Pass the Popcorn

Bush OK's Independent Probe of Prewar Intelligence
By Dana Milbank and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers

President Bush has agreed to support an independent inquiry into the prewar intelligence that he used to assert that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, Republican and congressional sources said today.

The shift by the White House, which had previously maintained that any such inquiry should wait until a more exhaustive weapons search has been complete, came after pressure from lawmakers in both parties and from the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq.

There was no official confirmation from the White House today, but several sources in the government said Bush's announcement of support for an independent commission is imminent. Vice President Cheney has begun to call lawmakers on the intelligence committees, who have encouraged the administration to proceed with an inquiry.

Bush's shift in position represents an effort to get out in front of a potentially dangerous issue that threatens to cloud his reelection bid. An independent commission would not necessarily absolve Bush politically, congressional officials said, but it could quiet the current furor and delay calls for top-level resignations at the CIA and elsewhere until after the election, diluting the potency of the issue for Democrats.

Kay, who resigned his post nine days ago, testified Wednesday that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraq's weapons programs. He said it was unlikely that stockpiles would be found in Iraq.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said today that convening a blue-ribbon panel is important because "we're in danger now of seeing the politicization of the whole intelligence issue."

The panel, Roberts said, would have to be bipartisan and include only recognized experts whose recommendations could "leapfrog" over the current debate and quickly tackle the issue of how to fix intelligence deficiencies. "It would be helpful not only politically, but also for the nation," Roberts said.Sources said Bush intends to endorse a commission in the coming days while remaining publicly agnostic on the accuracy of the intelligence that the administration used to take the nation to war in Iraq. Though some in the White House favor a frank admission that the intelligence was wrong -- something lawmakers and inspectors have given -- Bush and his aides have so far concluded that would only increase the pressure on them.

How many investigations are we up to now? Blair is facing similar calls. Seems like "sexing up" the intelligence was probably a bad idea, eh, fellows?

I'm trying to sort out the situation on the other side of the pond, which seems rather more serious than it is over here. The Sunday London papers are going nuts. The last week, with the release of the Hutton report exonerating Blair, has caused public outcry. Would that my fellow citizens would be so exercised.

Josh Marshall reads the tea leaves his way. Of course the Republicans are going to try to keep this investigation limited to CIA failures. But I think that ship has sailed and the Agency now has a dog in this fight. That's a hornets nest you don't want to poke, particularly when you don't have the facts on your side. Josh made that case already yesterday when he noted the three critical questions:

1. Did the White House play fast and loose with the truth about the Iraq threat?

Add them up.

You were right the first time, Josh.

Cancelled Sense

Security fears ground BA flights
Three British Airways flights to the United States have been cancelled for security reasons, the company says.

BA's Flight 223 had been the subject of concern early in January, when it was cancelled twice because of security fears and then delayed for hours several more times.
US officials said on Friday new intelligence indicated BA Flight 223 and Air France flights from Paris to an unspecified US city could be terrorist targets.

US Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said: "We remain concerned about al-Qaeda's desire to target aviation, especially international aviation.

"The US intelligence community continues to gather specific credible threat information on international flights, as we have done in... the past few weeks."

A British Department for Transport spokesman said the decision to cancel the flights was made "in the light of information received".

He said: "Aviation security measures are adjusted from time to time, and occasional cancellations may be necessary.

"The first priority is always the safety of the travelling public."

The US Homeland Security Department has said it has no plans to raise its current alert level.

One of my closest friends flies for a living, and I am concerned for her safety, but something about this just kicks up my skepticism gene. The jets used on 9/11 were transcontinental flights at the beginning of their routes and therefore fully fueled. Aviation fuel is explosive stuff, as we now know. Transoceanic flights don't carry more fuel than necessary to save money, and these flights' fuel tanks would be nearly empty by the time they reached the states. This doesn't compute.

Finance Reform

Liberal Donors Back Anti-Bush Groups
FEC Regulatory Plan Targets Efforts to Fill Vacuum Created by Soft-Money Ban
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 31, 2004; Page A08

Major liberal donors are demonstrating their willingness to fund a new shadow Democratic Party, according to reports filed yesterday by a network of nominally independent organizations committed to defeating President Bush in November.

At the same time, momentum to bar their activities gained new strength. On Thursday, the legal staff of the Federal Election Commission proposed regulations that could choke off the groups' plans, with backing from an alliance of Republican Party leaders and campaign watchdog groups.

The reports filed yesterday with the Internal Revenue Service and the FEC showed millions of dollars flowing from unions, wealthy individuals, environmental groups and others on the left into such organizations as America Coming Together (ACT), America Votes and the Partnership for America's Families, which are known as "527" groups for the section of the tax code governing their activities.

These and other 527 groups were formed to fill a vacuum on the Democratic side of the aisle created by the 2002 passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which bars the political parties from raising and spending large, unregulated "soft money" contributions from corporations, unions and rich people.

The ban has proved far more damaging to Democrats than to Republicans, who are far better at raising smaller, and still legal, "hard money" donations.

Without party-raised soft money, many Democrats believe that their voter-mobilization efforts would be severely underfunded in 2004 and that Democrats would be unable to counter an expected barrage of GOP television ads.

Thus, unions, environmental groups, wealthy liberals and other major players on the left have made large contributions to 527s to create what has become known as a shadow Democratic Party. But those groups' plans now face a tough fight for approval by the FEC, which is crucial.
.....
Republicans, because of their success at raising hard money, have been far less aggressive in creating these third-party groups. Now, Republicans are looking with growing anxiety toward the Democratic organizations. Contrary to their traditionally anti-regulatory views, top Republicans now back tough regulation of 527s.

On Jan. 13, Charles R. Spies, counsel to the Republican National Committee, wrote to the FEC: "It is now incumbent upon the FEC to not sanction the undermining and evasion of [the McCain-Feingold law] through the activities of newly formed 527 organizations dedicated to electing or defeating specific federal candidates." His letter had the full backing of RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie.

A Republican-created group, Americans for a Better Country, has pointedly forced the issue before the FEC by seeking an advisory opinion on whether it could initiate programs virtually identical to those already announced by the Democratic 527 organizations.

Earlier this week, FEC Commissioner Michael E. Toner, a former counsel of the RNC and general counsel of the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, wrote a letter to the newspaper Roll Call signaling that he is prepared to take a tough stand on regulatory issues.

While declaring that he is not prejudging the issue, Toner wrote that if the 527 groups are allowed to raise and spend soft money freely, "almost all campaign finance observers agree that the McCain-Feingold law will be severely undermined, and that at least as much soft money will be spent on electoral activities in 2004 as was spent before the new law was enacted."

On Thursday, Lawrence H. Norton and other members of the FEC's legal staff proposed strict regulation of 527 groups, severely limiting their use of soft money.
....
The FEC will take up the proposal at a Feb. 5 meeting, and the agency has plans to issue later in the spring a broader rule governing the activities of 527 and other independent organizations.

The Republicans are doing everything they can to turn this into a one-party country. If they suceed in pushing back the 527's, they will virtually guarantee themselves money hegemony. I fear for my democracy.

Medi-lies

Higher Medicare Costs Suspected for Months
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 31, 2004; Page A01

Bush administration officials had indications for months that the new Medicare prescription drug law might cost considerably more than the $400 billion advertised by the White House and Congress, according to internal documents and sources familiar with the issue.

The president's top health advisers gathered such evidence and shared it with select lawmakers, congressional and other sources said, long before the White House disclosed Thursday that it believes the program will cost $534 billion over the next decade -- one-third more than the estimate widely used when Congress enacted the measure in November.

The higher forecast, coming less than two months after President Bush signed the landmark bill into law, has fueled conservative criticism of White House spending policies and prompted accusations that the administration deliberately withheld financial information as it pushed the bill through a divided Congress.

Bush, addressing the controversy yesterday, said aides first gave him a complete budget estimate for the Medicare law two weeks ago. "The Medicare reform we did is a good reform, fulfills a long-standing promise to our seniors," he said of the law, which will offer elderly Americans help in paying for medicine and encourage them to join private health plans.

Sources familiar with the issue agreed that the White House did not finish its fiscal assessment of the law until this month. But the sources and documents indicate that administration officials made repeated preliminary cost estimates as the legislation was debated last year in Congress, and that they knew congressional budget analysts often made lower projections of Medicare spending than did the Health and Human Services Department.

A June 11 document indicates that Medicare administrators were preparing detailed fiscal analyses of at least some versions of the proposed legislation significantly in advance of its final passage. The document -- drafted by the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- says one Senate version of the Medicare drug bill would cost $551 billion over the next 10 years. That represents $151 billion more than the amount Congress cited upon passage in November, and $17 billion more than the estimate Bush will include in his 2005 budget blueprint Monday.

"There were whispers from the administration long before" Congress acted, said one source who worked on the legislation and, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity. Among a small group of lawmakers who negotiated the bill's final version, "it was an open secret" that administration officials believed "there is no way this is $400 billion," the source said.

The medicare bill was designed in secret by a small cabal of legislators, aided by copious help from the insurance and drug lobbies, and the cabal was all aware that they were going to lie about the costs. Because of the power of incumbency, none of these legislators will pay any kind of price at the polls. When the public slumbers, accountability dies

Diagnosis Code

H.D.S. Greenway inThe Boston Globe makes this observation at the World Economic Forum in Davos:

In much of the world beyond Europe, anti-Americanism is growing at an alarming and corrosive rate. President Bush seemed genuinely shocked when he heard this from moderate Muslim leaders in Bali last October. In visits to four Muslim countries last year I came away equally shocked at how the high regard in which the United States was once held is slipping away, even among those who are still our friends. Whether it be Cairo's council on foreign relations or Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, the distrust of the United States is noticeably high.

Among those not predisposed to admire the United States, even America's good motives are misunderstood in the general climate of mistrust. Last month in Lahore, Pakistan, a two-day meeting of Muslim clerics to celebrate the centenary of Maulana Maududi, founder of Jamaat-I-Islami, speaker after speaker spoke of a Muslim world under attack and siege, saying that Bush's call for democracy was a cover for imperialistic designs to undermine Islam and spread Western culture.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, who is in a life-and-death struggle with Islamic extremists in his own country, told the forum last week that "there is a deep feeling of injustice, abandonment, hopelessness, powerlessness and a sense of deprivation" in the Muslim world. "The fallout of this has been resignation and desperation." In the opinion of many experts at Davos this year, the United States had not successfully addressed the root causes of terrorism: It has concentrated its efforts on military solutions, which run the risk of recruiting ever more terrorists.

Even among America's friends there is something about the trumpeting of American exceptionalism, especially when wedded to what seems to many to be a desire to make the world over in America's image, that is profoundly offputting. It was during a panel on narcissism at the World Economic Forum last week that a Yale University assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, Bandy Xenobia Lee, quoted the standard medical description of Narcissistic Personality Disorder from the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual. A sufferer of this disorder is defined as someone who:

Has a "grandiose sense of self importance, e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements."

*"Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance."

*"Requires excessive admiration."

*"Has a sense of entitlement, i.e. unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations.

*Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes."

In light of current events, Lee thought the diagnosis might at times be applicable to nations as well as individuals.

Or the individuals who lead nations.

Continuing Plame

The Leak of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson's Identity:
Why Competing Congressional and Special Counsel Investigations Will Inevitably Cause Problems
By JOHN W. DEAN
--Friday, Jan. 30, 2004

With media attention firmly on the Democratic presidential primaries, little notice has been given to another significant, and developing, national topic. Recently, several important events have occurred relating to the investigation of the leak of the CIA undercover identity of Valerie Plame, wife of Bush Administration critic former ambassador Joe Wilson. These developments are worthy of close examination.

In July 2003, Robert Novak disclosed the leaked information to the public. Since then, the tempest surrounding the disclosure has only grown.

At the end of December 2003, a Special Counsel, Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, was appointed. Fitzgerald's appointment (and Attorney General Ashcroft's recusal of himself in the matter) suggested, as I noted in a prior column, that things were heating up in the investigation. And now, more events have unfolded.

On January 21 a group of former intelligence officers wrote to Congress requesting, according to the New York Times, "an immediate inquiry" into the disclosure. As the Times noted, "[i]t is unusual for former intelligence officers to petition Congress on a matter like this."

In addition, the same day, Representative Rush Holt (D. NJ), a member of the House intelligence committee, introduced a privileged Resolution of Inquiry relating to the Plame Wilson leak. (A resolution of inquiry is an infrequently used technique to obtain information from the executive branch.) Holt was joined by nine other colleagues.

For those of you who have been wondering what is happening with l'affair Plame, the answer is, "a great deal," some of which is new to me. This is a long and complex article. I excerpt only the introduction above.

Here are the salient points: in addition to the Special Prosecutor, House Democrats have requested a Resolution of Inquiry (this I didn't know about before, this an instrument which isn't used often.) This is subject to House procedures, and will probably be tabled in the Select Intelligence Committee or defeated if it comes to the floor, but it allows the House Dems to raise the profile of this investigation, although at some political risk to themselves. Blowback is a possibility.

This has fascinating legal and political implications. It is not often that I point you somewhere else and just say, "read the rest." I will say, after reading John Dean for a few months, that he has a flair for the more "ornamented" legal arcana of the nation's capital, particularly where it intersects with politics. He goes for a more dramatic reading of events than I might be tempted to give them. But then he is the high priest of this kind of arcana, so I will sit quietly at his feet and wait to see how events proceed.

The Book of the Dead

BBC at War
M’Lord Hutton Blesses Blair’s Attack on BBC’s Investigation of Iraq War Claims
By Greg Palast
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 30 January 2003

He did not say, "hello," or even his name, just left a one-word message: "Whitewash." It came from an embattled journalist whispering from inside the bowels of a television and radio station under siege, on a small island off the coast of Ireland: from BBC London.

And another call, from a colleague at the Guardian: "The future of British journalism is very bleak."

However, the future for fake and farcical war propaganda is quite bright indeed. Today, Lord Hutton issued his report that followed an inquiry revealing the Blair government's manipulation of intelligence to claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass murder threatening immanent attack on London.

Based on the Blair government's claim, headlines pumped the war hysteria: SADDAM COULD HAVE NUCLEAR BOMB IN YEAR, screeched the London Times. BRITS 45 MINS FROM DOOM, shrieked the Sun newspaper.

Given these facts only a sissy pacifist, a lunatic or a Saddam fellow traveler would fail to see that Prime Minister "Winston" Blair had no choice but to re-conquer it's former Mesopotamian colony.

But these headline were, in fact, false, and deadly so. Unlike America's press puppies, BBC reporters thought it their duty to check out these life or death claims. Reporters Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts contacted a crucial source, Britain's and the United Nation's top weapons inspector. He told reporter Watts that the Weapons of Mass Destruction claims by Blair and our own President Bush were, "all spin." Gilligan went further, reporting that this spin, this "sexed up" version of intelligence, was the result of interventions by Blair's PR henchman, Alistair Campbell.

Whatever reading of the source's statements, it was clear that intelligence experts had deep misgivings about the strength of the evidence for war.

The source? Dr. David Kelly. To save itself after the reports by Gilligan and Watts, the government, including the Prime Minister himself, went on an internal crusade to out the name of its own intelligence operative so it could then discredit the news items.
Publishing the name of an intelligence advisor is serious stuff. In the USA, a special criminal prosecutor is now scouring the White House to find the person who publicly named a CIA agent. If found, the Bushite leaker faces jail time.

Blair's government was not so crude as to give out Dr. Kelly's name. Rather, they hit on a subterfuge of dropping clues then allowing reporters to play '20 questions' - if Kelly's name were guessed, they'd confirm it. Only the thickest reporters (I name none here) failed after more than a couple tries.

Dr. Kelly, who had been proposed for knighthood was named, harangued and his career destroyed by the outing. He then took his own life.

But today is not a day of mourning at 10 Downing Street, rather a day of self-congratulations.

There were no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear warhead just short of completion, no "45 minutes to doom" bombs auguring a new London blitz. The exile group which supplied this raw claim now calls the 45 minute story, "a crock of shit."
Yet Blair's minions are proclaiming their vindication.

On this side of the pond, they didn't have to demonize the journalists, because the journalists were ALEADY in bed with the administration.

I take Palast's howl seriously. The BBC is one of the great English-language journalistic shops, not perfect, but far more objective and skeptical than most, and I hear his fear for his own career. He's been all but exiled to do his work in Britain because he can't find a forum over here. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is every bit as much required reading for this campaign season as Kevin Phillip's book.

From London, Greg can look across the Atlantic and see his possible future. No wonder he's howling.

Fog of War

Iraq War Questions Gain Momentum
Democratic candidates step up attacks on Bush, and GOP lawmakers urge a frank response. Analysts see a risk to the president's credibility.

By Janet Hook, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Mounting questions about the White House's rationale for invading Iraq are giving Democratic presidential candidates fresh ammunition for attacking President Bush's credibility and challenging a foreign policy record that has been the cornerstone of Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.

Bush administration officials have been thrown on the defensive by reports from former chief weapons inspector David Kay that Iraq had no stockpiled weapons of mass destruction at the start of the war last March, as U.S. intelligence had indicated.

But the administration has not acknowledged an intelligence failure, insisting that more time is needed to continue inspections.

Some analysts see a potential political risk if Bush refuses to accept Kay's conclusion that prewar intelligence was faulty, because it could keep the issue alive deep into the election season.

Even some Republicans are urging the White House to respond more forthrightly to questions about how U.S. intelligence could be so flawed.

"Politically the president really needs to explain this to the American people," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee who supported the Iraq war. "It undermines his ability to continue to talk to the American people about the war on terrorism."

There is probably a limit to how much political benefit Democrats can wring from the controversy. Support for the Iraq war remains broad: 65% of those surveyed this month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press thought going to war was the right decision.

I'm with Atrios, there is no need to flog the Kay report or the Hutton inquiry: both are whitewash jobs. The British public isn't buying Hutton, but on this side of the pond, the public disinterest will remain until the Iraq war gets expensive enough in lives and dollars that the electorate actually begins to care about it.

Medi-elephant

Medicare Drug Cost Estimate Increases
Prescription Benefit's Price Tag Rises 33%
By Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A01

The White House has concluded that adding prescription drug benefits to Medicare will cost one-third more than the $400 billion advertised by Congress and the administration when President Bush signed the bill into law less than two months ago, federal sources said yesterday.

The budget Bush is to propose on Monday will say that the new Medicare law, which sets in motion the largest expansion of the program in its history, will require $534 billion in the next decade, $134 billion more than the president and lawmakers said, according to congressional and administration sources.

Word of the escalation in the spending forecast immediately enraged lawmakers and policy analysts at both ends of the ideological spectrum. Congressional Democrats and conservative Republicans alike vowed that they would intensify efforts they already had been planning to alter major aspects of the Medicare law this year. "This is a work in progress," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a conservative who voted for the law.

Administration officials would not explain the precise reason for the discrepancy. White House spokesman Trent Duffy said putting a price tag on Medicare "is a terrifically difficult area to try to predict" that hinges on "any number of unknowns," including how many older Americans buy the drug coverage, how much pharmaceutical prices rise and how many people on Medicare switch to private health plans, as the law encourages.

"The bottom line is, President Bush made a commitment to give seniors a prescription drug benefit and modernize Medicare, and he's delivered," Duffy said.
....

"I'm not sure I've ever heard of such a big discrepancy . . . weeks after legislation is passed," said Gail R. Wilensky, a Republican health economist who ran the Medicare program in the first Bush administration. "If people thought they were voting for a $400 billion budget, it's distressing."

Once again, getting the bill passed as a political gesture was much more important than acurately budgeting for it. Bush doesn't care about cost, it's the appearances he will run on.

Sliding By

Paul Krugman has a question:

Finally, an important story that has largely evaded public attention: the effort to prevent oversight of Iraq spending. Government agencies normally have independent, strictly nonpartisan inspectors general, with broad powers to investigate questionable spending. But the new inspector general's office in Iraq operates under unique rules that greatly limit both its powers and its independence.

And the independence of the Pentagon's own inspector general's office is also in question. Last September, in a move that should have caused shock waves, the administration appointed L. Jean Lewis as the office's chief of staff. Ms. Lewis played a central role in the Whitewater witch hunt (seven years, $70 million, no evidence of Clinton wrongdoing); nobody could call her nonpartisan. So when Mr. Bush's defenders demand hard proof of profiteering in Iraq — as opposed to extensive circumstantial evidence — bear in mind that the administration has systematically undermined the power and independence of institutions that might have provided that proof.

And there are many more examples. These people politicize everything, from military planning to scientific assessments. If you're with them, you pay no penalty for being wrong. If you don't tell them what they want to hear, you're an enemy, and being right is no excuse.

Still, the big story isn't about Mr. Bush; it's about what's happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn't. What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?

Meet-Up For Religious Liberals

Rev. Allen Brill, propriator of The Right Christians has set up a Meet-up on February 19 for religious progressives. You can find it at Meet-Up here. I joined Meet-Up, which allows me to be one of the people nominating a venue. Without spending a penny, you can go vote on the venue if you think you would like to participate. Four people put nominations in ahead of me, so I guess we'll have enough people for a real Meet-Up here in Washington.

This is a serious issue. Religious progressives need to push-back the aggressive agenda of the religious Right in the upcoming election, and we need to band together to do it. If you can, join Meet-up, it doesn't cost much, and you can have a roll in setting the agenda for the meeting. I'm looking forward to meeting my fellow religious liberals at the Barnes and Noble in the next town over. Ten cities have signed up already and this news is only about 45 minutes old. Join the crew. This is international, so my non-US readers can be a part of it, too.

Senator Forehead

Here's what I'll be looking for in tonight's debate!! Lloyd Grove in today's NYDN:

Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry can't seem to put that knotty Botox issue to rest.

Two prominent New York plastic surgeons - after examining "before" and "after" photos posted on the Drudge Report - told Lowdown yesterday that Kerry exhibits all the signs of a Botox injection
.
"Not only is it Botox, but it's classic bad Botox," said Dr. Michael Kane, a surgeon in private practice.

"His forehead is just way too smooth. It looks weird. It's a bizarre appearance that he's got not a wrinkle. That doesn't happen to 60-year-olds."
Dr. Gerald Ember, an attending plastic surgeon at New York Presbyterian Hospital, agreed.

"The pictures ... show a marked absence of the horizontal lines of the forehead and wrinkles between the eyes. Only Botox or a forehead lift would do this," he said. "And I say good for him!"

In a Tuesday interview with a Boston radio station, the Massachusetts senator was asked about Lowdown's Tuesday item. Kerry "absolutely" denied receiving Botox treatments, and added: "I've never even heard it. Where did this come from? ... I've never even heard of it. Never heard of it."

It was unclear whether Kerry meant he had "never heard" of Botox - which his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, has publicly acknowledged using - or merely that he never heard of the Botox rumors concerning him.

Last year, Kerry denied to a Boston Globe reporter that he had a medical problem - only to acknowledge later that he had been successfully treated for prostate cancer. Kerry explained the fib by saying he wanted to tell his family first.

UPDATE: Looks like Botox to me.

Chewing Cud

Tighter U.S. beef regulations still too lax for comfort

After insisting for years that blood from cattle is safe to feed young calves as a substitute for cow milk, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suddenly reversed itself this week. It banned the practice as part of a series of new rules meant to prevent the spread of mad cow disease, which cattle can get from eating infected beef products.

That was not the FDA's only turnaround from long-held food-safety policies. It also banned restaurant scraps and chicken coop waste as protein supplements in cattle feed. The move will end the possibility of feed contamination from infected beef left on tables or in chicken feed.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson says the tighter rules show that the federal government won't take any chances with the public's health following the discovery of a Holstein infected with mad cow in Washington state this past December.
He's partially right. The FDA's belated actions close some of the most glaring loopholes in beef regulation.

But a broader commitment still is needed to restore global confidence in the safety of the $38 billion U.S. cattle industry.

Since the detection of the infected Washington cow, cattle prices have fallen 10% at home, and as many as 50 countries have banned U.S. beef imports, threatening $3 billion in annual sales.

The FDA's halfway measures fail to provide U.S. consumers with complete peace of mind. And by falling short of standards in place around the world, they give export markets the excuse they need to continue their bans.

We need to stop feeding cow parts to cows and animal parts to any other animals. The rest of the world has figured this out, why haven't we?

Extended Service

30,000 More Soldiers Approved by Rumsfeld
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 29, 2004; Page A01

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, invoking emergency powers, has authorized the Army to grow temporarily by 30,000 troops above its congressionally approved limit of 482,000 to facilitate a restructuring of forces severely strained by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and counterterrorism missions elsewhere.

The increase, disclosed yesterday in congressional testimony by Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, surprised members of the House Armed Services Committee, many of whom have been pressing for a larger Army.

Rumsfeld has resisted a permanent increase for months, arguing that a number of efficiency measures and restructuring moves could alleviate some of the stress on U.S. forces. But his approval of a temporary rise -- which does not require congressional action and which Schoomaker said would probably be needed for four years -- appeared to acknowledge that some relief is needed.

Schoomaker said the increase would make possible his plans to restructure the Army by expanding the number of brigades and creating more agile, deployable forces. The money, he said, would come from the $87 billion emergency spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that passed in November.

An aide to Schoomaker said after the hearing that the troop increase probably would be achieved through incentives to keep soldiers from leaving once their contracts expire and through "stop-loss" orders barring their exit.

I wonder how much effort is going to be extended to make sure that military absentee ballots are counted in November.

This is a short-term fix that is going to have long-term repercussions, and it will demand a complete re-thinking of the way that specialties are apportioned across active duty and Guard/Reserve forces. DoD has been fiddling with force structure for more than a decade, now they are going to have to do something about it. I'm not entirely certain that having to do this under crisis pressure is the right procedure, however.

Building a Movement

Hat-tip to reader Dale

The Dead Center
By ROBERT B. REICH

Self-styled Democratic centrists, like those who inhabit the Democratic Leadership Council, attribute the party's difficulties to a failure to respond to an electorate grown more conservative, upscale and suburban. This is nonsense. The biggest losses for Democrats since 1980 have not been among suburban voters but among America's giant middle and working classes — especially white workers without four-year college degrees, once part of the old Democratic base. Not incidentally, these are the same people who have lost the most economic ground over the last quarter-century.

Democrats could have responded with bold plans on jobs, schools, health care and retirement security. They could have delivered a strong message about the responsibility of corporations to help their employees in all these respects, and of wealthy elites not to corrupt politics with money. More recently, the party could have used the threat of terrorism to inspire the same sort of sacrifice and social solidarity as Democrats did in World War II — including higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for what needs doing. In short, they could have turned themselves into a populist movement to take back democracy from increasingly concentrated wealth and power.

But Democrats did none of this. So conservatives eagerly stepped into the void, claiming the populist mantle and blaming liberal elites for what's gone wrong with America. The question ahead is whether Democrats can claim it back. The rush by many Democrats in recent years to the so-called center has been a pathetic substitute for candid talk about what the nation needs to do and for fueling a movement based on liberal values. In truth, America has no consistent political center. Polls reflect little more than reflexive responses to what people have most recently heard about an issue. Meanwhile, the so-called center has continued to shift to the right because conservative Republicans stay put while Democrats keep meeting them halfway.

Democrats who avoid movement politics point to Bill Clinton's success in repositioning the party in the center during the 1990's. Mr. Clinton was (and is) a remarkably gifted politician who accomplished something no Democrat since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had done — getting re-elected. But his effect on the party was to blur rather than to clarify what Democrats stand for. As a result, Mr. Clinton neither started nor sustained anything that might be called a political movement.

This handicapped his administration from the start. In 1994, when battling for his health care proposal, Mr. Clinton had no broad-based political movement behind him. Even though polls showed support among a majority of Americans, it wasn't enough to overcome the conservative effort on the other side. By contrast, George W. Bush got his tax cuts through Congress, even though Americans were ambivalent about them. President Bush had a political movement behind him that supplied the muscle he needed.
In the months leading up to the 1996 election, Mr. Clinton famously triangulated — finding positions equidistant between Democrats and Republicans — and ran for re-election on tiny issues like V-chips in television sets and school uniforms. The strategy worked, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Had Mr. Clinton told Americans the truth — that when the economic boom went bust we'd still have to face the challenges of a country concentrating more wealth and power in fewer hands — he could have built a long-term mandate for change. By the late 90's the nation finally had the wherewithal to expand prosperity by investing in people, especially their education and health. But because Mr. Clinton was re-elected without any mandate, the nation was confused about what needed to be accomplished and easily distracted by conservative fulminations against a president who lied about sex.

As we head into the next wave of primaries, the Democratic candidates should pay close attention to what Republicans have learned about winning elections. First, it is crucial to build a political movement that will endure after particular electoral contests. Second, in order for a presidency to be effective, it needs a movement that mobilizes Americans behind it. Finally, any political movement derives its durability from the clarity of its convictions. And there's no better way to clarify convictions than to hone them in political combat.

A fierce battle for the White House may be exactly what the Democrats need to mobilize a movement behind them. It may also be what America needs to restore a two-party system of governance and a clear understanding of the choices we face as a nation.

Reich is correct. A battle for the White House is only the first test we need. The Bush White House has given us a whole slate of things to be against, but we still need a platform built of policies and strategies to be for. You can't build a movement out of opposition alone.

The Professor Steps Out

Brad deLong is simply on a tear. He makes Krugman look like a contemplative. He quotes Hesiod at Counterspin:

ANCHOR CHENEY: The "Dump Cheney" movement within the Republican party is really picking up steam. "Oh yeah, big time."
"While Democratic rivals battle for the presidential nomination in a succession of grueling primary elections, Vice President Dick Cheney appears to be fighting to secure his spot on the Republican ticket behind President George W Bush.

The vice president, whose apparent moderation and 35-year Washington experience reassured voters worried about the callowness and inexperience of Bush during the 2000 campaign, is seen more and more by Republican Party politicos as a drag on the president's re-election chances in what is expected to be an extremely close race.

The reasons are simple: instead of the moderate voice of wisdom and caution that voters thought they were getting in the vice president, ongoing disclosures about his role in the drive to war in Iraq and other controversial administration plans depict him as an extremist who constantly pushed for the most radical measures.

He is seen as not just an extremist, but also a kind of eminence grise who exercises undue influence over Bush to further a radical agenda, a notion that was backed by the publication of a recent book about former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who described Cheney as creating a "kind of praetorian guard around the president" that blocked out contrary views.

In addition, Cheney's association with Halliburton, the giant construction and oil company he headed for much of the 1990s and that gobbled up billions of dollars in contracts for Iraq's postwar reconstruction, is growing steadily as a major political liability.

Indeed, Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail are already using Halliburton's rhythmic, four-syllable name (HAL-li-bur-ton, HAL-li-bur-ton) as a mantra that neatly taps into the public's growing concerns overn Iraq and disgust with crony capitalism and corporate greed all at the same time.
Reports were already surfacing two months ago that a discreet "dump Cheney" movement had been launched by intimate associates of Bush's father (former president George H W Bush) - his national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state James Baker, who now has a White House appointment as Bush Jr's personal envoy to persuade official creditors to reduce substantially Iraq's US$110 billion foreign debt.

In addition to their perception that Cheney's presence would harm Bush's re-election chances, Scowcroft and Baker, who battled frequently with the vice president when he was defense secretary in the first Bush administration, have privately expressed great concern over Cheney's unparalleled influence over the younger Bush and the damage that has done to US relations with longtime allies, particularly in Europe and the Arab world."

Sniff...sniff. I smell panic

The grownup Republicans' move is long, long overdue. But where are the grownup Republicans in the economic policy wing?

And if this strike by Scowcroft, Baker, and company is to do any good, they need to ponder the advice that Alessandro Farnese, Prince of Parma, gave to Henri, Duc de Guise: "As we say in Italy, he who draws his sword against his prince needs to throw away his scabbard."

The comings and goings in the next six months will be interesting.

Same Facts on the Ground

NATO Faces Afghan Test, General Warns
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 28, 2004; Page A16

The U.S. general who commands NATO forces warned yesterday that the alliance faces a "defining moment" in showing whether it can follow through on a political commitment to expand operations in Afghanistan.

Marine Gen. James Jones, testifying before a Senate committee, acknowledged difficulty last year mustering helicopters and other equipment to meet an alliance decision to take over the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul. He said NATO is making plans to extend ISAF's reach beyond the capital by establishing at least five security and reconstruction teams around the country.

"We simply have to become better and quicker and more efficient at generating the force to support the operational plan," he said. "And I believe this exercise that we are about to go through with this very ambitious expansion of NATO's mission in Afghanistan will be a defining moment for the alliance as to whether we have in fact the internal will and discipline to generate the force."

His remarks came in response to expressions of concern by both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States and its allies were failing to do enough to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the committee's chairman, said Afghanistan is in a "fragile state of development" and warned that continued attacks by Taliban and al Qaeda fighters threaten reconstruction activities and the presidential election scheduled for June. NATO members "must back up" their pledge to bolster security in Afghanistan "with sufficient resources, troops, organization and political will," he said.

Lugar cited political and economic gains that provided cause for measured optimism about Afghanistan's future. These included adoption of a new constitution, establishment of new businesses and completion of the highway linking Kabul with the southern city of Kandahar.
....

...William Taylor, the State Department's coordinator for Afghanistan, stressed that solving Afghanistan's problems "is not a short-term effort." But he offered no estimate of the time that might be required.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), saying U.S. policy sometimes appeared to be following a "piecemeal approach to bolstering stability and the rule of law" in Afghanistan, pressed Taylor on how the Bush administration would define success there.

"We will be in Afghanistan until there is an end state, not an end date," Taylor said. That end state, he added, would include "a stable, responsible government that will never again be a harbor for terrorists."

Nope. No exit strategy here, either.

I hear from CNN that a major offensive is planned for the spring, when the snow is gone. But once again we are dogged by insufficient force. Given how thin the Army is stretched right now, I don't know where they are going to find the troops for a major offensive

More Investigations

Waxman claims wartime oversight nonexistent
By Jonathan E. Kaplan

“By and large, the Republican- led Congress has failed in its responsibility to do oversight,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the Government Reform Committee. “Now that Bush is president, there is not a scandal too big [for Republicans] to ignore.”

Waxman’s latest salvo came this week after he and other Democrats asked the General Accounting Office, Congress’s investigative arm, to look into “whether the White House complied with internal security procedures for protecting covert CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred.”

The larger issue, however, is whether Congress can lead a productive investigation in a presidential election year.

“It’s very difficult,” said a former Democratic White House official. He pointed to a congressional committee, headed by former Sen. Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), that examined Billy Carter’s dealings with Libya in 1980 as a productive investigation.

“It ended up being a very fair report. Essentially, with one or two exceptions, everyone in the White House behaved quite properly,” the former official said.

Congressional investigations have propelled the careers of some lawmakers. Missouri Sen. Harry S Truman (D) shed his label as “the senator from Pendergast” when he began investigating war profiteering.

It's beginning to look like C-Span is going to be must-see TV this spring. Anybody got a count of how many investigations are in the works or under contemplation?

Monitoring the Spread

Crisis talks as flu hits Bangkok
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Posted: 1021 GMT ( 6:21 PM HKT)

BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- Health experts are meeting in Bangkok for crisis talks on the bird flu, as parts of the Thai capital are declared "danger zones." Experts are hoping to come up with a global strategy to tackle the crisis, which has hit ten nations, killed at least ten people and led to the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens. Laos and China are the latest nations to report cases, while in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control has activated its emergency operations center in a bid to assist a global effort to stop the disease.

China detected the disease on farms in Guangxi and Hubei provinces, according to Klaus Stöhr, head of WHO's Global Influenza Program, and are investigating suspected cases in two other regions. A duck that died on January 23 was determined to have the disease, a finding Stohr called "alarming" as ducks usually harbor the disease but don't die from it. Authorities in China have sealed the farm, slaughtered 14,000 poultry animals within a 3-kilometer radius of the farm, and barred movement of animals within a 5-kilometer radius, Stöhr said.

While there is no evidence yet of human-to-human transmission, the victims have all been people who handled infected birds, and experts have advised people to avoid going to poultry farms and food markets with live animals.

As bird flu spreads around Asia, experts worry the virus is moving so fast it could mutate enough to allow humans to pass it on to each other.

The WaPo is reporting a "slow response" by Thai public health officials, similar to the "slow response" of the Chinese public health system to SARS last year. The last paragraph of the CNN story is the critical issue.

US v. UN

Truck bomb detonates outside Baghdad hotel
Blast comes day after 13 killed in attacks
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Posted: 5:18 AM EST (1018 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A truck bomb exploded Wednesday morning in southern Baghdad, heavily damaging a hotel and killing the driver, a South African contractor and an Iraqi civilian, a U.S. military official said.

At least four other people -- all Iraqis -- were injured in the blast.

According to Gen. Mark Hertling, the explosion happened at about 7:15 a.m. (11:15 p.m. Tuesday ET) in front of the Shaheen Hotel in the Karada section of the Iraqi capital, battering the front of the hotel and leaving a large crater in the road.

Iraqi police said the explosives were packed inside an ambulance or a vehicle made to look like one.

According to Hertling, the bomb may have been intended for another site since it blew up in the middle of the street in traffic, instead of being parked in front of the hotel.

Six U.S. soldiers, 2 CNN employees among dead
The five attacks Tuesday killed six U.S. soldiers, two CNN employees, four Iraqi policemen and an Iraqi civilian, according to police and military sources.

Three Combined Joint Task Force 7 soldiers were killed and three were wounded in a roadside bomb attack near Iskandariyah at 8 p.m. (noon ET) Tuesday.

They were traveling in a convoy when their vehicle struck the device. The wounded soldiers were evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital.

In Khaldiyah, west of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi civilian at about 1 p.m. (5 a.m. ET), a U.S. military spokesman said. One U.S. soldier and three Iraqis were wounded in the blast, the spokesman said.

Wesley Clark's ad has been playing here for a couple of weeks. His pledge to "get us out of this mess" is beginning to sound compelling.

UN to send team to Iraq to assess transfer of power
Elaine Sciolino and Warren Hoge/NYT

John Negroponte, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said, "Today's announcement is a positive development and part of the process on the part of the secretary general and the United Nations to re-engage itself in Iraq. Clearly the United Nations can play a role in the unfolding political process in Iraq."

.Annan did not specify the timing, composition, size or exact mandate of the mission, although diplomats in New York said they hoped the mission could go next week. .He added, "Consensus among all Iraqi constituencies would be the best guarantee of a legitimate and credible transitional governance arrangement for Iraq." Without such consensus, he warned, "You run the risk that the conflict and the divisions will continue."

I frankly don't see a way for the UN to be more than window-dressing, absent a much larger force for "peace-keeping."

Shooting Birds

2nd UN Security Team Arrives in Baghdad
Peter Heinlein
United Nations
27 Jan 2004, 21:22 UTC

A second U.N. security team has arrived in Baghdad, this one to determine whether international political staff could safely return to Iraq. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ordered the security assessment after agreeing to explore the feasibility of early elections in Iraq.
Even as the secretary-general was in Paris announcing his intention to send a political mission to Iraq, a security team was on its way to prepare for the mission's arrival.

The newly-arrived team's task is to determine whether the U.S. and British-led Coalition Provisional Authority can guarantee the safety of a group of U.N. electoral experts. Once that is done, the experts would fly in to try to settle a political dispute over the feasibility of holding elections before the CPA turns over authority to an Iraqi transitional government.
That handover is scheduled for June 30.

U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe declined to provide any details of the security team's size or scope. But she said it would operate separately from the two-person security liaison unit dispatched to Baghdad last week. "Last Friday we announced there was a two-person liaison team on ground. We also said that should the secretary-general decide to send in an electoral team, then another security assessment team will have to go in to make that specific security assessment. That team has arrived on the ground," she said.
Ms. Okabe also said the secretary-general's senior political adviser Lakhdar Brahimi is in Washington at the request of senior Bush administration officials for talks on Iraq's future. It is the 70-year-old Mr. Brahimi's second visit to Washington in a week, and U.S. officials are known to be hoping to persuade him to take on a lead role in Iraq's transition to self-rule.

While the horse race assumes center stage stateside (CNN and AP are both projecting Kerry at this hour, the only thing we are waiting on are the percentages), Bush is engaged in a desperate struggle to try to rid himself of the 51st state.

Given that violence is escalating again (in addition to the six soldiers lost today, two CNN employees and two Kellogg, Brown and Root employees have been killed in the last four days--civilians are not immune to attack) UN operatives are likely to be very stringent in their demands for security. The UN is still in mourning over the deaths of the UN attachment which was killed last summer. Sergio Viera de Mello was very highly thought of and well -liked by his colleagues. The husband of a colleague of mine was gravely wounded in that attack and will be in rehab for years, as will many others. The UN is not a stranger to having people on the ground in dangerous places, but they certainly are in no hurry to be a target. Kofi Annan will be very cautious.

If the UN's need for security can met, which I strongly doubt, then we move on to items 2 and 3, control and financing. How much control over these coming election and the process which shapes them is Bush willing to let go of? And who is going to pay for the whole mess?

Given that even the appointees of the Iraqi Governing Council, which isn't carrying a whole lot of legitimacy with the Iraqis, think that the security situation is too poor for elections, it appears we have a mess on our hands. Yes, our hands. George Bush put it there. You and I may not have chosen this war, but we are stuck with it. I hear that we are stuck with about $160 billion in cost so far, with a supplemental budget request of another $50 billion going to Congress after the election, regardless of who is elected.

While you sit back and contemplate which candidate you are backing in your primary, or in the general if you don't have a primary or a caucus, think about this. George Bush took us into a war we didn't need and the costs in the going-out years are impossible to define. If any conservatives wander by this site, I invite you to defend the profits defense contractors are going to make at the expense of services to people like you and me, like funding REAL education reform, unemployment insurance extensions or real job training programs. If the conservative approach to government is that it is to be small, primarily geared to the common defense, explain to me how this bloated Bush animal answers to your philosophy.

The cost of this unnecessary war is an additional tax. No one is talking about it that way yet, but I just played with the calculator and found that the amount spent so far works out to about 500 dollars for every man, woman and child in the country. Woohoo, put that up against your Bush tax cut. Of course, the burden doesn't fall on every man, woman and child, it falls on only those who pay taxes. The Bush tax cut masks the cost of the war, but not for long as the significance of those deficits takes a toll on the economy. Trust me you are going to pay for it in jobs, wage stagnation or deflation and economic roiling.

If you are reading me instead of Brad deLong, get thee over there. The man explains the dismal science to even me. And as a book reviewer, he is without peer.

REALLY Bad Bugs

New Concerns Over Spread of Bird Flu
Officials Worry Slaughter of Poultry Heightens Chance of Human Infection By Alan Sipress Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, January 27, 2004; 1:13 PM

BANGKOK, Jan. 27 -- As bird flu continued to spread in Asia, international health and agriculture officials warned Tuesday that the chief strategy for containing the disease -- the mass slaughter of chickens -- could inadvertently help the virus mutate into a form far more threatening to humans.

United Nations officials have pressed countries in the region to accelerate their culling of chickens. But they say that the required contact between poultry and the workforce that is killing them poses a risk by creating more chances for avian flu to hijack genes from ordinary human illness.

Chinese officials said Tuesday they had carried out a modest cull of poultry in the southern Guangxi region after tests on dead ducks confirmed their country had become the 10th to be infected with bird flu.

While urging Asian governments to follow strict guidelines in slaughtering poultry, including the use of extensive protective garb and disinfectant, U.N. officials acknowledged that adherence is spotty.

"There's such tremendous pressure to control the disease and slaughter as many birds as possible, some concessions are being made for the sake of speeding up the culling process," said Hans Wagner, a senior regional officer with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Bangkok.

This is one to watch. There is an entire area of virology about which we don't know much, including the way that avian strains of the flu bug may recombine with the ones which are common to humans. As of now there have been no documented cases of human to human transmission of this disease, but the epidemiology around this epidemic is going to be fascinating to watch. We had a run-through of the public health/disease tracking and isolation system earlier this year with SARS, which seemed to have come out of the same region. Between bird flu, mad cow, SARS and hep C in onions, I think we have a problem.

Civil Rights-GLBT Division

Via Amy Sullivan of Political Aims, we learn that the PBS series "Flashpoints" is featuring a program on "God and Country," which will be airing tonight in the Washington market. Check your local listings. Amy promises that some liberal heavy-hitters will be part of the discussion.

PBS commissioned an Ipsos-Reid poll on American's attitudes toward various issues which have religious overtones. I thought these responses were interesting:

1. Should same-sex marriages be legal, or not? Yes (should be legal) 35% No (should not be legal) 61% Don't Know / Not Sure 4%

9. Do you feel same-sex couples should or should not ... Be presumed to inherit the other partners' estate at death unless otherwise specified in a will Yes (Should) 64% No (Should not) 32% Don't Know / Not Sure 5%

Have the right to adopt children Yes (Should) 49% No (Should not) 47% Don't Know / Not Sure 3%

Take out a mortgage or buy a house together Yes (Should) 77% No (Should not) 20% Don't Know / Not Sure 3%

Be allowed to file a joint tax return Yes (Should) 55% No (Should not) 41% Don't Know / Not Sure 4%

Have a court decide how to divide up their assets in the event they break up Yes (Should) 57% No (Should not) 38% Don't Know / Not Sure 5%

Have the right to make medical decisions when the other partner is hospitalized Yes (Should) 78% No (Should not) 19% Don't Know / Not Sure 3%

So, when this is cast as a rights issue rather than a religious one, Americans mostly favor the application of the rights accorded either the civil contract of marriage or a religious marriage. This may be a big issue in this election year, but Americans are gradually making up their minds that it is a rights issue.

A Sniff from the CJ

High Court Won't Review Scalia's Recusal Decision

By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, responding to questions from two U.S. senators about a duck hunting trip involving Justice Antonin Scalia and Vice President Dick Cheney, said Monday that it is up to each justice, not the court as a whole, to decide whether to withdraw from a pending case.

"There is no formal procedure for court review of the decision of a justice in an individual case," Rehnquist said in a letter to Democratic Sens. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. "That is so because it has long been settled that each justice must decide such a question for himself."

He added that it was "ill-considered" for the senators to suggest that Scalia step aside in the pending case involving Cheney and the White House task force he headed to develop the Bush administration's energy policy. Cheney has refused to disclose records of the task force's activities.

Last week, Leahy and Lieberman wrote Rehnquist asking whether the high court had "procedures and rules" for determining when a justice should step aside and a policy for "review of a justice's unilateral decision to decline to recuse himself."

I think this is an enormous mistake on Rehnquist's part. While it is true that such a request has probably never been made to a Chief Justice on the part of the legislative branch before, Scalia's behavior is so egregious that failing to act runs the risk of undermining public confidence in the court from which there are no appeals. This has more than a whiff of judicial arrogance about it.

Primary Thoughts

Paul Woodward of The War in Context writes some commentary which seems appropriate for this New Hampshire primary day:

For many of us in 2000 the mantra was "vote your conscience." Now it might be better to say, vote with consequence. How "your guy" makes you feel, how noble are his goals, how pristine is his political record -- none of this matters one iota if he never makes it to the White House. There is no principle so high that it can be squared with a sense of resignation when contemplating the possibility of George Bush's re-election. Who can unseat him? That alone matters.

This means that if we are going to see a Democrat return to the White House in 2005, there needs to be a rekindling of faith; a renewal of the conviction that we actually have the power to make this happen. In a reversal from 2000, the ultimate form of cynicism this time around is to support a candidate who can't win.

At some point this evening, we will have a sense of who the voters of New Hampshire see as the best candidate to oppose George W. Bush. In seven short days, another seven states will chime in.

The blogosphere is in a reflective mood this morning. Both Chris and robeson have thoughtful and optimistic pieces up at the group blog Southpaw. The electoral process may not be perfect, but it does give us the means to unseat what Kevin Phillips called "The American Dynasty." I'm hoping that historians of the future will look back at this era and detect a significant shift in the ways our countrymen viewed the awesome responsibility of voting.

Challenging CW

Publius, the very smart Juris Doctor who blogs at Legal Fiction put up a post worth pondering yesterday. Publius challenges the conventional wisdom about "50-50 nation" and points out flaws in our electoral system which cause the extremes to pull at the center, to the disadvantage of all. I'm not entirely sure that I buy the complete argument, but Publius promises that this will be part of a longer series which will examine what we are getting wrong electorally. I'll be awaiting further installments, as I love contrarians. Publius, welcome to the 'sphere!

In "comments" to the post below, paradox asked a question to which I responded by email, and don't want to go on at length here. But let me just make this point: one of the things that the blogworld does is make possible long-form, complex and nuanced arguments, such as the case Publius is making. Paradox asked me what killed Usenet. One of the things that killed it was success: the larger groups had so many posters responding so quickly (even at 300 baud, or whatever the hell it was we were using those days) that everyone was forced into a reactive mode, having to fend off dozens or hundreds of counterarguments (which were frequently flames) at once. The traffic outpaced the technology.

Republican Revolt

Va. Seeks To Leave Bush Law Behind
Republicans Fight School Mandates
By Jo Becker and Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 24, 2004; Page A01

RICHMOND, Jan. 23 -- The Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates sharply criticized President Bush's signature education program Friday, calling the No Child Left Behind Act an unfunded mandate that threatens to undermine the state's own efforts to improve students' performance.

By a vote of 98 to 1, the House passed a resolution calling on Congress to exempt states like Virginia from the program's requirements. The law "represents the most sweeping intrusions into state and local control of education in the history of the United States," the resolution says, and will cost "literally millions of dollars that Virginia does not have."
The federal law aims to improve the performance of students, teachers and schools with yearly tests and serious penalties for failure. In his State of the Union speech Tuesday, Bush said that "the No Child Left Behind Act is opening the door of opportunity to all of America's children."

Officials in other states also have complained about the effects of the act, signed into law in 2002. But Friday's action in the Virginia House represents one of the strongest formal criticisms to date from a legislative chamber controlled by the president's own party.

My legislature is raising holy hell about this. The state's budget, still recession-strapped, is exceptionally tight. The last governor ran on an "abolish the car tax" (like the Gropinator) platform, and those cuts kicked in just as the economy tanked. We've been in a world of hurt for three years. The car tax was redistributed to the localities and they responded to the cut by raising property taxes. The Bush tax shift got here early, and is likely to make this year's state budgeting process all the more painful

The WaPo points up another area of conflict between existing state law and the federal testing standards in NCLB: we have a fairly stringent set of tests in place--which are controversial on their own, with lots of issues about "teaching to the test" being debated by local school boards--and the legislature is arguing that the federal law introduces competing and contradictory standards.

There is a meta-theme behind all of this. Public education in this country is a mess, politicized and queerly funded. If every district in the country had similar resources, I think there would be less squabbling. As long as we continue to fund school districts primarily by local property taxes, huge inequities will continue to exist and it won't be possible to do apples-to-apples comparisons.

The Blogging of the Blogosphere

The Insider's Insider: N.H.'s Guy for News
By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 25, 2004; Page D01

DERRY, N.H. -- Answering a question at one of his town hall meetings, Howard Dean ad-libbed a divinely sarcastic way to call Wesley Clark a Republican -- "I don't mind that he voted for Nixon and Reagan -- that was a long time ago" -- perfect copy for the media throng. "Bless you," shouted a wire service reporter, all fingers typing. The quote would appear on the wire after the event had ended, give or take editing glitches, maybe an hour later.

That is about 58 minutes late by the standards of James Pindell, editor of PoliticsNH.com, the newest arrival on the New Hampshire primary media scene. As usual, Pindell could be found in the back, last row on the right, recognizable by his trademark Elvis Costello glasses and reddish hair. On a laptop with a 12-inch screen, Pindell typed up Dean's quote and posted it on his Web site, "before Dean was on the next question," he says.
....

Embedded reporters follow candidates everywhere, making it nearly impossible to have an exclusive, much less a private dinner. And now there is James Pindell, who estimates he can broadcast the latest mud-throwing so quickly on his Web site that soon candidates will come to rely on him to find out what their opponents are saying about them, instead of using those campaign spies they send to one another's events.

The description of Pindell's role as techno-vanguard would not sit well with him. Not too far out of graduate school in journalism, Pindell sees himself in the old-school model: a political junkie, a newsman chasing the scoop, thinking "every news cycle, how can I own it."

"We're just like the boys on the bus," he says of his news staff of two, plus three interns. "Only we're the boys on the bus with laptops."

Pindell grew up in Indiana, where in eighth grade he began writing congressmen he saw on C-SPAN. When Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) left him a response on his voice mail, an addiction was born. He graduated from Drake University in Des Moines early so he wouldn't miss the last Iowa caucuses. He spent that year working for Yepsen, for whom he toiled away, a happy factotum, soaking up the master's lessons.

Two years ago, while covering the statehouse in West Virginia for a small newspaper, he got a strange offer. It came by e-mail from PoliticsNJ.com and invited Pindell to work at a similar site in New Hampshire. The sender was anonymous. Pindell has still never met his backers or talked to them by phone. He communicates with them by e-mail and deals with an accountant, who is regular with the checks. He guesses they are not journalists, but still Pindell felt a kinship: "They were junkies worse than I am."

This has been the weekend that the blogosphere has turned back on itself to examine what we are doing, where we are going and doing some philosophizing about it. I did not get to hear The Blogging of the President last night, and my audio card is fried, so I'll have to wait for the transcript. Billmon, blogging from the World Economic Forum in Davos, offers an extended meditation on blogging, jounalistic business models and the history of information transfer:

One of the worst moments at the Davos session was when some twinkie from a New York advertising firm stood up and described how her firm has started turning first to blogs to place ads for certain products. "What I don't understand," she said, "is why the big media companies don't swoop in and buy up some of these blogs while they're still cheap."

At least that's what I hope. The potential of blogging is something I've come to believe in passionately -- as passionately as I once believed in the mission of professional journalism. I'd hate to be wrong twice.

What do you think? I think there is more going on here than simple information transfer. Billmon talks about the "neural network" model, as if it were a fad. It isn't, it is a branch of physics which I find fascinating. In essense, it is the particle physics version of meme theory. Add a little anthropology and sociology (readers are humans, after all) and you have a social phenomenon.

Jack Balkin is celebrating the first anniversary of his blog with an extended discussion of communication and social theory. Jack is responding to an article in yesterday's NYT which argues that the blogosphere is inherently fractious, causing great division among people. Jack disagrees in substance, complaining that the writer doesn't understand the technology.

I must also note that the article quotes only people who believe that the Internet technology is bad for democratic discussion. In particular, the article highlights Cass Sunstein's arguments in Republic.com, which, as I noted in my previous post, were technologically naive. In this way, ironically, this newspaper article enacts the very thing it accuses the Internet of: listening to and presenting the views only of people who share one point of view.

Unfortunately, this article continues a meme that I have often found among progressive people-- that the Internet is bad for democracy. I think that this view is deeply mistaken. The Internet has its strengths and weaknesses, just like the traditional mass media have. The question is not whether the Internet is good or is bad for democracy. The key question is how the Internet changes the ways that democratic activities of organization, discussion, protest, and decisionmaking occur, and how the code of the Internet can be altered in different ways and different contexts to promote these different forms of democratic activity.

I have a slightly different view. I believe that what we are all doing is creating new forms of relationships and negotiating the social morals that go along with them. This is exciting and a little scary, but I think it is significant for both you and for me that we are having fairly substantive discussions together that we would never have been able to have before. Does it matter to me that I have readers all over the globe? You bet, I'm getting a perspective on the planet, and how I fit on it, that I couldn't have gotten even a few years ago. That matters.

Man and Machine

Stars and Stripes is a daily paper, partially funded by the Department of Defense, to bring news of home, the larger service family and some world news to our troops. It is available in the States, but the target audience is the troops serving abroad. Since the war started, I've taken to reading the Letters to the Editor at least weekly. Here is one from last week from a Master Sargent serving in Kuwait.

Stop loss unethical

After having served eight years and 11 days of an eight-year contract, I’m left to wonder about the economic ramifications of the military’s stop loss policy as it affects the military’s expenditures and my own pocketbook.

I can’t help but notice how much difference there is pay-wise between me, an E-5, and a civilian contractor here in the Middle East doing a similar job. Before now, it’s been more like a subtle irritation. I was fully aware that even though I only had an active-status obligation of six years, like everyone else who initially enlists in the military I actually signed an eight-year contract. But now, since that eight-year contract is over and I’m still here, why should I be getting paid any less than the civilian contractors do?

I apologize in advance to anyone this offends but, patriotism and duty aside, we enlisted members are very similar to indentured servants of the past. If this weren’t so, we could quit at any time. We trade a certain period of our lives to gain certain skills, learn a trade, or maybe see the world.

Those who decide they like military life may decide to make it a career. But many, like me, never planned on doing more than one term of service. Now that my term is up and my monetary debt is paid, I should be allowed to get out or at the very least receive a hefty pay raise or a bonus. I could certainly still fulfill my patriotic duty as a richer man.

Stars and Stripes published a survey they conducted on the ground in Iraq last fall. The multipart story on conditions and morale was published last fall. The troops were quite critical. The conditions were not good. Read the story. What's surprising is that months later, Reservists preparing to rotate into Iraq are still having to buy their own bullet-proof vests, and some troops are still eating Meals, Ready to Eat. Kellogg, Brown and Root cafeteria exposees in recent weeks have spoken of filth and rats.

Via The Sideshow I found a link to Jim Romenesko, media watchdog at the Poynter Institute (this belongs in your bookmarks, I start the day with Jim), who picks up memos sent to him by various media operations.

MEMO INTRO FROM EUROPEAN STARS & STRIPES STAFFER:

The memo below makes it sound like selling the press and firing the pressmen is just a proposal, but we talked about it at length in the meeting. They said the pressmen firings will be humane, and Stripes could keep the proceeds from selling the press, etc. It's important to understand how Stripes operates to appreciate this. Our budget is $30 million a year. The Pentagon gives us $11 million. (This is absurd. We cover the Pentagon. Why doesn't Congress give us some money instead? Probably because the Pentagon prefers to have that power over us and be able to yank our chain when it feels like it.) Beyond this, we're told to operate self-sufficiently to the greatest extent we can. Again, this is ridiculous. We don't have huge car dealerships and department stores and malls to advertise with us. We can't possibly function as a real newspaper from a business standpoint. We exist as a service to the troops, particularly in wartime. Yet we're told to operate this way. So we're behind the eight ball from the get-go. Then Iraq comes along. There's a war. There are 130,000 troops in Iraq. We send reporters there. We expand the newshole. It costs money -- a lot of money beyond Stripes' normal operating costs. Congress gives the Pentagon $87 billion to fight the war, because fighting a war in Iraq costs money -- a lot of money beyond the Pentagon's normal operating costs. Yet the Pentagon tells us to forget it and forces us to SELL OUR PRESS to have money to continue to cover the war and be a newspaper. And this comes just a few months after our survey of the troops got front page play in the Washington Post and was a huge embarrassment to the Pentagon. So the Pentagon is basically telling us that the reason Stars and Stripes exists -- to provide a real newspaper to troops during wartime -- is just too gosh darned expensive to fund. And we're talking about just a few million dollars here, piss in a pot for the Pentagon's bloated budgets. It's not about money. It's totally political. It's about trying to kill Stars and Stripes.

Brought to you by the same people who just cut foreign deployment and hazardous duty pay.

See, Rummy is a technocrat. He's all about systems and process. That some of those systems and processes happen to involve people is of no interest to him. Rummy, a fighter pilot in an earlier war, is entranced by the whiz-bang of war toys. He wants a lighter, leaner Army that is equipped like a combination of James Bond, Terminator and Neo in "The Matrix." He imagines that if he turns out enough if these techno-supermen, our world hegemony is assured.

Fourth-Generation Warfare, which is what we are actually conducting in Iraq, as opposed to Rummy's technicolor fantasy, is personnel heavy. An ideological war cannot be won by gadgets. We blew it in Viet Nam because we didn't understand this, likewise in Haiti, Somalia and any number of limited interventions in the last decade. Insurgencies are political wars, and the solutions are political, not solely military. Using the military alone has cost us a dozen soldiers in the last four days. Gee, I guess this is working well.

Col. John R. Boyd, the founder of Fourth Gen warfare strategic doctrine said, "Machines don't fight wars. People do, and they use their minds."

What we are doing right now in Iraq isn't using those minds. There is a cost for stupidity. The stupidity is at the top, and the grunts are paying the price.

Army Clash

Size of military sets the stage for big political battle
By GEORGE EDMONSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WASHINGTON -- The question of whether to increase the size of the active duty U.S. military generates passionate feelings on both sides. But not necessarily the sides that might be expected.

Republicans and Democrats in both congressional chambers are pushing plans to add full-time troops. Across the Potomac River, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is leading the opposition.

A clash is almost certain when President Bush submits a new defense budget next month and Congress begins working through it.

"I don't think this is a partisan issue at all," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). "In fact, it's probably a Hill vs. Pentagon more so than a partisan issue."

Chambliss chairs the Senate Armed Services subcommittee that oversees the size of the active duty military. And he said he had already alerted Rumsfeld's office that it would need to address the subject.

There are about 1.4 million men and women on active duty and roughly the same number in the National Guard and Reserve. The U.S. active duty force has been shrinking steadily for more than a decade. Slightly more than 2 million troops were on active duty in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States led the Persian Gulf War against Iraq.

About a fifth of the approximately 130,000 troops in Iraq now are Guard and Reserve forces, and the percentage is likely to rise considerably under the new rotation plan. Both the numbers of Guard and Reserve troops deployed and the extended time many have served overseas are creating much of the concern over the size of the military. The fear is that re-enlistments will drop and getting new recruits will become more difficult.

A great deal of the attention concerning an increase is focused on the Army. Advocates for more soldiers frequently cite last year's retirement speech by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who warned of the pitfalls of missions that exceed capabilities. "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army," he said.

Meanwhile, from U.S. News "Washington Whispers":

The Rummy Way
When Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee last year broke rank with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and called for a boost in troop levels, the Pentagon chief didn't fret. He began twisting arms. It worked. In legislation newly introduced to add troops, sponsor Rep. Ellen Tauscher, California Democrat, can't find a single GOP cosponsor.

War Wounded

Stress epidemic strikes American forces in Iraq

The war's over, but the suicide rate is high and the army is riddled with acute psychiatric problems. Peter Beaumont reports

Sunday January 25, 2004
The Observer

Up to one in five of the American military personnel in Iraq will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, say senior forces' medical staff dealing with the psychiatric fallout of the war.

This revelation follows the disclosure last month that more than 600 US servicemen and women have been evacuated from the country for psychiatric reasons since the conflict started last March.

At least 22 US soldiers have killed themselves - a rate considered abnormally high - mostly since President George Bush declared an end to major combat on 1 May last year, These suicides have led to a high-level Department of Defence investigation, details of which will be disclosed in the next few weeks.

Although the overall suicide rate is running at an average of 13.5 per 100,000 troops, compared with a US army average of 10.5 to 11 per 100,000 in recent years, the incidence of the vast majority of suicides in the period after 1 May is statistically significant, accounting for about 7 per cent of all service deaths in Iraq.

The same, say experts, is true for psychiatric evacuations, the majority of which have taken place after that date, a fact confirmed in recent interviews by Colonel Theodore Nam, chief of in-patient psychiatry services at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington. He says no psychiatric cases at all were evacuated during the major combat. High levels of psychiatric casualties are expected, despite the US armed forces making an unprecedented effort to deal with stress and psychiatric disorders during service in Iraq.

At the heart of the concern is that Iraq may repeat the experience of Vietnam, which experienced low levels of psychiatric problems during service there in comparison with the two world wars, but very high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among veterans later.

According to Captain Jennifer Berg, the chairman of psychiatric services at the Naval Medical Centre in San Diego, whose staff see US Marines returning from Iraq, military psychiatrists have been warned to expect the disorder to occur in 20 per cent of the servicemen and women in Iraq.

It's time to begin connecting the dots. We are about to see a wave of returning vets with psychiatric problems, "gulf-war syndrome" type illnesses, and the permanently disabled wounded. In the face of this, veterans' benefits are being curtailed. In comments a few days back, Sen. Bob told us about the WWII vet in his VFW post who was given a second appointment for cancer treatment next year. The crisis in the veterans' medical system already exists. It's time to move it to the front page.

Raising up another generation of homeless vets: the Bush legacy.

Scrambling the Scramblers

Eberhart will face 9/ 11 panel
NORAD chief’s testimony part of government inquiry
By PAM ZUBECK THE GAZETTE

The chief of Colorado Springs-based U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command has agreed to testify before a panel investigating why the government didn’t detect and prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.

Although Gen. Ralph “Ed” Eberhart declined to say what he would tell the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, his testimony will come one month before the controversial commission issues its report May 27.

Congress formed the panel despite White House objections and ordered it to find out why the country was caught off-guard on Sept. 11.

Among those who have testified since the commission was formed in 2002 were two NORAD officers who said their command wasn’t watching for attacks from within the United States.

They also said notification was slow, and procedures hampered any possibility that one of the hijacked planes might be intercepted.

Eberhart was commander of NORAD, U.S. Space Command and Air Force Space Command when hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing almost 3,000 people.

Eberhart declined an interview. NORAD issued a statement through a spokesman pledging cooperation.

“NORAD is committed to providing timely and complete responses to the 9/11 Commission’s requests for information,” the statement said, adding officials won’t otherwise comment until the panel finishes its work.

As leader of the joint Canadian and U.S. effort to monitor airspace surrounding North America, Eberhart likely will be asked what NORAD knew and when and how procedures have been changed since the attacks.

Two NORAD generals, testifying May 23, said there were significant delays in NORAD learning about the hijackings from the Federal Aviation Administration and in mobilizing fighter jets to escort or shoot down the airliners.

They said fighters took off about the time the first plane crashed into the North Tower and were eight minutes from New York City when the second airliner struck the South Tower.

Retired Maj. Gen. Larry K. Arnold, in charge at NORAD on Sept. 11, said it was “physically possible” for fighter jets to have arrived at the Pentagon before American Flight 77 had they taken off sooner.

Arnold testified NORAD obtained authority from President Bush to shoot down United Flight 93 five minutes after it crashed in Pennsylvania.

Military officials since have been given authority to order a shoot-down.

Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, Air Force deputy inspector general on Sept. 11 who now commands the 1st Air Force, Air Combat Command, and Continental U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command Region at Tyndall Air Force Base, said in May that NORAD’s mission is to detect threats from outside the country, not from within.

Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste cited numerous intelligence findings dating back years that showed terrorists contemplated using planes as weapons.

“Was not this information, sir, available to NORAD as of Sept. 11, 2001?” he asked.

“We had not postured, prior to Sept. 11, 2001, for the scenario that took place that day,” McKinley said. “There was no intelligence indication at any level within NORAD or DOD of a terrorist threat to commercial aviation prior to the attacks.”

One of the hallmarks of intellectual dishonesty and laziness is the unwillingness to take new risks and make new mistakes. Those of you who aren't old enough to have experienced Watergate may be unfamiliar with some of the tropes which will come into play this spring, but the one which will apply to the 9/11 investigation is "What did they know and when did they know it?" The stakes are different in this iteration of investigation: Watergate was a cheap burglery and coverup. 9/11 was an international tragedy.

Faith Matters

Via Philocrites, an interesting article from The Boston Globe about the United Church of Christ and the congregationalist movement. Howard Dean's congregation, First Congregationalist in Burlington, is a member of this denomination.

How will Dean's faith inform his judgment?
By Nancy S. Taylor, 1/24/2004

SINCE DEMOCRATIC presidential candidate Howard Dean has said he is a a congregationalist, his religious commitment has come under scrutiny.
....

So, what does being a congregationalist say about Dean and how his faith might inform his political judgments? To be accurate, Dean is a member of the United Church of Christ, a 1.3-million-member denomination of nearly 6,000 congregations that was established in 1957 by the union of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The UCC is the largest Protestant denomination in Massachusetts. But, across New England, where congregational heritage is as prevalent as clam chowder, many UCC members cling to the original "congregational" identity.
....

The UCC's congregationalist roots trace back to the early 1600s when the Pilgrims and Puritans arrived on these shores. These congregationalists, as they were later called, sought religious independence from persecuting authorities in Europe. They believed in local church autonomy. They eschewed an elite priesthood that, they averred, had amassed too much power and privilege. They were committed to religious freedom (although, regrettably, they failed initially to accord to others the same freedom they sought for themselves).

Today, it is this freedom that allows our members, whether clergy or lay, to hold remarkably different views. A Field Guide to US Congregations, a 2002 publication based on a comprehensive survey of US Christians, found that slightly more UCC members identified themselves as conservative rather than liberal.
....

In Massachusetts 10 percent of our UCC congregations have formally voted to be open to and affirming of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Christians. In none of the above-cited instances, however, were (or are) all Congregationalists or members of the UCC in agreement.

Dean supports civil rights for gay couples, although he is not in favor of gay marriage. The UCC includes those who share this view, as well as those who oppose recognition of homosexual couples and others who support gay marriage.

How can the UCC exist with such a diversity of theological perspectives and social convictions? We believe God is still speaking and did not stop speaking when the biblical canon was closed or the ancient creeds crystallized. Therefore, we are still listening and learning. We are convinced that the thud and clash of competing ideas in uneasy proximity to each other, make for spiritually alive, intellectually agile, and deeply engaged Christians.

To be a member of the UCC is to apply one's own, God-given intellect to inform one's faith. It is to examine an array of possibilities with attention to both tradition and new perspectives. As a member of the UCC, Dean is not instructed what to think by a pope, bishops, or his own pastor, for we do not grant that power to anyone.
Instead, we engage in "responsible freedom" -- the freedom to test and entertain ideas in an environment of respectful, if often impassioned, civil discourse. We should expect no less, of both citizens and elected officials -- religious or otherwise -- across the whole of our political life.

Nancy S. Taylor is minister and president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Since that fateful day when I introduced myself to you at Kos's place back in October, I have been outspoken about both my political and religious liberalism. For some on the secular left, that has left me open to attack on both my intellect and my political purity. One of the ideas that powers Bump is that faith and politics can have something to do with each with out cooking up a Jerry Falwell stew. A religious left exists in this country, but we don't get the megaphone of the Bakkers, the Robertsons or the Graham family dynasty. Secular critics have complained that we aren't doing enough to counter the poisonous rhetoric of the Christian Right. If you want to know what those on the religious left are talking about and actually doing, you will have to do a little digging. When the secular press writes about us at all, they usually get it wrong. Secular journos don't understand religion or religious people. Which is why I am glad to see this article in the BoGlo, written by an ordained member of the United Church of Christ. She does a beautiful job of depicting the "big tent" of the UCC.

In coming weeks, I hope to be able to lay out some of the social positions of the religous left, in the words of their own people, not of the journalists.

In the article there is a brief interview with Dean's pastor. After the 2002 tax cut, the minister sent out an appeal to the congregation asking them to send a portion of it to the church to use for social justice programs for the poor. Dean sent the entire rebate check. That's called "walking the walk." St. Francis of Assisi is reputed to have said, "Preach the Gospel always. Use words when necessary."

Family Business

Dean Drubbed by Post Editorial Page: It’s the War, Stupid
The only Washington Post columnist or editorial writer to lament the popping of the Howard Dean bubble was Charles Krauthammer.

Dean has had at least two formal sessions with Post editorial writers. Editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt and Ruth Marcus, the editorial staff’s political guide, met with Dean in August before a rally in Falls Church. Dean later came to the paper’s DC headquarters to meet with editors. Marcus also has been out on the campaign trail.

All the more surprising to find this editorial in this morning's WaPo:

Defending the Rant
Saturday, January 24, 2004; Page A18

O N THE MATTER OF Howard Dean's Iowa concession speech: Let's get a grip. We don't mean the candidate. We're talking about the public and the press, the late-night comics and the Internet remixers, all of whom have seized on the speech as the most revealing political moment since Dan Quayle flunked the spelling bee. Not to mention a heck of a lot more fun to watch -- and watch and watch and watch.

That's not to say the speech wasn't a disaster. It was -- a solid 7 on the political Richter scale, causing major, if not catastrophic, damage to the former Vermont governor's candidacy. Mr. Dean's political tuning fork, which had been so finely adjusted for much of the campaign, went horribly off kilter Monday night. Mr. Dean says he was trying to buck up an audience full of devastated young Deaniacs, but he made a mistake, and a rather rookie one at that, in not understanding how what might have seemed like rational exuberance inside the hall would come off far differently to those who weren't quite so into the moment. The damage it inflicted on Mr. Dean's candidacy was hugely amplified by the 24-7 media culture and the ubiquity of the Internet, which recycled and remixed the speech into one of the major political events of the 2004 campaign.

And yet, the speech itself was not as bad as the reaction to it would suggest. One could imagine Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) giving a similar war whoop and not sustaining anything like the damage that has accrued to Mr. Dean. Indeed, Mr. Kerry might well have been congratulated for shedding his aloof image. The speech has caused such big trouble for Mr. Dean because it so graphically evoked already-present worries about the candidate's temperament.

This is a common political phenomenon. Thus, Mr. Quayle's misspelling of potato was a big deal because of underlying doubts about the vice president's intellect. President George H.W. Bush's supposed fascination with a supermarket scanner resonated because of the perception of the president as out of touch with ordinary folk. Likewise, the grief that Vice President Al Gore took over his alleged boasts to have discovered pollution problems at Love Canal, invented the Internet or inspired a character in "Love Story" was the product of his reputation for self-serving puffery. In each of these cases, the importance of an episode, real or imagined, was inflated because of a pre-existing political condition.

In this case, there are legitimate reasons to worry about Mr. Dean's temperament that the speech stirred up but didn't quite exemplify. Mr. Dean's problem is not that he's given to, as he joked to David Letterman, "crazy, red-faced rants." Rather, as we've said before, the more serious concern about Mr. Dean is his admitted tendency to speak before he thinks. "I lead with my heart and not my head," he said Thursday. Not terribly reassuring, and more reason for unease than Monday's outburst.

Let's have a little fun deconstructing this, shall we? First, they aren't really defending the rant; they are using it as a symbol of a much deeper problem--call this the "Krauthammer diagnosis technique"--of tempermament, as if there were some sort of presidential temperament which is written in stone somewhere. If there is such a thing, the incurious, petty, vindictive and simplistic current possessor of the office manifestly doesn't have it.

Then, the writer back tracks to some political gaffes of history. Dan Quayle not being able to spell potato is arguably less significant than C Plus Augustus' inability to correctly identify the citizens of one of the oldest civilizations on the planet while running for the highest office in the land. Bush Sr.'s grocery store revelation demonstrated that he was completely out of touch. This was simply true, and the voters turned him out. But repeating the Al Gore inventions, all of them press inventions, says nothing it all about Gore, Dean or anything but the self-regard of the fourth estate. WaPo institutions like David Broder are still saying this stuff.

It's OK for W to cite Jesus Christ as his favorite "philosopher" because "he changed my heart," but for Dean to lead with his heart demonstrates dangerous problems of temperament. It makes me want to holler, too.

Harry Jaffe's "Post Watch" column in the Washingtonian justifies the existence of this publication, which is pretty fluffy except for Jaffe and "Capital Comment," a B+ gossip column. It's a monthly, but it sometimes breaks news.

Oh, by the way, you all know about The Wonkette, don't you? I was devastated when Ana Marie Cox closed down The Antic Muse in November, but now I see she's using her patented snark for hire. Good for her.

Keeping with the gossip theme, have you seen the cover of the new Advocate? Discuss!

(via Patrick Nielsen Hayden's omnium gatherum of a blog, Electrolite.)

On a more serious note, Steve Gilliard is back in the hospital and is facing open heart surgery next week. Go give him some love in the comments boxes, and, since this is a prayin' crowd, to a large degree, let's do some of that, too.

Down a Rat Hole

Bush Seeks 7% Boost in Military Spending
The $402-billion plan covers weapons and antiterrorism programs. A separate request is expected for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Esther Schrader, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration wants to boost military spending by 7%, to nearly $402 billion, in fiscal 2005, the Pentagon said Friday.

That would take the defense budget to levels exceeding those at the height of the Cold War. The increase would help pay for a raft of costly weapons and programs bolstered by Washington's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The administration is expected to make a request later in the year — most likely after the November presidential election — for an additional $50 billion or more to pay for those military operations

....

Stephen Daggett, a defense analyst for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, said the requested 2005 budget increase is about half of what is needed to keep up with inflation.

"The big news is that it doesn't include the supplemental appropriations for Iraq or any projection of what those costs will be in fiscal 2005," Daggett said.

Budgeting is a shell game. How the hell are we supposed to figure out what's being spent on anything? Hint: we're not.

UPDATE: Phil Carter has some informative commentary on the defense budget over at INTEL DUMP. While defense spending is now higher than it was at any point during the Cold War, Phil says, "You can't have a steak and lobster military on a McDonald's budget."

The post which precedes it, on the serious problems in force structure and retention and recruitment problems in the Guard and Reserves, also has a detailed analysis. I don't expect that Phil and I have much overlap in our politics, but I respect his skills as an analyst of all things military, and particularly on military law.

Obstruction of Justice

Federal Judge Scolds Justice Dept. Lawyers
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 24, 2004; Page A04

A furious federal judge ordered Justice Department lawyers yesterday to explain why they should not be held in contempt of court for telling subpoenaed witnesses not to testify before him in a class-action discrimination lawsuit.

Three Department of Agriculture employees were subpoenaed and scheduled to answer questions yesterday in court about whether top USDA officials had acknowledged any discrimination against Native American farmers when providing loans and assistance. A group of Native American farmers sued the USDA in 1999, but the case has been bogged down as the Justice Department unsuccessfully sought to appeal U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan's rulings that the farmer group qualified to file the broader class-action case.

Justice Department lawyers representing the Agriculture Department acknowledged to Sullivan that they told employees they did not have to come to court because they believed such testimony was improper.

"What gives you the authority to instruct witnesses not to comply with a subpoena of this court?" Sullivan asked Justice Department lawyer Carol Federighi. "You put yourself at significant risk of being held in contempt."

Federighi explained that the subpoenas appeared to be "a misuse of the court process." "I'll tell you what: You nor anyone else better ever instruct a witness not to appear," Sullivan said. "You understand me?"

Sullivan told the parties that in his 20 years as a judge he had never heard of government lawyers obstructing the testimony of witnesses, and he gave the department 30 days to defend its actions in writing. Justice Department lawyers declined to comment yesterday.

The Bump Bar Association may have some comments here. I've been watching the law in Washington for almost 20 years and I've never seen anything like this before. Simple mistakes, I've seen many, of the kind that make you shake your head and ask "What were they thinking?" This appears to be something way beyond incompetence.

I've been following this case since it was filed and it appears both to be well founded and pointing out a pattern of discrimination against Native American farmers which has been entrenched for decades. If it takes a few lawyers serving time for contempt to shake some arrogance loose from Ashcroft's Justice Department, I'm all for it.

Weapons of Mass Derision

Iraq Illicit Arms Gone Before War, Departing Inspector Says
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: January 24, 2004

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 — David Kay, who led the American effort to find banned weapons in Iraq, said Friday after stepping down from his post that he has concluded that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons at the start of the war last year.

In an interview with Reuters, Dr. Kay said he now thought that Iraq had illicit weapons at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but that the subsequent combination of United Nations inspections and Iraq's own decisions "got rid of them."

Asked directly if he was saying that Iraq did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country, Dr. Kay replied, according to a transcript of the taped interview made public by Reuters, "That is correct."

New WMD blow for Blair

Survey chief resigns saying Iraq never had stockpiles

Duncan Campbell and Patrick Wintour
Saturday January 24, 2004
The Guardian

Tony Blair last night suffered a blow on the eve of the most testing week of his premiership when the US official at the helm of the hunt for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction asserted Iraq did not have large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

Resigning from his post after nine fruitless months in charge of the Iraq Survey Group he said he did not think there had been a large-scale weapons programme inside Iraq since 1991.
David Kay, a hardline CIA of ficial close to the Republicans also criticised President George Bush for failing to give him adequate support.

His remarks will add to the pressure on Mr Blair as he battles to win backbench support ahead of Tuesday's vote on top-up tuition fees and tries to avert criticisms in the Hutton report into the death of the government weapons scientist David Kelly.

Weapons of mass destruction related program activities? I think our work here is not done. Why was it that we spent $200 billion dollars, thousands of lives and limbs? Remind me again...

This may cause Blair's government to fall, but over here it gets barely a whisper. Why is that?

The February Dumps

Billmon is blogging from the World Economic Summit, the annual event in Davos, Switzerland. His comments on the tone of this year's event seem to pretty much match the actual state of the world economy:

Two days into the forum, and the mood here feels like a cross between a CEO's funeral and the VIP lounge at Kennedy Airport -- after the VIPs have learned that all flights have been cancelled due to weather.
....

And so, a bad case of ennui -- and slight reduction in Davos Man's usual smug arrogance. Not an entirely bad thing, actually.

It sounds like February has come a little early this year. The only good things about February: it's short and the first crop of asparagus is in.

Stinky Business

This is really bothering me. Maybe one of our legal eagles can enlighten me. If a district court judge who was sitting on, let's say, a corporate malfeasance case, did something like this, what would happen to her?

I submit that it is possible that Justice Scalia could hear and judge this case in a fair and impartial manner, but, since there is no appeal from the Supreme Court, oughtn't even the "appearance of conflict of interest" have a little higher standard?

High Court Questioned On Allowing Scalia Trip
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 23, 2004; Page A04

Two top Senate Democrats challenged Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist yesterday to explain the Supreme Court procedures that permitted Justice Antonin Scalia to spend several days recently duck hunting with Vice President Cheney, who is a named party in a case pending at the court.

Judiciary Committee ranking member Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Governmental Affairs Committee ranking member Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who is running for president, wrote Rehnquist asking for information about Supreme Court "canons, procedures and rules" on the recusal of justices from cases in which "their impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

"When a sitting judge, poised to hear a case involving a particular litigant, goes on vacation with that litigant, reasonable people will question whether that judge can be a fair and impartial adjudicator of that man's case or his opponent's claims," the senators wrote.

Scalia himself has provided recent precedent on recusal. I, too, want to know about the "canons, procedures and rules" which allow him to think his behavior is unremarkable.

Iraq in an Election Year

U.S. Offer To Amend Iraq Plan Is Rebuffed
Shiite Says Program Lacks 'Legitimacy'
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 23, 2004; Page A12

NAJAF, Iraq, Jan. 22 -- Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, has deemed a U.S. plan for the country's political transition unacceptable in "its totality and its details," a representative said Thursday. The remarks signaled Sistani's refusal to consider revisions that American officials hoped would permit the plan to go forward.

The comments by the spokesman, Mohammed al-Yahya Musawi, represented the reclusive Sistani's most forceful and elaborate rejection yet of the Nov. 15 transition agreement. The depth of the objections suggested a widening gulf between compromises U.S. officials are willing to consider and the demands of a man who is perhaps Iraq's most powerful figure.

Under the plan, regional caucuses would be held across Iraq to choose a transitional assembly in May. That assembly would select a provisional government that would take power by June 30, formally ending the U.S. occupation. But since December, Sistani has insisted instead on direct elections to choose that government, prompting demonstrations by tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Baghdad and Basra, Iraq's largest cities.
In his remarks Thursday, Musawi said Sistani would drop his demand for elections if U.N. and Iraqi experts determined they were not feasible. But he said that shift would be possible only if another plan were adopted. He called the current plan "extremely dangerous."

"If neutral experts come and say that elections are not possible, I will retreat from my position, but on one condition," Musawi quoted Sistani as saying. "Foreign experts and Iraqi specialists should find an alternative."

The US has no credibility with much of Iraq, particularly with the Shi'a adherents of Sistani and his related clergy. They know a little something about mass graves in the wake of an uprising after the first Gulf War which was encouraged by Bush Sr. His failure to support the Shi'a resulted in mass murder and further repression by Saddam. I have been struck (as have some Commentors) by how little coverage has been given to massive demonstrations in Basra and Baghdad in the last week.

For U.S., One-Person, One-Vote a Problem in Iraq

Thu Jan 22, 7:12 PM ET
By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - As the world's foremost advocate of democracy, the United States is trying its best to avoid a one-person-one-vote in Iraq (news - web sites) -- at least for this year.

The irony is not lost on Shiite followers of Iraq's most influential cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who question why the United States agitates for the ballot box around the world but not in Iraq.

"Clearly Sistani fears it could lead to a less than full representation of the Shiite majority," David Malone, head of the International Peace Academy think-tank and a former Canadian U.N. ambassador, said.

And the United Nations (news - web sites) basically agrees with the Bush administration. "There is a perception that early elections tend to favor extremists rather than the moderates," one senior U.N. official said.

"One thing the United Nations has learned from the early 1990s is that a well-run election requires a great deal of planning and even then the U.N. cannot guarantee violence-free elections," Malone said.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) is expected to send an electoral team into Iraq this month to study the practicality of direct elections or recommend alternatives, as requested by the United States and the Iraqi leaders. The group will go in after a report from a U.N. security mission, expected to arrive in Baghdad this week or next.

But most diplomats say they believe a second mission would have to follow to mediate. Washington would like Lakhdar Brahimi, who has just finished a two-year stint as U.N. chief envoy in Afghanistan (news - web sites), to negotiate. However, the former Algerian foreign minister has so far declined.

Bush has hamstrung himself by tying the Iraqi elections, in whatever fashion they are conducted, to his own campaign. Sistani is demanding that the UN legitimate the process with oversight, while at the same time Bush's neo-cons are off the reservation undermining what he is trying to do in Iraq.

U.N. Should Change -- or U.S. Should Quit
The world body's rules prevent America from answering threats.
By David Frum and Richard Perle
David Frum and Richard Perle are resident fellows of the American Enterprise Institute and coauthors of the newly published book, "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror"(Random House).

January 23, 2004

The United Nations is the tooth fairy of American politics: Few adults believe in it, but it's generally regarded as a harmless story to amuse the children. Since 9/11, however, the U.N. has ceased to be harmless, and the Democratic presidential candidates' enthusiasm for it has ceased to be amusing. The United Nations has emerged at best as irrelevant to the terrorist threat that most concerns us, and at worst as an obstacle to our winning the war on terrorism. It must be reformed. And if it cannot be reformed, the United States should give serious consideration to withdrawal.

The U.N. has become an obstacle to our national security because it purports to set legal limits on the United States' ability to defend itself. If these limits ever made sense at all, they do not make sense now.

Yet the U.N.'s assertion of them forces presidents and policymakers into a horrible dilemma. If we obey the U.N.'s rules, we compromise our national security. If we defy them, we expose ourselves to accusations of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

According to the U.N. Charter, nations are permitted to use military force only in two situations. Article 51 of the charter recognizes an "inherent" right to self-defense against attack. In all other cases where a nation feels threatened, it is supposed to go to the U.N. Security Council to seek authorization before it takes military action — even action that might forestall an attack.

Frum and Perle are engaging in some myth-making themselves. We did attack Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan--though we are botching it to this day--with a broad coalition. They are conflating Iraq with Afghanistan, as Dick Cheney has been doing in his series of "exclusive interviews" with all the major media outlets over the last couple of weeks.

Their attempt to force events to fit their schemes has been over-ruled by Sistani. If Iraq's Shi'a majority says that the UN has legitimacy, then it does. The neo-con duo can stamp their feet and insist otherwise, but that doesn't make it so.

Bottom line: Iraq is still off of the average voter's radar screen as a campaign issue, but Team Rove have lost control over the timing. The Grand Plan was a piece of ceremonial video tape of "sovereignty" being handed over to some barely elected Iraqis with great pomp and circumstance, happy Iraqis waving flags and a big happy party shot for Fox and CNN. Just in time for the Republican convention, of course. Sistani has vetoed that particular campaign video.

The Iranian state news service (treat as suspect) that the young firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr preached a Friday sermon against the UN, basically repeating the charges of Frum and Perle, while adding that the UN is nothing more than a tool of the US. The plot thickens.

Cook until Well Done

Grand Jury Hears Plame Case
Testimony begins in front of a grand jury in the investigation into whether the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame was improperly leaked to the press
By JOHN DICKERSON AND VIVECA NOVAK

>BLOCKQUOTE>Sources with knowledge of the case tell TIME that behind closed doors at the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse, nearby the Capitol, a grand jury began hearing testimony Wednesday in the investigation of who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak and other journalists.

A huge unanswered question in this case is whether the leaker or leakers knew that Plame was undercover when they gave her identity away. That is a necessary element for any indictment for leaking the name of a covert agent. However, charges could also be brought for making false statements to the FBI, if a guilty party has falsely claimed innocence in interviews with government agents.

A little red meat.

Debate Debrief

The primary finally got serious, but not all the candidates did.

It's time for Dennis to put the helium away. I like what he has brought to the conversation, but he overstayed his welcome. Al, exit stage left with Dennis. Tuwanna, Al. You may be able to make a career out of being a gadfly, but you got asked a serious question and you blew it. Go home now.

General Clark, why are you here? You kept throwing your resume up there when you got asked domestic policy questions, which were mercifully in short supply.

Howard, baby, nice save. Letterman was both a nice touch and might be the kiss of death. Al Gore didn't go on SNL until he'd made up his mind he wasn't running. The Dianne Sawyer thing you handled nicely, so did Judy, and if you move to Washington, can she come over for coffee at my house? I have this nice little patio...But don't cut off your interviewers before they finish their sentences, makes you look bossy. Change the subject AFTER they've finished. I can tell you never had a psych rotation.

JFK, stop taking yourself so seriously. If I had to look at your mug in the mirror every morning, I'd probably get a little ponderous, too, but....if you want to be taken seriously, take yourself lightly. We all know you are a war hero, what else ya got? What is it with you military guys? We already know you are heroes, what's your next act?

Edwards, we know you are smart. Stop being so impressed with it. Ya ain't talking to a jury, you are talking to someone who wants to know if she wants you in her condo association. Ya got potential, boy. Make me proud.

Joe, and your point would be?....

Who Votes?

I've been thinking these thoughts for a couple of months, but decided they were too wooly and alarming to put into print. Gwynne Dyer has been having the same thoughts and is not as reticent as I, nor was the Salt Lake Tribune.

Al-Qaida will do Whatever it Takes to Assure Bush is Re-elected

Terrorists generally rant about their goals but stay silent about their strategies, so now we have to do a little work for ourselves. If the real goal is still revolutions that bring Islamist radicals to power, then how does attacking the West help? Well, the U.S. in particular may be goaded into retaliating by bombing or even invading various Muslim countries -- and in doing so, may drive enough aggrieved Muslims into the arms of the Islamist radicals that their long-stalled revolutions against local regimes finally get off the ground.

Most analysts outside the United States long ago concluded that that was the principal motive for the 9-11 attack. They would add that by giving the Bush administration a reason to attack Afghanistan, and at least a flimsy pretext for invading Iraq, al-Qaida's attacks have paid off handsomely. U.S. troops are now the unwelcome military rulers of more than 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people there and elsewhere are turning to the Islamist radicals as the only force in the Muslim world that is willing and able to defy American power.

It is astonishing how little this is understood in the United States. I know of no American analyst who has even made the obvious point that al-Qaida wants Bush to win next November's presidential election and continue his interventionist policies in the Middle East for another four years, and will act to save Bush from defeat if necessary.

It probably would not do so unless Bush's number were slipping badly, for any terrorist attack on U.S. soil carries the risk of stimulating resentment against the current administration for failing to prevent it.

Certainly another attack on the scale of 9-11 would risk producing that result, even if al-Qaida had the resources for it. But a simple truck bomb in some U.S. city center a few months before the election, killing just a couple of dozen Americans, could drive voters back into Bush's arms and turn a tight election around. Al-Qaida is clever enough for that.

(Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.)

I received an email this afternoon from a reader in New Zealand who reports that the national paper published a pro-Democrats editorial in today's paper. The paper explained the caucuses and the primary system. The reader notes that this would be ordinary around the time of the general election, but to print it 10 months ahead of the election is extraordinary. Britian's Guardian has already taken anti-Bush positions and has been openly speculating on the identity of the strongest Democratic candidate.

It is useful to be reminded that the entire world has a stake in the outcome of this election, even if they are mostly powerless to influence it. The bad guys also have an opinion, and the ability and the will to wield influence.

UPDATE: WaPo's Jefferson Morley collects editorial opinion from around the world following the Iowa caucuses. Let's just say the world press is a lot more friendly to the Democratic candidates than is the domestic press. The rest of the world seems to belong to DNC.

But the Jan. 19 caucus in Iowa made headlines in news sites the world over. In southern India, the New Kerala news site reported a rare angle that U.S. reporters missed: Kerry's co-chair in Iowa was state legislator Swati Dandekar, an Indian expatriate. In Guadalajara, Mexico, Mural (in Spanish) reported on four Mexican brothers who served in Vietnam and campaigned for Kerry.

But the most persistent question in the initial round of commentary: Do the Iowa results augur well for the Democrats? Or for President Bush, who is generally unpopular abroad?

Posted by Melanie at 05:51 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Spookspeak

(via publius at a very interesting new blog called Legal Fiction)

CIA: Iraq at risk of civil war
The warning, at odds with Bush's upbeat view, was delivered this week to Washington. His aides are pushing to save a transition plan.
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay
Inquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said yesterday, starkly contradicting the upbeat assessment that President Bush gave in his State of the Union address.

The CIA officers' bleak assessment was delivered orally to Washington this week, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified information involved.

The warning echoed growing fears that Iraq's Shiite majority, which has until now grudgingly accepted the U.S. occupation, could turn to violence if its demands for direct elections are spurned.

Meanwhile, Iraq's Kurdish minority is pressing its demand for autonomy and shares of oil revenue.

"Both the Shiites and the Kurds think that now's their time," said one intelligence officer. "They think that if they don't get what they want now, they'll probably never get it. Both of them feel they've been betrayed by the United States before."

Here is what to look for behind this story: it is completely unsourced, which means it is a leak. Clearly, Bremer and Bush were briefed before they went to the UN, but somebody in the intel set thinks the public should know about this. Warren Strobel at Knight Ridder has been a regular recipient of CIA leaks, but often the leaks hit him, the WaPo and the NYT at the same time. Was Strobel singled out, or did the other two papers decide not to run the story, or wait with it to develop it more? I'll be checking the websites all day to see if they put something up.

Felony Report

Ex-C.I.A. Aides Ask for Leak Inquiry by Congress
By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: January 22, 2004

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 — A group of former intelligence officers is pressing Congressional leaders to open an immediate inquiry into the disclosure last summer of the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame.

Their request, outlined in a letter on Tuesday to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and others, reflects discontent and unrest within the intelligence services about the affair, along with concern that a four-month-old Justice Department investigation into the matter may never identify who was behind the disclosure. The syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who first identified Ms. Plame as a C.I.A. officer in a column last July, has identified his sources only as Bush administration officials, and the Justice Department inquiry has not yet produced any public findings.

It is unusual for former intelligence officers to petition Congress on a matter like this. The unmasking of Ms. Plame is viewed within spy circles as an unforgivable breach of secrecy that must be exhaustively investigated and prosecuted, current and former intelligence officials say. Anger over the matter is especially acute because of the suspicion, under investigation by the Justice Department, that the disclosure may have been made by someone in the White House to punish Ms. Plames's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for opposing administration policy on Iraq.

Attorney General John Ashcroft disqualified himself last month from any involvement in the inquiry, and Justice Department officials have named Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, as a special prosecutor in the case. Mr. Ashcroft's decision to step aside came after months of criticism from Democrats in the Senate who complained that the attorney general could not impartially lead an investigation that focused in part on his political patrons and friends at the White House.
....

"The disclosure of Ms. Plame's name was an unprecedented and shameful event in American history and, in our professional judgment, has damaged U.S. national security, specifically the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence-gathering using human sources," the group wrote in the two-page letter.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Johnson, who described himself as a registered Republican who voted for President Bush, said he and other former intelligence officers had been discussing the idea of a letter for months and decided to go forward with it because of a lack of evidence of progress in the Justice Department investigation.

"For this administration to run on a security platform and allow people in the administration to compromise the security of intelligence assets, I think is unconscionable," Mr. Johnson said.

In addition to Mr. Hastert, the letter was sent to Representatives Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader; Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader; Porter J. Goss, a Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; and Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the panel. A copy was made available to The New York Times by a Congressional official who received one.

Unusual? More like "unprecedented." I assume that spooks and ex-spooks leak things to friendly congressional staffs. Doing things in public is not their way. This is extraordinary and is a sign of the rage burning in the intel community over the Plame affair.

There is another dirty tricks scandal brewing. This surfaced in November and immediately fell off the radar screen: electronic pilfering of Democratic congressional staff documents by Republican staffers who exploited a security breach on a shared server. Who was the favored recipient of the stolen documents? The name just keeps coming back like a bad meal: Robert Novak!!

Infiltration of files seen as extensive
Senate panel's GOP staff pried on Democrats

Let's see if this story breaks a little larger than the front page of the Boston Globe. "Crossfire" ought to be really entertaining this afternoon.

Viewers' Guide

Sidney Blumenthal offers a viewers' guide to tonight's candidate forum in New Hampshire:

Killing the king
Kerry is sitting on top of his party, but will he be knocked off when he arrives in New Hampshire?

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday January 22, 2004
The Guardian

In the Iowa caucuses, Dean was damaged while Gephardt's support disintegrated, most of that drifting to Edwards. Kerry, rejecting his previous position on the Iraq war as best he could, soared as the figure of experience. Edwards called Bush the president of the "privileged few". Kerry mocked Bush's bravado: "Bring it on! Just don't let the door hit you on the way out!" While evading the distorting media gaze, they learned from Dean and became pointedly anti-Bush, the sine qua non for legitimacy among Democrats.

But the dynamic that has lifted them up is only beginning to unfold. Political geography is now destiny. While Iowa puts a premium on niceness, New Hampshire prides itself on flintiness. Iowa instinctively wants to reward the worthy; New Hampshire habitually wants to kill the king. Iowa tries to reach a consensus in the caucus in front of the neighbours; in the privacy of the voting booth, New Hampshire wants to assert individuality. Iowa wants to cast a considered ballot; New Hampshire wants to, as its state motto proclaims, "live free or die". Will Dean recover? Will Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman, absent from Iowa, galvanise support or play assassins? Is there a new king and will he survive?

Since the Iowa caucuses, I've read a half-dozen theories about how the next three weeks are going to play out. I gave you one by Dick Morris yesterday. One blogger is punting the theory that RNC operatives are urging that their supporters give money to Kerry and Edwards, with the subtext that it is Clark who scares Rove.

I'm with Blumenthal. I have no doubt that there are conspiracies abroad in the land, and that our field won't hesitate to use the dark arts if they think they can get away with it. I've heard scattered reports of Kerry push-polling in Iowa and New Hampshire, for example. But the electoral process is sufficiently chaotic that I think it defies anyone's attempt to shape it or direct it. Candidates are more likely to self-destruct rather than to be the victims of someone else's plot.

Looming Problems

Army Reserve Chief Fears Retention Crisis
Helmly Faults Open-Ended Deployments, Shortages of Equipment in Iraq War
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 21, 2004; Page A04

The head of the Army Reserve said yesterday that the 205,000-soldier force must guard against a potential crisis in its ability to retain troops, saying serious problems are being "masked" temporarily because reservists are barred from leaving the military while their units are mobilized in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly said his staff is working on an overhaul of the reserve aimed in part at treating soldiers better and being more honest with them about how long they're likely to be deployed. Helmly said the reserve force bureaucracy bungled the mobilization of soldiers for the war in Iraq, and gave them a "pipe dream" instead of honest information about how long they might have to remain there.

"This is the first extended-duration war our nation has fought with an all-volunteer force," said Helmly. "We must be sensitive to that. And we must apply proactive, preventive measures to prevent a recruiting-retention crisis."

Helmly said his staff is engaged in an overhaul of the reserve aimed at turning the Army's part-time soldiers into a top-flight fighting force that can handle the strains of the global war on terrorism. In a Pentagon briefing for defense reporters, Helmly outlined an array of planned changes and bluntly described the force he took over in May 2002 as being dominated by bureaucrats who often ignored soldiers' needs.

In a recent memo, Helmly said, he told his subordinates that he was "really tired of going to see our reserve soldiers [and finding] they're short such simple things as goggles. It's about damn time you listen to your lawyers less and your conscience more. That will probably get me in trouble. But I told them, I want this stuff fixed."

Reservists in Iraq have long complained about having to spend a year there with inadequate equipment, including a lack of body armor.

Most reservists went to Iraq last year on year-long mobilizations, with a belief that they would be required to spend only six months in the country. But they were abruptly informed in September that they would have to spend 12 months in Iraq, pushing the total length of many reservists' mobilizations to 16 months or longer.

It's impossible to know how far along in this intiative the Army is--from the story, I can't tell if Loeb was called in on the front end, or if they are announcing it immediately preparatory to putting it into place. In either regard, it is probably too little, too late to stem a readiness crisis which will occur when the currently deployed troops are returned home. Unless the stop-loss is further extended (I'm guessing that the political cost of doing so would make it impossible), the guys and gals who muster out are going to be walking, talking ads for not enlisting. That goes for active duty military as well.

Helmly is undeniably doing the right thing, but it is something which should have been addressed years ago, and it is a little late to be worrying about bullet-proof vests and goggles for reservists.

Rove's Tears?

This is as inside the beltway spin as there is. I've heard it elsewhere, take no position and invite you to consider the source,Dick Morris's column in The Hill.

The big loser in Iowa was George W. Bush. Karl Rove must be crying. No longer can he nurture fond dreams of a set-up in November. There will be no George McGovern rout this year. Bush’s re-election will hinge on one key question: Does he pull the troops out of Iraq?

If Bush opts to model himself after Lyndon Johnson and attempt to fight a war during an election, he will end up where LBJ finished — out of the White House. But if he follows the wiser example of Richard Nixon and begins pulling the troops out once the handover to Iraqi rule takes place in June, he likely will be re-elected.

Since both Kerry and Edwards could win if nominated, the focus will be intense. Kerry’s experience gives him the edge. But the ranks of moderate independents, ignored so far in the Democratic nominating process could flood back into the primaries and tip the balance toward the southerner.

We need all to remember that this is not a Democratic primary we are watching. Without a Republican contest to siphon off independent voters, it is a general election to which Republicans are not invited. The centrist mainstream may yet prevail. And then Bush has real problems.

Short Fiction

"Let us be candid about the consequences of leaving (former Iraqi leader) Saddam Hussein in power. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programmes would continue to this day."

Since so much of the speech was fiction, it is entirely appropriate for Prof. DeLong to engage in a little exercise in imagination about how this particular paragraph came to be. We look forward to Brad's first novel.

Karl Rove: We'll have him say that the Kay Report showed that we were right in claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
Karen Hughes: Ummm... No.
Karl Rove: No?
Karen Hughes: No. We'd make him look like an idiot.
Karl Rove: How about if we have him say, "the Kay Report has identified Iraq's program to build Iraq's weapons of mass destruction"?
Richard Cheney: I'm afraid not.
Karl Rove: No?
Richard Cheney: He'll look like an idiot. The Kay Report did not identify weapons of mass destruction programs.
Karl Rove: Say it anyway. No one will challenge it. It will get by.
Dan Bartlett: In a normal year it would, but...
Karl Rove: But?
Dan Bartlett: Remember last year's State of the Union? The Niger uranium disaster? Usually we can fool the press with no problem. But this time they're lying in wait for us. We dare not have him say anything in the SOTU address that is false.
Karl Rove: Nothing?
Dan Bartlett: Nothing.
Karl Rove: So we can't have him say "weapons of mass destruction"?
Karen Hughes: Nope.
Karl Rove: And we can't have him say "weapons of mass destruction programs"?
Richard Cheney: Nope.
Karl Rove: How about if we have him say "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities"?
Richard Cheney: Works for me.

Iraqi Primary/SOTU Wrap

US set for Iraq election retreat

Britain now backs early poll

Patrick Wintour, Michael White and Ewen MacAskill
Wednesday January 21, 2004
The Guardian

The US-led coalition in Iraq is on the verge of bowing to Shia Muslim pressure for direct elections before the handover of power on June 30, the Guardian has learned.

According to British officials, the Blair government has been swayed by Shia arguments and the US is also shifting ground.

Shia arguments? 300,000 in the streets of Basra on Thursday, 100,000 blocking the streets of Baghdad on Monday and rumors of a million demonstrating on this coming Friday. The Shi'a have already won this primary.

SOTU WRAP: Yesterday, I suggested taking your blue pencils and circling all of the uses of the first-person pronouns: I, me, my, mine. Excessive use of these in a speech which is supposed to be about something else, the state of us, is the hallmark of a narcissist, even in an election year. After going through the transcript, I also suggest circling the word "terrorist." The word is so overused now that it is a late night TV joke. Bush just became his own irony.

In another life, I was a speech and debate competition judge. In the "original oratory" division at the high school level, this one wouldn't even have gotten a ranking. The man makes Ray Romano look good.

Those Were the Days

Tonight, when we could really use some good political analysis, Russ Baker puts David Broder head to head with his friend and former colleague Mary McGrory.

Broader, Not Broder

(New York-based Russ Baker is an award-winning journalist who covers politics and media.)

As the campaign season heats up, one can't help but wonder: do we really need David Broder to referee events?

Recently, the Washington Post reporter and muller, covering what must be his 7,865th presidential primary, did what he so often does: he got in an ever-so-polite tizzy about someone not following protocol. His target: none other than Howard Dean, who of course worries a lot of conventional people.

Broder filed a dispatch that read like a warning to the Democrats—that this particular grey sheep was straying too far from the flock. The following is typical. "Dean has found so many ways in a short time to set people's teeth on edge—with his comments about the Confederate flag, about his struggle to bring himself to talk religion in the South, about his variant positions on Medicare and trade and other issues—that this is clearly a pattern."

Well, so too can a pattern be evinced in the coverage provided by Broder—and, for that matter, so many of his jaundiced colleagues on the campaign bus. Instead of celebrating candor, they censure it. The United States is supposed to be a place where we say what we mean, even if we sometimes offend a few sensibilities. Instead of reminding us that an unrehearsed president would be refreshing, Broder and company call for better self-control and more scripting.

Broder's personal approach involves a lot of quotations from both political insiders and supposedly thoughtful men- and women-on-the-street—who often repeat judgments they heard from the media in the first place. He quotes a Des Moines lawyer: "It bothers me that [Dean] says he is for open government, but he closes up the records of his own administration. I think, too, he's got that small-state psychology of thinking what works well there will work well everywhere. The country is not like Vermont."

Broder doesn't explain that the records flap has never revealed any scandal about Dean, that Dean has offered credible explanations for not releasing correspondence and that the whole issue pales beside the Bush administration's unsurpassed zeal for keeping its own truly crucial decision-making out of the public eye. By quoting this lawyer, he recycles and reinforces this so-far inconsequential stain. Besides, is New York City like America? Arkansas? Georgia? By this standard, would Rudy Giuliani, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter be automatically disqualified for national office?

Even when Broder ostensibly is just "reporting,"—letting people speak for themselves—he often leaves you with a bad taste for Howard Dean. He introduces us to Sally Troxell, who"first heard Howard Dean being interviewed on a Sunday morning TV show while cooking bacon in her kitchen." She describes how she was struck by Dean's 'realness', and how she was impressed when she later engaged Dean in a face-to-face discussion of how to treat stock options on corporate books. The denouement comes with Troxell's revelation that Dean evokes a feeling she hasn't had in 35 years:

"Yes," she said. "Since SDS," referring to the Students for a Democratic Society, the New Left campus organization of the 1960s.

Though Broder closes with a declaration of delight with Iowa voters' candor, the reader surely comes away with this thought: Howard Dean's supporters are old radicals, i.e., he's George McGovern redux. The most troubling thing is this: what Broder mentions but does not focus on is how Dean and the woman disagreed—on guns (he had a more conservative position) and even on those stock options. Dean had a more conservative, more pro-business stance and he justified it by explaining how crucial stock options were for start-up ventures. Actually, that nuanced position was really interesting—possibly revealing the kind of logical, balanced thinking and ability to explain things to people of all philosophical stripes that makes someone a great leader. This, however, was a conclusion Broder did not take care to draw.

I enjoy reading Broder's columns. They're full of admiration for the common person, full of wisdom-spouting donut-dunkers and earnest steelworkers. This is enjoyable color reporting, but it in no way begins to approximate the kind of sophisticated analysis from a venerated and privileged essayist that America needs as it lurches from crisis to crisis.

In a recent column, Broder paid tribute to "the great liberal columnist" Mary McGrory, who on account of ill health has finally unpacked her campaign suitcase. He correctly labels her "surely the most elegant newspaper writer Americans have read over the last half-century."

Broder, to be sure, is a pleasant fellow and a competent reporter, but he is certainly no Mary McGrory. Almost exactly four years ago to the day, Mary McGrory was out there on the hustings. But her pieces, though they too featured the voices of ordinary voters, felt fundamentally different from Broder's.

Out of the presumably hundreds of comments she sifted, we heard from a man who said that Gore was "terminally tarnished by Clinton, " Bush "attractive, but I don't believe a lot of what he says," McCain likable but perhaps not the best at building consensus, and Bill Bradley "well intentioned but naÏve." Another told her that McCain's political reform platform "doesn't ring true" given the candidate's own acceptance of corporate funding, and that Bush gave him "the feeling of being steamrolled." One voter who had met Bush several times seemed to have cottoned on to Bush's highly selective charm, declaring that "with all his money and all his big-shot backers, when he shakes hands with you, he's looking elsewhere."

McGrory had no trouble reminding readers of the fundamental choices. "New Hampshire's dilemma was poignantly expressed in a [voter's] question.: 'Should we vote for the very best man or one we think can win?'" McGrory wrote like someone who understood what her job was. Not just handicapping a race, but really helping us understand which contenders—the underdogs, the troublemakers, the short-tempered, the lot—most deserve our cheers.

Where are the Jobs?

Invested in U.S. Stocks? You Just Think You Did Well
Tue January 20, 2004 12:22 PM ET

By Nick Olivari

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. investors, believing they did well last year with the major indexes posting their first up year since 1999, should think again.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 28.7 percent in 2003, but when the dollar's decline is added into the mix, investors who bought an S&P; 500 index fund made half as much as if they had converted their money to euros and invested it in Germany's DAX, for example.

In fact, according to Richard Bernstein, U.S. strategist at Merrill Lynch, in dollar terms, the S&P; 500 was the worst performing index of those they follow worldwide.
"By not diversifying outside the U.S., you underperformed last year and you will probably underperform this year," said Uri Landesman, who oversees $500 million as senior portfolio manager of the International Equity Fund at Federated Investors Inc. "That's because of the dollar and because, from a general valuation standpoint, Japan, emerging markets and Europe look more appealing."

Hello, investors. The underlying fundamentals are weak, and our monetary policy isn't helping.

The Bush administration is allowing the dollar to fall, though it says it is not. As in 1985, the decline is viewed as a means of bringing back jobs through exports. Because inflation is low, one negative effect of the dollar decline - rising inflation - is not seen as a danger. Rising costs to Americans traveling abroad is seen by the administration as a minor issue.

But one issue is definitely not minor: capital flows.

Answer this question: How can the United States, unique among nations, sustain permanent trade deficits? In classical economics, it cannot happen, for deficits are self-correcting: spend too much on imports and the currency falls, resulting in fewer imports.
Some economists argue that America is a special case, and that our trade deficits are not caused by too much American importing and consuming, but by foreigners lending us too much money - the capital surplus. A capital surplus is the flip side of the trade deficit, but the question is which causes the other?

There is no good answer to that, but it is true that foreigners have wanted to invest in America as much as Americans have wanted to buy foreign goods. The two things necessarily balance out. If we import $600 billion more than we export, that means foreigners have loaned us $600 billion to make up the difference, and we owe them interest and dividends.

But what if they don't want to lend to us? What if they lose too much on their loans because of the falling dollar?

Already foreign investors have cut back on their U.S. investments, selling both stocks and bonds. Net capital flow into America fell to $4 billion in September, which annualized is just a fraction of $600 billion.

So who exactly is supporting us?

The Central Banks of Japan and China for starters, who together hold about $1 trillion in U.S. reserve assets. Japan and China cannot afford to have the dollar fall too far without losing huge on their dollar investments. By continuing to buy dollars, they keep the dollar from falling where it needs to go to eliminate our trade deficit.

The net effect is that America is trading jobs for capital. If the borrowed capital is not invested in businesses that create jobs - and we see from manufacturing's fall that it is not - the result is the paradox of growing unemployment in a growing economy - exactly what we see today.

The politicians cannot ignore this dynamic, which is why protectionism will figure big in the 2004 election.

Bottom line: the market will likely to continue to improve and job growth will continue to be negligable. If jobs are going to be an important consideration in the general election, Bush economic policies (budget and trade deficits as far as the eye can see) aren't going to deliver.

GWOT

We're going to hear a lot of yack tonight about American success in the "War on Terror." As our efforts in Afghanistan are showing very little effect, questions can legitimately be raised about our strategy in this war, and Charley Reese raises the salient one.

Threat of Terrorism
by Charley Reese

You know, I'm sure, that the Bush administration has greatly exaggerated the threat of terrorism. Those who employ the tactic of terrorism do so because they are weak. They have no army. They have no great popular following.

Osama bin Laden was a crank living in the mountains of Afghanistan with only a small following in the Islamic world - until George W. Bush elevated him to world celebrity status.

It's true that bin Laden knocked down the World Trade Center towers and struck the Pentagon - or at least we're pretty sure he was behind those attacks. He was able to do that because his 19 people were lucky and because our immigration screening, our intelligence, the FBI and the airport security system were all sloppy.

To the extent that these attacks roused the federal government from its previous apathy and sloppiness, he did us a favor, though at the terrible cost of about 3,000 lives. But that attack was not justification for a "war on terrorism." A war on bin Laden, yes; a war on terrorism in general, no.
....

The great German philosopher of war Karl von Clausewitz said that war is the pursuit of political objectives by other means. That's true of terrorism. All terrorists have political objectives - to get the British out of Northern Ireland, to end the Israeli occupation, to get the French out of Algiers and so on. Since the motivation of terrorists is political, the solution to terrorism is likewise political.

There are some people in this country who will try to convince you that we are in a "war of civilizations." Don't buy it. It's false. There are specific aspects of our foreign policy that some people, like bin Laden, object to. He has no desire to occupy the United States, nor does he wish to convert the West to Islam.

In the meantime, go about your life and realize that there is a 1 out of 300 million chance that you will get killed by a terrorist. You have much more to fear from the flu and other natural hazards.

As long as there is an unlimited supply of unemployed, frustrated and angry young Muslim males, bombing the hell out of Afghanistan and playing patty-cake with a new constitution which is enforceable only around Kabul, and even there only in the daylight hours, isn't going to win the war on anything.

Background

Shia protesters step up demand for Iraq elections
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
20 January 2004

The patience of Shia Muslims has been running out in recent months, not least because the economy has failed to improve as Iraqis had expected at the time of the fall of Saddam Hussein last April. In recent weeks there have been protests over unemployment in many Shia cities.

It will be difficult for Mr Bremer to ignore protests such as those yesterday demanding democratic elections.

The US and Britain justified the war last year by claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Failure to find them has largely discredited WMD as a justification for war. This has made the overthrow of Saddam and the introduction of democracy to Iraq more important as a justification for the conflict.

It will be embarrassing for the US to hold elections denounced as undemocratic by Ayatollah Sistani and the largest Iraqi community.

As you watch or listen to the State of the Union tonight, keep a couple of thoughts in the back of your mind:

Iraq is a net negative for "national security," sucking up frightening amounts of financial resources which are not being applied to "first responders," seaport and airport cargo security, public health infrastructure, chemical and nuclear facilities and a bunch of other things I probably haven't thought of. The firefighters and cops in New York City still don't have radios that can communicate with each other. Did you know that?

Virtually every step we've taken in Iraq since the fall of Saddam has been a mistake. In the last week, two of the Bremer-endorsed policies have the capacity to bring massive resistence down on the heads of our troops in theater: the idiotic decision to replace long-standing secular law with Islamic Sharia law in the area of family and property rights is indefensible. The status of women in Iraq before the war made it one of the most progressive Muslim states. Women constitute about 65% of the population of the country, I fail to see how reducing them to the status of chattel is good for democracy. Second, Bremer's bull-headed insistence on this bogus election is liable to simply blow the entire country up. When he loses the tacet compliance of the Hawza, the Shi'a clergy, he's lost the country. Bush needs to be asked whether his policies are making Iraq any safer for our troops and our allies.

The SOTU will be the roll-out of the stump themes for Bush-Cheney '04. Remember that the moon-mars initiative and immigration boondogle are both all PR and have significant negatives for the WH. How much Bush bangs on these themes will tell us something about how disconnected this campaign is from the fray.

In the Trenches

There is a reason why we keep Jim Capazzola around at The Rittenhouse Review. It is because he can write stuff like this: WORKING IN AMERICA TODAY
Or Not Working in America
Several articles published over the past few days by coincidence center around a theme: working in America. Or, rather, not working in America.
Working (Poor) in America
In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine there is a terrific essay, “A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class,” by David K. Shipler, offering the compelling story of Caroline Payne’s struggle to overcome the inexorable rut and relenting challenges that define the lives of the working poor. It’s a profound and moving look at a life shaped by dead-end jobs, debt, bad teeth, picking up cans, and relying on the kindness of family and friends.
I tried to keep the excerpts down to a minimum, but there’s just too much in Shipler’s piece to hold back much more. (When you’re done here, go read the article in its entirety.)

Jim's analysis is both devastating and accurate. Follow him back to his place, you'll like it. Jim is about two weeks ahead of me in the needing to move in with relatives department. He's got a tip jar. Help if you can and help keep this independent voice looking out over Rittenhouse Square. And writing like this for us. Damn, the man is GOOD. If I could rant like this, I'd BE Jim Capazzola. But, I'm not. I can only admire from afar.

The Next Round

I knew Howard Dean was in trouble when the "inevitability" meme slipped into the press coverage around the first of the year. It's stupid for the press to say it, and you'd think they'd have learned better by now. The real danger is the candidate that starts to believe it. Trippi got sloppy and Dean got mouthy. I don't know who is serving as guru to the campaign right now, but who ever it is needs to sit down with these two characters and a big pot of black coffee tomorrow morning and tell them, "this is how it is going to be." Trippi needs to get somebody else to front for the campaign with Judy Woodruff, he's starting to believe his own myth. Ho Ho needs to start looking like Martin Sheen, and could use some coaching from Jed Bartlett, frankly. It's time to tone down the rhetoric--not run to the center, but sound like someone you'd want to have in the White House the next time a terrorist attacks. Dean's over the top, red-meat speach to his troops tonight, delivered at the top of his lungs, does nothing to appeal to voters who have been told every horrible thing in the world about him, sometimes by fellow Dems. Rove is playing him as a monster. When he goes out of the way to look the part, as he did tonight, he's playing into Team Rove's capacious hands.

Did I see it coming? The tracking polls had been giving me sweats for the last two weeks, but I couldn't put my finger on what was bothering me until tonight. If half the country thinks that George Bush is a "leader", whatever the hell that means, then it is time to study what that leadership needs to look like from the voter's perspective. I have my own definition of what leadership means, but if they aren't buying what I'm selling, then I ain't a leader.

One of the things I learned in the labor movement is that if you want to be a leader, find a group of people who are going someplace and get in front of them. The temperature of the left-center coalition has not yet been taken. I frankly don't see the charm of John Kerry, and, God knows, we've had enough time to see what he's got. But the people have yet to decide where they want to go.

To win the next election, Democrats are going to have to do something more than marketing themselves and using their own myths and personas to shape the electorate. They need to do something much more risky: to find the story that the electorate is telling itself about itself and run on that. The Democrats also have some soul-searching to do. It is time to get beyond triangulation. That's Rove's tactic, and he is already displaying how that technique can fail as he alienates his traditional conservative base. It is time to do some real listening.

I supported Dick Gephardt in 1988. I hated him in the Rose Garden for the signing of the congressional authorization for Iraq. I have watched him do some very public wrestling with his own political and personal beliefs for three decades. Sometimes I endorsed the result, sometimes I didn't. He has been a honorable public servent, to the extant that any of us could be, and I'd be happy to have him as a friend. I'm saddened to see the end of a career which I believe has been conducted by the best light of his own conscience. We would be a better country if more people like Dick Gephardt took up the reigns of public service. Hell, we'd be a better country if we had more people like Gep in every kind of leadership.

I'm listening to Kerry exhort the troops in Iowa. It is the first stump speech of his new campaign--the front-runner campaign--and it is pretty good. He's found a focus. About damn time. Up until now, he hasn't really been about anything other than wanting to be president. John Kerry gets laryngitis and finds his voice....and a domestic agenda.

Well, it looks like this is going to be an interesting primary. That means lots of late nights, dark nights, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and I'm not really a big fan of any of those things. But if it gives us a buffed, toned and utterly devastating nominee come August, I'll deal with it. Hell, I'll be glad of it. Bring it on.

Hat in Hand

Iraqis protest at handover plan

Tens of thousands of Shia Muslims have marched against coalition proposals for a transfer of power, just hours before the US seeks UN backing for the plan.

The rally in Baghdad follows a peaceful protest in Basra calling for direct elections to a transitional government.

US administrator Paul Bremer will ask the United Nations to support its plan for an interim selected authority.

Any sustained opposition by Iraq's Shia majority would cause serious problems for the US, correspondents say.

Monday's protest saw thousands upon thousands of Iraqis marching through the capital, many clasping each other's hands above their heads, to demand full general elections.

The BBC's Caroline Hawley in Baghdad says the Shias - who were repressed for decades by Saddam Hussein - fear they will be marginalised again under the US plan, which allows regional bodies created by the Americans to select a transitional parliament.

"Yes, yes to elections; no, no to selection," was one of the main rallying cries.

Cleric's demands

The protests add strength to the opposition voiced by Iraq's top Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose support is seen as key to legitimising an Iraqi-led administration.

One of his representatives, Hashem al-Awad, addressed the Baghdad rally with a warning to coalition authorities.

"The sons of the Iraqi people demand a political system based on direct elections and a constitution that realises justice and equality for everyone," he said, quoted by the Associated Press news agency.

This situation is going to evolve very quickly. L. Paul Bremer, UN Ambassador John Negroponte, Adnan Pachachi, temporary president of the Interim Governing Council, and other diplomats met with Kofi Annan in New York this morning. Annan is in no rush to get more of his people killed, but discussions will proceed about providing "technical assistance."

Mr. Annan has set three broad conditions for the United Nations' return: "clarity" on the scope of the organization's role, security assurances, and guarantees that the responsibility will be commensurate with the risk
.
Last week he announced that a four-member security team was going to Baghdad to study the conditions for Iraqis working on behalf of the United Nations and for expatriate staff members currently working out of offices in Cyprus and Jordan who might be re-entering the country.

Later today, the Security Council was to hear a report from Adnan Pachachi, this month's chairman of the Iraqi Governing Council, on the situation in Iraq. The closed session will include questioning from ambassadors from some of the Security Council countries that blocked United Nations authorization of military action.

Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sablière of France, a principal opponent of the war, said that even the once-critical members of the council were now united in their desire to see peace and stability in Iraq, and he predicted constructive questioning. "Our differences were one of principle," he said, "but the past is the past."

Expect horsetrading for reconstruction contracts. However, if the Shi'a rise up, none of it matters.

Democracy at Stake

(via Patrick Nielsen Hayden)

This is a terrifying must-read. Bob Kuttner points out that the situation isn't hopeless, but it is dire.

America as a One-Party State
Today's hard right seeks total dominion. It's packing the courts and rigging the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself.
By Robert Kuttner
Issue Date: 2.1.04

Is this one-party scenario inevitable? For a variety of structural reasons noted above, Democrats are unlikely to take back Congress this decade, absent a national crisis or massive scandal that overwhelms the governing party. But, contrary to the views of some of my colleagues, I think a Democrat could well win the White House in 2004. The Democratic base is aroused in a fashion that it has not been in decades, and swing voters may yet have second thoughts about George W. Bush. It's not at all clear what the economy and the foreign-policy scene will look like next fall, or what scandals will ripen.

Democrats have also begun fighting back against legislative dictatorship, and this may yet become a public issue. When the Republican Senate leadership unveiled rules changes to make it effectively impossible for Democrats to block extremist judicial nominees with a filibuster, the Democratic leadership threatened to use parliamentary tactics to shut the place down. House Democrats are now almost as unified as their Republican counterparts, and, if anything, even angrier. Tom DeLay may be sowing a whirlwind. And if a variation of the 2000 Florida theft is attempted in 2004, it is inconceivable that Democratic leaders and activists would show the same docility that Al Gore displayed.

We've seen divided government before, with a Democratic president and a fiercely partisan Republican Congress. It is not pretty. But it is much more attractive than a one-party state.

Benjamin Franklin, leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, was asked by a bystander what kind of government the Founders had bestowed. "A republic," he famously replied, "if you can keep it." There have been moments in American history when we kept our republic only by the slenderest of margins. This year is one of those times.

Email this one to everyone you know. I'm fairly sure that all of us here in the blogosphere are aware of the stakes, but I'm not sure that John and Jane Average have woken up to them yet.

Participatory Democracy

Liberal Oasis has a quick run-down of hard counts, the expectations game and the Sunday shows. There is enough spin here to keep me nauseous for months. The Des Moines Register has the complete schedule for Caucus Day. The Register will begin live reporting from the caucuses tonight at 8PM CST on their site. Here is a listing of all the Iowa TV stations' websites. WOI in Des Moines/Ames has the most-quoted news operation. C-SPAN begins coverage at 7PM EST, and will be live in a caucus in eastern Iowa at 7:30. NPR begins live coverage tonight at 10 PM EST. Chris Suellentrop's "morning of" prognostications are in Slate.

It is Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. I usually commemorate this holiday by re-reading the "Letter from Birminham Jail," but today I'm going to be reading "The Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam."

SOTU: The Preaching

The SOTU memes are already out there. The Agonist has the early round-up. I'll be spending most of my time today with Iowa. If there is something to be learned from this contest, it will be in the turnout, and that is where my laser-like focus will turn.

I will not be watching the SOTU. On your behalf, through this blog, I have watched so many Bush "press availabilities," Scotty McLellan "press gaggles," "Rummygrams" and what not, that I can't do it again. 50 minutes of Bush? Can't do it. I'd hurt the tv, the cats or myself. We already know what he is going to say, don't we?

I've read at least a half-dozen "drinking game" recommendations today for the speech, all of which would result in immediate liver failure if the thing goes like we think it would. I don't recommend this for anyone, of course. But I suggest a different course: in administrations past, the president usually referred to the administration with the third person pronoun. This was not the "royal we," but, rather, a recognition of the fact that it takes a lot of people to make the WH operate and that the policy decisions are shared. I've been amazed at how willing W is to shred that. He wields the "royal I" with pride. The change in diction with this White House has been remarkable, the speechified symptom of the "go it alone" policy positions he takes.

If you are going to watch the speech, or score the transcript, rather than taking a shot or another spoon of pudding every time he uses the first person pronoun, keep score on a piece of paper. Let's compare hash marks with, say, Poppy Bush's SOTUs.

This is a technique I use with preachers who wonder why their sermons are falling flat. Like a good sermon, the SOTU is not about the preacher, it is about the audience. Rove, Gerson and Company are lousy preachers.

If Bush uses the word "bold" at all, every bet is off and you get to break out the single malt scotch.

If you haven't experienced silence in a while, this would be a good time to turn off the TV and the radio. Meditate or pray, if you haven't in a while. Hug your kids, your spouse or your best friend. Shut up and listen to something beside the crap out of Washington. Play a game of Scrabble or rent a movie. Read a book.

Give the Nielsen conglomerate a reason to give this media event an "F".

UPDATE: The ever-valuable Center for American Progress has put together a special SOTU package at their website:

STATE OF THE UNION DICTIONARY: The Center for American Progress handy translator for many of the oft-used phrases in the President's State of the Union. Print it out and follow along.

SPEECH VIEWING GUIDE: From the unemployment crisis to tax cuts for the wealthy to weapons of mass destruction, we've produced a one-page checklist to print out and have in front of you as you watch the speech.

CLAIM VS. FACT: After the speech, we'll compare the President's words to his past actions and proposals for the future.

====
And if you aren't on the mailing list for the daily Progress Report, click here.

Taking it National

Part of the redistricting mess in Texas was an attempt to de-fang Martin Frost. It may not work. The feisty congressman is fighting back.

By Bob Ray Sanders
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

The ferocious big dog that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and other Republican leaders most wanted to muzzle, send to the pound and eventually "put down" for good is growling louder than ever.

He also looks as though he is poised and ready to bite.

Let me assure you that U.S. Rep. Martin Frost's bite is a lot worse than his bark.
That means U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, ought to be more than a little nervous.

Frost, a 13-term congressman from Arlington who is the senior Democrat in Congress from Texas and the South, filed Friday to run against Sessions this year in the redrawn 32nd Congressional District.

He was the primary target marked for extinction when Texas Republican leaders, at DeLay's urging, launched a campaign to redraw congressional districts that could result in the elimination of as many as seven veteran Democratic congressmen.

After the redistricting map was upheld by the Justice Department and a three-judge federal court, Demo- crats asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay that would force this year's election to be conducted using the old district lines.

Without comment, the high court Friday refused to block elections this fall under the redrawn map, an action (or inaction) Frost had anticipated.

Frost is going to put up a fight, he's good at it, knows the district and has a trackrecord with his people.

This is virtually a paradigm for what we Dems are going to have to do at the national level this year. On the ground organizing, knowing the folks, is going to matter this year like it hasn't in decades. Bush has more money. We have more votes. We just have to go and find them.

My vote has never been moved by an ad. Has yours? It HAS been moved by a conversation. Doorknocking works.

Turnout is the Game

LAT political reporter Ron Brownstein is considered one of the shrewdest of the boys on the press bus, but his column from Des Moines today reads like "I gotta get front-pager for the Sunday in by deadline." Iowa has rarely pointed out anything of significance for the larger primary. This year, there will be one significant set of figures to come out of Iowa: the hard counts. Brownstein misses the story.

Iowa Squeaker Could Complicate Rather Than Clarify Campaigns

By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer

DES MOINES — The Iowa caucuses are supposed to provide the first answers in the presidential nomination race. But this year, they may only supply questions.

In its final days, the contest has become an unprecedented four-way sprint that is pushing the candidates to the limits of their skills and endurance. Yet when they look up after the results Monday night, the Democrats may find they haven't moved very far from the starting line in their competition.

The caucuses frequently have buried rather than launched candidates — identifying losers instead of anointing winners in the nomination process. This year, though, with the candidates packed together so closely in the polls, Iowa may not play that winnowing function.

But U of MD-Baltimore County Poli Sci prof Tom Schaller, blogging on the ground in Iowa for dKos, doesn't miss the story. This is where the real buzz is for junkies. Schaller's doing some first class color reporting.

Hard counts, hard counts, hard counts.

Let's start with the last question. Yes, the polls (most recently the Des Moines Register poll released last night with Kerry at 26 pct, Edwards 23, Dean 20, Gephardt 18) have everybody buzzing, although they are inherently inaccurate. Why? For one thing, the Iowa voter list that all the campaigns purchased is not exactly current. The Iowa Democratic Party charged each camp $65K for the list, knowing they had a monopoly to exploit. There are addresses where there is no longer even a physical house, and there are people who have registered recently who are not on the list. And then, of course, campaign rules allow people to register and even change their party registration on caucus night. So, trying to figure out who is voting when there are names on this list that are stale, and people not on the list who are live and in play, is tricky.

No, it's impossible.

What I'm going to be listening for tomorrow night is turn out, hard counts, as well as the percentages. New Hampshire promises to be the first real shake out state, but if the polls in Iowa are wrong and any candidate breaks out of what looks like a tightly bunched field tomorrow, the story will change.

If you want to see what the Kool-Aid looks like, visit that comments thread. I got a contact high from just reading it.

UPDATE: Truthout.org has Senior Editor William Rivers Pitt and political editor Scott Galindez blogging on the ground in Iowa. If you really want to enter the fray for the next 24 hours, visit Bloggerstorm, with bloggers from a number of campaigns. This site is high energy, kept me awake last night.

Media Matters

CBS Cuts MoveOn, Allows White House Ads During Super Bowl
by Timothy Karr
Published by MediaChannel.Org

The nearly 100 million viewers expected to tune in to next month's Super Bowl on CBS will be served up ads that include everything from beer and bikinis to credit cards and erectile dysfunction.

They will also see two spots from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. What's missing from America's premiere marketing spectacle will be an anti-Bush ad put forth by upstart advocacy group MoveOn.org. The group had hoped to buy airtime to run "Child's Pay", a 30-second ad that criticizes the Bush administration's run-up of the federal deficit.

CBS on Thursday rejected a request from MoveOn to air the 30-second spot, saying "Child's Pay" violated the network's policy against accepting advocacy advertising, a company spokesperson told reporters.

At the same time, CBS is allowing ads placed on the docket by the White House's anti-drug office. For the third year in a row the White House has paid between $1.5 and $3 million each for 30-second spots during the broadcast. The 2004 ads, produced for the White House by Ogilvy & Mather are expected to convey a message similar to their previous Super Bowl spots. While CBS would not reveal the content of the upcoming ads, previous White House Super Bowl spots drew a controverial link between casual drug use and the financing of global terrorists.

Writing about the previous ads, LA Weekly media critic Judith Miller reported that their message plays well into Bush's anti-terror campaign because it keeps ordinary citizens under siege and the war on terror central in their minds -- an objective which in 2004 serves the president's re-election strategy well.

This is the lay of the land. The lackey media will exercise their vote. They always do. This is an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. When the 527s come on-line, they will be heard because money speaks.

In the larger scheme of things, an ad on the Superbowl broadcast doesn't really mean much. Any ad in that slot will have to fight its way through big-ticket ads by the usual corporate suspects in order to be heard. CBS is unveiling its next Survivor in the time slot which follows and I don't know how much "message" will leak through all of the hoopla for anybody.

Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

A Man, A Plan

In a fix (link fixed)

Originally published January 18, 2004

THE BUSH administration faces an extraordinarily difficult dilemma over a future Iraqi government. Straightforward elections would certainly be won by well-organized religious groups among the country's majority Shiite Muslim population, and this would spell big trouble with the already restive and resentful Sunnis, among others; on the other hand, fiddling with the process to produce a more acceptable outcome would look like, well, fiddling with the process.

L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. chief in Iraq, insists that there's no way Iraq could be ready for elections this year, and considering that the country is emerging from a history of totalitarian rule, it's a reasonable point. But devising an arcane and incomprehensible system of caucuses to pick delegates to an assembly - which is the current plan - and then calling it representative government smacks of self-delusion. We call it self-delusion because no one else - most of all the Iraqis - will be fooled into thinking that this isn't Washington's way of cooking up the kind of government it wants.

The chief Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, wants elections, period. One Iraqi, one vote. He accuses the Bush administration of trying to impose a pliable government on Iraq as it heads toward U.S. elections, and it's hard to disagree with that.

Nonetheless, when Mr. Bremer emerged from a White House meeting Friday he said the United States was sticking to its guns. To avoid the likely conflagration that would accompany elections, the Americans want to press ahead with indirect, sort-of, half-plausible democracy.

So, now we want the "irrelevent" UN to bless a plan for elections which everybody, including the Iraqis, knows is bogus. How on earth does anyone think this is going to turn out well?

The massive car bomb which exploded at the very feet of the CPA headquarters in Baghdad this morning is a warning to everyone who is contemplating cooperating with us. Sistani and his affiliated clerics stand ready to whip up thier Shiite constituency and Turkey has promised to intervene if the country shows signs of breaking up. We've put the world on notice that we are going to draw forces down in the current troop rotation.

Oh, yes, this is going very well. Count on the fact that you won't hear any of this in the State of the Union address on Tuesday.

View from Abroad

I've been getting email from non-American readers for months. Some of them are more exercised about the upcoming election, and the electibility of the eventual Dem nominee, than many Americans I know. This editorial in today's Guardian lays out the stakes as seen from the British point of view. Our election is likely to have effects on the UK domestic political scene because of the Blair-Bush alliance, but much of the rest of the world shares in the British point of view.

The presidential election matters massively for non-Americans, too. Indeed, given that 50% or more of the US electorate may not bother to vote at all next November, it may be that the outcome will be more closely watched abroad than at home. There is barely a single, dusty corner of our interconnected world that is not directly or indirectly affected by American power and policy. From the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the parched fields of Ethiopia, from the Sunni heartlands of Iraq to Korea's demilitarised zone, from the negotiating tables of Delhi and Jerusalem to world forums such as the UN and WTO, US influence projected through military might, muscular diplomacy, economic clout and bilateral aid is everywhere felt. More than that, it is most usually decisive - and divisive. Long after Boston and on a global scale, here is metaphorical taxation without representation.

A Democrat in the White House would certainly struggle to overcome the domestic divide. From gay rights, abortion, and business and environmental regulation to opportunity, healthcare and faith-based initiatives, issues on which many votes will turn, such weak forms of consensus and mutual tolerance that once existed are all but shattered now. But the US badly needs somebody who at least recognises the problem. A Democrat in the White House would not necessarily radically alter the way the US behaves in the world, especially over national security. But a readiness to pursue a more collective, more respectful, less confrontational, less obviously self-interested approach to global issues would do much to win over the non-voting international electorate as well as those Americans who actually make it to the ballot box.

Where is the candidate, among the Democrats seeking their party's nomination in the Iowa caucuses and the primaries that rapidly follow, who is equal to this challenge - who can attract the unifying popular support, the national credibility and the funding that is essential if Mr Bush is to be beaten? So far at least, none has clearly emerged from an uninspiring field. In a sense, this is to be expected. After months of sparring, the real boxing match is only just beginning, measured not by pollsters but by real people's votes. The days of wishful, woolly thinking are at an end. Howard Dean and the rest are about to hammer on an electoral anvil that will make or break them. It will be brutal while it lasts; but it is necessary. If the Democrats are to put up a candidate with the ideas, the strategy and the staying power to go all the way to the White House, they must pull no punches now. They need a winner, not a whinger. For them, for America, and for the watching world, failure is not an option.

On Thursday, Guardian Commentor Jackie Ashley discussed the stakes for Tony Blair in our Democratic primary and the general election (read the whole thing: she describes the doctor from Vermont as "amiable" and the current president as "grim." How come the danged furriners can see this when our own press can't?)

Blair's friendship with, and admiration for, the US president, means he has to be against the reviving centre-left of America. Blair's reputation is now entangled with Bush's. If a dissident ex-secretary says Bush was determined on regime change in Iraq from day one, and adds that he saw no evidence that Saddam ever had weapons of mass destruction, those are two bricks through No 10's windows. If Dean, or Clark, attacks Bush for an ill-thought-out and dishonest war, those are criticisms of Blair as well.

If a Democratic candidate was able to make these criticisms, and appeal to hardcore Democratic voters, and then oust Bush, it would be an answer to the Blair excuse that you can only win from the right. For the Democrats to choose Dean, and lose, would mean Blair having to tip-toe through the campaign, with his mouth mostly shut. But for them to choose Dean and win would be a political disaster for Blair. The war-forged alliance has broken every natural tie.

Press of Events

U.N. Support Crucial in Iraq, U.S. Says
White House Plans To Appeal to Body To Send Envoys
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A01

The United States plans to ask the United Nations on Monday to play an active role in virtually every aspect of the political transition in Iraq, from overseeing the selection of an Iraqi government and writing new laws to the transfer of power when the U.S. occupation ends on June 30, senior U.S. officials said yesterday.
....

The most divisive issue with the United Nations is likely to be U.S. insistence on controlling major decisions, even if the United Nations becomes a partner in the transition, U.S. and U.N. officials say.

"Our natural inclination will be to put parameters on how much the U.N. can or can't do. But to get the U.N. to buy into the process, we'll have to cede some level of control," said a well-placed U.S. official. "So this could be a problem."

A senior U.N. official said the world body remains "fairly reticent," particularly about a role in the controversial caucuses because the process provides little "scope" for a meaningful U.N. role. The Nov. 15 agreement outlines a complex plan for 18 regional caucuses to select a new national assembly by the end of May. The legislature would then elect a president or prime minister and cabinet in June before the U.S.-led occupation ends.

The Rush: Sistani and his affiliated clerics all began preaching civil unrest yesterday. The Rub: I've asked Juan Cole if he would address this explicitly this weekend. On the News Hour last night, Cole said that the Shi'a object to the regional election process as inherently undemocratic. The participants would be selected by the US, probably with consultation by the IGC members. The IGC is already demographically unbalanced, with the Sunnis over-represented. The Shi'a majority understand that in a genuine democracy, they'd have the majority. It is unclear what effect a UN imprimatur on Bremer's process would have with Sistani. Bottom line: events are getting ahead of Bremer very quickly.

Juan comments this morning that he doesn't think Iraq will have much play in the primary elections here. With the death toll now topping 500, all we need is one spectacular event to put the war on the front of the primary radar screen.

Old Boy Network

Trip With Cheney Puts Ethics Spotlight on Scalia
Friends hunt ducks together, even as the justice is set to hear the vice president's case.
By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer

January 17, 2004

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force.

While Scalia and Cheney are avid hunters and longtime friends, several experts in legal ethics questioned the timing of their trip and said it raised doubts about Scalia's ability to judge the case impartially.

But Scalia rejected that concern Friday, saying, "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned."

Federal law says "any justice or judge shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be questioned." For nearly three years, Cheney has been fighting demands that he reveal whether he met with energy industry officials, including Kenneth L. Lay when he was chairman of Enron, while he was formulating the president's energy policy.

A lower court ruled that Cheney must turn over documents detailing who met with his task force, but on Dec. 15, the high court announced it would hear his appeal. The justices are due to hear arguments in April in the case of "in re Richard B. Cheney."

In a written response to an inquiry from the Times about the hunting trip, Scalia said: "Cheney was indeed among the party of about nine who hunted from the camp. Social contacts with high-level executive officials (including cabinet officers) have never been thought improper for judges who may have before them cases in which those people are involved in their official capacity, as opposed to their personal capacity. For example, Supreme Court Justices are regularly invited to dine at the White House, whether or not a suit seeking to compel or prevent certain presidential action is pending."

Translation: This is the way it has always been. You got a problem with that?

Slavery

Shorter Nick Kristof:

Child sexual slavery is bad. Why aren't the women's groups exercised about this? I'm so noble that I'm going to spend a couple of hundred bucks to buy a 2 of these kids out of slavery and bring them back to the families which sold them into slavery in the first place.

If Kristof weren't a lazy journalist, he could have Googled thousands of articles, position papers and scholarly studies about the sex trade. He went to a city known for it, and reported that he found it. Big whoop.

He could have found it on any block in Queens. But I guess his employer didn't want to find it that close to home.

This is what passes for opinion at the Daily Paper of Record. I vote that we give up on the Gray Lady, stop linking to anything but Krugman and put her in the freezer. I've cancelled my dead tree subscription and intend to stop reading the on-line version

Nick, the brave journalist, went to Cambodia to discover what he could have found in any migrant camp in America, and along the streets of the diplomatic households in the US. What a crusader for the truth.

Oh, and he's going to take those girls back to the households which gave them up in the first place. He promises us another article on Wednesday. Where is he going to be when they are back in the same brothels in three months?

Cheap heroism, Nick. And you weren't paying for it.

That Other Dean and the Supremes

John Dean has a new and important column up at Findlaw. He is examining the limits of presidential power through a series of five Supreme Court challenges to the Executive power President Bush has claimed, either through executive order or by a broad reading of the Patriot Act.

Can the President of the United States arrest any American he suspects of being a terrorist and toss him in a military brig, deny him a lawyer, omit to bring any charges against him -- yet indefinitely keep him imprisoned nonetheless?
Can the President kidnap foreigners charged with violating federal law, and bring them to the United States to stand trial? How about Osama bin Laden, for starters?

What the Supreme Court has placed on its agenda, in short, is the Imperial Presidency -- that is, the Presidency in which the Executive largely acts alone, pushing the Constitution to the limits and beyond. And how the Justices deal with this overwhelmingly important topic could affect the reelection prospects of the Bush presidency, for, as David Savage notes, at least four of the five rulings are anticipated to be handed down during the summer of 2004 -- right in the middle of the presidential campaign.

Dean examines the high court historically, and it's relationship with the last truly imperial presidency, that of Richard Nixon. Dean spoke with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the historian who coined the term and used it to title his book on Nixon's presidency.

I've spoken with Arthur Schlesinger about it -- asking him if he thought the Bush presidency fit his description of an imperial presidency. In response, he chuckled, and said, "I'd certainly say this is an imperial presidency."

Stated more bluntly: Rulings for Bush will help him politically. Conversely, holdings against him will show a president who is operating outside the Constitution.

John promises extensive coverage for each of these cases as they procede to oral arguments and final ruling. Whether or not any of these cases will have broader political implications will depend on how they are covered: I don't think that John and Jane America spend any time at all thinking about Supreme Court rulings. It will need to be explained to them if the White House has over-reached and been repudiated or, conversely, if the Supremes allow these sweeping powers to stand, and what that means for civil liberties going forward.

April is going to be an interesting month for Team Rove. Richard Clarke's book on the run up to 9/11, the intelligence, and how much Bush knew, Against All Enemies : Inside the White House's War on Terror--What Really Happened is coming out that month. In addition, John Dean's new book, Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush ships in April. In it, Dean makes the case for Bush's impeachment based on the lies to Congress and the public which were used to justify the war. Should be interesting reading in April. This book will have less traction with the public than Clarke's book, but I'm glad the argument is being made.

Tweaking the Process

Both the LAT and the NYT lead today with L. Paul Bremer's quicky return to Washington for weekend talks with Rice/Cheney. The NYT focuses on the tensions between the US and the UN.

U.S. Joins Iraqis to Seek U.N. Role in Interim Rule
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

There were few details of what the United Nations was being asked to do to help the caucus plan, but administration officials said it could involve helping organize and perhaps certifying the legitimacy of the meetings.

The caucuses, to be held in each of Iraq's 18 states, are to choose delegations to a national assembly that will sit while a permanent constitution is written and elections are planned for 2005. The plan is so complex that some of its supporters confess to bewilderment about carrying it out.

"It's clear we want the United Nations to be involved," an administration official said. "It's clear the Iraqis want them. It's clear the security situation has improved, and we're willing to help with their security. But there are many stages we have to go through to get an agreement."

At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan is said to be highly reluctant to give his blessing to what is widely seen as a jerry-built process in effect concocted to let the United States hand over sovereignty to Iraq by June 30, as the American elections get under way.

"This meeting, for us, is a step along the way," an aide to Mr. Annan said. "It's not a meeting where there will be a decision on our part. We're going to listen to what they have to say, reflect on what they expect of us and get more detail on exactly how these caucuses are going to run."

Mr. Bremer left for Washington on Thursday to meet with President Bush on Friday. The circumstances of his sudden departure put pressure on Mr. Annan, whose reluctance to send a team back to Iraq is shared by colleagues still grieving over the bomb attack last summer on United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

People close to Mr. Annan say he has rarely been in a more uncomfortable position. For months, he has wanted the United Nations to oversee Iraq's transition to self-government. But he did not want it to be seen as merely giving in to an American plan worked out with Iraqis chosen by Mr. Bremer.

LAT also leads, but with the focus on internal Iraqi politics.

In public, the Bush administration insists that the Nov. 15 agreement represents a consensus among the competing Iraqi groups and says the only question is how best to implement it.

Officials fear that any sign that they would be prepared to abandon that agreement, which was signed by the Governing Council, would sow mistrust of the United States' willingness to keep its word among the Iraqis who have agreed to the plan.

A reversal also could invite new demands from other ethnic groups.

More thorny than the question of elections is, "How does one give enough to the Shia majority, and not have that be too much for either the Kurds or the Sunnis?" said Richard N. Haass, a former senior administration official who is now president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The United States must "on the one hand meet the accelerated timetable for the return of sovereignty that the Iraqis have asked for … and at the same time have a process that is legitimate and representative," a senior State Department official said. "We think the two are not mutually exclusive."

The U.S. sees the June date for transfer of sovereignty to Iraq as nonnegotiable, officials said.

"It's less a problem of our staying power and more a question of how long the welcome mat will be out," Haass said.

"We simply don't want to get into a situation where Shia acquiescence of the American presence turns into active resistance. That would be a strategic nightmare."

Some things to note: the security situation is in no way improved enough for the UN to establish a presence in country anytime soon. AP reported yesterday that 2 KBR employees were killed on Wednesday. All Things Considered had a long piece last night on the Combat Surgical Hospital in Iraq, through which all injured military personnel pass. They're working seven days a week and have seen no let-up on casualties, in spite of the optimistic statements coming out of commanders in Iraq.

Because of the situation on the ground and the bad blood between Bush and the UN, any hand off to the UN is months in the future, at best. CNN is broadcasting Michael Jackson's arraignment wall-to-wall, so this extremely important story is relegated to just another entertainment soundbite status.

UPDATE: re: the security situation....

Plane carrying Georgian defense minister comes under fire in Iraq; no one injured

Mind-boggled Media

Iowa Caucuses a Benchmark in Campaigning

....But understanding the nuts and bolts of the caucuses can be a little mind-boggling.

(quick grab from Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)

You won't find me linking to a FAUX story very often, but I heard this meme on NPR this morning, too, and it pisses me off because we are going to be hearing it over and over and over, and it is a damned lie. "Mind-boggling" my ass.

I attended my first caucus when I was 17. Maybe it's "mind-boggling" for media heavyweights like Lisa Porteus or NPR's Juan Williams, but I recall that it took me about 30 seconds to figure it out.

The media seem to think that we are all idiots, unable to parse anything more complex than the stupid questions they give us on their website polls.

The Columbia Journalism Review has just put up a blog watching campaign news coverage at CJR Campaign Desk. They've already put up pieces on the ABC News Dean smear piece earlier this week, and the Drudge nonsense that Lou Dobbs steno'ed last night.

UPDATE: Again via Taegan, a link to the Iowa Democrat's webpage "caucus" backgrounder.

Cold Shoulders

Where's that Cheney energy plan? Where's the budget for repairing critical infrastructure? And where is the outrage?

I guess we are supposed to unquestioningly accept a third-world economy, and a third-world power grid to go along with it.

Freeze strains Northeast power grid
Report: Lethal temperatures kill 5 in Michigan
Friday, January 16, 2004 Posted: 9:19 AM EST (1419 GMT)

BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Temperatures remained below zero across New England on Friday morning after plunging to near record lows, straining power grids and bringing life to a near standstill in some places. Officials asked residents to conserve energy voluntarily or face rolling blackouts.

The Midwest also is enduring bone-rattling temperatures that proved fatal for five people in Michigan, The Associated Press reported. Vermont Gov. James Douglas appeared live on the state's largest television network to urge New England residents to save energy and help prevent rolling blackouts, which may be needed in an extreme circumstance.

ISO New England Inc., the company responsible for maintaining the region's power grid, is preparing to shut off power to some customers Friday if necessary to keep the grid working. But early Friday no blackouts had been reported. The weather has created high demand for electricity, and as a result some power generating plants ran out of natural gas Thursday and increased the burden on other plants, according to ISO New England.

Steve Costello, a spokesman for the Central Vermont Public Service Corp., said it would be a first for the region if rolling blackouts are needed. "We've never had to resort to that to maintain the stability of the system," Costello said. "But there has been very, very high demand in New England today.

I remember hearing beaucoup ridicule of the French (any excuse to trash the French, of course) last summer when their public health infrastructure collapsed in an extended heatwave which killed thousands, primarily the elderly. This coldwave is a life-threatening situation with a shaky power grid, but I don't hear any complaints about it. Why is that?

On the Internet

Sidney Blumenthal addresses himself to the Paul O'Neill revelations in his usual elegant and concise fashion in today's Guardian:

One of the tacit operating assumptions of the Bush administration is that the checks and balances have been checked. But that implacable wall has been cracked by an insider's surprising confessions. The former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, fired and forgotten, mild-mannered and grey, appears an unlikely dissident. He was, after all, the CEO of Alcoa, a pillar of the Republican establishment.

More is involved with him than pride and pique. While O'Neill records slights and is dismissed by some as a dotty reject, he does more than tell a few tales in the book The Price of Loyalty. The attack on him, consistent with Bush efforts to intimidate anyone who challenges the official version, underscores the inherent fragility of Bush's public persona, upon which rests his popularity. Bush's greatest political asset is his image as a masterful commander in chief who happens to be a nice man. Alongside him, Dick Cheney is viewed as the sagacious Nestor.

This is territory that has already been covered fairly thoroughly by other pundits of the left. But he advances the ball in the final paragraph:

O'Neill's revelations cut deeper than mere polemics. They have been met not by any factual rebuttal but by anonymous character assassination from a "senior official" - "Nobody listened to him when he was in office. Why should anybody now?"

Then the White House announced O'Neill was under investigation for abusing classified documents, though he said they were not and the White House had shovelled carefully edited NSC documents to Bob Woodward for his shining portrait of Bush at War.

Quietly, O'Neill and his publisher prepared an irrefutable response. Soon they will post each of the 19,000 documents underlying the book on the internet. The story will not be calmed.

That ought to quiet the carpers at the Washington Post

Wedding Bell Blues

I find it really creepy that the government thinks it should get into the business of funding groups that want to "support marriage." What kind of marriages are they going to support? Newt Gingrich's? George Will's? Quite frankly, I don't want the government to get anywhere near any marriage I may or may not decide to contract.

The New York Times ferrets out the real issue:

Mr. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, citing polling data, has often said that he believed the failure of four million conservative Christian voters to turn out in the 2000 presidential election almost kept President Bush out of the White House. Projecting another close race this year, Mr. Rove has worked hard to stay in regular contact with conservative Christian political leaders.

Isn't it fascinating that Team Rove believes that conservative Christians are intensely interested in having the government enter both their bedrooms and their livingrooms? Is that true?

Or is this about telling poor blacks to get married?

Allen Brill has some penetrating analysis of this proposal. Allen writes:

While Karl Rove may have paid lip service to the Christian Right over the last three years, it's Grover Norquist who really has clout in the Oval Office -- and Grover is cautioning against making too much of the gay marriage issue:

Allen cites the same NYT article:

Mr. Norquist said some potential Republican voters might be turned off by raising the issue to a constitutional level, just as they were by too much talk of guns or abortions. "Obsessions turn people off," he said.

There are also gay Republicans to consider. About a million of them, or a quarter of the 4 percent of voters who identify themselves as gay, turned out for President Bush in the last election, Mr. Norquist said, citing polls of those who had cast votes.

How Mr. Bush himself feels about the issue personally is also unclear. Mr. Bush has made no secret of his own born-again faith. But some gay Republicans say he appears far more friendly to gays than previous Republican administrations. The administration has invited leaders of two gay groups, the Log Cabin Republicans and the Republican Unity Coalition, to the White House.

Over a month ago, a reader sent me a link to this article by Chris Manion. I knew it would come into play at some point. Manion's thesis:

Ever since the invasion of Iraq, Karl Rove has been traveling the country mobilizing the evangelical vote for the 2004 elections. In city after city, he is meeting with evangelical leaders. He begs: "in 2000, only 16 million of you voted. We need the other four million."

He is aghast. Virtually every neocon supporter of the war just happens to be discovering, quite suddenly, that traditional marriage, so central to Bush's core evangelical constituency, is a threat to Republican victory in 2004.

It's all triangulation and show. Manion's argument has shown up elsewhere in opinion journals, but he states it about as succinctly as anyone.

Blogging during "West Wing"

I just discovered this. The Columbia Politcal Review has a weblog, The Filibuster (compliments to Jake Rosenfeld at Political Aims). This will be old news to you who are already reading The Filibuster, but it was new to me and some good reading for political junkies.

Senior Editor Justin Slaughter did a Lettermanesque "10 Trends" for the upcoming political year. You can click on the link to read them all, but I was quite caught up in his summary of swing state politics. I'm rarely engaged by the horse race aspects of politics, but this was just so common sense that it caught me. He writes:

"That leaves Arizona, and this is the state that is the Stalingrad of 2004, the place where the election will be decided. At 10 EV's, one of the largest swing states, both parties need it. It's politics are impossible to define: Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal. An old-GOP bastion and home of Barry Goldwater, it's becoming a haven for Hispanic immigrants and emigrants from southern California. It's most popular politician is D.C.'s favorite maverick, Sen. John McCain. Arizonians are pro-choice and pro-death penalty, want fewer gun restrictions, are lukewarm on the environment, but want the Grand Canyon protected. In a September 2003 poll, Bush got 34% re-elect and with 44% of respondents preferring someone else. In short, the state is a true toss-up, one that defies prediction. All I can say is that both parties will fight and fight hard for Arizona, and its citizens may have the opportunity to effectively decide the direction of American and global affairs for the next four years. If the Greens decide to neglect just one state, I hope it's Arizona.

"(Whew), so the election will be close. That leads me to my second point: 2004 is winnable for the GOP and the Dems. Despite the claims of both parts of the blogsphere, this race will be close and there are three men with a good shot of being America's president by the end of January 2005: George W. Bush, Wesley K. Clark, and Howard B. Dean III. While the GOP needs to avoid being complacent (but I do hope they continue to believe in Bush's "destined victory" -- complacency breeds mistakes), the Democrats need to stop believing that victory is out of reach (some Dean supporters on Clark and most non-Dean supporters on Dean) or assured (some Dean supporters). This is a war of inches, with every speech, every ad, every canvassing, every phone call, every casual conversation having a potentially significant impact. Terry McAuliffe is fond of saying that if Democrats had knocked on 500 more doors in Florida in October/early November 2000, Al Gore would be President today. Nothing has changed. Every second counts, and everything's riding on this one."

Slaughter's last point is going to be more important this year than any election in recent memory, it's "mouse pads and shoe leather," grass roots organizing, which is going to matter.

If you are in a caucus or primary state and haven't found your candidate yet, go to the websites and study the positions. The meme out there about the Democrats not having any ideas is horse@#$%, we've got better ideas than a manned Mars missions, "no nation-building" and tax cuts for the rich. And when the convention is over, it will be time to put the rancor away and work our tails off for our slate. No matter who wins the nomination, we still have to take our country back.

Who among you am I going to meet at the D.C. Democratic Meetup next week?
UPDATE: On Wednesday night, we'll be at

Hawk and Dove
329 Pennsylvania Ave SE
Washington, DC 20003
202-543-3300

Metro: Exit the Metro, walk up to Penn, turn right. It's about four blocks. The Metro map is here, and the bus schedules are searchable .

Don't forget to http://democrat.meetup.com/rsvp/?e=1417961&v;=14903">let them know you are coming. The Hawk and Dove doesn't have limitless resources. This is an old Dem Hill hangout. Come and partake of the flavor. I look forward to lifting a glass and some wings with you.

Book Review

Joe Conason gives us the Shorter Paul O'Neill/Ron Suskind:

"The White House believes that massive deficits don’t matter.
The White House serves the narrow interests of the wealthiest few.
The White House diligently heeds oil men and coal operators.
The White House willfully ignores scientists and environmentalists.
The President and his advisers care about politics rather than policy.
The President and his advisers prefer scripted consensus to candid debate.
The President and his advisers jump at the command of corporate donors.
The President won’t read any document longer than three pages.
The President can’t discuss substantive policy issues.
The Vice President is in charge."

=================Snip Here to Make a Handy Wallet Card===

Of course, none of this tells us anything we didn't know or suspect before, but it is so nice to have it all laid out here so neatly. Thanks, Joe.

Nation Building

Pentagon: Suicides of U.S. Troops Rising in Iraq
Wed January 14, 2004 11:38 AM ET

By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At least 21 U.S. troops have committed suicide in Iraq, a growing toll that represents one in seven of American "non-hostile" deaths since the war began last March, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
The Defense Department's top health official said the military plan to deal with "battle stress" in Iraq more aggressively than in past conflicts such as the Vietnam War and the 1991 Gulf War.

"Fighting this kind of war is clearly going to be stressful for some people," Assistant Defense Secretary for Health Affairs Dr. William Winkenwerder told reporters in an interview.

"There have been about 21 confirmed suicides during the past year associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom," Winkenwerder said, adding that 18 were Army troops and three others were in the Navy and Marine Corps.

The suicide toll is probably higher than 21, he added, because some "pending" non-hostile death cases are still being investigated.

Clashes Rise in Southern Iraq
Jobless Protesters Confront Ukrainian Troops and Local Police
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, January 14, 2004; Page A14

KUT, Iraq, Jan. 13 -- The boom of exploding dynamite packets, followed by the rat-a-tat of returning assault-rifle fire, echoed all Tuesday morning through the streets of this gritty, once peaceful city on the Euphrates River, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Angry demonstrators confronted Ukrainian army tanks and Iraqi police at City Hall plaza for the second day in a row. A block away, Ali Aziz, 35, a stocky, out-of-work laborer, watched the battle from behind a schoolyard wall, red-eyed and shaking with anguish.

"I have three children to support, we are living in one rented room and I have to hold up a bucket to the ceiling when it rains," he said. "I helped protect the city offices during the war, but now the old thieves are back inside, and they only give jobs to their friends." The protesters were "out there to defend all our rights," he said.

Officials and witnesses said at least a dozen civilians and police were injured Tuesday, the fifth day of anti-government protests since Jan. 6 in southern Iraqi cities with largely Shiite Muslim populations.

U.S. ammunition plant reaching its limit

100th U.S. military death reported in Afghanistan

Juan Cole provides commentary on the evolving political situation in the Iraq, along lines we do not see reported in the domestic press:

For the vast majority of women who are Muslim, the implementation of `iddah or the obligation of a man to support a woman for 3 months after he divorces her (a term long enough to see whether she is pregnant with his child) has the effect of abolishing the divorced woman's right to alimony. This abrogation of alimony was effected for Muslims in India in the mid-1980s with the Shah Banou case, as the Congress Party's sop to Indian Muslim fundamentalists. The particular form of Islamic law that the IGC seems to envisage operating would also give men the right of unilateral divorce over their wives, gives men the right to take second, third and fourth wives, and gives girls half as much inheritance from the father's estate as boys.

The US is now in the position of imposing on the Iraqi public, including the 50% who are women, a theocratic code of personal status. The question is whether this step is just the first in the road to an Iraqi theocracy.

Netizens

Net users take a bow: you're doing all the right things
By Bernhard Warner in London January 15, 2004

The typical internet user - far from being a geek - shuns television and enjoys socialising with friends, a study on surfing habits has found.

The conclusions of the first World Internet Project report present an image of the average "netizen" that contrasts with the stereotype of the loner who spends hours of his free time in cyberworld and rarely engages with reality.

Instead, the typical internet user is an avid reader and spends more time engaged in social activities than the non-user, it says. Television viewing is down among some internet users by as much as five hours per week compared with net abstainers, the study added.

"Use of the internet is reducing television viewing around the world while having little impact on positive aspects of social life," said Jeffrey Cole, director of UCLA's Centre for Communication Policy in California that organised the study.

The findings are derived from surveys in 14 countries: the US, Britain, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Japan, Macao, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, China and Chile.

The study supports established trends such as linking wealth with the most avid users and that more men than women surf the web. The gender gap is most pronounced in Italy and smallest in Taiwan.

This comports pretty well with my own experience. My TV viewing is down to pretty much nothing. I keep CNN on in the background, just to hear what the lowest-common-denominator conventional wisdom is, check in with NPR to hear their spin, but I'm finding that I rely on the foreign press more and more. They seem to have retained more of their skepticism and are less likely to be stenographers for authority figures. The Internet also gives us access to independent journalists and scholars, there is virtually a post-graduate education available on-line, once you learn who to read.

What this article does not do is discuss the kind of community building that the internet allows. Information is not a neutral commodity, like carrots or paper towels. Information has implications, so the ability to share it forms bonds of interest.

Beware the Complex

Defense and the National Interest is the project of Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, a long time opponent of the general nuttiness that has been known to take over the Defense Department. Some of the updates he writes himself, and he also invites author/experts to write on specific topics in defense and defense spending (did you know that the DoD budget is now back up to where it was at the height of the cold war?)

In this update by "Dr. Werther" (I'll leave you to puzzle out the dramatic reference), an anonymous defense analyst in Northern Virginia (we got a million of 'em), he looks back in history for parallels to our current situation.

"The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey." — H. L. Mencken Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (New York: Knopf. 1956). p. 217.
Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill has provided a significant corrective to the naive — or disingenuous — assertion that 9/11 was a catalyzing event which wrenched the Bush administration from its alleged intention to follow a "humble" foreign policy. Instead, there is an accumulating body of evidence that 9/11 was a suspiciously useful pretext (like the Reichstag fire) rather than a bolt from the blue that "changed everything."

American history is now following a trajectory described by the corporate ambitions of Halliburton, Bechtel, Unocal. Their political patrons — or servants, who now decide our collective fate, already had the emergency decree in their pockets. How convenient.

Since Kevin Phillips' new book is all about the ties of the Bush family to the military industrial complex, both here and in pre-war Germany, the comparison seems apt.

Bookmarking Chuck's website is a good idea, and you can sign up for email updates. This is important material.

UPDATE: Quiddity at Uggabugga has a graphical representation of the Bush family connections. This is another of Quid's utterly amazing diagrams.

Journos on the Ground

Matt Stoller, at The Blogging of the President, has a fascinating interview with an American journalist working in Iraq. An excerpt:

The CPA is a total mess, as should be pretty clear. It's actually kind of shocking. It's hard to even know where to start. You probably know all of this: the CPA is locked inside the Green Zone, this massive area in the heart of Baghdad that's protected by armed guards, tanks, and lots of big concrete walls. Most of the people in the Green Zone never leave, or only leave with massive army escort and then only to go directly to meetings in ministries. They call the area outside of the Green Zone, the Red Zone. In other words: all of Iraq is the Red Zone. So, very few people in the CPA have the slightest idea what's going through the minds of Iraqis. They either have brief conversations with people on the street, when they're surrounded by armed troops. Inevitably, the Iraqis tell them they are very happy with the US occupation. What else would they say? I never, ever meet Iraqis who are happy with the US occupation. Or they meet with their own Iraqi staff or staff at the ministries, who are similarly positive--sycophantic to their bosses. The ignorance is so great that I generally find when I meet with CPA officials they start interviewing me, because I know far more about Iraq than they do.

The people of the CPA are a diverse group. Some are quite smart and well meaning and are depressed about the way things are going. Morale is extremely low. Some are Bush true-believers who refuse to hear a word against the occupation, as if everything is going well. There is open hostility between the career civil servants and the political appointees. The political types tend to have no experience in the Arab world, know no Arabic, have no experience outside of the US. The CPA people who have experience in the Arab world and have a better feel for what is going on in the street (only a vague idea because of their limited contact) are sidelined and don't have any power to affect CPA decisions. Those people tend to leave quickly out of frustration.

The reporter goes on to talk about communication problems within the CPA, as well as between the CPA and the outside world of the "real Iraq." The whole piece is one of the most interesting "inside job" interviews I've read so far. Chis Allbritton, who blogged the war on the ground as an independent journalist in Iraq last spring, is planning to return by March 26. See the rightside bar of his blog to see his plans and how you can help. He also has a superb post up today analysing the Strategic Studies Institute report, written by visiting professor Jeffrey Record, that was such a bombshell in the news yesterday. Chris's summary:

More troops, more peacekeeping and more nation-building. Record notes that Americans seem to have forgotten Clausewitz’s dictum that war is an extension of politics and instead seem to substitute war for politics. The American vision of war posits the enemy as “target sets”; if one destroys enough of the target set, the enemy will surrender and American goals will be achieved. He quotes Frederick A. Kagan as saying that this vision ignores the importance of “how, exactly, one defeats the enemy and what the enemy’s country looks like at the moment the bullets stop flying.” Troops must do more than break things and kill people. They must secure population centers and infrastructure, keep the civilian populace safe and prevent humanitarian disasters. And that takes a lot of boots on the ground. It also takes a realization by the U.S. military that regime change is inextricably tied to nation-building and peacekeeping, and that those must be factored into initial planning for war. “The only hope for success in the extension of politics that war is to restore the human element to the transformation process.”

First Draft of History

Auto makers are finding ways around pollution standards by reconfiguring SUVs as light trucks.

In Iraq, riots for jobs moved into a second southern city, as American casualties near 500 dead. The cassus belli in Iraq continue to unravel, and L. Paul Bremer rejects Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's call for democratic elections this year. The third helicopter in two weeks was shot down today, and the Pentagon is preparing to announce extensions of tours of duty for at least 1,500 troops.

Echoes from the Paul O'Neill 60 Minutes segment are still rippling across the web. In dramatic contrast to government inaction following the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the press, the Bush administration has immediately called for an investigation to determine if confidential documents were revealed. UC-Berkeley economics prof, Brad DeLong thinks that O'Neill should have resigned in June, 2001, when he realized that politics was always going to trump policy in the Bush White House. Atrios finds a photo of Vice President Cheney displaying a top secret document to the press.

MoveOn.org's profile was raised this month with a controversy over their 30-second ad competition (the winning submission was chosen Monday night.) The media are now viewing them as a force to be reckoned with in this election year. MoveOn funder George Soros called for the defeat of George W. Bush in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for Internation Peace yesterday, marking the publication of his new book, The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power. The Carnegie Endowment says: Soros writes that the Bush administration's foreign policy plans come from the same sort of "bubble" psychology afflicting U.S. markets in the late 1990s. He says they have used a real fact, overwhelming military supremacy of the United States, to create a deluded worldview that might makes right and "you're either with us or against us," in the same way the recent boom used a real fact, the growth in technology, to lead to a delusion, the "new economy."

Civil rights watch: yesterday the Supreme Court refused to overturn an appeals court ruling which upheld secrecy in the charging, holding and sometime deportation of mostly Muslim and Arab immigrants. The ACLU filed a motion yesterday in the Fourth District Court (Florida) to submit a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of Rush Limbaugh. The motion states that Florida infringed on Limbaugh's constitutional right to privacy in siezing his medical records. Also in Florida, blogger/attorney Jeralyn Merritt raises her eyebrows about the kinds of questions that can be asked of judicial nominees. Jeralyn says, "Get ready for questions like this: 'Will you be able to balance your duties as a single mother of twins with your duties as a Broward judge?'" (Is it the heat or the humidity that makes this line of questioning possible?) In an on-line discussion on Monday, ACLU attorney Jay Stanley explains why the proposed CAPSII law to monitor airline passengers is a "tremendous violation of privacy."

Liberal Oasis comments on the difficulty of fact-tracking the Democratic attack ads in Iowa, but Joshua Micah Marshall is trying to get the goods on one instance of alleged "dirty tricks" in New Hampshire.

The District of Columbia is holding the first-in-the-nation, but non-binding, Democratic primary election today. Only Howard Dean, Carol Mosley Braun, Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich have chosen to compete in the race, which offers no delegates to the nominating convention. After scuffling with Democratic National Committee officials last year, District Democrats moved the primary, ordinarily held in May, in order to garner some national publicity for the District resident's lack of full voting rights in Congress. The District has one non-voting representative in the House and no representation in the Senate. The tea is in the harbor!

The Los Angeles Times reports today that "The Arctic's Inuit are being contaminated by pollution borne north by winds and concentrated as it travels up the food chain," while the rest of us worry about farm raised salmon contaminated with carcinogens. SARS concerns are leading British officials to consider new powers to stop airline passengers, reports The Guardian, as Chinese authorities gear up to fight the recent re-emergence of the disease, and Beijing tour operators are cancelling tours to Guangjong province.

President Bush is in Monterrey, Mexico, today for the Summit of the Americas. He met over breakfast with new Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. This is the first meeting between the American and Canadian heads of state since the Canadians refused to join the Iraq coalition. Trade tensions include Canadian participation in Iraq reconstruction, prohibitive soft woods tariffs on Canadian exports and a ban on Canadian cattle. The Summit also offers Bush an opportunity to mend fences with Mexican President Vicente Fox, who also opposed the Iraq war.

Immigration issues have figured large at the Summit, with Fox supporting Bush's most recent initiative. Other Latin American states remain angered that the growth in US wealth keeps them impoverished. Workplace safety maven Jordan Barab asks the question "Bush's Immigration Proposal: What Does It Mean For The Workplace Safety of Immigrant Workers?" Jordan answers his own question: "There is little doubt that a three year vacation from fear of immigration authorities, and the ability to travel back and forth across the border will improve the lives of many immigrants. But ultimately, the only thing that will protect the lives and health of immigrant is a real right to organize and strong enforcement of workplace laws for ALL workers in this country. "

Jordan also points us to this article in yesterday's St. Louis Post Dispatch:

"Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when
the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax
release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis.

"The White House Office of Management and Budget is trying to gain final control
over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies responsible
for public health, safety and the environment."

The New York Times reports, "In-House Audit Says Wal-Mart Violated Labor Laws." Author Steven Greenhouse found that "The audit of one week's time-clock records for roughly 25,000 employees found 1,371 instances in which minors apparently worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day. It also found 60,767 apparent instances of workers not taking breaks, and 15,705 apparent instances of employees working through meal times."

Last year, The Arkansas Times reported that low wages and poor working conditions were leading some Wal-Mart workers to attempt union organization, but "Wal-Mart has responded to the union drive by trying to stop workers from organizing -- sometimes in violation of federal labor law. In 10 separate cases, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Wal-Mart repeatedly broke the law by interrogating workers, confiscating union literature, and firing union supporters. At the first sign of organizing in a store, Wal-Mart dispatches a team of union busters from its headquarters in Bentonville, sometimes setting up surveillance cameras to monitor workers. "In my 35 years in labor relations, I've never seen a company that will go to the lengths that Wal-Mart goes to, to avoid a union," says Martin Levitt, a management consultant who helped the company develop its anti-union tactics before writing a book called Confessions of a Union Buster. "They have zero tolerance."

Blog Eye on the Straight Media

Ken Auletta's article in The New Yorker won't be available until tomorrow, but it's already making news. Here's Lloyd Grove in theNew York Daily News:

He didn't free the slaves.
He didn't rid the world of Hitler.
He didn't even - like his father - preside over the destruction of the Berlin Wall.
Yet George W. Bush tells New Yorker writer Ken Auletta: "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

With stunners like that, no wonder he spends so little time with journalists.

The President's eyebrow-raising assertion comes during some Oval Office chitchat after Auletta - writing about the testy relations between the Bush White House and the news media - sits in on an interview with a British newspaper reporter.

In the latest New Yorker, Auletta reports that Bush and his minions have little use for the Fourth Estate.

Political guru Karl Rove claims that the job of journalists is "not necessarily to report the news. It's to get a headline or get a story that will make people pay attention to their magazine, newspaper or television more."
And Chief of Staff Andy Card scoffs: "[The media] don't represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election."

Card argues that it's not the responsibility of top White House policymakers to provide reporters with facts.

"It's not our job to be sources. The taxpayers don't pay us to leak!" Card tells Auletta. "Our job is not to make your job easy."

Predictably, the reporters who cover Bush aren't happy. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank complains: "My biggest frustration is that this White House has chosen an approach ...to engage us as little as possible." And the New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller grouses: "Too often they treat us with contempt."

Free the White House press corps!

Dan Froomkin's morning White House Briefing in the WaPo, has more, as does Howie Kurtz.

Liberal Oasis weighs in with an analysis of all the Dem's missed opportunities on the Sunday shows, and the pathetic attempts at spinning the O'Neill interview on the part of Secretaries Snow and Evans. I sort of half-listen to the Sunday shows to catch the meme-soup for the day, but this was a really pathetic showing by the Dems. O'Neill and Suskind handed them great attack material and they don't know what to do with it.

Buzzflash interviewed Kevin Phillips last week:

"BuzzFlash: One thing you sort of bring up here -- although I don't think you explicitly state it, and I'm kind of imposing my own interpretation -- is that there seems to be a tremendous amount of incompetence in the Bush dynasty. You detail better than I've seen detailed before all the contretemps and inept signals that the Bush Administration sent to Saddam Hussein before his invasion of Kuwait -- not just the celebrated April Glaspie meeting with Saddam, but actually a statement by Secretary of State James Baker that we wouldn't necessarily come to the aid of a country that was invaded in the Middle East. And yet, although this has been discussed, you get the sense that these guys really just have a tremendous number of missteps, and then start wars to kind of cover up, in a way.

Kevin Phillips: Well, I'm not certain Baker himself said that. It tended to be people in the State Department. But I'd basically agree with your point -- that there's been an awful lot of incompetency lately. They've been poor in handling the economy. They've been outfoxed often by Saddam Hussein. Even Saddam Hussein as a captive right now -- the legacy that he's leaving for Bush is one certainly that Bush never expected when he made that touchdown on the carrier. No, and they haven't been good at elections either. After all, Bush actually lost the last election -- certainly he lost the popular vote. His father could never win election from the Senate in Texas. That should have doomed him, but he had so many private connections that they counted for more than the fact that he wasn't good in public appeal. No, they haven't been terribly competent -- that's right."

Iraq Round-up

The Army War College has released a report which is scathingly critical of the Bush administration's War on Terra, citing an unnecessary war in Iraq and indiscriminate, unfocused, and poorly defined efforts elsewhere. Meanwhile, in Iraq, the leading Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is defying Proconsul Bremer's edict for caucus-style elections this year and demanding direct democratic voting. Will this arouse greater violence in the so-far mostly cooperative south of Iraq? Attacks continue on American troops, with another death today, as the government seems to have difficulty deciding if the total number of troops killed is 495 or 504. At any rate, the military mortuary at Dover, Delaware has been vacant only twice since the beginning of the war, and the number of casualties has now surpassed the number killed in the first three years of the Vietnam war. The Army is showing signs of desperation, according to Defensewatch editor Ralph Omholt, even as Guard and Reserve troops, which are taking on more responsibility in Iraq, remain dangerously ill-equipped. Here's a link to yesterday's TIME interview and last night's 60 Minutes segment on former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and reporter Ron Susskind's new book on the run up to the Iraq war, tax policy and the machinations of the Bush Whitehouse.

Behind Enemy Lines

Sowing the Seeds of GOP Domination
Conservative Norquist Cultivates Grass Roots Beyond the Beltway
By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 12, 2004; Page A01

Diners brushed past the men unaware, as Ken Mehlman and Grover Norquist hopscotched across state lines, refining what Norquist calls, with a wink, "our secret plan to seize power." Mehlman, the Bush-Cheney campaign manager, and Norquist, gardener of the conservative grass roots, were discussing a new tactic for the 2004 election: The campaign would activate the conservative base as it never had before.

Norquist, 47, is known for his weekly strategy sessions of conservatives, a Washington institution. But quietly, for the past five years, he also has been building a network of "mini-Grover" franchises. He has crisscrossed the country, hand-picking leaders, organizing meetings of right-wing advocates in 37 states. The network will meet its first test in the presidential race. On this evening at Harry's, several blocks from campaign headquarters in Arlington, Norquist presented his master contact list to Mehlman, mapped out and bound in a book.

"Fabulous, Grover. Awesome," Mehlman said, scanning the book like a hungry man reading a menu. "We're going to take that energy and harness it."

The binder was Norquist's gift to the presidential race. His aspirations, though, extend far beyond the White House. Congress, governorships, state legislatures, the media, the courts -- Norquist has a programming plan, and it is all Republican, all the time. Norquist closes his letters, "Onward." He takes the mission so seriously, he has named a successor in his will. Socially, he is often introduced as the head of the vast right-wing conspiracy. He accepts the title with a faint blush.

"He is an impresario of the center-right," the president's strategist, Karl Rove, said in an interview. Rove said Norquist's activists helped President Bush push trade promotion, tax cuts, judicial nominees and tort reform, among other items. "They've been out there slogging for us in the trenches."

They gather every Wednesday morning in a boardroom of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist is president of the anti-tax group. The shades are down, the lights are weak, yet an incandescent assuredness infuses the room. A hundred and twenty people mill around, eating bagels, distributing talking points, exchanging business cards and tips. They are lobbyists, analysts, senior White House and Hill staffers, advocates for property rights, gun ownership and traditional values. There are never enough chairs. The air is as warm as a hatchery.

"Guys, could you all please be seated," Norquist said on a recent Wednesday. " 'Cause as usual, we have a fun-filled, action-packed, spine-tingling agenda."

The sessions are by invitation only, and off the record. A Washington Post reporter was allowed access on the condition that no participant would be quoted without permission

Read the whole thing. That a WaPo reporter was invited into the belly of the beast tells you something about how confident they are.

One of the truisms about the human race is that our greatest strength and greatest weakness tend to be the same trait. The right's desire to appeal to the basest, most narrowly drawn definition of self-interest is also the force which can diminish it.

Posted by Melanie at 11:02 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Suffer the Little Children

I know that regular commentor Frederick already has Kevin Phillips new book, met the author and got his copy signed last week. As he reads it I hope he will provide us with his insights, or, if you are updating your reading on your blog, Frederick, drop a comment to let us know you've added your thought on the book. Frederick is devoting his blog, Beat Bush Blog to "regime change." His is a compelling, thoughtful piece of work.

The reason that I bring this up is that the Family Bush is trashing the poor in other places besides the federal budget. Bob Herbert's Monday NYT Op-Ed is, to say the least, very disturbing. We can't chalk up all of the Bush sense of entitlement to theological addlement. Little Jebbie is a rotter, too.

What Ails Florida?
By BOB HERBERT

MIAMI

The State of Florida really knows how to hurt a kid. It has money for sports stadiums. It lavishes billions of dollars' worth of tax breaks and other goodies on private corporations. It even has money for a substantial reserve fund. But, in an episode of embarrassing and unnecessary tightfistedness, it has frozen enrollment in a badly needed state health insurance program for low-income children.

Some 60,000 to 70,000 children who are eligible for KidCare, Florida's version of the popular and successful children's health insurance program, have been put on waiting lists. Even kids who already have serious health problems are being placed on the lists, which are lengthening every day. No one knows when — or if — the children will get coverage.
....

Most of the children on the waiting list are from families whose incomes are just over the poverty line. (The children of the very poor are covered by Medicaid.) The freeze was imposed at the end of July, ostensibly because of state budget problems. But the Florida budget problems are not as bad as those in many other states. Since last July Florida has qualified for nearly $1 billion in help from the federal government, which has come up with $400 million in increased Medicaid matching funds and more than $500 million in a fiscal relief grant.

The cost of providing the authorized coverage for the tens of thousands of youngsters on the KidCare waiting lists is estimated at just $23 million for the remainder of this fiscal year. The money from the federal government could be used for that purpose, but Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Legislature have not been willing to take that step. These kids are not part of a particularly favored constituency. Their parents do not have much political clout, and may not even vote. Some of the kids may end up desperately ill (some may die), but as a group they are not the kind of kids who get a lot of attention or sympathy from the powers that be in Florida today.

A spokesman for Governor Bush, Jacob DiPietre, told me yesterday that no immediate action is planned to provide health coverage to the children on the waiting lists. "Be assured that the governor and his entire administration are concerned about the waiting list," he said. But he added, "This is a problem that requires a long-term, sustainable solution."

And he made a point of noting, "The KidCare program is not an entitlement."

Florida is one of 34 states that have made serious cuts in public health insurance programs for low-income people over the past two years. A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that from 1.2 million to 1.6 million men, women and children have lost coverage as a result.

cuts are spreading, not receding, as states look for solutions to budget problems that in many cases are far more severe than Florida's.

On Thursday President Bush and Governor Bush made a joint appearance in Palm Beach, where the president picked up a quick million dollars for his re-election campaign. There was plenty of laughter and glad-handing, and little talk about such unpleasant matters as the denial of health care to low-income children.

Herbert adds some of the heart-rending anecdotal detail, including an uninsured family with three sick kids who have been waitlisted. They lost Medicaid when the father found a new job but couldn't afford insurance.

I'm sorry. Aren't there things that you just do because they are, ya know, RIGHT? What the hell kind of a government takes politics into account when the subject is sick kids? Oh, yeah. That federal one. Florida readers, contact your state reps and the governor's office. This is one of those kinds of arrogance which should have us getting out the pitchforks and marching on the statehouse. The Gov's aide's logic is specious: the program is an entitlement for those who qualify by income until some arbitrary cut-off point by the state. And how is it that Florida has this big federal fiscal relief grant when my state is doing Yoga with its budget to try to make some of the ends meet?

UPDATE: Jeb's budget director, Donna Arduin, is now working for Governor Gro--er--Shwartzenegger in California. Guess what his budget proposal looks like? "The heaviest cuts include capping enrollments in several programs, including Healthy Families, which
subsidizes health insurance for poor children, and a program that covers the medical expenses of children with cancer, heart conditions, cerebral palsy and
other serious disorders."

hat tip: Pacific John of the Gropinator.

The Family

This is a rather surprising review of AMERICAN DYNASTY:
Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
By Kevin Phillips , written by the WaPo's senior book critic, Jonathan Yardley.

"All in all, if presidential family connections were theme parks, Bush World would be a sight to behold. Mideast banks tied to the CIA would crowd alongside Florida S&Ls; that once laundered money for the Nicaraguan contras. Dozens of oil wells would run eternally without finding oil, thanks to periodic cash deposits by old men wearing Reagan-Bush buttons and smoking twenty-dollar cigars. Visitors to 'Prescott Bush's Tokyo' could try to make an investment deal without falling into the clutches of the yakuza or Japanese mob."

It is a gloomy, even frightening picture: "global oil ventures, national security, sophisticated investments, arms deals, the Skull and Bones chic of covert operations, and committed support of established business interests," now compounded by the "religious impulses and motivations" that the born-again George W. brings to the mix. It operates not in the free market its rhetoric prattles about, but in "crony capitalism" that gives every advantage to the cronies with enough capital to buy their way into the game. Crony capitalism has turned the funding of American elections into both a joke and a menace, and has made the public's business a matter of private interest.

That this powerful argument has been made by Kevin Phillips should be a measure of how seriously it should be taken. He is not an ideologue of the left -- to the contrary, he has been identified with the Republican Party for some three decades, though he now calls himself an independent -- and he is not a conspiracy theorist; indeed he makes plain at the outset that "we must be cautious here not to transmute commercial relationships into . . . conspiracy theory." It is true that in some instances his argument rests on circumstantial evidence and in others (mostly involving the family's engagement with espionage and secret arrangements) on conjecture. It is also true that at times reading his dense prose can be an uphill battle. But American Dynasty is an important, troubling book that should be read everywhere with care, nowhere more so than in this city.

Yardley uses the word "frightening" to describe the world of the Bush dynasty, and the world they are trying to force on us. This is an unusual tack coming from a critic who is both contrarian and predictably center-right. Yardley can never praise without carping, but the criticisms he offers in the final paragraph say more about him than about Phillips' book.

I just saw an hour program on Book TV with Phillips. A more serious, sober and reflective personage one could not hope for. This book is not tin-foil hattery, but serious history.

UPDATE: I'm watching the Kevin Phillips program on Book TV again. This book a must have. The bibliography alone is an education.

One of the commentors on another thread has offered to send tapes of the Paul O'Neill interview on 60 Minutes out to undecided voters in swing states, but this Phillips program is far more damning. Book TV repeats things and this is worth taping when it re-appears. Phillips re-emphasizes that all of his material is open source, along with his own speculations based on the facts available.

Phillips was in the Nixon Whitehouse. His first book in 1969, The Emerging Republican Majority(sound familiar?), laid out the "southern strategy" which has worked so well for the Republican party. He now considers himself an Independent, and wonders why the hell the press isn't following up on Bush the way they did on Nixon. When journalists became stars and get paid to give speaches, they lost interest in anything other than their incomes.

As I watch this mild and moderate man, Kevin Phillips, I wonder what happened to him that he has so turned from his corporate/political masters to walk this new path. The relationships between the Bush family, the bin Laden family, Carlyle, BCCI, the intel community and a host of other interlocking partnerships are stomach turning for me, but I wonder what it must have been like for Phillips to go through this change. How people change tracks is a source of endless fascination.

National Mood

Naomi Klein nails the current mood in The Nation.

While truth did not pay in 2003, lying certainly did. Just ask Rupert Murdoch. According to an October study conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, when it comes to the war in Iraq, regular watchers of Murdoch's Fox News are the most misinformed people in America. Eighty percent of Fox News watchers believed either that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, that there is evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link or that world opinion supported the war--or they believed all three of these untruths.

On December 19 the Federal Communications Commission gave Murdoch the right to purchase the top US satellite broadcaster, DirecTV. The FCC vote took place just five days before the FBI's almanac bulletin, and they can best be understood in tandem: If books that fill your brain with facts make you a potential terrorist, then media moguls who fill your brain with mush must be heroes, deserving of the richest rewards.

When Bush came to office, many believed his ignorance would be his downfall. Eventually Americans would realize that a President who referred to Africa as "a nation" was unfit to lead. Now we tell ourselves that if only Americans knew that they were being lied to, they would surely revolt. But with the greatest of respect for the liar books (Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Big Lies, The Lies of George W. Bush, The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq et al.), I'm no longer convinced that America can be set free by the truth alone.

In many cases, fake versions of events have prevailed even when the truth was readily available. The real Jessica Lynch--who told Diane Sawyer that "no one beat me, no one slapped me, no one, nothing"--has proven no match for her media-military created doppelgänger, shown being slapped around by her cruel captors in NBC's movie Saving Jessica Lynch.

Rather than being toppled for his adversarial relationship to both the most important truths and the most basic facts, Bush is actively remaking America in the image of his own ignorance and duplicity. Not only is it OK to be misinformed, but as the almanac warning shows, knowing stuff is fast becoming a crime.

People like to identify with their leadership. They prefer to believe that they, themselves, are moral, fair people, and they project that belief on their leadership. The level of cognitive dissonance that it takes to get them to abandon that belief is enormous.

I'm reminded of Richard Nixon's reelection in 1972. By that year, there was already a swirl of doubt in the media about Nixon's truthfulness on any number of issues, from the Vietnam war to the enemies list to the Watergate break in. It took two more years of relentless media pounding and daily televised Senate hearings to break down the public's identification with Nixon.

That the media has both given Bush a pass on almost every issue, and then assissted him by creating a fictional narrative about manliness, leadership, and resoluteness, which tracks 100% with the average American's fictional narrative about themself, gives us poll numbers which tell us that more and more Americans are going to see the failing employment situation and growing trouble in Iraq and still give the guy approval rating that don't track with reality. What the polling firms and media don't understand that, at this point in the election cycle, most voters aren't paying attention yet, and that what the pollsters are polling are the average Americans' opinions of themselves.

Some economists see significant weakness in the economy which could result in a real and palpable slowdown by late spring. Americans do vote their pocketbooks and if they are given additional impetus to separate their self-image from that of their leadership because it has become obvious that Iraq is a quagmire, Bush is unelectable. It took the media turning on Nixon for the Senate Watergate Committee hearings to even be possible. If the news becomes relentless bad, even Judy Woodruff will have to report it.

I sense that this is beginning to happen in small ways: CNN talking heads (which I look at as lowest common denominator media) have been partisan cheeleaders for Team Bush. The broadcast networks, by contrast, are showing a little more skepticism. But one of the most interesting media phenomena I'm tracking right now is the conversion of business talker Lou Dobbs. Up until a couple of years ago, the man was a consistent shill for big business interests. In the last 20 months, however, he's become a tiger on behalf of the middle class worker. This is remarkable. His interviews with administration officials or surrogates have been among the toughest on television.

I don't know how much media pressure it will take to get the average American voter to see beyond self-identification. Certainly the Faux-Murdoch complex will never turn, but if there is enough competing reporting available, some doubts will begin to seep in. Doubt becomes a wedge into which information can flow.

Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun

This Matthew Rosenberg article in the SF Chron is an excellent round-robin survey of the weekend in Iraq. Notice a couple of things: intra-Iraqi violence is escalating, and violence is becoming generalized in some parts of the country. With the huge troop rotation which has just gotten underway, we are moving into an extremely dangerous time. Note that Iraqi police or defense forces were nowhere to be seen at Sunday's demonstration.

Iraqi protesters stone British and Iraqi forces a day after deadly clashes with authorities

The trouble in Amarah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, started Saturday when hundreds of Iraqis gathered to protest that authorities had not kept a promise to give them jobs.
They stoned the town hall, shattering windows. Shots rang out, makeshift bombs were thrown and the British and Iraqi police opened fire. Hospital officials said six people were killed. The British put the death toll at five -- with no casualties among soldiers or police.

On Sunday, demonstrators sent a representative to talk to British and Iraqi officials, who promised them 8,000 jobs, according to witnesses. But protesters said a similar promise made weeks before had not been fulfilled and the clash ensued. No Iraqi police were visible at the scene Sunday.

The Navy also said Sunday that fighter jets from the USS Enterprise dropped a 1,000-pound bomb on "an enemy mortar position" near Balad, in northern Iraq. It said Friday's attack was the first use of precision-guided munitions this year from the carrier, which is in the Gulf.
....

In other developments:
* Iraqi police on Sunday surrounded at least two Tikrit hotels and arrested several men calling themselves migrant workers. They were suspected of belonging to the Badr Corps, the military wing of the Shiite group, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Sgt. Bryan Luke said. It was not immediately clear how many people were arrested in the operation or where they were from.
* Four mortar shells exploded at the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan office Sunday morning in the northern city of Mosul, damaging the building but causing no injuries, according to party officials who were there at the time.
* Two explosions occurred Sunday near the U.S.-led coalition office in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. Police said they appeared to be percussion bombs "aimed at terrorizing."
* The body of an Iraqi working with the U.S.-led coalition was found in the southern city of Basra, along with another man not associated with the coalition, authorities said Sunday. Insurgents opposed to the U.S.-led occupation have targeted soldiers as well as civilians and Iraqi police working with the occupiers.
* Two Estonian soldiers suffered minor injuries when a grenade was thrown at their patrol on Saturday in Baghdad, Estonian army spokesman Peeter Tali said.

Mad Cow Employment

Bushies just love those banner-thingies with the talking point of the day blasted across them. This will go down in history as a PR presidency. Let's hope it goes down real soon.

Bush Seeks Ways to Create Jobs, and Fast
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 - The stage had been set to celebrate the revival of jobs.
With a phalanx of women entrepreneurs at his side and a billboard covered with the word "Jobs!" behind him, President Bush proclaimed his confidence about the economy here on Friday. But he made only passing reference to the latest news about employment.

The reason was clear: Friday's report on unemployment in December was much weaker than either the administration or most independent economists had predicted. Job creation was virtually nil, and the unemployment rate declined only because the labor force shrank by 309,000 workers. Many of those were people who had simply become too discouraged to keep looking for work.

The problem confronting Mr. Bush is that there is little he can do between now and the elections except wait and hope that the employment picture improves. And the administration is not likely to get much more help from the Federal Reserve, which has already reduced short-term interest rates to just 1 percent.

"In terms of big levers to pull, they don't have anything," said Pierre Ellis, a senior economist at Decision Economics, a forecasting company.

I guess Bushco is just going to wave its magic wand and create jobs. Poof.

And what jobs there are will pay less, if the Labor department gets its way. We need to keep an eye on this one and not let it fall down the memory hole when congress returns.

The case can be made that it is time to review exempt/non-exempt work rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act, but in the other direction. Far too many jobs which have no supervisory, management or budget responsibility are currently exempted from the overtime provision of the Act. Almost everyone I know who works in office support/clerical functions should be exempt, but few are.

Gov't Advises Companies on How to Avoid Overtime Pay
By Leigh Strope
AP Labor Writer
Monday, January 5, 2004; 5:27 PM

WASHINGTON -- The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.

The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms, which Labor Secretary Elaine Chao called long overdue.

Among the options for employers: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.

The department says it is merely listing well-known choices available to employers, even under current law.

"We're not saying anybody should do any of this," said Labor Department spokesman Ed Frank.

A final rule, revising the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, is expected to be issued in March. The act defines the types of jobs that qualify workers for time-and-a-half if they work more than 40 hours a week
.
Overtime pay for the 1.3 million low-income workers has been a selling tool for the Bush administration in trying to ease concerns in Congress about millions of higher-paid workers becoming ineligible.

But the Labor Department, in a summary of its plan published last March, suggests how employers can avoid paying overtime to those newly eligible low-income workers.
"Most employers affected by the proposed rule would be expected to choose the most cost-effective compensation adjustment method," the department said. For some companies, the financial impact could be "near zero," it said.

Employers' options include:
-- Adhering to a 40-hour work week.
-- Raising workers' salaries to a new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible for overtime pay.
If employers raise a worker's salary "it means they're getting a raise -- that's not a way around overtime," Frank said. The current threshold is $8,060 per year.
-- Making a "payroll adjustment" that results "in virtually no, or only a minimal increase in labor costs," the department said. Workers' annual pay would be converted to an hourly rate and cut, with overtime added in to equal the former salary.
Essentially, employees would be working more hours for the same pay.

The department does not view the "payroll adjustment" option as a pay cut. Rather, it allows the employer to "maintain the pay at the current level" with the new overtime requirements, said the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division administrator, Tammy McCutchen, an architect of the plan.

Labor unions criticized the employer options
.
Mark Wilson, a lawyer for the Communications Workers of America who specializes in overtime issues, said the Bush administration was protecting the interests of employers at the expense of workers.

"This plan speaks volumes about the real motives of this so-called family-friendly administration," Wilson said.

He says cutting workers' pay to avoid overtime is illegal, based on a 1945 Supreme Court ruling and a 1986 memo by the Labor Department under President Reagan.
....

The final plan does not require approval from Congress. That hasn't stopped Democrats and some Republicans from trying to block the rule, thus far unsuccessfully, out of fear that millions of workers would become ineligible for overtime.

Department officials say about 644,000 higher-paid workers would lose their overtime eligibility. But the proposal says 1.5 million to 2.7 million workers "will be more readily identified as exempt" from overtime requirements. Labor unions claim the figure is about 8 million.

This article makes a big whooptie about the income threshold for overtime, which is essentially meaningless as there are so many other categories of non-exemption to render this provision virtually meaningless. The real news, which the Times reporter misses, is that the new regulations will exempt classes of employees currently covered by overtime from the entitlement to it they now have. Like many hourly workers covered by a union contract, in my last career overtime made the difference between between being able to afford new glasses, or buy Christmas presents or take the odd vacation and not. The new rules are draconian and the burden, as always, falls on the lowest 40% of incomes.

There is one good jobs story today.

In 1995, Malden Mills was destroyed in a fire. Malden is a small, industrial city north of Boston, and this was the last vestige of the one dominant textile industry in this rust-belt region. Malden makes Polartec, the fabric which keeps us warm and dry with very light weight. When the factory burned, the owner kept all of the workers on payroll until a new plant could be built. They don't make heroes like this anymore. He had to go hugely into debt to finance that payroll while the factory was rebuilt, and he's been struggling to hang on to the business ever since. Years of appeals by the Massachussetts congressional delegation have finally led to a consolidation loan by the Ex-Imp bank, which may allow this fantastic owner to hang on to his business. Here is a link to the BoGlo story:
Ex-Im Bank backs former Malden Mills CEO's request

Aaron Feuerstein is a real hero. He demonstrates what the word loyalty really means, as opposed to "loyalty" as practiced by Bush, Inc. Multi-millionaires really are different than you and I. They are a lot pettier.

I hope Mr. Feuerstein is able to rescue his business. And I hope that Team Rove goes down in flames over this obscene change to the overtime rules. And I also hope that the press will finally start reporting what is really going on. People say I'm a dreamer....

The Pre-Draft

US military stretched too thin?
Volunteer army is "closer to being broken today than ever before in its 30-year history."

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Pentagon experts worry that some of the military's most experienced pilots might quit after prolonged deployments to dangerous hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq. At least 14 US helicopters have crashed in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat over last May, claiming some 58 lives and underscoring the vulnerability of an essential cog in US military operations there. Retention of pilots is a major concern because of the time, and the cost, of training them. Analysts say the situation with pilots is just one more example that the US military is stretched too thin.

"There is no question that the force is stretched too thin," said David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. "We have stopped treating the reserves as a force in reserve. Our volunteer army is closer to being broken today than ever before in its 30-year history."

The Denver Post notes that while sign-up and retention rates for active-duty branches remain strong, the recruiting of reservists has fallen off. Last year the Army fell 7 percent below its recruitment goal. And in some states, the retention rate has fallen far below the desired 85 percent - In Colorado it has fallen to 71 percent.

"This year we have lost 49 soldiers, and that is bad news," said Master Sgt. Pat Valdez, a spokesman for the 2nd Brigade of the 91st Division of the Army Reserve, which comprises some 800 soldiers from Western Plains states. "They are getting out because of personal reasons, promotions at work ... and stress on family."

One result of this situation, The Washington Post reported earlier this week, is that the Army alone has blocked the departure of more than 40,000 soldiers, about 16,000 of them National Guard and Reserve members who were eligible to leave the service this year. Reuters quotes the Pentagon as saying that 187,746 National Guard and Reserve troops were mobilized as of Dec. 31, 2003. About 20 percent of the troops in Iraq are Reservists or Guard members but this proportion is expected to double next year. The Associated Press notes the number of military reservists called to active duty jumped by more than 10,000 in the past week, reflecting their new role in Iraq.

In order to accomodate the massive changeover between departing and arriving troops the next two months in Iraq, the Army this week issued a "stop loss" order to keep 7,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq from leaving the service at the end of their regular enlistments. But some defense analysts say stop-loss orders will discourage new recruits, bound to see many in uniform as no longer volunteers. "The reality is the stop-loss orders that are now in effect amount to a de facto draft," Charles Pena, defense analyst with the Cato Institute, said.

The Albany Times Union reports that the military may soon start calling up retired reservists. There are 800,000 Reserve retirees. The Pentagon is asking them to provide updated address and contact information.

Bush advisers debating what to do about Syria

By Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Senior aides to President Bush are vigorously debating what to do about Syria as evidence mounts that the government in Damascus is stepping up support for the terror group Hezbollah and allowing anti-American insurgents to reach Iraq, according to U.S. officials.

Civilians in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office are pushing for military action against Syria short of an invasion and have drawn up plans for punitive airstrikes and cross-border incursions by U.S. forces, according to three officials.

But Bush's White House advisers, backed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department, are arguing against a new military venture with much of the U.S. military tied down in Iraq and a presidential election year under way.
That view appears to have prevailed, for now.

"We've got all we can handle, and then some, in Iraq, and our military is either stretched to the breaking point or already broken," said one senior administration official

He and others spoke on condition of anonymity because the debate is ongoing and some of the information involved is classified.

Classified, eh? Not if you read the papers.

The Syrians have been falling all over themselves to provide us with intelligence on Al Qaida, but they are hardly blameless in the cultivation of terrorism in the ME. And then there are our friends the Saudis...

The fact of the matter is that we don't have the resources to take on the Syrians. The Knight Ridder story indicates that we are losing the pilots that it would take to wage an effective air war, anyway.

And by the way, who is going to pay for all this high-tech dick-swinging? In the last two weeks we've been told that Bush is going to cut the deficit in half in five years, establish a base on the moon by some indefinite date and reform immigration. Every election season involves a certain amount of ludicrous promise making. We simply seem to have arrived in cloud cuckoo land a whole lot earlier this year.

New World Order

I was introduced to the writing of Helena Cobban by Juan Cole. She's a journo who has been working the international beat, and Asia in particular, for decades. She has a column in the Christian Science Monitor, and hits a couple of important points this week.

Americans need to recognize their place in the world

By Helena Cobban

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. - At the turn of the year, it's good to take stock of issues of vital concern. My big question for the new year: How, during the year ahead, do we hope to see the 4 percent of the world's population who are US citizens interacting with the other 96 percent?

Last March, President Bush took it on himself to start a war for total regime change against Iraq. He made that decision alone - and received military help from only two other nations, Britain and Spain. Previously, Bush had pressed the United Nations hard to launch intrusive inspections of Iraq's weapons programs - and the UN had done just that. But when Bush went to war, he sidelined the UN completely, defying the wishes of nearly all the world's governments - including many of Washington's longtime allies - and of the 5.8 billion people who are their citizens.

From the New York Times this morning, a related story.

U.S. Seeking Backing of U.N. Chief for Iraq Plan
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 9 — The United States moved Friday to secure backing from Secretary General Kofi Annan for the American plan to transfer authority to Iraqis this summer, and to persuade him to send United Nations staff members back to Baghdad promptly.

The American ambassador, John D. Negroponte, met Mr. Annan late Friday after consultations in Washington to spell out what role the United Nations could play and what security assurances the American-led alliance could provide.

The United States is eager for the imprimatur a United Nations presence in Iraq would give the allied forces but has resisted Mr. Annan's repeated demands for "clarity" over exactly what its workers would be asked to do and how safe they would be from attacks like those that drove the organization out of Iraq this fall. A bomb at the United Nations offices in Baghdad on Aug. 19 killed more than 20 staff members. Mr. Annan pulled all non-Iraqi staff members out of the country in October.

In actions that have alarmed Washington, individual Iraqi leaders have been seeking United Nations intervention in the current transition plan, a Nov. 15 agreement that calls for regional caucuses leading to the appointment of a provisional government by July 1.

They would like to see elections occur before that date, but Mr. Annan, in a gesture welcomed by the United States, sent word on Thursday night that elections could not be organized so hastily and that the United Nations would not intrude on the security arrangements.

The crux of the matter in American foreign policy rests in the deep divide between Cobban and Hoge's storys. Bushco has gone out of their way to piss off the rest of the world, but now we want the UN to clean up the mess in Iraq, at least as window dressing. I'm not at all sure that Bushco understands much more than window dressing.

As a practical matter, the "solutions" for Iraq offered by all the Dems (except Kucinich) call for some degree of internationalization. This will mean getting the UN involved, at least in the on the ground diplomacy. If anyone thinks that the UN is going to be in a big rush to send troops to relieve ours, think again. International troops are already committed in so many "peace-keeping" actions around the world that there aren't enough left to provide any real relief in Iraq.

After the amount of garbage the Bushies have hurled at the rest of the world over the Iraq war, you better believe that a price will be extracted if and when the international community decides that it is in their best interest to give us a hand. The didn't want this war, their populations are still firmly against it, and they are in no rush to see their kids dying on the sand. I remember my jaw dropping when Bush went to the UN and hearing the rant against the Asian sex trade he delivered. That particular Asian cesspool needs cleaning up, and it would be a good thing if Americans weren't using it. Americans like Neil Bush, for example. But when Bush went looking for help, he delivered a tirade instead.

That's the behavior of someone who thinks the world is your oyster, and you have hired help to do the dirty work of opening the shells.

Your Bump

I just spent two hours working on an essay about all the current hoo-raw in the press about the Dem candidates beginning to talk about their spiritual interests and commitments, anchored in an upcoming Washington Post article by Beliefnet's Steve Waldman. This is an important topic, and I'd been thinking about my essay all week.

The system crashed. It's gone.

It's also late, so I'm not going to try to reconstruct it tonight. Maybe if I sleep on it, it will be a better post in the morning.

I appreciate all of your comments and ideas about system configurations. I've been working on mainframes and PCs for more than 25 years, but I have to admit I don't have much of a handle on a lot of what makes our machines and applications work. I was in the frontline of trainers who took payroll departments from paper to computer in the 70s, joined the first rank of database designers in the 80s, when I also bootstrapped my first word processor. But I got lost after DOS. GUI interfaces left me by the side of the road as a developer. I lost interest when I got more interested in writing than designing and coding wordprocessors. I appreciate all of your help as I move to a better system. My hatred of M$ remains so I'm going to explore that Open Office option so many of you recommended.

Baby brother #1 is a sysadmin who also builds the guts of the machines. The next machine will be a house grown system. It is no small irony that my current machine is something he wouldn't have been able to turn on when I bought it in 1997, it was probably my 7th or 8th computer. My, how things change. Baby brother #2 is in the financial services industry, and I don't understand that, either. But neither of them understand this liberal theologian in their midst, either, so all of the non-comprehension is mutual. The "baby brother" thing is a bit of a joke, as both of them top 6 feet and I'm, erm, tiny, the shrimp of the family.

Thanks for hanging around this week. We had some new faces. Er, handles, whatever, on the comments threads. It makes me very happy that you choose to spend some of your time here, but I want to remind my reader/lurkers that this is your space, too. It's the conversation that matters. Don't come here just to read me. If you aren't reading the comments, and entering in, you are missing the community. What makes a blog different from a personal journal is that it grows and changes in conversation. I'm already making design decisions based on what you've told me, and some of the comments threads are interesting commentaries and controversies in themselves. Many have told me that you like what I'm doing here, and I thank you for that. I'm trying to do something that I think is important, beating Bush by telling the truth, but this is a blog, not an editorial column. You make the community, which is the blog ideal, by talking with each other. My dream is that, within a year, I'll have to move this site to something like Scoop. For that to happen, I have to turn out the quality work that you've told me you appreciate, but you also have to participate.

Thanks to all of you who fill the comments boxes with wonderful, thoughtful commentary. Boy, does Bump have smart readers. We are known by the company we keep. Discuss amongst yourselves what you want here. Besides the design issues, what do you want here in content? I'm also not Digby or Billmon, I have a very distinct point of view on the news and a theological orientation, and I think that has been clear from the very beginning of the Bump. Tell me how you want me to stretch. This is not an open thread, monitoring one of those on MT is a nightmare, but I'd like to hear your desires for this Bump in the Beltway. You've given me courage and hope on days when I've had none. I trust you.

Comment away!

Melanie

Insider News

via >corrente

Former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill will be flacking a new "insider" book on "60 Minutes" this Sunday. This is the first reason I've had to watch the tired, old exercise in apologetics for a long time. This might be interesting.

Former Treasury Secretary Criticizes Bush
O'Neill Says President Did Not Encourage Open Debate

Reuters
Friday, January 9, 2004; 10:38 AM

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill likened President Bush at Cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," according to excerpts Friday from a CBS interview.

O'Neill, who was fired by Bush in December 2002, also said the president did not ask him a single question during their first one-on-one meeting, which lasted an hour.
"As I recall it was just a monologue," he told CBS' "60 Minutes," which will broadcast the entire interview Sunday.

In making the blind man analogy, O'Neill told CBS his ex-boss did not encourage a free flow of ideas or open debate.

"There is no discernible connection," CBS quoted O'Neill as saying. The president's lack of engagement left his advisers with "little more than hunches about what the president might think," O'Neil said, according to the program.

CBS said much of O'Neill's criticisms of Bush are included in "The Price of Loyalty," an upcoming book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind.

Even more interesting will be the release of this book in April. Richard Clarke was the NSC staffer for Clinton who was responsible for counterterrorism. It was he who gave the Al Qaida briefings to Condi and Bush before 9/11. Briefings which were largely ignored, or so I hear. I hope he includes the slides of those Power Point presentations in his book, properly redacted so as not to reveal sources and methods, of course.

UPDATE: More reasons to watch "60 Minutes" tomorrow night. Familiar territory for denizens of the blogosphere, but this is going to be new news to the voter in Middle America. Paul O'Neill was fired by Bush for opposing the second round of tax cuts as being ruinous to the budget deficit. The Bush administration is one of those places where telling the truth is a bad idea.

Saddam's Ouster Planned In 2001?
Jan. 10, 2004

The Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported.

That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O'Neill talks to Correspondent Lesley Stahl in the interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," he tells Stahl. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do is a really huge leap."

O'Neill, fired by the White House for his disagreement on tax cuts, is the main source for an upcoming book, "The Price of Loyalty," authored by Ron Suskind.

Suskind says O'Neill and other White House insiders he interviewed gave him documents that show that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for removing Saddam Hussein from power and planning for the aftermath of Saddam's downfall -- including post-war contingencies like peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq's oil.

"There are memos," Suskind tells Stahl, "One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.'"

A Pentagon document, says Suskind, titled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," outlines areas of oil exploration. "It talks about contractors around the world from...30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq," Suskind says.

According to CBS News Reporter Lisa Barron in Baghdad, "The Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of former exiles, says it's not surprised by O'Neill's remarks. Spokesman Entifadh Qanbar tells CBS News that the Bush administration opened official channels to the Iraqi opposition soon after coming to power, and discussed how to remove saddam. The group opened an office in Washington shotly afterwards."

Iraq's Future

Kurds' Wariness Frustrates U.S. Efforts
Reluctance to Yield Autonomy Brings Prospect of Two Governments in Iraq

By Robin Wright and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A13

The United States faces the prospect of two governments inside Iraq -- one for Kurds and one for Arabs -- after so far failing to win a compromise from the Kurds on a formula to distribute political power when the U.S. occupation ends, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
....

The new crisis over Kurdistan is the latest flap in the increasingly troubled process of working out a transition to Iraqi rule. The drama is playing out as the United States rushes to help create a Transitional Administration Law to govern the country after June 30.

To the surprise of many U.S. and Iraqi officials, the hottest flashpoint is proving to be the formula for federalism. Iraqis generally agree that Iraq's 18 provinces, possibly redrawn into a smaller number of states, should have a federal government, but the details have been divisive.

One possible compromise is deferring decisions on the final status of the Kurdish north, and its claim on regional oil fields, until the United States hands over power to a provisional Iraqi government. The Iraqis would then be left to sort it out. If this fallback option is adopted, U.S. officials say, they hope that a strong central government in Baghdad emerges, wins international backing and leads the Kurdish minority and Arab majority to come to a mutually accepted arrangement.

But Kurds are opposed to creating a set of basic laws for Iraq that doesn't address those issues. "If you leave everything out, no details, it's like a time bomb," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi Governing Council. "The sooner one tries to find a solution and some consensus, the better."

The danger in trying now to make major decisions on Kurdish autonomy, U.S. officials say, is that the Kurds may be reluctant to alter those terms later when Iraqis write a constitution after the U.S. political role ends.

This is a disaster waiting to happen, and a tangible sign of how dangerously screwed up Bremer (and whoever is running him) is. What do the Iraqis say about this?

Riverbend, the blogger behind Baghdad Burning, writes:

"Splitting Iraq...
Salam blogged about a subject close to every Iraqi's heart these last few days- the issue of federalism in Iraq and the Kurdish plan to embrace Kirkuk and parts of Mosul into the autonomous region in the north.

"I can sum it up in two words: bad idea. First off, Kirkuk doesn't have a Kurdish majority as Talabani implies in every statement he makes. The Arabs and Turkomen in Kirkuk make up the majority. After the war and occupation, the KDP (led by Berazani) and PUK (led by Talabani) began paying party members to set up camp in Kirkuk and its outskirts to give the impression that there was a Kurdish majority in the oil-rich area. The weeks of May saw fighting between Kurdish Bayshmarga and Turkomen civilians because in some selected areas, the Turkomen were being attacked and forced to leave their homes and farms.

"While Kurds and Turkomen generally get along in Iraq, there is some bitterness between them. Making Kirkuk a part of 'Kurdistan', as some are fond of calling it, would result in bloodshed and revolt. The Arabs in Kirkuk would refuse and the Turkomen wouldn't tolerate it. "

She offers a small history lesson on the reasons for historical bad blood, but the bottom line is this: splitting the country in this fashion would invite civil war. Riverbend links to Salam Pax, the original Baghdad Blogger, who voices the most basic, fundamental objection to this proposal by the Kurdish "leadership:"

"I remember almost a month ago when Zibari (our minister for foreign affairs) talked about federalism and I thought “that’s nice we are starting the discussion finally”. I was wrong it was not a discussion; it was a done and made deal. It got so silly that Kurds and Arabs are having real trouble about the issue, the Kirkuk incident was (sic) . I can’t remember anyone asking me what I thought about the whole issue, neither was it put to debate openly. Someone high and mighty suddenly decided that is what’s good for you, and we are going thru the process of trying to fit into that prêt-a-porter federalism. “The Officials” are not discussing whether that system is good for us or not they are way beyond that point, they are discussing into how many pieces Iraq is going to be cut up. Along “ethnic” lines or by governorates.

"Have I mentioned already that we were not asked?"

Kurds' struggle intensifies ethnic conflict in Kirkuk
In the Iraqi city, violence erupted last week as six were killed in clashes between Kurds, Turkmens, and Arabs.
By Dan Murphy | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

KIRKUK, IRAQ --Last week, at least six people were killed in ethnic clashes in the city - mostly Turkmens and Arabs at the hands of well-armed and organized Kurd militias. In late August, at least 10 were killed in similar incidents.

The tensions in the city have many sources, from Kirkuk's proximity to one of the world's richest oil fields, to the waves of demographic change that swept over the city in the 20th century, to the fears held by small ethnic groups like the Turkmens that they will be marginalized.

Where they intersect is the long, often-violent Kurdish struggle to carve out an ethnic homeland in northern Iraq. In the decolonization process in the early 20th century, the Kurds and their distinct language and culture were split between Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Separatist movements exist in all three countries to this day.

So much for "building democracy in the Middle East."

Science Fiction

Bush Plans To Call for Settlement On Moon
Manned Mars Mission Is Longer-Term Goal
By Mike Allen and Kathy Sawyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A01

President Bush will announce plans next week to establish a permanent human settlement on the moon and to set a goal of eventually sending Americans to Mars, administration sources said last night.

The sources said Bush will announce a new "human exploration" agenda in Washington on Wednesday, six days ahead of the final State of the Union address of his term and just as his reelection campaign moves from the planning stage to its public phase.

The plans grew out of a White House group that was assigned to examine the mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on Feb. 1, throwing the future of the space program into doubt.

Officials were unwilling to provide cost figures or details and would say only that Bush will direct the government to immediately begin research and development to establish a human presence or base on the moon, with the goal of having that lead to a manned mission to Mars. That endeavor could be a decade or more away, the officials said.

Bush might as well propose peace on earth, a chicken in every pot and universal spiritual enlightenment. Along with the immigration proposal earlier this week, this is nothing more than hot air. The level of cynicism that this betrays on the part of Team Rove is pretty spectacular. Just because Bush can form the words "base on the moon" in his mouth doesn't make him JFK.

Brave New World

I'm about to make some hardware changes, and that means software changes. The first will demand some of the second. We aren't going to have the Mac v. PC debate here. The new machine will be a PC. I'm not a graphics-intensive user, I need standard MS applications, as crappy as they are. End of story. I'm not geeky enough to be able to handle Linux, but I'd like to hear what you think about Win XP v. Win 2000 v. Win 98SE. I have some choices to make and I've heard horror stories about each of these OS. Those of you with system admin cred are welcome to chime in. Once again, this is not a place to hash out your Windows v. OSX issues. That decision has been made.

Additionally, I'm not very thrilled with IE. Navigator never worked that well in a Windows world, and I'm looking for browser suggestions. If you like Mozilla or Opera, tell me why. And I want to hear more about their email clients, too. My old Eudora isn't helping me anymore, the v.4 update over my Eudora Light was so complex and with so little to offer in return that I un-installed it within a week and I HATE Outlook. Friends don't send Rich Text to friends. I'm going to be stuck with a dial-up connection for at least the next little while, so time-consuming downloads are not looked on with favor around here.

Suggestions are welcome. But I'm still a WordPerfect chick in a Word world.

Nuculer Dreams

I've been doing a slow burn all day over this story. "Ludicrous," "inane" and "moronic" are modifiers which come to mind. If the government really thought there was any point to this, why did they encourage 750,000 people to gather in Times Square on New Year's Eve? I want my money back. These idiots don't know how to spend it.

Government nuclear experts last month began working undercover in major U.S. cities, using high-tech equipment hidden in briefcases and golf bags, to hunt for radiological ``dirty'' bombs and other weapons terrorists might use, according to three government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. So far, the Las Vegas incident is the only one in which any worrisome levels of radiation were found, said one official.

The Energy Department's Nuclear Incident Response Teams were sent to scour Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York and Washington immediately after the nation's terror alert status was upgraded on Dec. 21 to orange, or high risk. They began working 24 hours a day, and more teams were later sent to other cities, which the officials declined to identify.

The Homeland Security Department also has provided detection equipment for police to use in Chicago, Detroit, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle. It also sent radiation pagers for police to use in patrolling the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on Sunday.

Agency spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Wednesday there was no specific intelligence pointing to a dirty bomb -- which authorities believe might use conventional explosives to disperse a plume of radioactive dust over several city blocks -- or plots involving chemical, biological or nuclear devices.

Meanwhile, while blood and dollars are poured into the Mesopotamian sands

Every year, 16 million containers move through America's 361 ports. Only 4 percent get scanned - leaving what may be the biggest hole in the nation's terror shield. In a sense, Boston's 70-percent scan rate makes it one of the most secure US ports. It also highlights a fundamental question now circling among port officials, political leaders, and the shipping industry: Would scanning more containers - even up to 100 percent - boost security?

Let's see, we're escorting French aircraft with F-16s and the ports remain unguarded. Let's throw these bums out and get somebody competent to run the country.

Mad Cow Markets

Various administration economic officials and conservative pundits like to pretend that the recent recovery of the Dow Jones Industrial Average is increasing the wealth of ordinary workers. It turns out that participation in equity markets isn't nearly as broad as they would like you to think.

The myth of the populist stock market
By David Callahan

NEW YORK - Wall Street analysts are predicting another great year for the stock market in 2004, and Americans are again pouring their savings into stocks. Tens of billions of dollars have flowed back into equities since last summer. As the Dow and Nasdaq soar, more money is likely to follow. There are also signs of a revival of the '90s myth of the populist stock market -a myth in which Wall Street gives everyone on Main Street a shot at a better life.

Can Americans possibly fall once more for this nonsense? Maybe. The scandals of recent years, most lately in the mutual-fund industry, have done little to debunk the notion that Wall Street is geared toward ordinary investors and that stocks offer a universal path to wealth creation. At the height of the boom, however, the bottom three-quarters of American households owned less than 15 percent of all stock. Barely a third of households hold more than $5,000 in stock. Most Americans have more debt on their credit cards than money in their mutual funds.

Stock-market gains have reflected the top-heavy ownership patterns. Between 1989 and 1997, the most recent year for which there is good data, 86 percent of stock market gains went to just the top 10 percent of households. Yet when the market tanked, it was often ordinary investors who felt the sharpest pain - pain that many will cope with well into retirement. According to a March survey by Greenwich Associates, major retirement pension plans lost $1 trillion from the beginning of 2000 through beginning of 2003.

Apart from getting burned by the vast scams in tech stocks, those ordinary Americans who did try to benefit from the last bull market got mauled in myriad smaller ways. Thousands of Americans are suing financial firms over things like hidden fees and inflated commissions, dishonest investing advice, and reckless trading practices. In the past two years, investors have filed more than 2,000 cases alleging "churning" by their brokers - that is, unnecessary trading to rack up commission fees.

Today, as middle-class investors go back into the water, the sharks are still there. While many investors will make gains if the market continues to rise - and stocks are probably a better place to put your money than under a mattress - the crackdown so far on Wall Street abuses is not very reassuring. Big firms like Merrill Lynch got only a slap on the wrist for misleading investors and admitted no wrongdoing. In 2002, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer helped to extract a $1.4 billion settlement from America's top 10 brokerage firms, but not a single individual in those firms faced criminal charges or admitted personal responsibility.

David Callahan's website, The Cheating Culture collects the daily stories of lies and dishonesty in many fields of business, including the financial services industry." All of you small investors with a couple of grand in a TSA, 401K or Keogh should pay attention to this.

I can't say that I really understand all this stuff, but here's some more news from WaPo:

SEC Wants Mutual Fund Fees Explained
By Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 8, 2004; Page E02
The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering requiring fund directors to explain annually to their shareholders how they determine the funds' fees, SEC Chairman William H. Donaldson said yesterday.

The funds' independent directors would also be required to keep a paper trail of the information they used to determine that the fund managers were charging reasonable fees for management, advertising and administrative costs, according to an advance version of the speech Donaldson gave to the Mutual Fund Directors Forum. Critics say mutual fund fees are far too high.

The SEC has been debating publicly with New York state Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer about the best way to protect fund investors from fees that eat into their return