus to their paranoid and sometimes criminal fragging of political enemies great and minor, the neoconservatives working for George Bush botched virtually every important move they made in the last six years.

Moreover, each time they used the presidency's bully pulpit to make a prediction, be it about the post-invasion spread of democracy in the Middle East, the utility of Iraqi oil revenues in financing the occupation, or the chilling effect our presence in Iraq would have on Palestinian resolve, more or less exactly the opposite ended up taking place.

And yet, despite the walloping defeat of the Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections that seemed to spell the end of neocon rule in Washington, the clowns are once again spilling out of the Volkswagen. Lately the neocons seem to be all over the public airwaves, and not as the targets of purgative public flogging or tarring ceremonies, but as the subjects of serious interviews, with respected journalists treating them like real human beings with real opinions. Even worse, a few are still in office, and appear to be cooking up a last-minute encore before the curtain finally comes down in '08.

Richard Perle, the former head of the Defense Policy Board, known in the Beltway as the "Prince of Darkness," has been on TV a lot lately in a much-publicized public spat with former CIA director George Tenet, who recently accused Perle of targeting Iraq days after 9/11. John Bolton, former UN-hating ambassador to the UN, recently won the Bradley Prize for "outstanding intellectual achievement" -- achievement that presumably includes helping make the case for the Iraq disaster and support for a future invasion of Iran. In his acceptance speech, Bolton cheekily credited Tehran, Pyongyang and other rogue nations for his success, thanking them just for "being themselves." And while Scooter Libby crashed at trial, Doug Feith soft-landed into a tenure track at Georgetown, where he will now teach history, a subject he spent the past five years or so violently misinterpreting.

he neocons remain a bold presence in the media for a number of reasons. Number one, they still have real political power. Dick Cheney is still the vice president, and the Pentagon is still guided heavily by the neocon-dominated Office of Special Plans (OSP), where the power is now reportedly concentrated in an office called the Iranian Directorate, charged with helping make the case for war with Iran. Amid all the public hand-wringing about a congressional demand for an Iraq withdrawal timeline, Washington is abuzz with rumors that the neocons are loading up for one last historical Hail Mary, a "long bomb" to throw at Tehran before Bush leaves office. The knowledge that they are crazy enough to try something like that makes people in the capital take them seriously.

But beyond that, there just hasn't been any effort in the media to identify and really make clear the root causes of the Iraq policy failure. In the current Washington mythology -- a mythology reflected in public statements of everyone from John McCain to Hillary Clinton -- the Iraq War blew up in our faces for logistical reasons, because we didn't send enough troops, or have a sound occupation plan, or have an "understanding of the insurgency." It was the right war, wrong execution, wrong defense secretary. The failure had nothing to do with the mistake of placing our bets on a radical revolutionary policy of "pre-emptive invasion," or with the White House's authoritarian efforts to castrate the Pentagon and the CIA and replace them with their own intelligence-gathering and policymaking apparatuses.

The neocons may have been proven wrong in the particulars, and to ordinary people their legacy may turn out to be a nightmarish Middle East bloodbath and decades of debt, but in Washington they're still revered as canny operators who swept two election seasons with a drooling mannequin for a candidate and for years ruled Washington with almost Caligulan abandon. They were idiots in terms of how the world worked, but they understood power in the Beltway better than Nixon, better than Clinton, better really than any White House clan since the Roosevelt years. That's why they'll keep getting top billing on talk shows and invites to all the best Washington parties, even if, as seems likely, they leave office 18 months from now with half the planet in flames.

In Washington there is no shame in being wrong; there's only shame in losing. The neocons were wrong as hell, but they were also winners. That's why no one should expect them to go away now. That's especially true since their only real competition in the intellectual arena is the cynical third-way corporatism of the Democratic party, a tenuous and depressing alliance of business interests and New-Deal interest groups whose most persuasive "idea" is that it is not neo-conservatism. The neocons, wrong and stupid as they might be, at least represent a clearly-articulated dream of unchecked greed, power and big-stick foreign conquest that appeals in an elemental way to the dark side of the American psyche. Until America rejects that dream -- and don't hold your breath for that -- don't count on the Boltons and the Perles disappearing from view.

Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine. His book, Smells Like Dead Elephants, is due out next year.

Sanity prevailing...?

Anonymous Liberal tells us that there may yet be a spark of sanity in the courts:

Earlier this week, a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the government did not have the authority to detain Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri–a Qatari national who had come to the United States on a student visa–indefinitely without process. Al-Marri, who the government claims is a terrorist, has spent the last four years in a military brig in South Carolina. He has not been charged with a crime or even an immigration violation.

In its court filings, the Bush administration argued that Congress had implicitly provided statutory authority for this sort of detention when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) shortly after 9/11. The Fourth Circuit rejected this argument, noting that “if Congress intended to grant this authority it could and would have said so explicitly.”

The Court then pointed out an obvious historical flaw in this argument:

In fact, shortly after Congress enacted the AUMF, it enacted another statute that did explicitly authorize the President to arrest and detain “terrorist aliens” living within the United States believed to have come here to perpetrate acts of terrorism. . . .

[T]he Patriot Act establishes a specific method for the Government to detain aliens affiliated with terrorist organizations, who the Government believes have come to the United States to endanger our national security, conduct espionage and sabotage, use force and violence to overthrow the government, engage in terrorist activity, or even who are believed likely to engage in any terrorist activity. Congress could not have better described the Government’s allegations against al-Marri — and Congress decreed that individuals so described are not to be detained indefinitely but only for a limited time, and by civilian authorities, prior to deportation or criminal prosecution.

In sum, Congress has carefully prescribed the process by which it wishes to permit detention of “terrorist aliens” within the United States, and has expressly prohibited the indefinite detention the President seeks here. The Government’s argument that the President may indefinitely detain al-Marri is thus contrary to Congress’s expressed will.

Bush's European disaster

Sidney Blumenthal at Salon files this sad commentary about GWB's trip that was "a pageant of disdain, delusion and provocation masquerading as a respite from his troubles at home".

I returned from Europe a week before President Bush departed for the G8 summit in Germany. In Rome and Paris I met with Cabinet ministers who uniformly said the chief issue in transatlantic relations is somehow making it through the last 18 months of the Bush administration without further major disaster. None of the nonpartisan think tanks in Washington can organize seminars on this overriding reality, but within the European councils of state the trepidation about the last days of Bush is the No. 1 issue in foreign affairs.

One of the ministers with whom I met, who had supported the invasion of Iraq and had been an admirer of outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair's, ruefully cited Blair's remark about Iraq at his joint press conference with Bush on May 17 at the White House: "This is a fight we cannot afford to lose." "Cannot? Cannot lose?" mocked the minister. "Should not have lost."

High officials of European governments describe U.S. influence as squandered and swiftly eroding (one minister went down a list of Bush administration officials, rating them according to their stupidity), the country's moral authority nil. Lethal power vacuums are emerging from Lebanon to Pakistan, and Europeans are incapable on their own of quelling the fires that burn far closer to them than to the United States through their growing Muslim populations and proximity to the Middle East. They have no illusions that they will be treated seriously as real allies or that there will be a sudden about-face by the Bush administration. Their faint hope -- and it is only a hope -- is that they have already seen the worst and that it is not yet to come. Even worse than Bush, from their perspective, would be another Republican president who continued Bush policies and also appointed neoconservatives. That would toll, if not the end of days, then the decline and fall of the Western alliance except in name only, and an even more rapid acceleration of chaos in the world order.

Bush's procession through Europe was a pageant of contempt, disdain, delusion, provocation and vanity masquerading as a welcome respite from his troubles at home. In Albania he landed at last in a place where he was hailed as a conquering hero. His demolition derby of U.S. influence was presented as a series of bold moves, but it confirmed the fears of the other world leaders at the G8 summit (and elsewhere) that the rest of Bush's presidency will be an erratic series of crashes. His performance ranged from King Nod, issuing proclamations oblivious to and even proud of their negative effect, to King Zog (the last king of Albania). No president has had a more disastrous European trip since President Reagan placed a wreath on the graves of SS soldiers in the Bitburg cemetery. Yet Reagan's mistake was unintentional and symbolic, a temporary and superficial setback, doing no real damage to U.S. foreign relations, while Bush's blunders not only reinforced counterproductive policies but also created a new one with Russia that has the potential of profoundly undermining U.S. national security interests for years to come.

Bush's foreign policy has descended into a fugue state. Dissociated and unaware, the president and his administration are still capable of expressing themselves as if it all makes complete sense, only contributing to their bewilderment. A fugue state should not be confused with cognitive dissonance, the tension produced when irreconcilable ideas are held at the same time and their incompatibility is overcome by denial. In a fugue state, a trauma creates a kind of amnesia in which the sufferer is incapable of connecting to his past. The impairment of judgment comes in great part from a denial of distress. Bush's fugue state involves the reiteration of a failed formula as though nothing has happened. So he proudly reasserts the essence of his Bush doctrine: Our acts are independent of other countries' interests. And he adds new corollaries: Other nations must forgive our unacknowledged mistakes even if we threaten their national security. To this, Bush overlays cognitive dissonance: Our policy is working; it just needs more time. Thus the incoherent becomes coherent.

Bush's amusing gaffes should not divert attention from the gravity of his underlying decline. Though his verbal hilariousness has been present since the beginning, his miscues, misstatements and mistakes now highlight a foreign policy in utter disarray.

Upon meeting Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican last weekend, Bush presented him with a gift of a wooden cane carved with English words. When the pope asked the president what they were, Bush told His Holiness, "The Ten Commandments, sir." To sir? With love?

In Rome, on June 9, a reporter asked Bush about setting a deadline for Kosovo independence. "What? Say that again?" "Deadline for the Kosovo independence?" "A decline?" "Deadline, deadline." "Deadline. Beg your pardon. My English isn't very good." Bush then declared, "In terms of the deadline, there needs to be one. This needs to come -- this needs to happen." The next day, asked when he would set a deadline, he replied, "I don't think I called for a deadline." Reminded of his previous statement, Bush said: "I did? What exactly did I say? I said, 'Deadline'? OK, yes, then I meant what I said."

Before offering that tongue twister, Bush quite deliberately upset German Chancellor Angela Merkel's proposal for climate change at the G8. She put before the summit a program for carbon limits and an emissions trading system supported by, among others, Tony Blair, as his final gesture to burnish his reputation before he leaves office on June 27. Bush countered with a proposal for voluntary limits that would have to be approved by China, India and other major industrial countries that would not agree. In short, Bush's program was no program at all, except as a gambit to push aside Merkel's. With that, Bush demolished the possibility of any positive plan emerging from the summit. He also deprived Blair of a last achievement. Were it not for his relationship with Bush and support for his Iraq policy, Blair would not be leaving Downing Street. He has sacrificed his career to Bush's fiasco. His advice on the reconstruction of Iraq ignored, his advocacy grew more passionate. From whom much has been asked, nothing has been given.

While Bush was undermining traditional allies, Russian President Vladimir Putin was making child's play of him. Bush's proposal to put tracking stations for a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic gave Putin his opening. In response, he offered a radar site in Azerbaijan to be jointly operated by the United States and Russia. Bush had deployed the wrong tactic on behalf of the wrong strategy. Bush's missile shield has not been proved to work, has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and has an uncertain purpose. Is the plan meant to reassure eastern European nations of the former Warsaw Pact, Donald Rumsfeld's "new Europe," against Russia, or is it a short-term ploy to rally support in the one region in the world that still likes Bush because of deep residual pro-Americanism? If Bush intended to persuade Putin to temper his authoritarianism, he only succeeded in antagonizing the Russian leader. As Bush's "freedom" agenda has collapsed, he has reverted to a Plan B for a new ersatz Cold War. His ham-handed move allowed the adroit Putin to change the subject and corner him. Meanwhile, the engagement of Russia in areas of mutual interest -- containing Iran -- languishes.

In Iraq, Bush's policy is now to arm all sides in the sectarian civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. He claims to be devoted to nation building, which he previously dismissed, while he presides over a mass exodus of 2 million Iraqis, upholds law and order while holding tens of thousands of prisoners without due process, and conducts a "surge" of troops to secure the capital city of Baghdad whose main effect has been to facilitate its ethnic cleansing. The Iraqi government, for its part, has not met any of the benchmarks in reforming its laws demanded by the United States as the sine qua non of continuing support.

And where in the world is Condoleezza Rice? While Bush was in Europe, the secretary of state was at home. Instead of attending the summit, she delivered a speech at the Economic Club of New York, announcing that the new doctrine of the administration henceforth should be called "American realism." Until that moment, we were supposed to refer to it as "transformational diplomacy." Rice, the former realist turned neoconservative fellow traveler, seemed to have come full circle. But what was it exactly that she was doing with her rhetorical adjustment?

Rice's frenetic but feckless diplomacy in the Middle East has been fruitless. She is unwilling or unable to break beyond the bounds that Bush establishes, forbidding relations with Syria, for example, and thus guaranteeing her failure.

As she shuttles endlessly and meaninglessly, neoconservatives within the White House undermine her foredoomed initiatives. Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security advisor for policy, in briefing a meeting of Jewish Republicans, said that Rice's "talks are sometimes not more than 'process for the sake of process,'" the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on May 14. According to Haaretz, "Those attending the meeting of Jewish Republicans understood Abrams' comments as an assurance that the peace initiative promoted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice doesn't have the full backing of President George W. Bush." As she engages in an academic exercise to rebrand empty rhetoric with new empty rhetoric, the neocons continue to create a parallel foreign policy.

Rice contradicts herself but forgets that she has. Bush continues to prattle about "freedom" but cannot remember his benchmarks. Only Dick Cheney remains consistent. The new mission statement is the old mission statement. The new scenarios are the old delusions. Time marches on.

This is Iraq, now that al Sadr is back...

McClatchy Newspapers report that "The anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is reasserting authority over his movement after disappearing from public view for three months." As driftglass puts it...

On the one side, we are being targeting by the people we “liberated” and who who now clearly want us the fuck out of their country by any means necessary, and we operate hoping that their most powerful leader will somehow not keep kicking us in the throat.

On the other, we now arm and train the same people we overthrew and ousted four years ago, knowing that by night they reconstitute as death squads and kill each other and us.

Because they, too, want us the fuck out of their country.

The Bush regime’s lies and treasonable incompetence have left our armies stranded in a no-win killbox, hostage to forces that hate us, and our futures hostage to events rapidly spiraling beyond our control.

And the only solution being sold by from the back of the Dear Leader’s snake oil wagon is an even bigger bottle of Clap!Even!Louder!

His lapdog Republicans in Congress are so terrified of debating the rank criminality that now reeks off of Abu G’s Justice Department and erupts daily into the media like gangrene that they refuse to allow it to come to a vote.

And he personally is so terrified of having to answer hard questions about his failed war that he has refused to re-nominate Peter Pace to his own jobb; the same man in which the Dear Leader placed such limitless confidence less than two years ago. Effectively firing Pace just to make sure that nobody in his Administration who knows the dirty, tragic realities of what is really unfolding in Iraq is ever put under oath in front of a Congress that is no longer permitted to function as Dubya’s personal shit-scraper, glory hole and getaway car.

While in the wilds of Pakistan, Osama bin Laden laughs and laughs and laughs.

All of which is brought to you courtesy of the Republican Party, because in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but you can no longer be both.

Libby gets 30 months, Republicans get a touch of the vapours

This is the latest installment of What Digby Said:

I don't know why Scooter is so damned special that everybody in Washington is having the vapors over the fact that he may have to do time. (I know if I were Jack Abramoff, I'd be a little bit miffed that nobody is lifting a finger after the tens of millions I'd funneled to all my good friends.)I mused yesterday that it was because the town elders are circling the wagons around one of their own, and I think that's part of it.

But it appears that this is actually something more and it's beginning to smell very ugly to me. The political and media establishment are making an explicit argument that high level Republicans really should be held to a lower standard than other Americans --- the exact opposite of the argument they made in the Clinton impeachment, where they insisted that a non-material lie about a private sexual matter in a dismissed case was so important that it required a duly elected and successful president be removed from office. Perhaps the problem is simply that the it's a capitol full of lawyers, who tailor their arguments for each individual case. Unfortunately, the only client seems to be the Republican party.

The fact is that the Libby case is simply not partisan. The Democrats were completely out of power and had nothing to do with it, so the cries of witchhunt and prosecutorial misconduct are absurd on their faces. Patrick Fitzgerald is the kind of prosecutor Republicans usually revere --- a by-the-book believer in the letter of the law. Yet they are making these specious arguments anyway and they are quite likely, in my estimation, to make them work, through sheer insider power.

I frankly never cared if Scooter did time or got probation or did community service. But nice people get jail sentences that seem harsh every day in this country and all of Scooter's friends are the first ones to say the judge should throw away the keys. Certainly, George "please don't kill me, please don't kill me" Bush is not known for his compassion when it comes to matters of sentencing. So all this special pleading is especially distasteful coming from these people.

I'm not big on blog triumphalism, but if there is one thing we bring to the table it's that our distance from that milieu brings some perspective to it. And from where I sit we have a decadent elite who rule on behalf of a political party that finds authoritarianism quite appealing --- as long as they aren't personally subject to it. Pardon me for thinking that might not be the best thing for the country.