Month: November 2005

I See Marty’s Underpants

by digby

I get these neat little e-mails from Marty Peretz at the New Republic telling me that I should read this or that article in the magazine (and subscribe, of course.) It’s always amusing how “he” chooses to frame certain arguments. Here’s one that cracks me up:

The first of these is a long piece (with a dejected Napoleon on the cover) by Paul Berman, the author of Terror and Liberalism, the prize-winning book of two years ago, relating France’s xenophobia towards America to its historic arrogance about France as the perfect model for everyone, including its Arab and African immigrants.

And here I thought all this talk about Freedom Fries and “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” showed America’s xenophobia toward France. And then there is our vaunted “exceptionalism” in which we are forcibly exporting our perfect model for everyone as if we are high priests anointed by the God of Democracy. (And also, of course, because we are so good and they’re so evil.) And call me crazy, but it seems to me that I’ve heard an awful lot, my whole life, about the damn immigrants (legal and illegal) who refuse to learn English. Damn that liberal multiculturalism all to hell.

I guess I just have never understood why conservatives hate France so much. It’s the most American country in Europe. Only with really good food, good wine and liberal attitudes toward sex. It’s a lot like San Francisco.

Ahhhhh.

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Of Course It’s True

by digby

I was busy yesterday so I didn’t get to comment on the amazing story that Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera headquarters. I think what surprised me the most is that anyone thinks that it might not true. Of course, it’s true.

Juan Cole leads us through the evidence, the most compelling being that he blew the shit out of two other Al Jazeera offices!:

The US military bombed the Kabul offices of Aljazeera in mid-November, 2001.

The US military hit the Aljazeerah offices in Baghdad on the 9th of April, 2004, not so long before Bush’s conversation with Blair. That attack killed journalist Tarek Ayoub, who had a 3 year old daughter. He had said earlier, “We’ve told the Pentagon where all our offices are in Iraq and hung giant banners outside them saying `TV.”’ Given what we now know about Bush’s intentions, that may have been a mistake.

When the US and the UN shoe-horned old-time CIA asset Iyad Allawi into power as transitional prime minister, he promptly banned Aljazeera in Iraq. The channel still did fair reporting on Iraq, finding ways of buying video film and doing enlightening telephone interviews.

Having blown up two Al Jazeera offices and having his puppet shutting down remaining operations in Iraq, I have to say that I think the onus is on Bush to prove that he didn’t want to blow up the Al Jazeera headquarters in Qater. Fool me once, won’t get fooled again and all that.

One of these days, journalists are going to have to face the fact that they are considered by the Cheney admnistration to be “fair game” in the GWOT. And it isn’t just the hostile Arab press. The Republicans have made it quite clear that anyone who implies that the Americans are on the wrong track or are behaving in less than gallant ways, are traitors.

This little t-shirt pitch encapsulates the beliefs of many on the right, I’m afraid:

The Marine who killed the wounded insurgent in Fallujah deserves our praise and admiration. In a split second decision, he acted valiantly.

On the otherhand, Kevin Sites of NBC is a traitor. Beheading civilians, booby-trapped bodies, suicide bombers?? Sorry hippie, American lives come first. Terrorists don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. This Marine deserves a medal and Kevin Sites, you deserve a punch in the mouth.

Via Atrios and Steve Clemons, I see that Frank Cakewalk actually uses the phrase “fair game” in reference to al Jazeera:

Gaffney: We’re talking about a news organization, so called, that is promoting bin Laden, that is promoting Zawahiri, that is promoting Zarqawi, that is promoting beheadings, that is promoting suicide bombers, that is other ways enabling the propaganda aspects of this war to be fought by our enemies, and I think that puts it squarely in the target category.

Whether the best way to do it is with bombs or through other means is something we could discuss, but I think it’s fair game, under these circumstances, given the way it conducts itself.

These “moral clarity” guys really take my breath away.

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Walking In Each Other’s Shoes

by digby

I hear that Jean Schmidt is unrepentant this morning, saying, “There’s no way that I remotely tried to impugn his character” speaking of her remarks about John Murtha.

This is a very important principle for her. After all, just a couple of months ago, Schmidt said this in her first remarks before the House:

(Mrs. SCHMIDT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1
minute.)

Mrs. SCHMIDT. Mr. Speaker, I stand here today in the same shoes, though with a slightly higher heel, as thousands of Members who have taken the same oath before me. I am mindful of what is expected of me both by this hallowed institution and the hundreds of thousands of Americans I am blessed to represent. I am the lowest-ranking Member of this body, the very bottom rung of the ladder; and I am privileged to hold that title.

This House has much work to do. On that we can all agree. We will not always agree on the details of that work. Honorable people can certainly agree to disagree. However, here today I accept a second oath. I pledge to walk in the shoes of my colleagues and refrain from name-calling or the questioning of character. It is easy to quickly sink to the lowest form of political debate. Harsh words often lead to headlines, but walking this path is not a victimless crime. This great House pays the price.

So at this moment, I begin my tenure in this Chamber, uncertain of what history will say of my tenure here. I come here green with only a desire to make our great country even greater. We have much work to do. In that spirit, I pledge to each of you that any disagreements we may have are just that and no more. Walking in each other’s shoes takes effort and pause; however, it is my sincere hope that I never lose the patience to view each of you as human beings first, God’s creatures, and foremost. I deeply appreciate this opportunity to serve with each of you. I very much look forward to getting to know you better, and I humbly thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to address this humble body.

She still feels that way, which is why she’s willing to endure all “the
hateful words” being said about her for her innocent remarks about cowards cutting and running.

Does anyone know of any studies done on the effects of long term self-bullshitting victimization? Do their minds fracture at some point? Does that explain Dick Cheney?

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Fairnbalanced

by digby

FOX News is refusing to air an ad critical of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, citing its lawyers’ contention that the spot is factually incorrect.

Factually incorrect?

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Holding Their Feet To The Fire

Bob Woodward seems to think that he’s been tough on the Bush administration:

WOODWARD: But you know, I would never compromise. You know, if I may, I brought some headlines in “The Washington Post.” These — do these make any sense?

KING: Hold them up a little.

WOODWARD: Yes, OK.

KING: So we can read them.

WOODWARD: This is — yes, OK. This is November 2002 before — as the Bush — word came out about the war in Afghanistan. “A Struggle for the President’s Heart and Mind.” Struggle. It explains in great detail how Powell had different positions, there was a mass tension and difficulties in the war council. Let’s see. This is the second part of that series. “Doubts and Debates Before Victory over the Taliban.” Doubts and debate. Now, anyone who knows anything about the Bush administration, they’d rather keep doubts and debate off stage. I bring them on stage in this book.

I’ve — you know, I don’t want to go on, but “The New York Times,” front page, when the book, “Plan of Attack,” came out last year, “Airing of Powell’s Misgivings Tests Cabinet Ties” and the book jolted the White House and aggravating long festering tensions in the Bush cabinet.

“Airing of Powell’s misgivings.” “Doubts and Debate before Victory.” Man, that must have really freaked out the White House!

The Bushies never gave a shit about Powell and they were thrilled to portray Commander Codpiece treating the great General like a lackey. It’s quite clear that Woodward doesn’t understand why he is given all that access.

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Send In The Lobster

War-room spinners also hope to highlight whatever good news there is to be found in Iraq, and which, they say, doesn’t make its way into the American media. They recently dispatched one of their best operatives, Steve Schmidt (no relation to the Ohio congresswoman), to Baghdad to look for ways generate positive press. His answer: build better relations with the reporters. But they may be preoccupied these days by the need to dodge terrorist attacks on their hotels.

I wonder why they haven’t gone back to the tried and true. Via Somerby, here’s Margaret Carlson talking about her time with the Bush campaign:

“There were Dove bars and designer water on demand,” she recalls, “and a bathroom stocked like Martha Stewart’s guest suite. Dinner at seven featured lobster ravioli.”

It wouldn’t hurt for the administration to send over some Dove bars. It bought them oodles of good coverage in 2000.

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Stuck In Their Groove

It’s amazing how the media gets stuck on certain narratives and how hard it is for them to change. On Hardball today, Matthews had on Charlie Cook and Stewart Rothenberg, both of whom are non-partisan, clear thinking political analysts. Chris began by bringing up the president’s low poll ratings, the trouble the Republicans are having on the war, the bad press and all of it. Within minutes, as always happens on these shows, they were dissecting the deep, intractable problems …. with the Democrats.

Rothenberg, to his credit, did bring up that it wasn’t actually necessary for the Democrats to have a single message right now since we are a year from the elections and the Republicans are imploding. This led to a discussion of how the Democrats are the captive of special interests.

It’s clear that the gasbags haven’t yet developed a vocabulary or a framework from which to describe and understand the new political reality. Matthews, in particular, can’t wrap his arms aroud the idea that the Republicans are tanking. He compared Bush to Henry the Fifth today (yup) and got all brow furrowed and confused trying to understand how it could happen that Bush is so unpopular.

This is something that the elite media and the Bush administration have in common. They can’t adjust to changing circumstances. Once their narrative/gameplan/talking points are set, you have to pry them out of their brains with a crowbar.

I hope that Democrats are prepared for the fact that they are going to have to wage the 06 election as if they are 30 points down and Bush is still astride his destrier cutting a swathe through every competitive district in the country. No matter how low he goes in the polls, or how much the public is disgruntled with republican rule, the media are going to portray the Democrats as even worse. We’ll have to win a few “surprises” before they can adjust their plot line.

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Genie In A Bottle

by digby

Nobody is going to ask me who should be hired at The New York Times to replace Judith Miller, but if they did I would say that they should hire the best and most unsung national security reporter in the country — Jason Vest. If you are unfamiliar with his work, do yourself a favor and have Mr Google look him up. He’s a real reporter, not a stenographer, but he also has an impressive interest and grasp of the history of various groups, cabals and individuals who make up the current national security establishment and the Bush administration. And lo and behold, he actually writes about them. This is a huge key to understanding these otherwise inexplicable people and their motives. I highly recommend that you read his pieces wherever they come up and I will continue to bring them to your attention.

Today, he has written a piece on torture for the National Journal that is fascinating because he’s spoken to old guard CIA who have had some experience with this stuff in the past. They all agree that the moral dimension is huge, but there are good practical reasons for not doing it as well. These range from the difficulty in getting allies to cooperate because of their distaste for such methods to the fact that the information is unreliable.

But the thing I found most interesting is the observation that it does something quite horrible to the perpetrators as well as the victims:

“If you talk to people who have been tortured, that gives you a pretty good idea not only as to what it does to them, but what it does to the people who do it,” he said. “One of my main objections to torture is what it does to the guys who actually inflict the torture. It does bad things. I have talked to a bunch of people who had been tortured who, when they talked to me, would tell me things they had not told their torturers, and I would ask, ‘Why didn’t you tell that to the guys who were torturing you?’ They said that their torturers got so involved that they didn’t even bother to ask questions.” Ultimately, he said — echoing Gerber’s comments — “torture becomes an end unto itself.”

[…]

According to a 30-year CIA veteran currently working for the agency on contract, there is, in fact, some precedent showing that the “gloves-off” approach works — but it was hotly debated at the time by those who knew about it, and shouldn’t be emulated today. “I have been privy to some of what’s going on now, but when I saw the Post story, I said to myself, ‘The agency deserves every bad thing that’s going to happen to it if it is doing this again,'” he said. “In the early 1980s, we did something like this in Lebanon — technically, the facilities were run by our Christian Maronite allies, but they were really ours, and we had personnel doing the interrogations,” he said. “I don’t know how much violence was used — it was really more putting people in underground rooms with a bare bulb for a long time, and for a certain kind of privileged person not used to that, that and some slapping around can be effective.

“But here’s the important thing: When orders were given for that operation to stand down, some of the people involved wouldn’t [emphasis mine –ed]. Disciplinary action was taken, but it brought us back to an argument in the agency that’s never been settled, one that crops up and goes away — do you fight the enemy in the gutter, the same way, or maintain some kind of moral high ground?

To some extent civilization is nothing more than leashing the beast within. When you go to the dark side, no matter what the motives, you run a terrible risk of destroying yourself in the process. I worry about the men and women who are engaging in this torture regime. This is dangerous to their psyches. But this is true on a larger sociological scale as well. For many, many moons, torture has been a simple taboo — you didn’t question its immorality any more than you would question the immorality of pedophilia. You know that it’s wrong on a visceral, gut level. Now we are debating it as if there really is a question as to whether it’s immoral — and, more shockingly, whether it’s a positive good. Our country is now openly discussing the efficacy of torture as a method for extracting information.

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase “defining deviancy down” he couldn’t ever have dreamed that we would in a few short decades be at a place where torture is no longer considered a taboo. It certainly makes all of his concerns about changes to the nuclear family (and oral sex) seem trivial by comparison. We are now a society that on some official levels has decided that torture is no longer a deviant, unspeakable behavior, but rather a useful tool. It’s not hidden. People publicly discuss whether torture is really torture if it features less than “pain equavalent to organ failure.” People no longer instinctively recoil at the word — it has become a launching pad for vigorous debate about whether people are deserving of certain universal human rights. It spirals down from there.

When the smoke finally clears, and we can see past that dramatic day on 9/11 and put the threat of islamic fundamentalism into its proper perspective, I wonder if we’ll be able to go back to our old ethical framework? I’m not so sure we will even want to. It’s not that it changed us so much as it revealed us, I think. A society that can so easily discard it’s legal and ethical taboos against cruelty and barbarism, is an unstable society to begin with.

At this rather late stage in life, I’m realizing that the solid America I thought I knew may never have existed. Running very close, under the surface, was a frightened, somewhat hysterical culture that could lose its civilized moorings all at once. I had naively thought that there were some things that Americans would find unthinkable — torture was one of them.

The old Lebanon hand that Vest quotes above concludes by saying this:

I think as late as a decade ago, there were enough of us around who had enough experience to constitute the majority view, which was that this was simply not the way we did business, and for good reasons of practicality or morality. It’s not just about what it does or doesn’t do, but about who, and where, we as a country want to be.”

Now that we’ve let the torture genie out of the bottle, I wonder if we can put that beast back in. He looks and sounds an awful lot like an American.

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The War Marketeer

by digby

A lot of people are linking to this fascinating Rolling Stone article on John Rendon, king of wartime propaganda. I’ve written extensively about the Office of Global Communications and the WHIG, but I didn’t know that Rendon was involved. I should have. It’s exactly his kind of gig.

I became aware of Rendon after Gulf War I, when it was revealed that he had had a big hand in “shaping the debate.” But it shouldn’t be assumed that he was the only PR firm involved in such things. Many of you will remember that none other PR giant Hill and Knowlton orchestrated one of the most amazing examples of prowar flackery ever documented:

… nothing quite compared to H&K’s now infamous “baby atrocities” campaign. After convening a number of focus groups to try to figure out which buttons to press to make the public respond, H&K determined that presentations involving the mistreatment of infants, a tactic drawn straight from W.R. Hearst’s playbook of the Spanish-American War, got the best reaction. So on October 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill at which H&K, in coordination with California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter, introduced a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah. (Purportedly to safeguard against Iraqi reprisals, Nayirah’s full name was not disclosed.) Weeping and shaking, the girl described a horrifying scene in Kuwait City. “I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital,” she testified. “While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers coming into the hospital with guns and going into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.” Allegedly, 312 infants were removed.

The tale got wide circulation, even winding up on the floor of the United Nations Security Council. Before Congress gave the green light to go to war, seven of the main pro-war senators brought up the baby-incubator allegations as a major component of their argument for passing the resolution to unleash the bombers. Ultimately, the motion for war passed by a narrow five-vote margin.

Only later was it discovered that the testimony was untrue. H&K had failed to reveal that Nayirah was not only a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, but also that her father, Saud Nasir al-Sabah, was Kuwait’s ambassador to the U.S. H&K had prepped Nayirah in her presentation, according to Harper’s publisher John R. MacArthur’s book Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War. Of the seven other witnesses who stepped up to the podium that day, five had been prepped by H&K and had used false names. When human rights organizations investigated later, they could not find that Nayirah had any connection to the hospital. Amnesty International, among those originally duped, eventually issued an embarrassing retraction.

They hate us because we’re so good. God bless America.

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All Leaks Are Created Equal

by digby

This essay in today’s LA Times makes my head hurt. It’s by a professor of media studies and history at Rutgers and it is called “Attack secrets, not leaks:”

As a critic of both the Iraq war and the administration’s political ruthlessness, I appreciate the satisfaction of seeing a White House operative nabbed for what seems like petty revenge. As a former and still-occasional journalist, I agree with the criticisms of Miller’s credulous prewar reporting, which helped legitimize claims that Saddam Hussein posed a danger to the United States. As a former assistant (and still a friend) to Woodward, I’ve often heard the rap that he’s too close to those in power.

However, I also believe that the frame that the news media have used for presenting this story is badly warped.

Instead of dwelling on horse-race details about who leaked what to whom and when, pundits should be debating the fundamental issue: Should leaking be criminalized in the first place? Instead of cheering the Plame investigation and vilifying the reporters caught in its web, we should be deploring the probe and applauding the reporters for gaining access to classified material, however ugly the leakers’ motives.

I understand this principle. If you “criminalize” leaks then people will stop leaking and the public will be less informed. But that principle exists to serve the far more important principle of the public’s right to know. That is what has become badly warped.

Why in the world should we applaud reporters for getting access to classified material but not writing a story about the powerful government leakers who leaked that classified information in order to obscure the facts and hide the truth? I’m not crying for Plame (although I think it’s a traitorous act to cavalierly expose a WMD specialist for petty reasons at a time like this.) What I’m interested in is the fact that the executive branch used classified information to secretly discredit a critic and the press doesn’t understand that withholding that story, not the identities of those who did it, is outrageous and worthy of condemnation.

The Fitzgerald probe is a peculiarity that is merely shining a light on a common practice among insiders that they clearly don’t understand is wrong. In the case of both Miller and Woodward, they wrote nothing about the case until they were forced by the law and their lameass, tardy editors. Their protection of their sources actually superceded their larger obligation to inform the public. This happened throughout this saga to greater and lesser degress, wherein a number of reporters gave lawyerly answers and talked about the case as if they didn’t know the answers to the questions they were asking, acting the part of journalist instead of actually being journalists. As I wrote earlier, as far as I can tell, Matt Cooper (and I should add, Knut Royce and Tim Phelps) were the only ones who actually understood what the story was.

Nobody is saying that they should have revealed the names of their sources, but they damned well should have revealed the substance of their conversations with those sources. Moreover they should have revealed to the public that the administration was using underhanded methods to discredit a critic. The fact Woodward and Miller (and others) wrote no stories is not a reason to excuse them — it’s the main reason to condemn them.

We hear a lot of whining about how they didn’t write stories because they didn’t want to be subpoenaed or the prosecutor asked them not to say anything (which is a genuinely baffling genuflect to government power.) I feel their pain, but that is the chance they take when they traffic in classified information. Their job is a risky business and while I’m sure they hope they aren’t going to have to face a prosecutor for it, it’s always got to be in the back of their mind that it could happen. The government tries to keep secrets and the press tries to dig them out.

Surely, everyone can see where that breaks down in this story, right? The idea that the “ugly motives” of government officials is irrelevant is preposterous in this case. The first question should have been, why is the powerful Scooter telling me this on backround? Why isn’t the president’s right hand man Rove saying this on the record? Would George Bush fire them if he knew they were revealing this information? If it’s relevant to Wilson’s report and casts doubt on his credibility, why aren’t they saying this publicly?

There are only two possible reasons that Libby, Rove and the other leakers would not go on the record. The first is that they knew Plame’s status was classified. The second is that they were trying to smear Wilson and didn’t want the public to know that. Either way, reporters should have understood they were being used by powerful forces to obscure the truth, not reveal it.

There is no legitimate reason for a top administration official to anonymously leak classified information to support the administration’s position. You can see a case in which a top official would legitimately leak classified information to cast doubt on the administration’s policy with which he disagrees, but not the other way around. The executive branch classifies information in the first place, presumably because it’s not supposed to be public. If they feel that the information is important and necessary to make public in order to support their policy, they can declassify it, call a press conference, give an interview, write a paper. Or they can shut up and find another way to advance their position. What they shouldn’t be able to do is have it both ways — use classified information to wage turf wars or discredit administration critics by having the press cover their asses. And yet that’s what happened. Top members of the Bush administration know they can get away with this because they believe that the chumps in the press will even go to jail rather than reveal their dirty deeds (which they went to great pains to remind the press to do.) That is “up is downism” taken to an extreme.

I agree that it’s not the job of the journalist to worry about the legal ramifications for Rove and Libby. Reporters are in the business of reporting classified information if it is in the public interest. (See: Pentagon Papers) However, reporters are not supposed to be in the business of advancing the administration’s position through this means. That is an abuse of confidentiality. The highest level of government has both the power and the responsibility to debate its critics openly and honestly. If they refuse to do that, the press shouldn’t do it for them behind a shield of anonymity. It subverts democracy.

Rove and Libby (and the others) may not have anonymously leaked because they knew Plame’s status was classified. It is just as likely that they did it for the same reason they always do — they were playing dirty pool and didn’t want to attach their names to it. This is what all these jaded members of the beltway refer to as “hardball politics.” And like hundreds of examples before this, the press docilely went along in order to preserve its access.

The reporter’s privilege is a means to an end, not the end in itself. It exists to serve the public’s right to know. And yet in this case, as in so many others in recent years, it’s been used to obscure the truth, spin the facts, serve the powerful to the detriment of the public.

To pretend that motives don’t matter, that all sources are equal, that it doesn’t matter if a source lies or uses the reporter as a cover for unethical behavior, is to devalue the principle until it has no meaning. Apparently, many of the elite media are so “entangled” with their sources and so inured to dirty politics that they can’t see this.

For the press to shield immensely powerful individuals from being responsible for these actions stands the entire principle underlying the reporter’s grant of confidentiality on its head. The point of it is to allow people to criticize their government without fear of professional reprisals, not so that powerful government officials can discredit their critics without fear of public reprisals.

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