Month: September 2003

You Can Believe Me Or You Can Believe Your Eyes

Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.

[…]

Bush’s defenders say the administration’s rhetoric was not responsible for the public perception of Hussein’s involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While Hussein and al Qaeda come from different strains of Islam and Hussein’s secularism is incompatible with al Qaeda fundamentalism, Americans instinctively lump both foes together as Middle Eastern enemies. “The intellectual argument is there is a war in Iraq and a war on terrorism and you have to separate them, but the public doesn’t do that,” said Matthew Dowd, a Bush campaign strategist. “They see Middle Eastern terrorism, bad people in the Middle East, all as one big problem.“

Ooooh. The “intellectual argument.” I guess they are talking about those nasty Birkenstocked elites again. Real people just wanna kick some Ay-Rab asses. It don’t matter who done it, them ragheads is nothin’ but one Big Problem. Yee – hah!

Golly, one might conclude from reading this that Bush’s campaign strategists see such ignorance, prejudice and racism as opportunities to advance their agenda. How typically Republican of them.

But, you’ve gotta love this:

Key administration figures have largely abandoned any claim that Iraq was involved in the 2001 attacks. “I’m not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading hawk on Iraq, said on the Laura Ingraham radio show on Aug. 1.

Well, I’m not sure even now that I can fully grasp just what a lying, mendacious, intellectually incoherent piece of shit Paul Wolfowitz has turned out to be.

2 days after the attacks Wolfowitz said:

“I think one has to say it’s not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that’s why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign.”

Even a year later he was still spouting much the same line.

And, why did he say this? What led him to think that “ending states that sponsor terrorism” would end the threat from al al Qaeda? Was he simply lying straight out or did he actually — stupidly — believe it?

I think, sadly, that it may have been the latter.

This nonsensical theory came about because of his and other neocon fellow travellers’ close association with one of the most crazed nutjobs in Washington, somebody who should have been placed in the far fringes of tinfoilhat-land and was instead operating as a “fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute (alongside other kooks like Michael “Ghorbanifar go-between” Ledeen.) That person was Laurie Mylroie and her obsession with Saddam Hussein had led her to the completely insane and ridiculous thesis that international terrorism could not exist without Iraq’s sponsorship, as she reiterated just 2 months ago in testimony to the 9/11 commission.

This is the caliber of thinking Paul Wolfowitz admires and writes glowing book blurbs about.

It has become clear that if Paul Wolfowitz had exercised just a little bit more taste and discretion in his choice of dinner party companions (like Chalabi the conman and Mylroie the paranoid obsessive), we would likely not be in Iraq today. (Josh Marshall has more on the complete destruction of credibility of one of the shining lights of neconservatism, whom he calls the “Comical Ali” of the neocon collapse. Ho. )

With people like this in charge, it is easy to understand why Americans are completely confused and deluded about our foreign policy.

It’s going to take a concerted effort on the part of the Democratic candidates for president to educate the country about this. They must repeat it over and over again.

And, it’s another reason why whoever becomes the nominee is going to be irreparably hamstrung by a vote in favor of the war. Voters may allow a Republican frat boy to be stupid on national defense, but they will not allow it of a Democrat. That’s just the way it is.

Bowl Him Over With A Feather

Avedon Carol says:

“Markets are a great way to organize economic activity, but…”

Couldn’t you just fall over laughing? Just like I usually do whenever I see that Alan Greenspan line Pfaff quoted the other day, about how when the Soviet Union fell he just assumed it would “automatically establish a free-market entrepreneurial system.”

Hey, I only read comic books, but these people think they live in one.

Hahaha. In fact, I even know which comic book Alan and his little friends think they live in. It’s called “Atlas Shrugged” and has kept dreamy romantic schoolgirls and market fundamentalists of all ages atwitter and breathless for decades.

Read the whole post. It’s a timely reminder of why we got all those pesky, intrusive regulations in the first place. And, it wasn’t a perverse, liberal compulsion to make business owners lives difficult.

The article to which Avedon refers also says:

Mr. Greenspan said that after 1989 he – or ”we,” as he put it – discovered that ”much of what we took for granted in our free-market system and assumed to be human nature was not nature at all, but culture. The dismantling of the central planning function in an economy does not, as some had supposed, automatically establish” market capitalism.

It explains a lot about what has happened to the ex-Communist world since 1989 that men and women with the influence of Mr. Greenspan, occupying posts of great power, should have held so egregiously naive, or historically and culturally ”deaf,” a belief as did Mr. Greenspan.

What in the hell is wrong with the intellectuals of the right? Has it simply become habit to disregard anything that doesn’t fit their narrow worldview and ideology?

Or are they just, as the recent Berkeley study found, so psychologically resistant to uncertainty, attached to dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity that they are simply incapable of being true intellectuals.

I don’t know, but it’s pretty clear that the ivory tower think tank culture of the right needs to do some serious reassessment if they plan to run the world. Their incompetence and naïveté is as breathtaking as anything we’ve seen since Russia in the 20’s.

Big Meanies

Gawd, I love Republicans. I really do. If they didn’t exist, you’d forget what the kindergarten schoolyard is like, and that would be a shame.

Here are yesterday’s talking points as faithfully and robotically mouthed by GOP hacks from sea to shining sea:

“The one thing they were unified on was their negativity and their attacks on the president.”

Ed Gillespie, GOP chairman

Oh, my dear Lord, can it be? Can they be so dastardly and despicable as to attack the president during a presidential campaign? Are there no depths to which these treasonous, un-American bastards will sink?

By Gawd, they won’t get away with it. Not by a long shot.

The Republicans are going to whine and stomp their tiny little feet and sob until the big nasty Democrats just stop it, stop it, stop it! It’s against the rules to be so mean!

And, it will work just great, too, because the American people have forgotten all about that unfortunate eight years, 24-7 of non-stop GOP harping, screaming, chest beating and slobbering about Bill Clinton. Now that the dignified Republicans are in charge, all those years of obsessing about the shape of the President’s manhood and his corrupt, murdering ways and his feminazi wife and his Commie connections are lost in the mists of time.

Today, alls I know is that the Democrats are icky and bad for bashing that nice young man, George W. Bush. Why, I’ve heard that some low class Democrat even called him a “major league asshole,” can you believe that?

They’d better quit it … or else.

Lukewarm Water

I don’t always agree with Joan Walsh but I think she is on to something important in today’s Salon Column.

I wrote last fall that I thought the Senate resolution giving the president carte blanche to invade at will was a serious, perhaps fatal, error on the part of the Democratic Presidential Wannabe Club.

The moral reason was obvious. Dick Cheney made it quite clear, two months before the vote, that the administration planned to attack Iraq, no matter what. It was immoral to give Bush a blank check to do that for their own craven political purposes. This was a vote on a matter of life and death, not “bring your daughter to work day.”

The political reason was that the base of the party was going to be slow to forgive. This was clear from the enormous outpouring of e-mails, letters and phone calls coming into Senators’ offices; record numbers by all accounts. As my own Senator, Diane Feinstein said on the floor of the Senate:

People have weighed in by the tens of thousands. If I were just to cast a representative vote based on those who have voiced their opinions with my office – and with no other factors – I would have to vote against this resolution.

Naturally, she voted for the resolution, ostensibly because of the supposed grave imminent threat Saddam presented to the US that we in the peacenik hoi polloi just didn’t seem to grasp.

…the same hoi polloi who knew very well that invading Iraq was a long held wet dream of radical neocons who were opportunistically using 9/11 as an excuse to advance their agenda… the same hoi polloi who could see with our very own eyes that the Bush Doctrine, published and distributed for every American to read, advocates muscular unilateralism and the emasculation of international institutions and the rule of law. You didn’t have to be an insider to know that the administration’s late blooming “commitment” to getting UN approval and international support was nothing but window dressing to buy time.

As Walsh says in her article:

Frankly, I found it equally incomprehensible how someone could support the war as Gephardt did, and now pretend that he didn’t know the president had no plan and no international cooperation to get it done. I knew that, sitting behind my desk in San Francisco, raising my teenaged daughter. Why didn’t anyone tell Gephardt, the savvy House minority leader?

Walsh doesn’t say it, but here in Santa Monica I knew our Senator Diane was voting for it because she was afraid that she’d be labeled a coward by the Mighty Wurlitzer if she didn’t. Continuing to live in the past, and making political calculations based upon the closed, insular advice of political consultants who have outlived their usefulness, the Democratic leadership believed that the conditions of 1991 were again at play and they would not let themselves be caught out this time. Always fighting the last war, as usual.

Walsh says it is “unseemly” for the contenders who voted for the resolution to now pile on the Bush administration. I don’t think it’s unseemly, it’s just not credible. It showed a remarkable political obtuseness not to recognize that when the base of the party is worked up enough to call and write in record numbers, something is in the air besides the smell of patchouli oil. These were Democrats, not anarchists or Naderites. That kind of political tone deafness is a disqualification in my book. At a time when the electorate is closely divided, you’d better pay attention to your base.

The vaunted Carville-Greenberg-Shrum operation further confused the issue by advising Democratic candidates to go around the country saying “I’m for the war, but with reservations” because that’s what their polls told them that many people felt.

Apparently, they didn’t realize that the people who felt this way were looking for leadership on the issue not equivocation. By saying they were for the war but with reservations, voters were simply saying that they supported the president by default in a time of war (and media cheerleading), but they knew in their gut that something wasn’t quite right.

It was the candidates job to identify and articulate where that feeling came from. When the Democrats appeared to be just as uncomfortable and confused as they were, swing voters went with the guys who seemed sure of themselves. You can’t blame them.

But, most importantly, the consultants failed to realize that by taking this position the democratic leadership was telling the energized base to go fuck themselves. The results were predictable:

Here’s what the Carville-Greenberg-Shrum operation said in their post-mortem of the election:

On Election Day, Republicans won by 4 points in voting for the House of Representatives (51 to 47 percent). That produced a gain of just 4 seats in the House. In the Senate, Democrats went from a one-seat majority to being in the minority. That represents a swing of 4 points away from Democratic performance in 2000 (even), actually the switch of around 2 percent of the voters, not a seismic change.

[…]

This imbalance of energy and direction produced a unique electorate, which would have been noted election night, had the traditional exit polls been available. The 2002 electorate was more Republican and much more conservative than those that showed up in the Presidential election of 2000 and the off-year election of 1998. Republicans were greatly energized by their campaigns, while Democrats were not.

If the Democrats had had the balls to say what they knew very well was the truth, we may have won the mid-terms and kept George W. Bush from hurtling forward with the Iraq war when the rest of the world balked at his bullying ways. At the very least they would have had a principled and coherent position from which to run. It was a huge failure of nerve and it explains the predicament the Wannabe Club finds itself in today.

Hence, grassroots support for Howard Dean and Wesley Clark.* The others look like presidential pretzels trying to explain themselves, now that things have gone wrong. Many of us predicted it would be so.

*I don’t mean to ignore Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun. They also objected to the war and I admire them for it. Their voices are worthy of respect and all three of them have followings that should be valued in the Party. But, they have little chance of gaining the nomination for reasons unrelated to the Iraq war.

Two More Straws

There are so many political and policy atrocities associated with the modern GOP and this administration that it becomes hard to feel anything more than a sort of resigned acceptance and hope that the historians will place them in their proper place in history beside other failed radical experiments.

But, every once in a while something comes to light that begets an emotional charge of such white hot anger and outrage that I find I’m shocked and awed once again at the sheer lack of decency and any claim to honor these people have, particularly after having to listen to their phony pretensions of patriotism and virtue.

Two such cases came up just recently and I wondered once again how low they can possibly go. Pretty low, apparently.

First, I simply cannot wrap my arms around the fact that the White House “sexed down” the EPA assessment of the air quality around ground zero. That they would knowingly place the people involved in the rescue and clean-up operation in long term health danger is simply so disgusting that I find it hard to imagine that any public safety worker in this country could ever vote for the Republicans again.

Remember, the people most likely to be affected by the bad air quality around the WTC after the attacks were cops, firefighters, municipal workers, rescue units and military personnel. The heroes of 9/11, the ones Bush so shamelessly exploited day after day after day — the ones that Peggy Noonan and K-Lo and Coulter got all misty and moist over.

Thanks guys. And by the way, Fuck You.

Would it have been too much trouble for the party of personal responsibility to give unspun information to citizens of the site of the most deadly terrorist attack in the nation’s history so they could decide for themselves how to mitigate the risk of serious long term consequences? The workers would have gone to work anyway, guaranteed, but they might have used more sophisticated equipment and might have discouraged people with respiratory problems from going into the area until it was completely cleared. Gosh, maybe they would have had themselves medically monitored more closely. That would have been terrible.

The only people who likely would have held back are those who work in the Stock Exchange, and there we find the real reason for the lie. Because a bunch of rich traders might have stayed home rather than expose themselves to long term lung damage, Bush and his cronies decided to throw them to the wolves, too.

Good thing you got those tax cuts boys. You’re going to need them to pay for your health costs.

Vote Republican. They care.

The other story that made me erupt with righteous indignation is the story this morning in the NY Times affirming that the White House authorized the bin Laden family “evacuation” from the US during the time that flights were suspended after 9/11.

This story has been out there from early days and those who placed any credence in the story were derided as dupes and 5th columnists.

With all that honor and dignity swirling around the oval office, you would have thought that somebody would have been concerned about whether it was right to spirit a bunch of Saudis out of the country rather than “protect” them from the supposed howling mob by putting them in protective custody until matters became clearer.

Meanwhile, the FBI was rounding up thousands of Middle Eastern men all over the country, many held for months on end with no legal representation, even eventually trumping up charges of thought crimes against a handful of dumbshits who failed to be born into rich Saudi “friends of Bandar” families.

This seems like a big story to me — one that should rightly have the entire beltway awash in gossipy speculation.

Let’s be clear. One of the more fanciful conspiracy theories to emerge immediately after 9/11, the one charging the Bush administration of protecting the Saudi royal family and the family of Osama-bin-fucking-Laden turns out to be TRUE!

Ok. It isn’t as big of a deal as fundraising at a Buddhist temple or a DNA stained dress. I understand that. But, you would think that Tweety and the rest might find it just a little bit intriguing that our president authorized the escape of intimates and family members of the mastermind of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Wait…

Look! Over There! Arnold’s shaking hands at a fair!

Britney Luvs Bush!

never mind…

Last Refuge

Anyone who thinks that the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror should tell it to the Marines of the 1st Marine Division who comprised the eastern flank of the force that fought its way to Baghdad last April.

[…]

America’s troops and our coalition partners are determined to win–and they will win, if we continue to give them the moral and material support they need to do the job. As the president said recently, our forces are on the offensive. And as Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane said in congressional testimony, “They bring the values of the American people to this conflict. They understand firmness, they understand determination. But they also understand compassion. Those values are on display every day as they switch from dealing with an enemy to taking care of a family.”

I saw the troops in Iraq, and Gen. Keane is absolutely right. I can tell you that they, above all, understand the war they are fighting. They understand the stakes involved. And they will not be deterred from their mission by desperate acts of a dying regime or ideology.

[…]

Young men and women from across America rushed to the trio, eager to touch them and talk to them. One soldier, a mother of two, told Christy she’d enlisted because of Sept. 11. Another soldier displayed the metal bracelet he wore, engraved with the name of a victim of 9/11. Others came forward with memorabilia from the World Trade Center they carried with them into Baghdad. And when it was Christy’s turn to present Gen. Tommy Franks with a piece of steel recovered from the Trade Towers, she saw this great soldier’s eyes well up with tears. Then, she watched as they streamed down his face on center stage before 4,000 troops.

To those who think the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the global war against terrorism . . . tell that to our troops.

Cue the plaintive wail of a lone trumpeter playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” as through my patriotic tears I grab blindly for a barf bag and my passport.

I’ve read enough gushy patriotic drivel in the last 2 years to tide me over until Armageddon and I thoroughly expect the Mighty Wurlitzer to play Sousa and Lee Greenwood on a loop during the presidential campaign. However, the above piece of manipulative treacle wasn’t written by a delusional codpiece worshiper like Peggy Noonan. It was written by one of the foremost intellectuals of the neocon movement and the premiere architect of the hallowed Bush Doctrine.

It’s none other than Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz himself, expelling a steaming pile of saccharine pap in order to avoid explaining how his every prediction about the postwar occupation was wrong. Read the whole thing. You’ll find not even one word of substance in the entire embarrassing sermon.

I’m sure the AEI Ladies Auxiliary and “Bush Is A Hottie” groupies get all teary eyed at the mere mention of 9/11 widows and brave fighting men on the “front,” but thinking people are supposed to demand a little bit more from the leading designers of our foreign policy. He’s writing in the Wall Street Journal, after all, not the Toby Keith fanzine.

And, please spare me any more adoring profiles of Wolfowitz, extolling his virtue and good intentions, much less his intellectual integrity. This pathetic appeal to emotion exposes him as either dangerously naïve and childlike in his thinking or so ideologically driven that he is willing to say and do anything in service of his goals.

Remember, these guys have always been wrong about everything. It is their special talent. They thought Kissinger was a dangerous appeaser with his weak kneed wussy détente. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall they were agitating for a stronger military presence in Europe to check an inevitable resurgence of communism. If they’d had their way we would have invaded Russia, for Gawd’s sake.

Typically, now that they have been proved to be both baldly dishonest and dramatically incompetent, they are falling back on their old favorite — rank sentimentality and gooey patriotic tributes to the troops.

The scoundrels are scurrying to their last refuge much sooner than I would have thought possible. Get out your trowels and shovels because we are about to be buried in patriotic clichés. It’s all they’ve got.