Weekend Drive By...

Two pieces of note from Saturday's New York Times.

First, an editorial, "The Roots of Prison Abuse."

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who has shown real political courage on this issue, recently released documents showing that the military's top lawyers had warned a year before the Abu Ghraib nightmare came to light that detainee policies imposed by the White House and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld violated American and international law and undermined the standards of civilized treatment embedded in the American military tradition.

Nice to see that Graham's mojo grew back. I wonder how long before it falls off again.


And in case you've forgotten about Iraq, James Glanz reports about a suicide bomber attack on Iraqi recruits.

A suicide bomber wearing a vest laden with explosives blew himself up outside an army recruitment center in a remote northern village on the Syrian border on Friday, an official with the Iraqi Interior Ministry said. The official said the attack killed 26 people and wounded at least 30, though American military officials put the figures at 10 dead and 21 wounded.

American military officials fudging the body count?

Bogus prisoner abuse investigations, phony claims of "success" and "progress," Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch, Rummy and the Yes Men Generals...

One of the major casualties of this war--the Pentagon exposed as a five-sided echo chamber of the Rovewellian propaganda machine.

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Speaking of credibility--I keep wondering why Dubya would put Bolton in the UN given Bolton's obvious connection with Plame/Rove/Niger/Traitorgate, but hey...

If Bolton is US Ambassador to the UN, does that give him diplomatic immunity from prosecution?

Nah. This administration would never pull a stunt like that.

Would it?

Republic? What Republic?

From The Washington Post editorial staff:

FOR 15 MONTHS now the Bush administration has insisted that the horrific photographs of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were the result of freelance behavior by low-level personnel and had nothing to do with its policies...

Army brass, which has conducted investigations documenting hundreds of cases of prisoner mistreatment in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but denies that any of its senior officers are culpable...

On Wednesday, the former warden of Abu Ghraib, Maj. David DiNenna, testified that the use of dogs for interrogation was recommended by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the former commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison who was dispatched by the Pentagon to Abu Ghraib in August 2003 to review the handling and interrogation of prisoners. On Tuesday, a military interrogator testified that he had been trained in using dogs by a team sent to Iraq by Gen. Miller...

In statements to investigators and in sworn testimony to Congress last year, Gen. Miller denied that he recommended the use of dogs for interrogation, or that they had been used at Guantanamo.

Yet Army investigators reported to Congress this month that, under Gen. Miller's supervision at Guantanamo, an al Qaeda suspect named Mohamed Qahtani was threatened with snarling dogs, forced to wear women's underwear on his head and led by a leash attached to his chains -- the very abuse documented in the Abu Ghraib photographs...

The interrogation of Mr. Qahtani, investigators found, was carried out under rules approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Dec. 2, 2002. After strong protests from military lawyers, the Rumsfeld standards -- which explicitly allowed nudity, the use of dogs and shackling -- were revised in April 2003. Yet the same practices were later adopted at Abu Ghraib, at least in part at the direct instigation of Gen. Miller...

When the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted, GOP leaders such as Sen. John W. Warner (Va.) loudly vowed to get to the bottom of the matter -- but once the bottom started to come into view late last year, Mr. Warner's demands for accountability ceased. Mr. Rumsfeld and other senior officials have never been the subject of an independent investigation. A recommendation by the latest Army probe that Gen. Miller be reprimanded for his role in the Qahtani interrogation was rejected by Gen. Bantz Craddock of Southern Command...

Six GOP senators led by John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) have backed an amendment to the defense operations bill that would exclude exceptional interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay and ban the use of "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment for all prisoners held by the United States...

Attempts by the White House and Mr. Warner to block or gut the legislation failed, and on Tuesday the GOP leadership pulled the defense bill from the floor rather than allow a vote.

This, in a nutshell, describes what's happening to our republic. The executive branch declared itself outside the law, then denied it acted outside the law, then used the Army to cover its trail, then used partisan control to stop Congress from exercising curbs on its exercise of unlimited power.

What's happened to my country?

A Quagmire by Any Other Name

You've probably all heard by now that the "Global War on Terror" is now the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism."

I wonder:

Are we now in a declared state of national struggle?

Have we switched to a struggletime footing?

Will there be a new series of special presidential struggle powers?

Will the detainees at GITMO be granted prisoner of struggle status?

Will the Treasury Department issue struggle bonds?

And hey--

Is there such a thing as The International Law of Armed Struggle? Gee, if there's not, we don't have to follow it, do we?

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Have a good weekend.

Peace,

Jeff

The Herd of Cats Known as Democrats

"All Democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it."

--Mark Twain


"I belong to no organized party--I am a Democrat."

--Will Rogers


"When the Democratic Party forms a firing squad we form a circle."

--Morris Udall

Just what is a Democrat these days? A liberal, a progressive, or a centrist? A brain-dead tree hugging nutjob or a sober fiscal conservative? A commie pinko peacenik or a chicken hawk? A champion of the middle and lower classes, or a puppet of the elite corporate special interest groups?

If you answered "yes" to all the above, you're right. Therein lie all the critical factors--strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and centers of gravity--of the Democratic Party.

These days, in analyzing the Dems, it's simplest just to start with their weaknesses. It seems that nobody hates the Democratic Party than the so-called "left." In fact, many liberals seem to despise the party more than they despise the neo-concentric GOP.

Carla at Preemtive Karma , a self-professed liberal, gives us a pretty darn good insight as to why the left is so angry with the "putrid fetid heap" known as the Democratic Leadership Committee:

The DLC isn't an organization that represents anything but GOP-lite. It's an organization that takes in cash and sells out to whoever will give them the most. If that was my set of values I'd vote Republican.

The big DLC claim to fame is the presidency of Bill Clinton. Except that Clinton didn't run as a soft Republican. He won on a populist message that was founded on the progressive values of fundamental fairness and equal opportunity for all citizens. Those values have nothing to do with the DLC.

They muddy the waters with their mushy conservative rhetoric in an effort to pander for votes.

The DLC claims to aim for the center...but no such thing exists. It's an offering to the public of "we don't suck quite as bad as the real Republicans do".

Americans want a viable alternative to corporate shills, Wall Street hackery, big oil corruption and the Christian conservative mockery of civil rights. They want an alternative to the Iraq War, undermining labor and workers, anti-choice screeds and politicians who've sold out to the highest bidder.

Hillary Clinton says that there ought to be a "ceasefire" between factions of the Democratic Party. I say to Hillary...get stuffed, woman.

On the one hand, you'd think, "with supporters like this, who needs the GOP?"

On the other hand, you might think that just maybe there's something healthy about a party that encompasses a broad political spectrum, where open dissent is the norm, and which isn't driven by the ideology of a relatively tiny cabal of rich friends of a big oil family.

And that, in my opinion, is the foundation on which the Democratic Party can begin to build the strengths that can bring it back into power. Keep in mind, the party has been in power before, and as the quotes from Twain, Rogers, and Udall illustrate, it's always pretty much been a herd of cats.

More on this next week...

Conspiracy Theory?

Arianna Huffington reveals Judith Plame's role with Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha, the outfit charged with finding WMD in Iraq.

Miller’s assignment was so sensitive that Don Rumsfeld himself signed off on it. Once embedded, Miller acted as much more than a reporter. Kurtz quotes one military officer as saying that the MET Alpha unit became a “Judith Miller team.” Another officer said that Miller “came in with a plan. She was leading them… She ended up almost hijacking the mission.” A third officer, a senior staffer of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, of which MET Alpha was a part, put it this way: “It’s impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better.”

“Judith,” said an Army officer, “was always issuing threats of either going to the New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There was nothing veiled about that threat.”

In one specific instance, she used her friendship with Major General David Petraeus to force a lower ranking officer to reverse an order she was unhappy about.

I submit that my assertion the neocons are waging an active campaign to pull the media off the trail in the Traitorgate affair is anything but a wild-eyed conspiracy theory. To think they're playing on the up and up is complete denial of their proven track record.

Yeah, you can see why Miller preferred jail over testifying to the grand jury, all right.

Watch the political yak shows this weekend. Notice how many times the right wing types pull the conversation away from the "sixteen words" and drive it back into "which reporter outed Plame."

And keep this in mind--whoever said what to whom when, the "original" source couldn't have been a reporter.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Hey!

I was just sort of thinking. Like, if you were totally paranoid, you know? You might start wondering about all these reporters from, like, the big liberal newspapers who were maybe sort of helping out Bush and Cheney and those guys when they were talking about mushroom clouds and stuff to get people all fired up to go over to Iraq and bust the place up.

I'm just saying.

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Over at her place, Ariana Huffington pretty much paints The New York Times' Judith Miller as a full-blown aider and abettor of the Rovewellian campaign to sell the war. (And Arianna makes some darn compelling arguments in that regard.)

Blog favorite Capitola Banta points out this piece from The New York Times' Doug Jehl that casts murky aspersions on the role Walter Pincus of The Washington Post played in Plamegate. Jehl also conjures up journalistic names like Novak, Cooper, and Russert.

Another piece of the puzzle: conservative pundit William Safire seems to have to come out of retirement to bang the drum about the travesty of Judith Miller being in jail.

Funny how Plume/Rove/Niger/Traitorgate is become a story about reporters--for the most part, reporters who work for the "liberal" mainstream media.

Do you think maybe, behind some curtain, there's a short, bald, fat guy throwing switches and pulling strings to make all this happen?

Like I said, I'm just saying. But wouldn't it be something if, at the end of the day, the free press takes the fall for Traitorgate?

"Just because you're paranoid..."

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

Zounds! More long held common knowledge emerges in today's mainstream media!

Surprise #1:

Josh White of The Washington Post files this today:

Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller told top officers during an advisory visit to Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison that they needed to get military working dogs for use in interrogations, and he advocated procedures then in use at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to court testimony yesterday.

Maj. David DiNenna, the top military police operations officer at Abu Ghraib in 2003, said that when Miller and a team of Guantanamo Bay officials visited in early September 2003, Miller advocated mirroring the Cuba operation.

"We understood he was sent over by the secretary of defense," DiNenna testified by telephone. DiNenna said Miller and his team were at Abu Ghraib "to take their interrogation techniques they used at Guantanamo Bay and incorporate them into Iraq."

The use of military dogs to exploit fear in detainees was approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use on a specific important detainee in Cuba in late 2002 and early 2003.

DiNenna also supported claims made by Janis L. Karpinski, then a brigadier general in charge of U.S. prisons in Iraq as the commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, that Miller said he wanted to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib.

The claim that prison abuses were "isolated instances" of actions by "a few bad apples" was never credible. At long last, Josh White and others in the mainstream media are managing to bring the truth to the surface.

Where I think the trail will lead? Well, we pretty much already know what happened--Rumsfeld (and most likely Cheney) decided they needed a way to maneuver around US civil and military law as well as a series of long standing international agreements in handling prisoners of the war on terror. Then White House Counsel Alberto Sanchez ginned up position papers that supported the objective. Then "Mad Dog" Miller went to Gitmo to carry out the policy, then Rummy sent him to Iraq, and then Torturegate spread to Afghanistan, where two prisoners were chained to the ceiling and beaten to death.

In the meantime, the only people to face criminal charges over Torturegate are enlisted personnel.

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Surprise #2

I concur with Bob Herbert's assessment of the hoopla about troop withdrawal from Iraq: it's a political feint.

The Bush administration has no plans to bring the troops home from this misguided war...

What has so often gotten lost in all the talk about terror and weapons of mass destruction is the fact that for so many of the most influential members of the Bush administration, the obsessive desire to invade Iraq preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. It preceded the Bush administration. The neoconservatives were beating the war drums on Iraq as far back as the late 1990's...

The invasion of Iraq was part of a much larger, long-term policy that had to do with the U.S. imposing its will, militarily when necessary, throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Over at Huffington Post, Tom Hayden (who's never been one of my all time favorite guys) also hits what I believe to be the real stratagem behind the troop withdrawal talk.

The US (by "US" I assume Tom means the White House/Pentagon neocon cabal) wants to avoid more casualties on the battlefield and political losses in election year 2006.

They want to confuse, divide, lull and deflate American and global anti-war opinion.

They want to take the risk of some American troop withdrawals this winter or spring.

By seeming to begin withdrawal, they are looking for a way to stay.

If they succeed, public attention will drift away from the Iraq War and the peace movement will be isolated.

You'll notice, if you look carefully, that none of the happy talk about troop withdrawal coming from Rummy or US commander in Iraq General Casey contains words like "complete, permanent withdrawal."

The neocon men put our troops in Iraq to establish a permanent set of military bases and control of Middle East oil. They've come this far, they're not likely to change their aims now, or stop short of achieving them.

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Surprise #3

Can you believe it?

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee want to know if John Bolton testified before Patrick Fitzgerald's Plame/Rove/Niger/Traitorgate grand jury.

Seems like a reasonable question to me. Bolton was, after all, the guy who put the bogus Niger intelligence into a State Department "fact sheet" and then tried to cover the fact he had done so. And he's known to have ties with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who is presently doing time for refusing to speak to the grand jury. It strains the bounds of credulity to think that hard charging Patrick Fitzgerald didn't want the grand jury to hear what Bolton had to say for himself.

However, comma, as part of his confirmation process, Bolton was required to fill out a question form that asked whether he was "interviewed or asked to supply any information in connection with any administrative (including an inspector general), congressional or grand jury investigation within the past five years."

Bolton replied that he had not been.

Do I hear the sound of one football fumbling?

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Bonus Surprise!

From Barry Schweid of the Associated Press:

An independent panel headed by two former U.S. national security advisers said Wednesday that chaos in Iraq was due in part to inadequate postwar planning.

Astounding, Holmes. We needed an independent panel headed by not one but two former national security advisers to figure that one out? How many tax dollars did we spend to arrive at such a revelation?

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Okay, okay. Time to give the mainstream media a break. After the calculated drubbing they've taken at the hands of the Rovewellian propaganda machine, they have to make sure they cross every "t" and dot every "i" before they go to press. And, in fairness, I think they're making a hell of a comeback since the Rathergate fiasco.

I've been especially impressed with the tenacity of Josh White and Dana Priest of the Post and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff in sticking with the Torturgate story.

Barbarians at the "Gates"

Josh White of the Washington Post reports today on the migration of interrogation techniques from Cuba to Abu Ghraib.

"[The] severe tactics approved for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo migrated to Iraq and spiraled into the notorious abuse at Abu Ghraib in the late summer and early fall of 2003."

"At [hearings at] Fort Meade yesterday, soldiers testified that the top military intelligence officer at the prison, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, approved the use of dogs for interrogations. Maj. Matthew Miller, a prosecutor, also revealed that Pappas, faced with a request from interrogators to use dogs on three stubborn detainees captured at the same time as then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, 'admitted he failed to ask' Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the top general in Iraq, for approval as he was supposed to have done."

I can't help but wonder how long Colonel Pappas will stick to that story.

Sergeant Santos A. Cordona is charged with allowing unmuzzled dogs to threaten and attack detainees at Abu Ghraib. His civilian attorney plans to call at least one witness "to talk about a September 2003 visit to Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then in charge of the Guantanamo prison."

This whole thing's going to stink to high heaven if a bunch of enlisted people wind up in prison over Torturegate and General Miller walks.

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From the "irony is dead" files via The Jerusalem Post:

[Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld arrived unannounced in the Iraqi capital with a series of messages for the country's interim leaders, suggesting a heightened sense of urgency in US President George W. Bush's administration to make faster strides on the political and security fronts, so that American forces can eventually leave.

I wonder what brought on that "heightened sense of urgency" don't you? Especially after two years of "stay there till the job's done" and "the terrorists will just wait us out."

You reckon this is a preemptive move to soften the impact of the Nigergate and Traitorgate?

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Regardless of what I believe to be the hidden motive behind talk of troop withdrawal, I thoroughly agree it's the right thing to be doing. But I think it should have been done several months ago.

Neo-critical Factors

It's time now in our progressive think tank critical factor analysis of the neo-right to start drawing tentative conclusions.

The Global War on Terror

The war--or "wars," if you prefer--are not going well. Despite some success in establishing a constitutional government in Iraq, the insurgency shows no sign of abating. Senior officers still say we're making one or more new insurgents for everyone we capture or kill. The Army and Marine Corps continue to grind down under the strain of continued operations in Iraq; there is some question whether they can ever recover. The cost of the Iraq incursion continues to rise in terms of both US dollars and human casualties.

Afghanistan, once the crown jewel in our War on Terror, is now the world's leading narco-state. The Taliban have reestablished themselves in that country. The recent defeat of elite US Special Forces by Afghani rebels using inferior weapons but superior tactics dispelled the myth of US "tactical superiority."

A recent State Department study shows that the incidence of terrorist activity throughout the globe is on the rise. The London and Madrid bombings indicate that al Qaeda leadership is still directing--at a strategic level, at least--Islamic terror activity in the western world.

And oh, the tallest Arab ever wanted "dead or alive" by the United States government is still at large.

THIS JUST IN: Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has called for "a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops" from Iraq. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Traitorgate

According to an article by alter Pincus and Jim VandeHei in today's Washington Post , "The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war."

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is casting a wide net indeed. The trail of the bogus Niger uranium intelligence leads through the State Department, the Defense Department, the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, the Office of Special Plans, and the office of the Vice President of the United States. And all these offices contain cells of loyal Bush neoconservatives.

Cronyism

Up to now a critical strength of the Bush administration, the cabal of long time ideological cronies distributed throughout the executive department may turn into a critical vulnerability. The list of names attached to Traitorgate grows by the day: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby, Rove, Tenet, Ashcroft, Powell, Fleishman, Bolton, Rice, and many others. Given the tight knit relationships among all the players, it seems likely that if one goes down on criminal charges, they all will.

Tentative Conclusions

Center of Gravity

"Experts" disagree on just what a "center of gravity" is, but a consensus is growing that COGs are related to objectives. If we stick to the overall objective of taking back control of congress in 2006, we might consider the Republican's strategic COG to be the core of neoconservatives surrounding President Bush: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice, and a handful of others. To discredit them would be a decisive blow to the entire Republican Party.

Critical Vulnerability

One word: Traitorgate. If allegations and speculations about Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation prove true, the whole Niger uranium issue will prove the "Achilles tendon" that will bring down the GOP center of gravity.

Weaknesses

Other aspects of the neoconservative regime that can be exploited: economy, civil liberties, catering to the religious, environmental issues, exposure of media manipulation, questionable ties to big business (Exxon, Halliburton, the general military/industrial complex, transportation, etc.), mishandling of the war.

We're also seeing--to some extent--the beginning of a split in the GOP as some congressional Republicans are beginning to distance themselves from the neoconservative core.

Strengths

Regardless of what we discover regarding Traitorgate over the next few months, the core supporters of the Bush machine will doubtless remain loyal--especially those who react favorably to "brain dead nutjob" rhetoric. The Murcoch media empire and the rest of Big Brother Broadcasting will continue to echo chamber the neo-propaganda, and the core faithful will continue to consume and believe it.

The war, mishandled or not, may by its very existence may also turn out to be a Bush GOP strength. Many Americans, even those opposed to the Bush administration, may be queasy about making a major shift in the complexion of government while jihadist terrorism is still a visible and immediate threat to US security.

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Well, progressive think tankers, that's my quick and dirty analysis of your "opposition." But there's work yet to be done. You can't just sit around and wait for the neocon-centric GOP to implode on itself. Something "big" will no doubt fall out from Fitzgerald's investigation, but we really have no idea how big that something will be.

And keep in mind the wisdom of an old adage: "be careful what you wish for." If it works out that the GOP collapses, will the Democratic Party be able to step in and take up the burden of restoring a failed government?

Tomorrow I'll begin my operational analysis of the "progressive Democrats."

Braindead Nut Jobs and Other Obstacles

We're jumping ahead in our analysis of "the opposition's" critical factors, but here's a post from a hardcore Bush supporter at a political discussion web site that's worth noting:

"Well the Rove thing is brain dead...

"You might hear a gasp here or there from the nutjobs who refuse to let it go. But that’s just the ventilator on a brain dead subject. Pay no attention to it, this issue has no better chance at revival than Terry Schivo.

"Of course this how all the Liberal dreams have ended when it has come to Bush. Dreams of getting Bush through Delay, Rove, Cheney, 'Bush lied', 'iraqi quagmire', etc, etc, etc... Or at the very beginning, 8 years ago; Bush was 'selected not elected.'

"All lay side by side now, dismal failures. They only hang by a chad now because some nutjobs who love them refuses to let the brain dead die..."

That's three "brain deads" and two "nutjobs" by my count. The grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors aren't worth the effort of tallying.

But this post is typical of what General Semanticists would call the "ill-logic" of the low end of the Bush support machine--poor command of language, reflexive signal response to emotional symbols and words, and a predisposition to go along with language and symbols that conform to the operant training they've experienced from an early age.

What is the "progressive think tank" network to do about this kind of mindset? Attack it? Debunk it? Ignore it and maneuver around it?

Let's set these questions aside for now, and go on with our critical factors analysis.

To be continued...

Let's Think About It

Over at Huffington Post, Andrea Batista Schlesinger laments the success of conservative "think tanks" and asks, "How do progressive think tanks better make their case?"

This is an excellent question, and one that doesn't offer much in the way of easy answers. That doesn't mean there aren't any answers, but the road to finding them requires serious analysis and the patience not to jump to hasty conclusions.

A vital aspect of this analytical process is Sun Tzu's admonition to "Know thy enemy, know thyself." In military art we do this by analyzing own force and opposition "critical factors," which can be categorized as strengths, weaknesses, critical vulnerabilities, and center(s) of gravity. But to start with, we don't want to label these factors, as what at first can appear to be a strength may later prove to be a weakness or critical vulnerability.

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Let's start by looking at the conservative camp. I'll list my choice of critical factors; see what you can find to add.

--Neoconservative Ideology. Core philosophy involves military-centric foreign policy, pursuit of US global domination, and encompasses the beliefs of the extreme religious right.

--Core Constituency. Exists at the far right of the political spectrum. (Quick note here: today's political spectrum does not look like a bell curve. Rather, it resembles an expanding spectrum that begins at a focused point on the right and becomes more diffuse as we move to the left. So, while the extreme right is a fairly tight ideological core, the far left is a diverse collection of barely related issue groups.)

--Organization. The right has one. True Republican "outsiders" are rare as hens' teeth.

--Communication/Propaganda. On the right, all communication is propaganda. Talking points are carefully crafted by think tanks and administration spin masters, then spread through a tightly controlled and disciplined echo chamber. We cannot overemphasize the importance of the cooperative Rupert Murdoch media empire, or forget that it is, in essence, a tabloid organization that is not held to the same standards of journalistic integrity demanded of the mainstream media.

--Perception Management. The Rovewellians are perhaps history's most successful practitioners of the "perception is reality" theory. Their ability to twist and distort facts to produce a desired political reality is uncanny. Almost all "media events" are staged--some more obviously than others. (Many folks don't know that the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad was orchestrated by The Rendon Group, a "communications consulting firm" that has conducted numerous "information operations" for the government.)

--Accountability. None whatsoever. Their "blame and deny" tactics have been incredibly effective. Hence the declaration in the media that "irony is dead." My particular favorite of the moment is the conservative uproar that the Fitzgerald investigation is a "smear campaign" on Karl Rove. Speaking of which...

--Karl Rove. Ruthless, arrogant, shameless--dedicated to the proposition that the ends of his political client's agendas justifies whatever means are required to achieve them. Understands that success consists of "fooling most of the people most of the time.'

--George W. Bush. Far more complexity to this guy than meets the eye. Does he really believe he hasn't made any mistakes and that God is telling him what to do, or is he just saying that to play to his more mindless supporters? I suspect that he's capable of Clintonian compartmentalizing--he can say or believe whatever he needs to say or believe at any given moment. Keep in mind that his professed "values" were essentially grafted onto him well into his adult life. He was a rich playboy until his early forties, when he embraced Evangelical Christianity, and in his fifties when he adopted the neoconservative political philosophy. This is not a man whose philosophies evolved over a lifetime of observation and contemplation.

To be continued...

Jane's Latest Bad Idea

Jane Fonda's off on a cross country bus tour to protest the war in Iraq.

"I've decided I'm coming out. II have not taken a stand on any war since Vietnam," she says. "I carry a lot of baggage from that."

Yeah, Jane, a whole lot of baggage--most notably the picture of her smiling and posing next to a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft artillery battery as American aviators were suffering unspeakable horrors in the Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war camp.

The last thing the anti-war movement needs right now is for Jane to throw her baggage on a bus and trot it all over America. That will do for the rabid right war supporters what the invasion of Iraq did for terrorism. Pavlov's Dogs of War will howl endlessly across the Big Brother Bandwidth that anyone who opposes the Bush strategy in Iraq--including military veterans who are trying to be heard through the Rovewellian noise machine--of being no better than Hanoi Jane.

Traitors. Unpatriotic. Un-American. Cowardly. Aiding and abetting the enemy in a time of war.

Jane, you're playing right into the chicken hawk's "support the troops or we'll shoot this dog" strategy.

Please, please, please; unpack your bags, stay home, shut up.

If you really need something to do, go out and spend some of Ted Turner's money.

Is Anyone in the Adminsitration Innocent?

As compelling as Frank Rich's Sunday piece "Eight Days in July" was, it failed to answer, much less raise, a number of other important questions.

For example, who at Justice decided to wait until 8:30 pm to tell Gonzales of the investigation, and who decided to give Gonzales 12 hours before he officially notified the staff?

What's more, why did the investigation begin three months after the Novak column appeared that outed Judith Plame as a C.I.A. operative? Did the C.I.A. wait three months before asking Justice to conduct an investigation? If so, who made that decision, and did that decision have anything to do with him receiving the Medal of Freedom?

Why did then Attorney General John Ashcroft take another three months to recuse himself from the case because of "potential conflicts of interest?" And what, specifically, would those potential conflicts of interest be?

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Cut to the chase, which, as Frank Rich aptly points out, is that "The real crime here remains the sending of American men and women to Iraq on fictitious grounds."

Premier among these fictitious grounds is the phony intelligence on the Niger uranium that prompted Mr. Bush's sixteen words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

More questions on that score need asking and answering.

Who in the administration knew the Niger intelligence was false?

When did they know it?

How did the C.I.A. not see immediately that some of the documents were forged? (Apparently, the forgeries were laughably amateurish.)

Who forged the document?

An article from the UK's Guardian Unlimited posted last Saturday says that:

"...A parallel investigation is under way into who forged the Niger documents.... A source familiar with the inquiry said investigators were examining whether former US intelligence agents may have been involved in possible collaboration with Iraqi exiles determined to prove that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear programme."

The bad news--the "parallel investigation" is being conducted by the FBI, and according to some, the FBI is dragging its feet. In September of 2004, Josh Marshall of The Hill wrote that the identity of the man who gave the forgeries to Italian reporter Elisabetta Burber is known, the FBI has never bothered to interview him.

And according to Daily Kos, they still haven't. In a Friday article titled "Niger Yellowcake and The Man Who Forged Too Much", Pen weaves a tale worthy of LeCarre that follows the forgery trail that ultimately "leads us to Washington D.C., past a Federal Investigation into Israeli espionage and right up to the steps of the White House and Dick Cheney's Office of Special Plans.

---

The Office of Special Plans was, in the words of Guardian Unlimited's Julian Borger,

"...A shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency. [It was] was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.

"The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war."

A 2003 Mother Jones article titled "The Lie Factory" gives a chilling account of the OSP's activities.

Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the Pentagon during the run up to war, says, "It wasn't intelligence--it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."

The party line was enforced at OSP, and anyone who didn't go along with it was purged.

---

Somewhere along this trail, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and unknown others become involved in a scheme to discredit Joe Wilson's mission to Niger in an effort to preserve the basis for Mister Bush's "sixteen words."

The size and impact of this deception defies imagination. And yet, it looks more and more like there was hardly a key figure in the Bush administration who wasn't in on it.

No wonder Patrick Fitzgerald has been at this investigation for so long.

As compelling as Frank Rich's Sunday piece "Eight Days in July" was, it failed to answer, much less raise, a number of other important questions.

For example, who at Justice decided to wait until 8:30 pm to tell Gonzales of the investigation, and who decided to give Gonzales 12 hours before he officially notified the staff?

What's more, why did the investigation begin three months after the Novak column appeared that outed Judith Plame as a C.I.A. operative? Did the C.I.A. wait three months before asking Justice to conduct an investigation? If so, who made that decision, and did that decision have anything to do with him receiving the Medal of Freedom?

Why did then Attorney General John Ashcroft take another three months to recuse himself from the case because of "potential conflicts of interest?" And what, specifically, would those potential conflicts of interest be?

---

Cut to the chase, which, as Frank Rich aptly points out, is that "The real crime here remains the sending of American men and women to Iraq on fictitious grounds."

Premier among these fictitious grounds is the phony intelligence on the Niger uranium that prompted Mr. Bush's sixteen words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

More questions on that score need asking and answering.

Who in the administration knew the Niger intelligence was false?

When did they know it?

How did the C.I.A. not see immediately that some of the documents were forged? (Apparently, the forgeries were laughably amateurish.)

Who forged the document?

An article from the UK's Guardian Unlimited posted last Saturday says that:

"...A parallel investigation is under way into who forged the Niger documents.... A source familiar with the inquiry said investigators were examining whether former US intelligence agents may have been involved in possible collaboration with Iraqi exiles determined to prove that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear programme."

The bad news--the "parallel investigation" is being conducted by the FBI, and according to some, the FBI is dragging its feet. In September of 2004, Josh Marshall of The Hill wrote that the identity of the man who gave the forgeries to Italian reporter Elisabetta Burber is known, the FBI has never bothered to interview him.

And according to Daily Kos, they still haven't. In a Friday article titled "Niger Yellowcake and The Man Who Forged Too Much", Pen weaves a tale worthy of LeCarre that follows the forgery trail that ultimately "leads us to Washington D.C., past a Federal Investigation into Israeli espionage and right up to the steps of the White House and Dick Cheney's Office of Special Plans.

---

The Office of Special Plans was, in the words of Guardian Unlimited's Julian Borger,

"...A shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency. [It was] was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.

"The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war."

A 2003 Mother Jones article titled "The Lie Factory" gives a chilling account of the OSP's activities.

Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the Pentagon during the run up to war, says, "It wasn't intelligence--it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."

The party line was enforced at OSP, and anyone who didn't go along with it was purged.

---

Somewhere along this trail, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and unknown others become involved in a scheme to discredit Joe Wilson's mission to Niger in an effort to preserve the basis for Mister Bush's "sixteen words."

The size and impact of this deception defies imagination. And yet, it looks more and more like there was hardly a key figure in the Bush administration who wasn't in on it.

Bloody Sunday

If by some miracle you haven't read Frank Rich's Sunday column yet, check...it...out!

Freedom of the Press--in the UK

It appears (thank you, Lord) that someone's looking into who forged the Niger documents. A UK Guardian story states:

"A parallel investigation is under way into who forged the Niger documents. They are known to have been passed to an Italian journalist by a former Italian defence intelligence officer, Rocco Martino, in October 2002, but their origins have remained a mystery. Mr Martino has insisted to the Italian press that he was "a tool used by someone for games much bigger than me", but has not specified who that might be.

"A source familiar with the inquiry said investigators were examining whether former US intelligence agents may have been involved in possible collaboration with Iraqi exiles determined to prove that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear programme."

Well duh. Too bad we had to learn of this "parallel investigation" from a UK paper.

Weekend Update

Two more signs we live in Rovewellian times:

Defense Department lawyers are defying a court order to turn over photos and videotapes of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Manhattan Federal District ordered the images released as part of a Freedom of Information Act suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that seeks to determine the American military's abuse of prisoners in Cuba, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

In a related story from the Associated Press, a group called Judicial Watch obtained documents under the FOI Act which show that in 2001, the Navy hired The Rendon Group, a "communications firm" in an effort to influence the vote on the use of bombing ranges in Puerto Rico. The contract, originally let at $200,000 grew to $1.6 million after two modifications. Judicial Watch questioned whether such activity--directly trying to influence the outcome of an election--was legal for the military to undertake. Navy officials, contacted on Friday, did not comment.

The Rendon Group has a history of conducting "perception operations" for the military. Among other "information management" events in its portfolio were the staged scene of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad and the false stories concocted around the capture and rescue of Private Jessica Lynch.

We have an arm of the executive branch defying the judiciary branch in order to "control information" and spending millions--perhaps billions--to "shape perceptions."

Winston Smith lives.

And Don't Miss This

The Bush Family History Links. Prescott Bush, Dubya's grandpa, makes Joe Kennedy senior look like a Buddhist monk.

Weekend Neo-connect the Dots

If you get a hankering to play the home version of Neo-connect the Dots, some good places to start are here, here, here, and here.

All the King's Horses

One of my favorite rainy day pastimes lately is something I call "neo-connect the dots." To play, you simply start with any given neocon man in the Bush constellation and see how his past or present activities connect with the other neo-con men's.

I wasn't too surprised to find that the latest Bush satellite, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was one of the attorneys who worked with the Bush legal team during the contested 2000 election results in Little Brother Jeb Bush's Florida. It's uncertain exactly what part he played in stopping the recount, but he wasn't the guy who said, "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team and I'm here to stop the vote." That guy was John Bolton.

The same John Bolton who Bush has nominated to be US ambassador to the United Nations.

The same John Bolton who, while in charge of arms control at the State Department, inserted the bogus Niger yellowcake story into the official State Department "Fact Sheet" without consulting the department's intelligence analysts.

The same John Bolton who, as a member of the Project for the New American Century, signed the January 1998 letter to President Clinton demanding that removing Saddam Hussein from power "now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy."

Donald Rumsfeld signed that letter too. So did Paul Wolfowitz. Dick Cheney didn't sign that letter, but he was a member of the PNAC--and CEO of Haliburton--at the time the letter was drafted. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Cheney's chief of staff, was part of the PNAC too.

So was Jeb Bush.

So was Elliot Abrams. The same Elliot Abrams who was a key figure of suspicion back in the Iran-Contra affair days. Another shady character in Iran-Contra business was John Negroponte .

As ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 85, Negroponte covered up human rights abuses by the CIA trained Battalion 316. He became US Ambassador to the UN in 2001, was the first US ambassador in "post hostilities" Iraq, and is now America's first Director of National Intelligence.

Which means he works sort of hand in hand with CIA Director Porter Goss, who "has a long history of subservience to Cheney."

Well, the rain has stopped. Time to go outside and play with the dogs. This "neo-connect the dots" game is kind of fun, isn't it? Next rainy day, I think I'll start with Jeb and Niel Bush and their roles in the Savings and Loan scandal.

I can't wait to see where that leads.

Global War on Terrorism Update

-- Yesterday, a Sunni Arab faction walked out on the Iraq constitution drafting process, and a Kurdish bloc demanded hundreds of square miles of additional territory.

-- Not that the constitutional process was going all that nifty. A provision calling for Khoranic law to apply to family law will, according to many, set women's rights in that country back nearly 50 years.

-- Iraqi security forces aren't ready to fight the insurgents on their own, and the prognosis isn't rosy. As of late last month, US commanders deemed that 3 of 107 military and paramilitary battalions were capable of conducting "level 1" operations.

-- Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari visited Tehran Sunday. He laid a wreath on Ayatollah Khomeini's tomb and declared a "new chapter in brotherly ties” between Iran and Iraq.

-- According to Iraq Body Count 24,865 Iraqi civilians were killed in the first two years of the war. US led coalition forces account for 37% of these deaths. Insurgent forces were responsible for 9% of them.

-- A situation is "developing" in London. A bus appears to have blown up, and something's going in the underground railways.

Have we leaned anything yet?

Will our "leaders" offer us anything other than "stay the course?"

Thank You, God

Another big picture viewer heard from: Molly Ivins of The Free Press sees it too.

"Actually, we are missing the point here. The point being that Joseph Wilson is merely one of the many people who provided one of the by now innumerable pieces of evidence that this administration lied about why we went to war in Iraq. When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill wrote that Bush planned to invade Iraq from the day he took office, the administration went after O'Neill. When Richard Clarke disclosed that the Bushies wanted to use Sept. 11 to go after Saddam Hussein from Sept. 12 on, they went after Clarke. They went after Gen. Zinni, they went after Gen. Shinseki and everyone else who opposed the folly or told the truth about it. After they got done lying about weapons of mass destruction and about connections to Al Qaeda, they switched to the stomach-churning pretense that we had done it all for democracy. Urp."

More Questions, No Answers

A cyber pal pointed me to this 2003 letter from Congressman Henry Waxman to President Bush asking WTFO? about the forged Niger yellowcake intelligence.

Draw your own conclusions, but the information Waxman includes makes it harder and harder to believe that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and others didn't know the yellow cake story was bogus as they were telling it.

Another Guy Who Gets It

This from Matthew Yglesias, titled "Follow the Documents."

Matt asks one of my top four questions about the run up to the Invasion of Iraq: who forged the yellow cake documents?

From a footnote in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report:

"In March 2003, the Vice Chairman of the Committee, Senator [Jay] Rockefeller, requested that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigate the source of the documents, [clause redacted], the motivation of those responsible for the forgeries, and the extent to which the forgeries were part of a disinformation campaign. Because of the FBI's investigation into this matter, the Committee did not examine these issues."

As of July 2005, the FBI has apparently come up with nothing.

I wonder why not. Maybe they've all been busy trying to get their computer system fixed.

It's Not Torture Guy...

...which may turn out to be Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts' strongest asset during the confirmation proceedings.

According to President Bush, Roberts has "the qualities that Americans expect in a judge: experience, wisdom, fairness and civility." Which explains why he never had a gig on Court TV.

Senator Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the Judicial Committee, says he envisions "full and exhaustive" hearings, and doesn't expect "any issues that go to the qualifications" of a justice to be off limits.

Hm. I wonder what Leahy's talking about. You don't think they'll ask Roberts what he thinks about Roe v. Wade, do you?

Progress for America, a conservative group, calls Roberts a "terrific nominee." Naral Pro-Choice America denounces him as an "unsuitable choice."

So it looks like Roberts will be just controversial enough to keep Yellow Cake Gate off the front pages and arguing head cable news shows for a few days.

New York Times Bush Boy David Brooks is on Imus this morning saying the Rove story is just a "ton of heavy breathing." He also parrots the White House line that Wilson's story about the Niger uranium was false (even though it was true). He also says Rove obviously had nothing to do with outing Wilson's wife (even though it's obvious that he did). He says there's nothing to the whole story (even though there's a whole hell of a lot to the story).

"I don't want to sound like a shill here," Brooks says (even though he clearly is one).

Let's get something straight here. The part of Wilson's story that's in question--who exactly sent him to investigate the Niger intelligence or whether his wife was actually "undercover"--is only marginally relevant. What's important is that the administration used the yellow cake fable to justify invading Iraq. When Wilson exposed the intelligence as false, the administration pulled out all the stops to discredit him and his story (the essence of which was true).

Brooks, a supposed "legitimate" journalist, is not offering honest opinion and analysis. He's parroting the party playbook, trying to keep the public discourse (and the public mind) away from the critical aspect of the Niger story.

My thinking right now is that if anybody deserves to get fired, it's David Brooks. Let him go to work for Rupert Murdoch. He'll fit right in at Big Brother Broadcasting.

And oh, don't feel too bad for Torture Guy. He'll have other chances.

Violent Extremism: It's not Just for Muslims

In all candor, I'm not much of a Christian. "Do unto others" and "love thy neighbor" is about all I can absorb, much less live up to. Maybe that explains why I don't understand people like this Eric Randolph character who just got life in prison for blowing up an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. Randolph also faces charges for bombing an abortion clinic in Atlanta, Georgia.

Described as "unrepentant," Randolph stated, "Abortion is murder and because it is murder I believe deadly force is needed to stop it."

I don't know whether abortion is murder, or if certain kinds of abortion constitute murder and other kinds don't. God hasn't clued me in on that yet. I am reasonably certain that God hasn't put me in charge of making those sorts of judgments for others, and I'm sure as hell that He hasn't authorized me to use deadly force on abortion clinics.

Curiously, Randolph also faces charges for bombing the Olympics and a gay bar in Atlanta. I wonder how he justified deadly force to stop the Olympics and homosexuality.

God didn't put me in charge of judging Randolph either. The reason I bring him up is to illustrate that the underlying causes of religious based extremism, violence, terrorism, or whatever we're calling it today are not exclusive to the Muslim faith.

I overheard an interesting conversation the other day.

Two guys are sitting at this bar, and they're talking about the war in Iraq. "More bombings in Baghdad today," the first guy says.

"Looks like we might have to kill all of them," the other guy says.

"Genocide?"

"That's one word for it," the other guy says, and finishes off his beer and orders another one. "If it comes to that, as a good Christian, I'm certain God will approve."

True story.

I'm not relating this incident to make any sort of blanket condemnation of Christianity (like I said, I am one, sort of), or of any other religion, for that matter. I just find it disheartening that all the history of religious violence we have to learn from, people of so many cultures are still so willing to justify doing horrible things in God's name.

Hope this didn't sound too preachy or anything.

The Deafening Silence

I caught Johathan Alter in a live interview with Chris Jansing on MSNBC this morning. Alter moved the conversation toward the "bigger picture" in the Plame case--namely the cooking of intelligence on Iraq--and an interesting thing happened. Jansing steered him back to talking specifics about Rove, Plame, Wilson, and Libby.

Interesting, I thought. That's pretty much exactly the kind of thing Russert did yesterday on Meet the Press.

Then I though, Duh! We've got elephants hiding behind elephants here.

If you buy that the real target of Fitzgerald's investigation isn't Karl Rove (which I kind of do), then you're left with the conclusion that Fitzgerald is going after somebody bigger. And who's bigger than Karl Rove? I can only think of two guys...

And I think that what's going on in the mainstream media is that nobody wants to be the first to mention the names Richard Cheney and George W. Bush in connection with Fitzgerald's investigation.

Which is probably a smart move on the part of the mainstream media. Let Fitzgerald do the heavy lifting--and take the heat.

Jonathan Alter Pitches In

Jonathan Alter's 25 July Newsweek article "Why the Leak Probe Matters" is available online now.

Alter has joined Frank Rich, Dan Shor, and knucklehead bloggers like me in pointing to the larger issue in the Plamegate story.


"For all of the complexities of the Valerie Plame case," Alter writes, "for all the questions raised about the future of investigative journalism and the fate of the most influential aide to an American president since Louis Howe served Franklin D. Roosevelt 70 years ago, this story is fundamentally about how easy it was to get into Iraq and how hard it will be to get out. We got in because we 'cooked' the intelligence, then hyped it."

I know I've been harping on this for almost two weeks now, but I think the ramifications of the issue justify the level of attention. Indeed, the scope of the story is such that it darn near defies comprehension: America's leaders concocted a hoax to justify a preemptive invasion of another country.

To date, the administration has been fairly successful at keeping this pachyderm in the middle of the room away from the public's attention--largely by smearing or otherwise destroying everyone who tried to blow the whistle, and through a comprehensive campaign to discredit the mainstream media.

Now, the issue is in the justice system, being (to all appearances) competently pursued by special federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. How comprehensive his investigation will turn out to be is uncertain. But it seems likely that we will find out more of what actually happened in the manipulation of intelligence information at the highest levels of government. It's quite possible that we'll discover proof of specific acts, and perhaps criminal ones, committed by Vice President Cheney and even President Bush himself as part of a conspiracy to deceive the American public and the rest of the world.

The next issue for consideration: if, in fact, the president and/or vice president come under felony indictment, how will America react?

I'm Shocked, Shocked...

...to learn the Bush administration had a plan in place to covertly influence the Iraqi elections.

A piece by Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger in today's New York Times reports that "President Bush approved a plan to provide covert support to certain Iraqi candidates and political parties, but rescinded the proposal because of Congressional opposition...

"Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that 'in the final analysis, the president determined and the United States government adopted a policy that we would not try - and did not try - to influence the outcome of the Iraqi election by covertly helping individual candidates for office.'

"The statement appeared to leave open the question of whether any covert help was provided to parties favored by Washington, an issue about which the White House declined to elaborate."

An article by Seymour Hersh in the next issue of The New Yorker will outline how "the administration proceeded with the covert plan over the Congressional objections."

"Several senior Bush administration officials disputed that, although they [uh] recalled renewed discussions [yeah, that's what they were, 'renewed discussions'] within the administration last fall about how the United States might [hammana hammana] counter what was seen as extensive Iranian support to pro-Iranian Shiite parties [yeah, that's what we did, all right.]"

And get this...

"None [of the senior administration officials] would speak for the record, citing the extreme sensitivity of discussing any covert action, which by design is never to be acknowledged by the United States government."

Give me a break! They can't discuss covert action for the record, but they can do it on deep background?

They're killing me!

More on this...

...at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.

Smoke, Mirrors, Presto Change-o

Ah, even Frank Rich is starting to get it right. How long before the rest of the mainstream media gets on board?

"We shouldn't get hung up on [Karl Rove] - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

"This scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair."

Yep.

And here's Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee on Tim Russert's roundtable softball tournament trying to make it about Rove and Wilson, and Timmy Boy helping him out.

And here's Joe Podesta of Center for American Progress, trying to bring the discussion back to the main point--the warping of intelligence on Iraq. "They want us to be talking about Wilson" in order to mask the real issue, he says.

And here's Little Russ bringing the discussion back to Rove and Wilson and McClellan, and helping Mehlman hammer the Dems for being such a bunch of big old partisan meanies.

And here's Tim lobbing Mehlman a straight line that lets Mehlman point out the good news: last year's deficit was only $300 billion. Mission accomplished!

The Dems really ought to stop going on Russert's show.

---

But back to the chase: Carl Bernstein's now trying to get back to the WMD issue, and the "switchblade" mentality of the White House.

Tim's steering him back into source confidentiality. Tapes of Woodward talking to Felt. Substance is melting.

Pictures of old man Felt.

Talk about Felt.

More talk about Felt.

Oh, well. Maybe Schieffer will get things back on topic.

But I'm not counting on it.

"What to do about Karl Rove?" Shieffer says in the pre-show promo. Looks like I have to watch.

Wilson's on, and we're back to who should be fired or who should apologize. Blah, blah, blah. Was she undercover, was she not?

Oh, now Roy Blunt says the CIA was overzealous, over classified Plame's role. Glub, glub, glub.

Smoke, mirrors, presto change-o.

Ah, Shieffer asks Blunt what Rove was trying to do. Ah, Rove was trying to wave Cooper off an inaccurate story...

Wilson's arguing whether he actually said Cheney sent him. (DOESN'T MATTER, DAMMIT!)

Shieffer asks if Karl Rove deserves an apology. C'mon, Bob!

---

Press and Nation, just two more walls in the echo chamber.

Weekend Reading...

If you haven't seen it yet read Seymour Hersh's 2003 article on the yellow cake issue.

Also check out this piece by Dan Shor on the yellow cake issue in the Christian Science Monitor. Shor concludes, as I do, that "The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal - the effort to delude America into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war."

See what conclusions you draw.

The Shadow Knows...

A quick weekend drive by; I'll do a fuller piece on this next week.

Things that happen in the seat of power are usually connected. So I'm not terribly surprised that former Rumsfeld adviser Douglas Feith has come out with his "We overemphasized WMD" statement about the same time the Valerie Plame case is blowing wide open.

I've said for some time that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been after something much bigger than a perjury rap on Karl Rove (yeah, yeah, you heard it here first.)

The real connection has to do with Joseph Wilson's analysis of the Niger yellow cake story and the "sixteen words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The sixteen words turned out to not only be false; they turned out to be based on documents that were determined to be forgeries--poorly crafted forgeries at that.

The sixteen words were, of course, the crux of the administration's case for invading Iraq.

Hence, Feith's statement about "overemphasizing" the WMD angle. As in, "We didn't really mean to sell the war that way. President Bush really didn't mean to use the sixteen words to sell the war to America and the world."

Really?

The latest revelation that Powell was circulating a memo with Wilson's findings on Air Force One almost certainly indicates that Mr. Bush was aware of it.

But let's cut to the chase, the issues that (I think) are the key ones.

At the time of the president's SOTU speech, who if anyone in the administration knew that the sixteen words were based on forged documents? And oh, by the way, who forged those documents?

That's what I'd like to know, and I'm guessing that's what Fitzgerald wants to know too.

More Brave New World Dictionary

The latest from The Brave New World According to Rove.

In an AP article by Robert Burns, Former Rumsfeld policy aid Douglas Feith "comes clean" and admits the Bush administration "overemphasized the WMD aspect" of the rationale behind the Iraq invasion.

"Overemphasized?" How about "only emphasized?" Or better yet, "lied about?"

More good Rovewellian stuff at the bottom of the article:

"Feith, who served in the White House and at the Pentagon during the administration of President Reagan, said one of his most important contributions during his four years working for Rumsfeld was helping break down communication and cultural barriers between Pentagon civilian and military officials.

"By working closely with Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and exposing scores of staff members to their example of cooperation and collegiality, the "great divide" between the civilian and military policy organizations and their "clash of memoranda" has been largely overcome, Feith said."

Which is neo-speak for "Feith helped shit can all the generals who wouldn't play ball with Rummy."

Support the Troops; Boycott their Corporate Sponsors

Maybe it's because I've lived in Navy towns for so long I seldom notice how much advertising is aimed at the military. Maybe I've been so outraged at the blatant war profiteering of Halliburton that I haven't seen who else is getting away with it until now. Or maybe I haven't noticed what this particular company has been up to because I've been a big fan of its products for so long.

An old Navy buddy sent an MPG file this morning. You may have seen it. (I may have seen it before too, and it just didn't register against the background of the rest of the phony patriotism we see everywhere these days.)

This particular video takes place in the waiting area of an airport; I’m not sure which one, it may have been a set on a soundstage. People sit around, doing what people do while they wait to board their flights. Someone stands and starts clapping. Folks start looking around, and then everybody stands and applauds. Through the concourse amble a group of soldiers--presumably just home from the war. Boy soldiers and girl soldiers. White, black, Hispanic, Arab, and Asian soldiers. A pretty red haired little girl in her mother's arms--a pretty red haired little girl the soldiers have ostensibly been overseas protecting--stares at them with eyes full of wonder.

As the soldiers pass into the baggage claim area, the shot fades to black. "Thank You" appears on the screen. Then the logo for Anheuser Busch .

And it hit me: these bastards are using the war and the troops to sell beer.

Well, it took me long enough to notice, but I'm clued in now. This business of using the military and firemen and policemen and you name it to sell products is the most crass example of exploitive commercialization I've seen in this country to date; a neo-con job on par with anything Karl Rove's cowboys have come up with.

I won't be drinking Budweiser again any time soon. Looks like I'll have to change to Coors. Oh, no: I just remembered, Joseph Coors was a neo-con man himself. (Coors was a key figure in the establishment of The Heritage Foundation, one of the most visible (and heinous) neoconservative think tanks.

Hmm... Who makes Mike's Hard Lemonade?

Guantanamo; Never Really Been and I Don't Want to Go

I'm quite happy to see that the mainstream press hasn't let the Guantanamo-Abu Ghraib-Afghanistan prison abuses issue fall of the edge of the earth. In today's Washington Post Josh White describes how the Abu Ghraib tactics were first used at Guantanamo.

White draws his story from a recently released military investigation. "The report's findings are the strongest indication yet that the abusive practices seen in photographs at Abu Ghraib were not the invention of a small group of thrill-seeking military police officers," he writes. "The report shows that they were used on Qahtani several months before the United States invaded Iraq."

White also says the report "supports the idea" that interrogators thought use of hoods and sexual humiliation were "authorized" techniques.

The investigation also recommended that Major General Geoffrey Miller, who commanded the Guantanamo prison, be reprimanded for failure to properly supervise the interrogation of Mohamed Qahtani, the alleged "20th" 9-11 hijacker, but "General Bantz Craddock, head of the U.S. Southern Command, declined to follow the recommendation."

White and the military investigation also connect the dots between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Not surprisingly:

"Some Republicans, however, said the alleged abuses occurred in just a small fraction of cases. They noted that there have been 24,000 interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and highlighted recent improvements at the facility. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) called the Guantanamo abuse relatively 'minor incidents' that should not be a matter of national interest."

Should not be a matter of national interest. Sure, Pat, whatever you say.

Oh, did I forget to mention that the techniques used to interrogate Qahtani were approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld?

No, Pat, no national interest there.

Pavlov's Dogs of War, Part I

This from an interview with Republican Representative Peter King of New York, another Pavlov's Dog of War who needs to be put down.

"People like Tim Russert and the others, who gave [Joe Wilson] such a free ride and all the media, they're the ones to be shot, not Karl Rove."

King's another neocon man-love drama queen in the JD Hayworth tradition who wants all the messengers shot so the perpetrators don't have to take responsibility for their own actions.

Jeff

Reading Tea Leaves, Connecting Dots, Swagging

It's foolhardy to thing you can accurately predict the future, or read minds, or look into the past and see behind closed doors. But given the political smoke signals coming out of Washington and elsewhere right now, it's hard not to speculate on what they may mean.

Somewhere on the edge of the radarscope is President Bush's "consultations" with Democratic and Republican Senators on the subject of Supreme Court nominees, something not at all consistent with Mr. Bush's normal "my way or the highway" mode of operating.

Speaking of inconsistent--stories are coming out now of plans to withdraw British and US troops from Iraq sometime next year.

The Downing Street Memos still seem to be gaining traction.

John Bolton, off the radar for over a month, announced today that he'll accept a "recess appointment" as Ambassador to the UN. Mighty big of him, if you ask me, but I'm not entirely sure he isn't going to get pulled into a bigger story than the one he's in now.

Hill Republicans are rallying around Karl Rove. I've suspected for some time that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has bigger fish to fry than Karl. Exactly how high up he goes may depend on what Time reporter Matt Cooper tells the grand jury today.

What does all this portend? Here's my guess--and it's just a guess--but I think Fitzgerald's looking to blow the lid off the Bush administration's entire run up to the war in Iraq: who was in charge of shaping intelligence where, who purposely suppressed information not friendly to the White House objectives, and most importantly, who was the puppet master manipulating the whole thing.

I expect, at a minimum, that Cheney, Bolton, and Rumsfeld will be drawn into Fitzgerald's investigation. I think they expect it too, and they're trying to do some preemptive damage control. That would explain the softening on the Supreme Court nominee process, and the "leak" of the memo on troop withdrawal plans.

We'll see what happens. I'll be especially curious to see what Patrick Fitzgerald does after he talks to Matt Cooper in front of the grand jury. If he starts filing charges against people, stand by.

And please keep in mind that this is all just conjecture on my part. (Although if I turn out to be mostly right, I might brag about it just a little.)

Jeff

How Many Skeletons?

I don't always agree with Juan Cole, but I think his perceptions on the Karl Rove issue hit the nail on the head. Cole not only addresses the Plame/Wilson incident, but also points out how similar tactics were employed against retired General Anthony Zinni and former Treasury Secratary Paul O'Neil. (Cole points out that O'Neil blew the whistle on the Iraq war planning in January of 2001, and leaves it to us to figure out the significance of the date.)

I think everyone needs to keep in mind that Karl Rove is just one piece of a giant, sinister (yes, I said "sinister") puzzle. It's fairly clear that the plan to invade Iraq was concieved by the neoconservative Project for the New American Century no later than January of 1998. If we keep digging, we're going to find a lot of skeletons.

A Strategy of Non-sequiters

The London bombings clearly showed the fallacy of President Bush's "flypaper theory," but you wouldn't know that from listening to him.

In yet another "town hall meeting" speech given to a captive and sympathetic audience of US Marines and FBI recruits yesterday, he repeated his favorite mantras.

--"We're fighting the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan and across the world so we do not have to face them here at home."

If we don't have to face them here at home, why do we need a Department of Homeland Security? Why did we have to elevate the alert level after the London bombings?

--"The war on terror in Iraq is now a central front. The terrorists fight in Iraq because they know that the survival of their hateful ideology is at stake. They know that as freedom takes root in Iraq, it will inspire millions across the Middle East to claim their liberty as well."

The freedom that takes root in Iraq is most likely to be a theocracy friendly to Iran. Some freedom. (More importantly, some accomplishment of US national aims.)

All this is reminiscent of my favorite Bush non-sequiter: "I think [the terrorists] are losing. That's why they're still fighting."

Silly terrorists. Can't they see that if they stop fighting, they've won?

It goes on and on and on and on and on and on...

Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter of California says he rejects the idea of forcing the administration to lay out a clear exit strategy because it ''sends a message" that the United States is not committed to finishing the job in Iraq. But, hey, wait a minute, Congressman. What message does not having an exit strategy send? That we never intend to "finish the job?"

And just what is the "job," anyway? A "free and secure Iraq?" How free? How secure? If you can't define those two things in relatively specific terms, you have no tangible goals. There is no "job," and you'll never get it done.

Put another way, there is no exit strategy.

The Next Bad War

From today's Bob Herbert column:

"Last week's terror bombings in London should be seen as a reminder not just that Mr. Bush's war [in Iraq] was a hideous diversion of focus and resources from the essential battle against terror, but that it has actually increased the danger of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies."

If you carve through the emotion of this sentence, you'll find the clearest lesson learned about the Iraq War. It was a strategic mistake. Invading, occupying, and attempting to rebuild another nation did not defeat or even diminish global terrorism. And there's no tangible reason to believe it ever will.

This lesson seems to have evaded the New York Times' editorial staff.

In a Sunday editorial on the upcoming Quarterly Defense Review (QDR) the Times calls for the pentagon to cut back on naval and air forces and to increase Army manning by 100,000. The present force wasn't designed to fight the kinds of wars we're presently fighting, and "The price for this mismatch is evident in Iraq, where the burden of fighting has fallen on Army and Marine ground forces neither large enough nor adequately equipped for a long-term occupation in a hostile environment."

I agree that cut backs in the Air Force and Navy are called for (although one cannot dismiss the vital role these forces would play in repelling an invasion of Taiwan or South Korea).

But the notion of building an Army to fight more wars like Iraq is patently unsound. The last thing we want to do is fight another war like that, but if we build a force to fight a war like that, guess what kinds of wars we're going to fight?

An old adage says that generals always make the mistake of preparing to re-fight the last war. The New York Times would have us make the mistake of preparing to re-fight this one.

How Civilized People Behave

Just a quick observation on the reactions in Great Britian.

From high officials and "common" Londoners, we're seeing how civilized people behave in the face of adversity. We hear lots of talk about "carrying on" and "not being defeated" and "preserving the English way of life."

We're not hearing "evil doers," "bring it on," or "payback's a bitch."

We're not hearing a lot of bravado from Scotland Yard or British Intelligence about how "We will track these mad dogs down and they will be punished." They don't have to talk about it. They're just going to do it. We probably won't hear much from them until the mission's accomplished. And when they tell us the mission's accomplished, it really will be.

---

In contrast, I forced myself to listen to an hour or so of American Kool Aid radio today. Lots of "boot in their ass" talk. Lots of "time for us to show them we're serious." Seriously--$200 plus billian and tens of thousands of casualties isn't "serious" enough for these folks.

I heard three callers to this show trot out the "Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here," line. Still. Again. Yet. The significance of the London attacks had completely gone over their heads. Predictably, none of the Big Brother Broadcasters pointed out the proven lunacy of this line of logic.

Man

Kinds of people I've learned through hard experience to shy away from:

-- People whose "wit" consists of repeating jokes they hear on TV and who think they're really funny.

-- People who repeat Rovewellian talking points they hear on Fox News and Rush and who think they're really smart.

-- People who tell the first two kinds of people that they're funny and smart.

Time to get back to work on the latest fiction work in progress. Titled 2020, it's supposed to be a satiric, illogical extension of today's America. But I'm having a problem with it. No matter how absurd a scenario I try to create, it seems no more absurd than our present reality.

Jeff

But Seriously...

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

-- Benjamin Franklin

But seriously...

I don't really think "charity bombing" would have a lasting effect on terrorism (although I'm certain we could feed and clothe the entire Middle East for less than we're spending on military operations there).

But we need to do something other than what we're doing now because our present strategy clearly isn't working. Bin Laden and whoever else masterminds radical Islamic terrorism have gotten inside of our turning circle. Everything we do or don't do plays into their game plan. The Bush strategists either don't see this or they do see it and don't want to believe it.

So what do we do differently?

I'm not sure, but the first step in formulating any plan is to set realistic, achievable, and tangible goals. Abstract platitudes like "spreading democracy and freedom throughout the world" won't cut it any better than visions of sugarplums dancing through our leaders' heads.

It doesn't take a strategic genius to figure out that the objective of a "War on Terrorism" might need to be something to do with terrorism. Defeating it, beating it, stopping it, ending it, deterring it, preventing it, punishing it...

As we have clearly seen, invading and occupying other countries does not defeat terrorism. So we might not want to invade and occupy any more countries, you think?

The size of the errors in Iraq and Afghanistan is too profound to sweep under the carpet. What we need is an honest to goodness plan to exit those countries. Not necessarily abandon them, per se; but we need to make it quite clear that we won't stick around forever, and that means setting timetables for taking off the training wheels. (This business of comparing Iraq and Afghanistan to America's revolution is ludicrous. We didn't ask the British to stick around for a decade or so while we came up with our constitution.)

We've also seen that unilateral US action cannot defeat terrorism. We need to bring our traditional allies into the game. That's going to involve eating a large helping of crow, but so what? Is the objective to defeat terrorism or save face? (Remember now, it's a war on "terrorism," not embarrassment.)

No war can be won without superior command and control. That means establishing clear chains of command defining who is responsible to whom for what. I seriously doubt anyone has a wire diagram that shows the organization of the countless agencies involved in Homeland Security. If such a thing does exist, it's indecipherable.

Our armed services are not designed or organized to combat terrorism or insurgencies. This has to change. And it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. We can probably re-gear our entire military for the cost of two aircraft carriers, and still retain enough "conventional force" to fight and defeat anyone else's military.

But perhaps the most important thing we need to do in our War on Terror is to declare a War on Bullshit. No more "flypaper theory," no more "with us or against us," no more "bring 'em on," no more "last throes." And no more "what's past is past." Our nation's leaders--especially our elected officials--need to be held accountable for their actions. If our leaders aren't accountable, we truly are defeated.

Bomb Them Into the Industrial Age

We need to carpet bomb the entire Middle East.

With carpet bombs of food, medicine and clothing.

Of building materials.

Of Korans.

Of instructions in native language on how to improve food (not narcotic) crop production.

On instructions in native action on health care.

With no other bullshit. No propaganda. No Rovewellianism. Just an American flag pasted to every box. And maybe a smiley face.

That would cost a hell of a lot less than we're spending now.

What would we have to lose?

We're already losing, with the strategy we have now.

The Lesson Still Unlearned

I'm still reeling from the news of this morning's terrorist attack in London.

The images and reports pouring in on the news channels are horrible, of course. And the calm reactions of British officials and Londoners themselves are, well... I guess I'm heartened at the exemplary response of a civilized people to an act of such detestable barbarism.

But what I lament most about the London attack is the lesson it illustrates that I fear, in the emotion of the moment, will be missed by many people, especially our leaders:

Our strategy in the Global War on Terror has not worked. It is not working. It is not going to work.

The London attack clearly illuminates the lunacy behind the "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here," justification for the war in Iraq. If they can pull off a sophisticated, coordinated attack like that in London--perhaps the most counter-terrorism savvy city in the world--they can pull one off anywhere, including and especially damn near any city in the United States of America.

The argument that our Iraq incursion has deterred further attacks on US soil is pure Rovewellianism. For once, I agree with MSNBC's Ken Allard's line of thinking: bin Laden and his lieutenants have not ordered attacks in the US because to do so would be a disastrous strategic mistake. Another 9-11 would galvanize the American public and regain sympathy for us from the rest of the western world, completely undoing everything bin Laden has accomplished politically to date.

Hundreds of billions of dollars and who can count the casualties later, America is no safer than it was in September of 2001 and no closer to "victory" in the War on Terror. And yet...

Our misleaders will no doubt use the London attack to bolster its "stay the course" rhetoric, exhorting us to continue to support and fund a strategy that has, in my opinion, proven to be one of the most persistent failures in the history of human conflict.

I Smell Smoke; Where's the Fire?

Just what in the wide world of sports is special federal prosecutor Scott Fitzgerald up to?

According to the Associated Press, our man Fitz isn't satisfied with getting the e-mails passed between Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and his editors pertaining to the Judith Plame story. He's now insisting that Cooper testify before the grand jury. What does Fitzgerald hope to gain by that?

The AP story states that, "The case is among the most serious legal clashes between the media and the government since the Supreme Court in 1971 refused to stop the Times and The Washington Post from publishing a classified history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers." But something tells me that the Plame affair and the Pentagon Papers affair are two very different stories. In the Pentagon Papers affair, a government prosecutor tried to keep the media from reporting what it knew to be the truth. In the Plame affair, a prosecutor seems bent on forcing the media to tell what it knows.

My sense is that Fitzgerald is looking for something far bigger than nailing Rove on a perjury charge. It think he's trying to build a comprehensive conspiracy case around the intelligence cook-off that led us to war in Iraq. If that's what Fitzgerald is up to, I'm behind him, but I have reservations about the long-term effects his tactics may produce.

If he successfully makes his case, it will be on the testimony of sources who--the underhanded nature of their motives aside--gave information to the press on the premise of confidentiality. Under oath before the grand jury, Matthew Cooper will be more or less obliged to tell everything he knows or thinks he knows about what went on behind closed doors during the lead up to the Iraq invasion. That, most likely, will end Cooper's career as an investigative journalist, and it may do permanent damage to investigative journalism in general. Will anyone talk to a reporter again knowing their name might come up at a grand jury hearing?

I sincerely hope Fitzgerald is carefully considering all these things as he pursues this case, and that his ultimate goal justifies the costs and risks he is taking with regard to the First Amendment.

Fitzgerald earned a reputation in Illinois as a relentless, "untouchable" prosecutor. So he's not likely to let go of this case any time soon.

We should have an interesting summer.