OK, John Kerry is an idiot. There's an old joke - what are the three shortest books in the world?
The English book of cooking
The German book of humour
The Irish book of sobriety
I think we can replace German with WASP. Good lord, the man is not funny so he shouldn't even try to tell a joke. He needs to go away and shut up. Hey, John, good job coming out immediately to defend yourself. Might have been a good idea to do the same thing with the Swiftboaters.
The fact that he got so close in 2004 is not because of him but because of the hate of Bush. If we had run "Anyone But Bush" we would have won.
Meanwhile, my pal, John, says that liberals are always right. Once again he is right. Before the 2004 election liberals were talking about the danger in touch screen voting. We were talking about voting irregularities in Ohio. FINALLY, two years later the issue is getting attention.
In South Florida there are problems in Miami and Broward county. Somehow, mysteriously, the reported problems only occur for Democrats. Their votes are coming up for Charlie Crist instead of Jim Davis.
Then the company that manufactures the voting machines used in St. Pete and Tampa is owned by a company from Venezuela. Lovely!
We told you so.
(Full disclosure - I'm Irish)
So, I have decided to take back the term pro-life as a description for everyone who wants this war in Iraq to end. See, we are pro-life because we want our soldiers to live, we are pro-life because we want the Iraqi civilians to live.
All who work against global warming are pro-life, too. We want the planet to sustain life in the future. Kind of kooky and out there but we really think that's important.
Fighting the genocide in Darfur is pro-life. We don't want to see women and children burned out of their homes, their wells poisoned so they can no longer sustain life, the women held in rape camps, the men murdered. We want them to have a life of dignity and the opportunity to live in their homes, not in a refugee camp.
Supporting stem cell research is pro-life. Wouldn't it be nice if your grandmother didn't have to suffer from alzheimers? Or your uncle from diabetes? Pro-life also means a better life. By the way, if you're against stem cell research you need to go all the way and be against invitro fertilization. For years eggs have been thrown out, you should demand the heads of the people who run the IVF clinics for murder.
Helping the poor is pro-life. I know the people who think Reagan is the greatest president EVER might disagree but his administration ruling the ketchup was a vegetable to save money on school lunches is not-pro life. It is hurting the poor. You cannot get an education if you are hungry. Maslov's hierarchy of needs, my friends. Mr. Bush (the current) is also not pro-life when he allowed so many people to perish and starve after Katrina. Granted, he did manage to cut short his vacation for one brain dead woman. To bad the same can't be said for the people who died in the tsunami or Katrina.
For anyone reading this who believes pro-life is only about abortion you have been had. If Mr. Bush were really on your side and believed that abortion is murder he would have demanded a constitutional amendment banning it. He would be fighting every day to stop it. He would attend your rallies instead of phoning it in. And if you believe abortion is murder are you willing to adopt a few black children? I don't see the list of kids in foster care going down so I suppose not. If you're a man and believe that abortion is murder do you wear a condom every time you have sex to prevent an unwanted pregnancy? (That's a question for Rush since it has never been explained why a Christian like himself who is unmarried would need viagra.)
Pro-life means a better life for all.
I am pro-life.
Dying to Save the G.O.P. Congress
By FRANK RICH
IF you happened to be up around dawn on Tuesday, you could witness the death rattle of our adventure in Iraq live on CNN. Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the American commander, were making new promises from the bunker of the Green Zone, inspiring about as much confidence as Jackie Gleason and Art Carney hatching a get-rich-quick scheme to sell a kitchen gadget on "The Honeymooners."
"Success in Iraq is possible and can be achieved on a realistic timetable," said Mr. Khalilzad. Iraq can be "in a very good place in 12 months," said General Casey. Even a child could see how much was wrong with this picture.
If there really is light at the end of the tunnel, why after three and a half years can’t we yet guarantee light in Baghdad? Symbolically enough, television transmission of the Khalilzad-Casey press conference was interrupted by another of the city's daily power failures. If Iraq’s leaders had signed on to the 12-month plan of "benchmarks" the Americans advertised, why were those leaders nowhere in sight? We found out one day later, when the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, mocked the very idea of an America-imposed timetable. "I am positive that this is not the official policy of the American government, but rather a result of the ongoing election campaign," he said, adding dismissively, "And that does not concern us much."
Give the Iraqi leader credit for a Borat-like candor that almost every American in this sorry tale lacks. Of course all the White House's latest jabberwocky about "benchmarks" and "milestones" and "timetables" (never to be confused with those Defeatocrats' "timelines") is nothing more than an election-year P.R. strategy, as is the laughable banishment of "stay the course." There is no new American plan to counter the apocalypse now playing out in Iraq, only new packaging to pacify American voters between now and Nov. 7. And recycled packaging at that: President Bush had last announced that he and Mr. Maliki were developing "benchmarks" to "measure progress" in Iraq back in June.
As Richard Holbrooke, the broker of the Bosnia peace accords, has observed, the only real choice left for the president now is either "escalation or disengagement." But there are no troops, let alone money or national will, for escalation. Disengagement within a year, however, is favored by 54 percent of Americans and, more important, 71 percent of Iraqis. After Election Day, adults in Washington will step in, bow to the obvious and pull the plug. The current administration strategy - praying for a miracle - is not an option. The current panacea favored by anxious Republican Congressional candidates - firing Donald Rumsfeld - is too little, too late.
The adults in charge of disengagement will include the Bush family consigliere, James Baker, whose bipartisan Iraq Study Group will present its findings after the election, and John Warner, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, who has promised a re-evaluation of Iraq policy within roughly the same time frame. Democrats will have a role in direct proportion to the clout they gain in the midterms.
One way or another the various long-shot exit scenarios being debated in the capital will be sorted out: federalism and partition; reaching out somehow for help from Iran and Syria; replacing Mr. Maliki with a Saddam-lite strongman. There will be some kind of timeline, or whatever you want to call it, with enforced benchmarks, or whatever you want to call them, for phased withdrawal. (Read "Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now" by George McGovern and William R. Polk for a particularly persuasive blueprint.) In any event, the timeline will end no later than Inauguration Day 2009.
In keeping with the political cynicism that gave birth to this war and has recklessly prolonged it, the only ones being kept in the dark about this inevitable denouement are our fighting men and women. They remain trapped, dying in accelerating numbers in a civil war that is now killing so many Iraqi civilians that Mr. Maliki this month ordered his health ministry to stop releasing any figures.
Our troops are held hostage by the White House's political imperatives as much as they are by the violence. Desperate to maintain the election-year P.R. ruse that an undefined "victory" is still within reach, Mr. Bush went so far at Wednesday's press conference as to say that “"absolutely, we're winning" in Iraq. He explained his rationale to George Stephanopoulos last weekend, when he asserted that the number of casualties was the enemy's definition of success or failure, not his. "I define success or failure as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves," the president said, and "as to whether the unity government" is making the "difficult decisions necessary to unite the country."
Unfortunately, the war is a calamity by both of those definitions as well. The American command's call for a mere 3,000 more Iraqi troops to help defend Baghdad has gone unanswered. As we've learned from Operation Together Forward, when Iraqis do stand up, violence goes up. And when American and British troops stand down, murderous sectarian militias, some of them allied with that "unity" government, fill the vacuum, taking over entire cities like Amara and Balad in broad daylight. As for those "difficult decisions" Mr. Bush regards as so essential, the Iraqi government's policy is cut and run. Mr. Maliki is not cracking down on rampaging militias but running interference for their kingpin, Moktada al-Sadr. Mr. Maliki treats this radical anti-American Shiite cleric, his political ally, with far more deference than he shows the American president.
The ultimate chutzpah is that Mr. Bush, the man who sold us Saddam's imminent mushroom clouds and "Mission Accomplished," is trivializing the chaos in Iraq as propaganda. The enemy's "sophisticated" strategy, he said in last weekend's radio address, is to distribute "images of violence"” to television networks, Web sites and journalists to "demoralize our country."
This is a morally repugnant argument. The "images of violence" from Iraq are not fake - like, say, the fiction our government manufactured about the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman or the upbeat news stories the Pentagon spends millions of dollars planting in Iraqi newspapers today. These images of violence are real. Americans really are dying at the fastest pace in at least a year, and Iraqis in the greatest numbers to date. To imply that this carnage is magnified by the news media, whether the American press or Al Jazeera, is to belittle the gravity of the escalated bloodshed and to duck accountability for the mismanagement of the war. Mr. Bush's logic is reminiscent of Jeffrey Skilling's obtuse view of his innocence in the Enron scandal, though at least Mr. Skilling has been held accountable for the wreckage of lives on his watch.
It is also wrong to liken what's going on now, as Mr. Bush has, to the Tet offensive. That sloppy Vietnam analogy was first made by Mr. Rumsfeld in June 2004 to try to explain away the explosive rise in the war's violence at that time. It made a little more sense then, since both the administration and the American public were still being startled by the persistence of the Iraq insurgency, much as the Johnson administration and Walter Cronkite were by the Viet Cong's tenacity in 1968. Before Tet, as Stanley Karnow's history, "Vietnam," reminds us, public approval of L.B.J.'s conduct of the war still stood at 40 percent, yet to hit rock bottom.
Where we are in Iraq today is not 1968 but 1971, after the bottom had fallen out, Johnson had abdicated and America had completely turned on Vietnam. At that point, approval of Richard Nixon's handling of the war was at 34 percent, comparable to Mr. Bush's current 30. The percentage of Americans who thought the Vietnam War was "morally wrong" stood at 51, comparable to the 58 percent who now think the Iraq war was a mistake. Many other Vietnam developments in 1971 have their counterparts in 2006: the leaking of classified Pentagon reports revealing inept and duplicitous war policy, White House demonization of the press, the joining of moderate Republican senators with Democrats to press for a specific date for American withdrawal.
That's why it seemed particularly absurd when, in his interview with Mr. Stephanopoulos last weekend, Mr. Bush said that "the fundamental question" Americans must answer is "should we stay?" They've been answering that question loud and clear for more than a year now.
What we should be thinking about instead are our obligations to those who are doing the staying. Kevin Tillman, who served with his brother in Iraq and Afghanistan, observed in an angry online essay this month: "Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a 5-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet."
If we really support the troops, we'll move past Mr. Bush's "fundamental question" to one from 1971 posed by a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran, John Kerry, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
He is not faking his dickyness. And he has an advanced case of asswipery.
On a further note: Dickey Cheney proves yet again that he loathes American values and holds the teachings of Jesus in utter contempt.
And on a further further note Patricia Heaton and her ilk prove again that conservatives do not value human life at all. In fact, they are in so much anal retentive terror of life that they rail against it and do damage to it whenever possible. As usual they set up a straw man.
Being conservative is a mental disorder characterized by denial, self loathing and fear. The harm this mental illness does is clear the more we observe Bush (is he drunk?) Cheney, Limpbaugh, Rummy, Ken Melhman, Foley, Kolbe, Cunningham, Coulter, Drudge, Rove, Heaton, Libby, Gingrich, all gay Republicans, O'Reilly, Ney, Falwell, Pat Robertson...there are so many... who am I leaving out?
The Arithmetic of Failure
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Iraq is a lost cause. It's just a matter of arithmetic: given the violence of the environment, with ethnic groups and rival militias at each other's throats, American forces there are large enough to suffer terrible losses, but far too small to stabilize the country.
We're so undermanned that we're even losing our ability to influence events: earlier this week, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki brusquely rejected American efforts to set a timetable for reining in the militias.
Afghanistan, on the other hand, is a war we haven't yet lost, and it's just possible that a new commitment of forces there might turn things around.
The moral is clear - we need to get out of Iraq, not because we want to cut and run, but because our continuing presence is doing nothing but wasting American lives. And if we do free up our forces (and those of our British allies), we might still be able to save Afghanistan.
The classic analysis of the arithmetic of insurgencies is a 1995 article by James T. Quinlivan, an analyst at the Rand Corporation. "Force Requirements in Stability Operations," published in Parameters, the journal of the U.S. Army War College, looked at the number of troops that peacekeeping forces have historically needed to maintain order and cope with insurgencies. Mr. Quinlivan's comparisons suggested that even small countries might need large occupying forces.
Specifically, in some cases it was possible to stabilize countries with between 4 and 10 troops per 1,000 inhabitants. But examples like the British campaign against communist guerrillas in Malaya and the fight against the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland indicated that establishing order and stability in a difficult environment could require about 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants.
The implication was clear: "Many countries are simply too big to be plausible candidates for stabilization by external forces," Mr. Quinlivan wrote.
Maybe, just maybe, the invasion and occupation of Iraq could have been managed in such a way that a force the United States was actually capable of sending would have been enough to maintain order and stability. But that didn't happen, and at this point Iraq is a cauldron of violence, far worse than Malaya or Ulster ever was. And that means that stabilizing Iraq would require a force of at least 20 troops per 1,000 Iraqis - that is, 500,000 soldiers and marines.
We don't have that kind of force. The combined strength of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is less than 700,000 - and the combination of America's other commitments plus the need to rotate units home for retraining means that only a fraction of those forces can be deployed for stability operations at any given time. Even maintaining the forces we now have deployed in Iraq, which are less than a third as large as the Quinlivan analysis suggests is necessary, is slowly breaking the Army.
Meanwhile, what about Afghanistan?
Given the way the Bush administration relegated Afghanistan to sideshow status, it comes as something of a shock to realize that Afghanistan has a larger population than Iraq. If Afghanistan were in as bad shape as Iraq, stabilizing it would require at least 600,000 troops - an obvious impossibility.
However, things in Afghanistan aren't yet as far gone as they are in Iraq, and it's possible that a smaller force - one in that range of 4 to 10 per 1,000 that has been sufficient in some cases - might be enough to stabilize the situation. But right now, the forces trying to stabilize Afghanistan are absurdly small: we're trying to provide security to 30 million people with a force of only 32,000 Western troops and 77,000 Afghan national forces.
If we stopped trying to do the impossible in Iraq, both we and the British would be able to put more troops in a place where they might still do some good. But we have to do something soon: the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan says that most of the population will switch its allegiance to a resurgent Taliban unless things get better by this time next year.
It's hard to believe that the world's only superpower is on the verge of losing not just one but two wars. But the arithmetic of stability operations suggests that unless we give up our futile efforts in Iraq, we’re on track to do just that.
1. My dear friend Wendy Werris is having her first reading and signing of her wonderful memoir - An Alphabetical Life at Skylight Books in the Los Feliz area East of Hollywood this Saturday at 5pm. Details here and here.
2. More proof of my thesis that conservatives are the real moral relativists here. Or possibly they have no moral center at all.
 
Here's a little Tuesday dog blog.
This is my boy, Richie, on North Carolina's beautiful Outer Banks. He's German, so he's quite serous about body surfing and organizing my friend's big dogs. He's also going to be 15 in December. You have to admit for a senior citizen he looks great.
The photos were taken by Jean M. Fogle who's works can be seen in Pet Fancy and various dog calendars.
I live in Lakeland, Florida. You know, where Katherine Harris just won the straw poll that you had to pay $25 to vote? Fifteen minutes from where she was born?
Our paper, The Lakeland Ledger, endorsed Bill Nelson for senate.
They said of Nelson:
Fortunately for Floridians, Harris has an opponent who is worthy of being in the Senate. He is incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, a moderate Democrat who has a long record of working tirelessly for his state and nation.
They said of Ms. Harris:
The second-term congresswoman's attempts to appeal to the dominant conservative wing of the party have only served to put her so far out on a limb that only her die-hard supporters are sticking with her. How seriously can mainstream voters take a candidate who denounces the separation of church and state, and suggests that a vote for her opponent is a vote against Christian principles? She has been dogged by reports of corruption investigations and frequent staff turnovers, with former staff members openly opposing her. The net effect is a campaign in constant turmoil.
Living in a purple state it's good that we can keep Senator Nelson. Unfortunately, the DCCC didn't bother to run a candidate against Adam Putnam. There is an independent, Joe Viscusi, who has signs all over my neighborhood. Mr. Putnam is old orange money (like Ms. Harris) and is likely to win but it would be fun to see him go. Or, at least, it would be fun if his power were lessened because he was part of the minority party.
Fifteen more days.
Watching George Will articulate what we, as liberals, should be saying better than any of the Democrats is somewhat frustrating.
He asked, "What is our Mission in Iraq? First it was WMD. There were none so it was to create a beacon of Democracy in the Middle East. That's not going to happen. So, what is our mission?"
He also commented that the President uses strategy and tactical as synonyms. They're not.
Let's hear some Democrats be as clear, please.
Let's dump Pelosi now and say that Jack Murtha will be the Speaker of the House. Pelosi has not earned it. You don't earn it just by being there. You earn it by showing LEADERSHIP. Not only is a good move politically because you take away the Republican talking point about her and most Americans agree with Jack but it is a good move for the troops and for all Americans.
What say you?
Obama Is Not a Miracle Elixir
By FRANK RICH
THE Democrats are so brilliant at yanking defeat from the jaws of victory that it still seems unimaginable that they might win on Nov. 7. But even the most congenital skeptic has to face that possibility now. Things have gotten so bad for the Republicans that were President Bush to unveil Osama bin Laden's corpse in the Rose Garden, some reporter would instantly check to see if his last meal had been on Jack Abramoff's tab.
With an approval rating of 16 percent - 16! - in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Congress has matched the Democrats of 1994 or, for that matter, Michael Jackson during his own version of Foleygate. As for Mr. Bush, he is once more hiding behind children in an elementary school, as he did last week when the monthly death toll for Americans in Iraq approached a nearly two-year high. And where else could he go? Some top Republican Congressional candidates in the red state he was visiting, North Carolina, would not appear with him. When the president did find a grateful campaign mate at his next stop, Pennsylvania, it was the married congressman who paid $5.5 million to settle a lawsuit by a mistress who accused him of throttling her.
Maybe the Democrats can blow 2006 as they did 2004, but not without herculean effort. As George Will memorably wrote, if they can't at least win back the House under these conditions, "they should go into another line of work."
The tough question is not whether the Democrats can win, but what will happen if they do win. The party's message in this campaign has offered no vision beyond bashing Mr. Bush and pledging to revisit the scandals and the disastrous legislation that went down on his watch. Last spring Nancy Pelosi did promote a "New Direction for America" full of golden oldies - raising the minimum wage, enacting lobbying reform, cutting Medicare drug costs, etc. She promised that Democrats would "own August" by staging 250 campaign events to publicize it. But this rollout caused so few ripples that its participants might as well have been in the witness protection program. Meanwhile, it was up to John Murtha, a congressman with no presidential ambitions, to goad his peers to start focusing on a specific Iraq exit strategy.
Enter Barack Obama. To understand the hysteria about a Democratic senator who has not yet served two years and is mainly known for a single speech at the 2004 convention, you have to appreciate just how desperate the Democrats are for a panacea for all their ills. In the many glossy cover articles about Obamamania, the only real suspense is whether a Jack or Bobby Kennedy analogy will be made in the second paragraph or the fifth. Men's Vogue (cover by Annie Leibovitz) went so far as to say that the Illinois senator "alone has the potential to one day be mentioned in the same breath" as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Why not throw in Mark Twain and Sammy Davis Jr.?
This is a lot to put on the shoulders of anyone, even someone as impressive as Mr. Obama. Though he remains a modest and self-effacing guy from all appearances, he is encouraging the speculation about seeking higher office - and not as a coy Colin Powell-style maneuver to sell his new book, "The Audacity of Hope." Mr. Obama hasn't been turning up in Iowa for the corn dogs. He consistently concedes he's entertaining the prospect of a presidential run.
There's no reason to rush that decision now, but it's a no-brainer. Of course he should run, assuming his family is on the same page. He's 45, not 30, and his slender resume in public office (which also includes seven years as a state senator) should be no more of an impediment to him than it was to the White House's current occupant. As his Illinois colleague Dick Durbin told The Chicago Tribune last week, "I said to him, "Do you really think sticking around the Senate for four more years and casting a thousand more votes will make you more qualified for president?' " Instead, such added experience is more likely to transform an unusually eloquent writer, speaker and public servant into another windbag like Joe Biden.
The more important issue is not whether Mr. Obama will seek the presidency, but what kind of candidate he would be. If the Democratic Party is to be more than a throw-out-Bush party, it can't settle for yet again repackaging its well-worn ideas, however worthy, with a new slogan containing the word "New." It needs a major infusion of steadfast leadership. That's the one lesson it should learn from George Bush. Call him arrogant or misguided or foolish, this president has been a leader. He had a controversial agenda - enacting big tax cuts, privatizing Social Security, waging "pre-emptive" war, packing the courts with judges who support his elisions of constitutional rights - and he didn't fudge it. He didn't care if half the country despised him along the way.
The interminable Iraq fiasco has branded the Democrats as the party of fecklessness. The failure of its leaders to challenge the administration's blatant propaganda to gin up the war is a failure of historic proportions (as it was for much of the press and liberal punditry). When Tom Daschle, then the Senate leader, presided over the rushed passing of the war resolution before the 2002 midterms, he explained that the "bottom line" was for Democrats "to move on"; they couldn't wait to campaign on the economy. The party's subsequent loss of the Senate did not prevent it two years later from nominating a candidate who voted for the war's funding before he voted against it.
What makes the liberal establishment's crush on Mr. Obama disconcerting is that it too often sees him as a love child of a pollster's focus group: a one-man Benetton ad who can be all things to all people. He's black and he's white. He's both of immigrant stock (Kenya) and the American heartland (Kansas, yet). He speaks openly about his faith without disowning evolution. He has both gravitas and unpretentious humor. He was the editor of The Harvard Law Review and also won a Grammy (for the audiobook of his touching memoir, "Dreams From My Father"). He exudes perfection but has owned up to youthful indiscretions with drugs. He is post-boomer and post-civil-rights--movement. He is Bill Clinton without the baggage, a fail-safe 21st-century bridge from "A Place Called Hope" to "The Audacity of Hope."
Mr. Obama has offended no one (a silly tiff with John McCain excepted). Search right-wing blogs and you'll find none of the invective showered on other liberal Democrats in general and black liberal leaders in particular. What little criticism Mr. Obama has received is from those in his own camp who find him cautious to a fault, especially on issues that might cause controversy. The sum of all his terrific parts, this theory goes, may be less than the whole: another Democrat who won't tell you what day it is before calling a consultant, another human weather vane who waits to see which way the wind is blowing before taking a stand.
That has been the Democrats' fatal malady, but it's way too early and there's too little evidence to say Mr. Obama has been infected by it. If he is conciliatory by nature and eager to entertain adversaries' views in good faith, that's not necessarily a fault, particularly in these poisonous times. The question is whether Mr. Obama will stick up for core principles when tested and get others to follow him.
That's why it's important to remember that on one true test for his party, Iraq, he was consistent from the start. On the long trail to a hotly competitive senatorial primary in Illinois, he repeatedly questioned the rationale for the war before it began, finally to protest it at a large rally in Chicago on the eve of the invasion. He judged Saddam to pose no immediate threat to America and argued for containment over a war he would soon label "dumb" and "political-driven." He hasn't changed. In his new book, he gives a specific date (the end of this year) for beginning "a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops" and doesn't seem to care who calls it "cut and run."
Contrast this with Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, who last week said that failed American policy in Iraq should be revisited if there's no improvement in "maybe 60 to 90 days." This might qualify as leadership, even at this late date, if only John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, hadn't proposed exactly the same time frame for a re-evaluation of the war almost a week before she did.
The Democrats may well win on Election Day this year. But one of their best hopes for long-term viability in the post-Bush era is that Barack Obama steps up and changes the party before the party of terminal timidity and equivocation changes him.
5 of this morning's "top stories" on CNN.com:
1. Giant, 4-foot catfish stops traffic, drops jaws
2. Indicted Wesley Snipes filming in Namibia
3.Carmen Electra shows troupe how to lap dance
4. Police 'confident' slain neighbor didn't molest tot
5. Priest admits 'just fondling' Foley
Down the page: an ad. for tonight's Larry King live with a pic of Barak Obama and this copy: The Rev. Jesse Jackson. From civil rights and politics to surviving scandal. He talks to Larry and takes your calls.
The reason why many people get their news from THE DAILY SHOW is because, unlike cable "news", THEDAILY SHOW actually has news content.
I was talking to someone the other day who said you have to live in another country to appreciate being American. I lived in Germany for five years and I knew exactly what he meant. I love this country, this big, messy, melting pot of a country.
Mr. Olbermann tonight spoke of the worst of America called Mr. Bush a liar.
If we no longer have the assurance that if we are arrested we will be charged and presumed innocent what have we become?
Please, please, let the Democrats win by a landslide and overturn this horrific law. Or let a court rule it unconstitutional.
Let Jack Murtha be Speaker of the House and let's get our country back.
Why is it such big news when conservatives start saying what liberals were saying all along? James Baker says Iraq is a mess. Really? Welcome aboard, numbnuts. If the media would actually listen to liberals initially we would all be better off. And ten of us would not have been killed today. And there might have been a real debate in this country before Bush started his asinine war. Bush,Cheney, and Rummy are out of touch with reality ON PURPOSE. Some of us this knew this a long time ago.
Also - in a broader sense - why does the GOP exist at all? The GOP is a bad habit its partisans are to lazy to change. The social conservatives are used to get elected - then ignored by the fiscal conservatives. The fiscal conservatives spend like crack addicted gamblers - pitching the budget and sanity overboard.
There is nothing conservative about the GOP at this point. It may be time for a third party on the Right.
This guy, this guy, and this guy have amazingly similar psychological profiles.
Us versus Them defines all issues. Delusions of connection to God (or Gods). Cultish devotion of followers. Denial of reality. Overblown sense of mission. Contempt for established precedent and law.
Nutters.
In today's New York Times there are two stories about campaigning.
One is of Mr. Cheney raising money because the base still loves him and the other one is about Mr. Bush having a group of conservative talk radio personalities into the Oval Office for a meeting.
The meeting, which was not announced on the president's public schedule, was part of an intensive Republican Party campaign to reclaim and re-energize a crucial army of supporters that is not as likely to walk in lockstep with the White House as it has in the past.
Isn't that great. You know, if the man was willing to work a 40 hour week I would allow him the time to campaign after hours. But why should I pay his salary to fire up the conservative base? I would think that between the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the North Koreans going nuclear there would be more important things for Mr. Bush to focus on. Why should I pay to fly Cheney around the country to campaign against my beliefs?
Then you have Tony Snow and the cabinet making the rounds. Who pays for this? Does the Republican Party pick up the tab?
Is the President the leader of the entire country or just the base that still likes him?
It takes a commission created by the GOP congress to come up with the obvious. Ridiculous. The Study Group - (HA!) headed by James Baker will come out with a report that says the Bush/Cheney/Rummy policies in Iraq are not working. Gee. Really? Seems like most of us liberals said that about 3 years ago. The fact that the Bush 2 team is a bunch of belligerent imbeciles would be hilarious if they were not destroying the republic. And - yes - I do think this report is simply cover for the GOP as it runs for the hills on November 8. The GOP will ditch Bush no matter who wins congress. The DEMs can do one thing in the next 2 years if they win - hold Bush to account for his crimes, lies and deceit.
Vote for the "D" no matter what.
One-Letter Politics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In a recent interview with The Hartford Courant, Senator Joseph Lieberman said something that wasn't credible. When the newspaper asked him whether America would be better off if the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives next month, he replied, "Uh, I haven't thought about that enough to give an answer."
Why wasn't this a credible answer? Because anyone with the slightest interest in American politics - a group that obviously includes Mr. Lieberman - is waiting with bated breath to see how this election goes, and thinking a lot about the implications. If the Democrats gain control of either house, no matter how narrowly, the American political landscape will be transformed. If they fail, no matter how narrowly, it will be seen, correctly, as a great victory for the hard right.
The fact is that this is a one-letter election. D or R, that's all that matters.
It's hard to think of an election in which the personal qualities of the people running in a given district or state have mattered less. Given the stakes, voters who answer "yes" to the question Mr. Lieberman claims not to have thought about should think hard about voting for any Republican, no matter how appealing. Conversely, those who answer "no" should think hard about supporting any Democrat, no matter how much they like him or her.
There are two reasons why party control is everything in this election.
The first, lesser reason is the demonstrated ability of Republican Congressional leaders to keep their members in line, even those members who cultivate a reputation as moderates or mavericks. G.O.P. politicians sometimes make a show of independence, as Senator John McCain did in seeming to stand up to President Bush on torture. But in the end, they always give the White House what it wants: after getting a lot of good press for his principled stand, Mr. McCain signed on to a torture bill that in effect gave Mr. Bush a completely free hand.
And if the Republicans retain control of Congress, even if it's by just one seat in each house, Mr. Bush will retain that free hand. If they lose control of either house, the G.O.P. juggernaut will come to a shuddering halt.
Yet that's the less important reason this election is all about party control. The really important reason may be summed up in two words: subpoena power.
Even if the Democrats take both houses, they won't be able to accomplish much in the way of new legislation. They won't have the votes to stop Republican filibusters in the Senate, let alone to override presidential vetoes.
The only types of legislation the Democrats might be able to push through are overwhelmingly popular measures, such as an increase in the minimum wage, that Republicans don’t want but probably wouldn’t dare oppose in an open vote.
But while the Democrats won't gain the ability to pass laws, if they win they will gain the ability to carry out investigations, and the legal right to compel testimony.
The current Congress has shown no inclination to investigate the Bush administration. Last year The Boston Globe offered an illuminating comparison: when Bill Clinton was president, the House took 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether Mr. Clinton had used the White House Christmas list to identify possible Democratic donors. But in 2004 and 2005, a House committee took only 12 hours of testimony on the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
If the Democrats take control, that will change - and voters should think very hard about whether they want that change. Those who think it's a good idea to investigate, say, allegations of cronyism and corruption in Iraq contracting should be aware that any vote cast for a Republican makes Congressional investigations less likely. Those who believe that the administration should be left alone to do its job should be aware that any vote for a Democrat makes investigations more likely.
O.K., what about the Senate race in Connecticut, where Ned Lamont is the Democratic nominee, and Mr. Lieberman, who lost the Democratic primary, is running as an independent but promising to caucus with the Democrats if he wins? Is this a case where the man, not the party, is what matters? Only if you believe that Mr. Lieberman's promise not to switch parties is 100 percent credible.
A few months ago we did a little piece on Muhammed Yunis in our Great People series.
It must have helped him with the Nobel Peace Prize which he won yesterday.
Sometimes it's the little things we do that add up to a wonderful life.
Congrats to Mr. Yunis and let him be an inspiration to us all.
So, I get a phone call from my pal, Katy, tonight because she and her husband are watching what we affectionately call the "Snooze" better known as the News Hour. Her husband, who was enjoying a cocktail, wanted her to call me because no less than David Brooks said that the Democrats would take the house with at least 30 new members.
You have to understand that I live in a District where the DCCC didn't bother to run a candidate (not that that has stopped them from sending me emails begging for money) so I perhaps don't feel the winds of change here in Polk County. Could it be true? Could we actually manage to have more than just a one seat majority? Brooks also said he thinks we will take the Senate.
Is it the accumulation of so much bad news that republicans won't be able to sweep it out of the doorway to get to the polls? I guess with Ney pleading guilty today, the new book saying that the Bush administration is using the Christian Right (duh!), Bob Woodward's new book, Mark Foley, the cover up of Mark Foley, at least 46 American soldiers killed in Iraq this month, the Brits "cutting and running", James Baker's report telling Bush to "cut and run" and that's just this month!
Krugman called it the perfect storm in his op-ed this morning. Maybe he's right. I hope so.
Wouldn't it be lovely to have just a smidge of accountability in government? Wouldn't that be a lovely change?
WASHINGTON — A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.
Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain," both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.
More telling, however, is the ruling out of two options last month. One advocated minor fixes to the current war plan but kept intact the long-term vision of democracy in Iraq with regular elections. The second proposed that coalition forces focus their attacks only on Al Qaeda and not the wider insurgency.
Instead, the commission is headed toward presenting President Bush with two clear policy choices that contradict his rhetoric of establishing democracy in Iraq. The more palatable of the two choices for the White House, "Stability First," argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents. The goal of nurturing a democracy in Iraq is dropped.
So, we didn't find any WMD and more people have died since we've invaded than under Saddam and we can't create a democracy.
Wow, are we super-terrif or what?
Oh my - what to say? What to say? When is the "religious" right going to wake the ____ up and realize that the G.O.P. establishment holds them in contempt? They are envelope stuffers for the powerful. It is pathetic. They are pathetic. Childish and pathetic.
Jesus is a liberal. Read the bible...for God's sake.
Have we ever - as a nation - suffered through a more inept presidency? Certainly not a 2 termer. Buchanan the Democrat who served one term just before Lincoln is clearly the worst one term president. But everything W has touched in 6 years has failed. Everything. Iraq. Afghanistan. All his domestic policies especially the "funded by our grandchildren" prescription drug benefit and "No child left behind" nonsense. I would say his presidency was a success from about 9/14/01 to the end of that year. After that everything became based on delusion and fantasy and power grabbing.This man is an epic disaster. It would be laughable if he weren't destroying my country.
God has given us Foley to help right the ship because God clearly hates Republicans and evangelicals. HE/SHE is punishing the GOP before this election. Will we heed God's call to vote Democratic?
This ought to spook ya...
I find it hard to believe - but, then again, every time I think the W brigade of imbeciles and crackpots "Would never be that stupid!" - it turns out they are THAT stupid. From disbanding the Iraqi Army, to going on a fundraiser as a CAT 4 hit New Orleans... The Bushies have a long history of being THAT stupid.
Sure, PERVGATE, is a boon for DEMS- so far - but I can't help wondering if we should not be spending a wee bit more time on the Woodward revelations and all that Navy hardware headed to the Straits of Hormuz.
One good thing - if we do attack Iran there will be a moment just before the end of the world in which the gaseous Chris Hitchens will be on Hardball defending Bush and condescending to the rest of us between belches. Nobody foams at the mouth with quite the aplomb of C. Hitchens.
Finally...has anyone posted a clip of Kim Jong riding a missile to earth ala Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove???
I have no idea how North Korea's N-bomb test will play out. It is certainly very bad news indeed. Politically, though it proves the point I have been making about Democrats for at least 2 years: a political party that's centering ideal is "we're not them" is: A. No party at all. and B. Subject to outside events since there is no reason to vote FOR the Democrats - only reason to vote AGAINST the G.O.P.
The Democratic "leaders" unwillingness to forcefully get behind even a basic overall agenda that is a clear alternative to the G.O.P. makes them utterly reliant on events outside it's control in order to win. And outside events cut both ways. Foley = Good for Dems. Nutters with Nuclear Bombs = Bad for Dems. North Korea handed the R.N.C. a gift yesterday. Watch the fear mongers go to work this week... Watch the Democrats slip again in the polls.... Why? They have no offense. Elections are won on OFFENSE. Not defense. Ask Rove. He's good at it.
I was on North Carolina's beautiful Outer Banks last week so I didn't get in my full TV watching. That's why we love TiVo so much because when you get home you can watch The Daily Show and laugh your ass off.
Not so funny is Dennis Miller. I guess since he has become a 9/11 conservative he doesn't have that much material to work with - mocking the administration isn't part of his schtick. So where does he go to find humor? Mocking fat people. Cute. There's a well most people don't want to draw from but Mr. Miller spent the first few minutes of his five minute interview making jokes about obesity.
As someone who can best be described as "fluffy" I didn't find it particularly amusing. Instead I thought, what a schmuck. Even the worst racist won't make jokes on national TV about blacks or Jews but Mr. Miller goes for the easy target of fat people.
This proves the point that Conservatives are just not that funny. Because there is no humor in denigrating a group of people because you have nothing else.
The Paranoid Style
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Last week Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, explained the real cause of the Foley scandal. "The people who want to see this thing blow up," he said, "are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros."
Most news reports, to the extent they mentioned Mr. Hastert's claim at all, seemed to treat it as a momentary aberration. But it wasn't his first outburst along these lines. Back in 2004, Mr. Hastert said: "You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where - if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from."
Does Mr. Hastert really believe that George Soros and his operatives, conspiring with the evil news media, are responsible for the Foley scandal? Yes, he probably does. For one thing, demonization of Mr. Soros is widespread in right-wing circles. One can only imagine what people like Mr. Hastert or Tony Blankley, the editorial page editor of The Washington Times, who once described Mr. Soros as "a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust," say behind closed doors.
More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called "the paranoid style in American politics."
Hofstadter's essay introducing the term was inspired by his observations of the radical right-wingers who seized control of the Republican Party in 1964. Today, the movement that nominated Barry Goldwater controls both Congress and the White House.
As a result, political paranoia - the "sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" Hofstadter described - has gone mainstream. To read Hofstadter's essay today is to be struck by the extent to which he seems to be describing the state of mind not of a lunatic fringe, but of key figures in our political and media establishment.
The "paranoid spokesman," wrote Hofstadter, sees things "in apocalyptic terms. ... He is always manning the barricades of civilization." Sure enough, Dick Cheney says that "the war on terror is a battle for the future of civilization."
According to Hofstadter, for the paranoids, "what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil," and because "the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated." Three days after 9/11, President Bush promised to "rid the world of evil."
The paranoid "demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals" - instead of focusing on Al Qaeda, we'll try to remake the Middle East and eliminate a vast "axis of evil" -"and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid's sense of frustration." Iraq, anyone?
The current right-wing explanation for what went wrong in Iraq closely echoes Joseph McCarthy's explanation for the Communist victory in China, which he said was "the product of a great conspiracy" at home. According to the right, things didn't go wrong because the invasion was a mistake, or because Donald Rumsfeld didn't send enough troops, or because the occupation was riddled with cronyism and corruption. No, it's all because the good guys were stabbed in the back. Democrats, who undermined morale with their negative talk, and the liberal media, which refused to report the good news from Iraq, are responsible for the quagmire.
You might think it would be harder to claim that traitors are aiding our foreign enemies today than it was during the McCarthy era, when domestic liberals and Communist regimes could be portrayed as part of a vast left-wing conspiracy. What does the domestic enemy, which Bill O'Reilly identifies as the "secular-progressive movement," have to do with the religious fanatics who attacked America five years ago?
But that's easy: according to Mr. O'Reilly, "Osama bin Laden and his cohorts have got to be cheering on the S-P movement," because "both outfits believe that the United States of America is fundamentally a bad place."
Which brings us back to the Foley affair. The immediate response by nearly everyone in the Republican establishment - wild claims, without a shred of evidence behind them, that the whole thing is a Democratic conspiracy - may sound crazy. But that response is completely in character for a movement that from the beginning has been dominated by the paranoid style. And here's the scary part: that movement runs our government.
I watch the Sunday News shows. I am a bit of a news junkie.
Cokie Roberts said on This Week when discussing John Warner's bleak assessment of Iraq that they (Congress) are going to deal with this after the elections.
I thought, wow, how callous is that? Here we are in the midst of the worst month for American soldiers - how many dead already this month? And we are not going to have a real conversation on Iraq until after the elections? No one said, jeez, Cokie, that is unconscionable. Jeez, Cokie, while these jokers are trying to keep their seats we have men and women in harms way trying to stay alive. Perhaps these assholes should put the soldiers first, no?
What the kids on the round table did agree on is that the Bush administration is basically going to do exactly what Jack Murtha suggested last November after this November's elections and call it something else. I don't know, maybe Operation Freedom to Steal Other People's Ideas and Call Them Our Own Without Giving Them Any Credit With Enduring Blindness to Any Irony. Something catchy like that.
There really is something wrong with us that we don't just run to our windows and scream that we're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Because our men and women being killed and maimed in a senseless war trumps getting re-elected.
By the by - to all the alleged Christians out there - like that Bush guy - who think that torture, preemptive war, and vicious attacks on gays and lesbians is "Christian" (just so long as you accept "Jesus as your lord and savior" - what ever the hell THAT means - you can money grub, power grab and behave with no integrity... cuz, you know, Ann Coulter is still a virgin... I mean she must be, right? She's not married...)
Here is a piece about a genuinely Christian and truly radical act that Jesus would understand and applaud:
Amish mourn gunman who killed 5 girls.
And FYI - George W Bush is not a man of deep faith. He is a man of deep belligerence and no faith. That is not a judgment. It is an observable fact.
I am off to a truly amazing Christian church. Later.
Why are alleged conservative commentators defending the GOP at this point? I read a piece (of sh**) by Jonah Goldberg in the LA Times - that I won't even link to - that kept implying that the House GOP leadership screwed up with Foley - but at least the GOP stood for something.
What?What does the GOP stand for? Certainly not conservative values.
During the W years we have seen:
Misuse of the military. Wild deficit spending. Expansion of government. Expansion of entitlements. Massive corruption scandals in the House. Attempts at nation building.
The list could go on. What is "conservative" about all this?
What DOES the GOP really stand for?
Power. For itself.
Stumbled across this in my morning reading: 13 troops killed in Iraq in the last 3 days. My heart breaks that 13 more American families found out that their loved ones died in another pointless war started by Republicans to benefit Republicans. As these 13 American troops died the American media focused on the pathology of another Republican pervert and his Republican enablers. FYI: Liberals are and were right about Iraq. Conservatives are and were wrong. For the good of the country the media needs to spend more time listening to liberals.
Last night Bill Moyers had a documentary on Jack Abramoff. It was amazing how greedy and completely amoral Abramoff, Scanlin, Ney and DeLay all are.
Who cares if people are being exploited on the Mariannas? They were making money. Who cares if they were bilking Indian tribes and taking the money that should have gone to essential services for the tribe to pay for a golf outing for Ney and the ultra creepy Ralph Reed?
Meanwhile, the Foley saga continues to get messier. There was breaking news last night that perhaps Mr. Foley had gone to the Page Dorm drunk and had to be removed by the police. Lovely, just lovely. Ann Coulter was on Hannity and Colmes last night and (for the few minutes that I watched - really - how much can one person take?) her assertion was that Foley is gay. Sorry, Ms. Coulter, he is a predator. He is a pedophile who is using the excuse of alcholism.
That pisses me off. Just like that horrible woman who raped the 14 year old boy in Florida who said she was too pretty to go to jail and then blamed her actions on being bi-polar. These people give alcholics and bi-polar people a bad name. Don't we have enough problems without assholes using fake excuses for their bad behaviour?
We'll have to see what happens in a month with the mid-terms. The idea of someone voting for Foley is too strange to contemplate. The idea that the Democrats don't have enough to run on is beyond comprehension as well.
But no one ever lost by underestimating the failure of the Democrats to capitalize on a Republican scandal or on the ability of the ultra-right to vote for a child molester as long as there's an (R) after his name.
oh and - I was wondering do any of the right wing bush ass kissers still think the media "isn't reporting all the good things happening in Iraq." ? Cuz, ya know, it is going so well over there...
FYI: Liberals were right. Conservatives were wrong.
I try to follow my own rule of not being overly condescending to Red State morons. But sometimes - it is just not possible. Looky here - a Georgia parent wants Harry Potter Books banned because she says they promote Wicca. How can we not condescend to that? These people are fu%*^#* idiots. If the Harry Potter books promoted wicker - I'd be all for a ban. There ARE more important things. Bush and the GOPs have lost Iraq, are about to lose Afghanistan, have exploded our debt, damaged the military, ruined the intelligence agencies, ignored warnings about 9/11, disappeared as Katrina hit, and lied so often and so much that it is impossible to tell if ANYONE in Bush's party has a moral center of gravity anymore. The Republican Party has rotted to the core - and it is taking America with it.
Delay, and Foley, and WMD's.
Oh My.
HAHA! Bush is saying DEMOCRATS can't be trusted with national security! HAHAHA. It is always opposite day with those White house jackasses. Have we ever HAD a President who so completely ignored reality and our own military and common sense? No one has endangered national security more than the arrogant Bush/Cheney/Rice/Rummy - and their new bitch - Hank Kissinger.
Also - watch for Rove to shove Hastert overboard - and for the midterms to become Boehner vs. Pelosi in the next 2 weeks. A solid plan. Karl knows his shit.
Last night on the Daily Show Mr. Stewart was fantastic, as usual.
His best comment came after showing Newt Gingrich on Fox "News". Mr. Gingrich said that the Republicans didn't want to make an issue of Mark Foley because it might be perceived as Gay Bashing. (We're supposed to suspend reality and believe the party that wants a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage every election cycle does not want to engage in Gay Bashing.)
Mr. Stewart said that equating gay bashing with not exposing pedophilia is the ultimate in gay bashing.
We love him so much.
Alec Baldwin over at the Huffington Post hits an interesting note about the mid terms. "When you go into the voting booth this November, remember that it is not against the Republican Party that you must vote. It is against THIS Republican Party." Read the whole thing.
I agree. Bush has morally corrupted his own party, and fish rot from the head. I see no GOPs on the national scene that have not sold their souls. Bush has an amazing way of getting people to give up their integrity for just long enough to get what he wants. Tenet, Powell, McCain - Woodward's new book seems to be full of good people who go into an integrity free coma when it comes to what Bush wants done and what Bush wants to hear. It's creepy.
Oddly, except for nominal GOP member Arnold out here in Cali. Who is - as I predicted years ago - governing to the LEFT of his Democratic predecessor on some very important issues. Arnold is actually a Clinton Democrat running against a Mondale Democrat - whose name I can't spell and is irrelevant, anyway.
I'm reading Against All Enemies by Richard Clark (next on the nightstand is Frank Rich's new book).
Let me just quote Mr. Clinton giving an address on terrorism at George Washington University April 1996:
This will be a long, hard struggle. There will be setbacks along the way. But just as no enemy could drive us from the fight to meet our challenges and protect our values in World War II and the Cold War, we will not be driven from the tought fight against terrorism today. Terrorism is the the enemy of our generation, and we must prevail...But I want to make it clear to the American people that while we can defeat terrorists, it will be a long time before we defeat terrorism. American will remain a target because we are uniquely present in the world, because we act to advance peace and democracy, because we have taken a tougher stand against terrorism, and because we are the most open society on earth. But to change any of that, to pull our troops back from the world's trouble spots, to turn our backs on those taking risks for peace, to weaken our opposition against terrorism, to curtail the freedom that is our birthright would be to give terrorism the victory it must not and will not have.
That's right. To take away our freedoms is to give the terrorist a victory. To bug my phone calls, to give the president the "freedom" to detain me for any reason, to suspend habious corpus, to torture detainees is to give the terrorist a victory.
I was listening to NPR yesterday on my big drive from Florida to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. They had a story about the Blitz in London. Those people didn't give in to fear. They worked around it. They believed they would prevail and with that wonderful British still upper lip, they did.
What are we willing to give up to be free? If, as Mr. Bush says, the terrorist hate our freedoms, his policy of taking them away should make us less of a target.
So You Call This Breaking News?
By FRANK RICH
IF your head hurts from listening to the Washington furor over the latest National Intelligence Estimate, by all means tune it out. The entire debate is meaningless except as a damning election-year indicator of just how madly our leaders are fiddling while Iraq burns.
The supposedly shocking key finding in the N.I.E. - that the Iraq war is a boon to terrorism - isn't remotely news. It first turned up in a classified C.I.A. report leaked to the press in June 2005. It's also long been visible to the naked eye. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted before any revelations from the N.I.E., found that nearly half the country believes that the Iraq war is increasing the terrorist threat against America and only 12 percent thinks the war is decreasing that threat. Americans don't have to pore over leaked intelligence documents to learn this. They just have to turn on the television.
Tonight on "60 Minutes," Bob Woodward will spill another supposedly shocking intelligence finding revealed in his new book: a secret government prediction that the insurgency will grow worse next year. Who'd have thunk it? Given that the insurgency is growing worse every day right now - last week suicide bombings hit a record high in Baghdad - the real surprise would be if the government predicted an armistice. A poll released last week by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that about 6 in 10 Iraqis approved of attacks on American forces. Tardy investigative reporting is hardly needed to figure out that the insurgency is thriving.
"The insurgents know what they are doing," Mr. Woodward is to say on CBS, according to an advance excerpt. "They know the level of violence and how effective they are. Who doesn't know? The American public." He accuses the administration of keeping such information out of sight by stamping it "secret." All this, too, apparently comes as eye-opening news to Mr. Woodward three and a half years into the war; his new book's title, "State of Denial," has a self-referential ring to it. But the American public does know the level of violence all too well, and it also knows how the administration tries to cover up its failures.
That's why long ago a majority of that public judged the war a mistake and Mr. Bush a dissembler. It's only the variations on the theme that change. When the president declared last month that "the Iraqi government and the Iraqi military is committed to keeping this country together," reality was once more busily contradicting him. The Los Angeles Times reported that a third of that government wasn't showing up to parliamentary sessions and that only 1,000 Iraqi soldiers answered the American call for 4,000 reinforcements in the do-or-die battle to secure Baghdad.
Against this ominous reality, the debate over the N.I.E. is but a sideshow: politics as usual on both sides. The president reluctantly declassified what had already been leaked, somehow hoping he could override the bad headlines with Pavlovian repetition of shopworn slogans. (He said America must "stay on the offense" four times in one speech on Friday alone.) Democrats are huffily demanding that the White House release more than a few scraps of the 30-page-plus N.I.E., a debating point with no payoff. The N.I.E. is already six months out of date, and Americans can guess most of it, classified or not. In this war at this late stage, the devil can be found everywhere, not merely in the details.
The facts of Iraq are not in dispute. But the truth is that facts don't matter anyway to this administration, and that's what makes this whole N.I.E. debate beside the point. From the start, honest information has never figured into the prosecution of this war. The White House doesn't care about intelligence, good or bad, classified or unclassified, because it believes it knows best, regardless of what anyone else has to say. The debate over the latest N.I.E. or any yet to leak will not alter that fundamental and self-destructive operating principle. That's the truly bad news.
This war has now gone on so long that we tend to forget the early history that foretold the present. Yet this is the history we must remember now more than ever, because it keeps repeating itself, with ever more tragic results. In the run-up to the war, it should be recalled, the administration did not even bother to commission an N.I.E., a summary of the latest findings from every American intelligence agency, on Iraq's weapons.
Why not? The answer can be found in what remains the most revealing Iraq war document leaked to date: the Downing Street memo of July 23, 2002, written eight months before the invasion. In that secret report to the Blair government, the head of British intelligence reported on a trip to Washington, where he learned that the Bush administration was fixing the "intelligence and facts" around the predetermined policy of going to war in Iraq. If we were going to fix the intelligence anyway, there was no need for an N.I.E., except as window dressing, since it might expose the thinness of the administration’s case.
A prewar N.I.E. was hastily (and sloppily) assembled only because Congress demanded it. By the time it was delivered to the Capitol after much stalling, on Oct. 1, 2002, less than two weeks remained before the House and Senate would vote on the Iraq war resolution. "No more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary," according to an article last spring in Foreign Affairs by Paul Pillar, the C.I.A. senior analyst for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005. In a White House press briefing after the war started, an official said Condi Rice hadn't read it at all, leaving that menial duty to her retinue of "experts."
When one senator who did read the whole N.I.E., the now retired Democrat Bob Graham of Florida, asked that a declassified version be made public so that Americans could reach their own verdicts on the war's viability, he was rebuffed. Instead the administration released a glossy white paper that trumpeted the N.I.E.'s fictions ("All intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons") but not its doubts about much-hyped evidence like aluminum tubes and uranium from Africa. The only time the president cared about the N.I.E., a document he never wanted, was when he thought it would be politically useful in fighting growing criticism in 2003 that he had manipulated prewar intelligence. Then he authorized his own cherry-picked leaks, which Scooter Libby fed to Mr. Woodward and Judith Miller of The Times. (Neither wrote about it at the time.)
As the insurgency continued to grow in the fall of 2003, the White House again showed scant interest in reality. The American military's Central Command called for an N.I.E. instead. The existence of this second N.I.E. was only discovered in February of this year by Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder Newspapers. It found that the growing violence in Iraq was "fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists - and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops." Yet the president ignored that accurate intelligence, refusing to raise troop levels and continuing to argue erroneously that the insurgency was mainly linked to Saddam and Al Qaeda. Three years later, he still makes that case rather than acknowledge that our troops are caught in the cross-fire of a civil war.
Having ignored the facts through each avoidable disaster, the White House won't change its game plan now. Quite the contrary. Its main ambition seems to be to prop up its artificial reality no matter what the evidence to the contrary. Nowhere could this be better seen than in Ms. Rice's bizarre behavior after the Bill Clinton-Chris Wallace slapdown on Fox News. Stung by the former president's charge that the Bush administration did nothing about Al Qaeda in the eight months before 9/11, she couldn't resist telling The New York Post that his statement was "flatly false."
But proof of Ms. Rice's assertion is as nonexistent as Saddam's W.M.D. As 9?11 approached, both she and Mr. Bush blew off harbingers of the attacks (including a panicked C.I.A. briefer in Crawford, according to Ron Suskind's "One Percent Doctrine"). The 9/11 commission report, which Ms. Rice cited as a corroborating source for her claims to The Post, in reality "found no indication of any further discussion" about the Qaeda threat among the president and his top aides between the arrival of that fateful Aug. 6 brief ("Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.") and Sept. 10.
That the secretary of state would rush to defend the indefensible shows where this administration's priorities are: it's now every man and woman in the White House for himself and herself in defending the fictions, even four-year-old fictions, that took us into the war and botched its execution. When they talk about staying the course, what they are really talking about is protecting their spin and their reputations. They'll leave it to the 140,000-plus American troops staying the course in a quagmire to face the facts.
1. All Saints Church in Pasadena (my church! whoo hoo!) is under investigation by the IRS because a Christian pastor attacked the notion of preemptive war. Imagine that. Those kooky followers of Jesus's message...Meanwhile, right wing "churches" are all telling their congregations that Jesus is a country club Republican and to vote accordingly. Any concern at the country club that he has a Jewish mother has not been noted - There have been announcements from pulpits in Texas churches that Jesus was seen eating ham sandwiches on the back nine with George Allen. So all is well.
2. The Dodgers are in the playoffs!
3. Mayor V. kicked off a million tree initiate in Los Angeles. Then kicked a dog that got in between him and a TV camera. But we still love ya Mayor V! Finish the damn subway!
4. My Pal Wendy has a new web site and a new book coming out in a week. Whoo Hoo!
5. My pal Joshua is back from his tour in Europe.
6. Republicans lie all the time about everything. Here. Here. eHere.
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