Month: September 2006

Duped

by digby

Max Blumenthal has the latest on the rightwing cabal that got ABC to air its propaganda. It looks like Iger was asleep at the wheel and rudely awakened.

While I had speculated here that it was writer Cyrus Nowrasteh, whose credits included “The Day Reagan Was Shot,” who brought in the lil’ religious fanatic director David Cunningham, it turns out that Cunningham brought in Nowrasteh. Weird.

David Horowitz is doing his best Sergeant Schultz impression.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald reports even more proof emerges that the marketing campaign was aimed exclusively at rightwingers. No screeners for Alan Colmes, Al Franken, Ed Schultz or Rhandi Rhodes. Local LA bloviator Bill Handel got one, though. Unsolicited.

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9/11 Symbiosis

by digby

I’ve been getting a few admonistions from readers who are upset that I’m not suspending my anger to observe this day with solemnity and seriousness. But I’m not going to apologize for being angry. I was angry that day five years ago and I’m still angry.

You see, I knew — I knew — that bin Laden had just achieved a huge victory, perhaps a decisive one. This was not because of the attacks themselves or even the possibility of more in the future, which as horrible and dramatic as they are do not in themselves represent any kind of existential threat. This was because as an observer of the zeitgeist and the political scene for over 30 years at that point, I knew that our government and media would react to this event in exactly the way bin Laden hoped and that we would do to ourselves what the Islamic extremists could only dream of doing: turn the country into a permanent state of faux crisis — and enable the authoritarian right wing of this country, which was unfortunately in power at the time, to pursue a doomed military empire, create a powerful imperial presidency and build the American style police state they had longed for for decades. I knew that they would run with this “opportunity” and run with it they did.

It became a cliche and then a joke when people would say “the terrorists have won” but there is little doubt in my mind that they have achieved much of what they set out to do. Rather than being the object of sympathy and solidarity we were in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the world now sees the United States as the terrorists do — a rogue superpower, untrustworthy and unpredictable. The irrational invasion of Iraq cemented an image in the minds of muslims and others that the US intends to steal valuable mid-east resources and wants a permanent presence in the region in order to subjugate its people.

The next generation of Americans is going to be left with a crippling economic burden from the twin effects of runaway spending on Iraq and an insane fiscal policy. Our society is being trained to believe we live in a perpetually fearful state of suspended animation, waiting for the ax to fall and increasingly sure that we must be willing to allow the government to do anything to maintain our precarious safety. (As long as we can keep shopping, of course.)

SCHNEIDER: One year after 9/11, 31 percent of Americans said they felt fear when they thought about the attacks. Five years after the attacks, that numbers is up to 44 percent.

One year after 9/11, nearly half the public expressed a desire for vengeance. Osama bin Laden is still out there. Only now are some of the terrorists being brought to trial.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will continue to bring the world’s most dangerous terrorists to justice.

SCHNEIDER: The desire for vengeance is about the same five years later. Do Americans believe the country will ever completely return to normal? No, a view shared by more and more people. One year after 9/11, 54 percent felt the country would never get back to normal. Now, five years after the attacks, 70 percent believe the country will never return to normal.

Good work Osama. If you wanted to create terror, you seem to have succeeded. Or someone has on your behalf. There are those who seem intent upon wallowing in this “fear,” immersing themselves in it, rubbing it all over them and everybody else. And there’s no question why they want to do that. After all, terror doesn’t just benefit Al Qaeda, does it?

The conservative Center for Security Policy will begin airing a new television commercial criticizing those who might oppose [Bush’s proposed legislation on show trials for terror detainees].

Some in Congress think “that if we retreat our terrorist enemies will leave us alone,” says the ad that will run in Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont and New York. “They say we should close Guantanamo, where captured foes are kept from waging war against us. … They seem to think we’ll be safer if we cut and run.”

With menacing music in the background, the commercial ends with an admonition: “Vote as if your life depended on it. Because it does.” via

And the Democrats, a day late and a dollar short when it comes to national security, have no choice but to feed into that sense of existential fear by nattering on about failed homeland security and accusing the president of feeble leadership because he hasn’t caught Osama bin Laden, thus reinforcing the notion that we are under seige. Not that they have any choice really. To do otherwise would be, as Tom Kean said yesterday on This Week, “heresy.”

So, in a very real sense, just as bin Laden depends upon the Republican party’s fear and loathing campaign to keep him relevant, the Republicans depend upon bin Laden to keep the terror on simmer. (Those tapes always dribble out just at the right moment, don’t they?) According to Ron Susskind’s book “The One Percent Solution” it is well known why in intelligence circles:

Deputy CIA director John E. McLaughlin noted at one meeting, “Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President.” Suskind quoted Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, as saying “Certainly, he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.

The problem is that this country simply cannot take an endless ginned-up “war” designed to benefit the Republican party and Islamic terrorists and neither can the rest of the world. We have big problems to face and we need allies and cooperation to deal with them. Right now we are actively making things worse by allowing our government to pursue terrorism policies that create more of it.

This week the administration is planning to force the congress to rubber stamp its heretofore illegal torture and detention regime. They are going to use some of the 9/11 families to demagogue this legislation as the only proper response to the WTC attacks and they are going to try to trap Democratic politicians into voting for it or risk being “Clelanded” in the coming campaign. You can already see the outlines of what we can expect to see in that ad I excerpted above.

This torture and detention regime is making our country less safe and less free by creating more terrorists and degrading the US Constitution, but rather than dismantling it the Republicans are going to institutionalize it. It is only the latest of many such foolish actions our government undertook since 9/11. The question is whether we will continue to allow them to do Osama bin Laden’s dirty work or if people of good sense will be able to resist their irrational warmongering and confront terrorists intelligently instead of giving them exactly what they want.

I’m not a big fan of Islamic fundamentalists myself. Like most fundamentalist religious fanatics, they are delusional, repressive, authoritarian tyrants and I have no desire for them to succeed in any way. I’m a liberal, after all. I’d really like to see the US government stop empowering them.

The fact that it is doing so makes me angry, I admit. On this day, of all days, especially.

*Note: I must admit that as much as I *knew* the Republicans would make the terrorist threat self-fulfilling by their overreaction, I never imagined that they would so boldly say things like this:

“We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.”

Uhm. No, actually it doesn’t. Not ever. And especially not when the war is a “war.”

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Stoking The Myth

by digby

CNN just gave President Bush some enthusiastic fellatio with its segment called “Commanding Presence?” I thought the question mark might lead to a serious discussion of Bush’s timorous behavior on 9/11 but since the people answering this question were Ari Fleischer and Andy Card you can imagine how critical it was. They did show the “My Pet Goat” footage, but Ari and Andy helpfully explained that it was highly unusual for anyone to interrupt the president in the middle of a photo-op so it shows just how seriously they all took it.

We then learned that he was desperate to get back to the White House, saying immediately, “I’m not gonna let some tin-horn dictator terrorist keep me outta Washington.”

They portray him as being very unusually voluble throughout that day — in private, at least. Later, after he insisted that he take marine-one instead of a motorcade because he wanted to “land at the white house” he looked down upon the smoldering pentagon and said to no one in particular, “the mightiest building in the world is on fire — this is the face of war in the 21st Century.”

Sure he did.

Thank you, CNN —

love, Karl

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The Catapault Malfunctions

by digby

CNN just reported that the ABC event movie, “The Path To 9/11” had 13 million viewers compared with CBS’s 10 million for the third repeat of it’s 9/11 documentary and football won the time slot with a strapping 20 million viewers.

When they look at the numbers closely, I think they will show an ABC audience that shrank tremendously within the first 15 minutes. This is not because it was politically sensitive but because it is one of the most tedious, incomprehensible pieces of garbage they’ve ever broadcast. A bunch of advertisers must be breathing a sigh of relief this morning that they hadn’t been talked into blowing any money on it.

It wasn’t just that it was a pathetic and obvious attempt to ape real talent like Oliver Stone, Steven Soderberg and Stephen Ghagan, or that the characters were robotic cliches whose turgid dialog actually made me laugh out loud several times. (There is a particularly hilarious scene in which Amy Madigan stomps around like a weepy linebacker, practically rending her garments before a conference table full of bedwetting bureaucrats, proclaiming “we had him and we let him go!”) It’s that it was, despite all the hoopla, so slow and plodding that even someone like me who had a great interest in watching every frame to find details I could use, simply could not sustain my interest after the first hour. I forced myself, but it wasn’t easy. Somehow, I doubt that middle America was more riveted than I was.

Here in LA on the ABC 11 o’clock news they held a sort of focus group to watch the film and comment on it. (They all looked a little shell shocked — and I doubt it was because the movie was so powerful.) I found it quite interesting that more than half of them saw it as a rightwing attempt to re-write history and found it “dangerous” and “false.” The rightwingers present were forced to say things like “I find it amazing that half this country refuses to accept we are at war.” From seeing that exchange, I’m hopeful that this movie failed to convince anyone who isn’t already dogpaddling around in the wingnut kool-aid. If that focus group is any indication, most of those who managed to make it through the whole thing without being rendered comatose could see that it was unbalanced.

The problem with wingnuts in popular culture is that they can’t seem to attract real creative talent. I think creativity rarely fits comfortably with authoritarianism, so that isn’t surprising. They are going to have to find a better team than Nowrasteh and Cunningham if they hope to indoctrinate the public with wingnut propaganda through film and television. Perhaps they should stick to screaming Hiteresque ranting on talk radio. That they know how to do.

Update: the numbers are actually worse than CNN reported

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Leadership

by digby

Youtube

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The Onslaught

by digby

From Andrew Sullivan

Next week, I’m informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove’s fall election strategy. He’s intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his “Hail Mary” move for November; it’s brutally exploitative of 9/11; it’s pure partisanship; and it’s designed to enable an untrammeled executive. Decent Republicans, Independents and Democrats must do all they can to expose and resist this latest descent into political thuggery. If you need proof that this administration’s first priority is not a humane and effective counter-terror strategy, but a brutal, exploitative path to retaining power at any price, you just got it.

My prediction: McCain, Graham and Warner sputter a little bit and then do the big el- foldo. The institutionalization of the American police state will proceed apace until Republicans are removed from power — and probably beyond. This is the kind of genie that fights going back in the bottle every step of the way.

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Who Lost Osama Part VII

by digby

As we gird our loins for “Fantasia Redux” tonight in which the public will be throroughly brainwashed into believing that Clinton outright refused to kill bin Laden because he was too busy schtupping interns and didn’t give a damn about terrorism, it becomes more and more obvious that even after 9/11, the Bush administration didn’t take terrorism seriously.

The most galling thing about this entire episode is that aside from the ridiculous rightwing slant toward Clinton, which isn’t surprising, the wingnuts have been going on and on about how the problem was “the wall” (which they also misrepresent) and that the bureaucratic Clinton administration wouldn’t allow the various agencies to communicate. Fine. If that was a problem, everyone can agree that, in accordance with the law and the consitution, that should be fixed.

But guess what:

Bureaucratic battles slowed down the hunt for bin Laden for the first two or three years, according to officials in several agencies, with both the Pentagon and the CIA accusing each other of withholding information. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s sense of territoriality has become legendary, according to these officials.

In early November 2002, for example, a CIA drone armed with a Hellfire missile killed a top al-Qaeda leader traveling through the Yemeni desert. About a week later, Rumsfeld expressed anger that it was the CIA, not the Defense Department, that had carried out the successful strike.

“How did they get the intel?” he demanded of the intelligence and other military personnel in a high-level meeting, recalled one person knowledgeable about the meeting.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency and technically part of the Defense Department, said he had given it to them.

“Why aren’t you giving it to us?” Rumsfeld wanted to know.

Hayden, according to this source, told Rumsfeld that the information-sharing mechanism with the CIA was working well. Rumsfeld said it would have to stop.

A CIA spokesman said Hayden, now the CIA director, does not recall this conversation. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, “The notion that the department would do anything that would jeopardize the success of an operation to kill or capture bin Laden is ridiculous.” The NSA continues to share intelligence with the CIA and the Defense Department.

[…]

Today, however, no one person is in charge of the overall hunt for bin Laden with the authority to direct covert CIA operations to collect intelligence and to dispatch JSOC units. Some counterterrorism officials find this absurd. “There’s nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!” one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. “Nobody!”

But then, it’s not surprising, is it?

I certainly hope that after this “Path To Propaganda” debacle somebody decides that the real story of the Bush administration should be made. It will have to be a farce, of course. Too bad Jerry Lewis is too old to play George W. Bush. Maybe Gilbert Godfried is available.

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Swamp Mouse

by digby

I was just listening to Johnny Wendell here on KTLK interviewing Ray Richmond of The Hollywood Reporter who reports that there have been rumors around town ever since Disney refused to distribute “Fahrenheit 9/11” that Disney has a corrupt relationship with Jeb Bush in Florida. I don’t know if it’s true, but I do know that Disney has made some very questionable corporate decisions in recent years when it comes to political material.

Matt Stoller reports that Disney also seems to be employing well known Republican flacks in high level corporate positions. It gives new meaning to the word synergy.

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Even The Cons Hate It

by tristero

You know you’ve got a Condition Red public relations debacle on your hands when everyone from Bill Clinton to John Podhoretz agrees you suck. What Christy sez.

I assume someone will collect and publish the list of commercials for show 2 – show 1 being broadcast without ads. I for one will take that list very seriously. Any sponsor whose products I can avoid, I will, and those that can’t will hear from me.

As for ABC, you couldn’t pay me to watch their shows. And there are plenty of really exciting places to take my kid for vacation, none of which have anything to do with copyright-protected rats… sorry, I meant mice.

Purity Purge

by digby

Last month we all read endless stories about how the leftist blogofascists are trying to purge the Democratic party of its moderates. We read that we not only didn’t have any decency, we were naive and self-defeating, just like our hippy heroes, the McGovernites. The national media closely covered our wild antics so that everyone in politics would see how untrustworthy we were and properly shun us.

Now, in a different race, we see this different angle on similar circumstances:

With a barrage of television advertisements and the mobilization of its get-out-the-vote machine, the national Republican Party has lined up in Rhode Island to beat back a conservative primary challenge to the most liberal Republican in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee. The outcome on Tuesday could help determine whether Democrats have a shot at taking back the Senate.

In an extraordinary pre-emptive announcement, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has said it will concede Rhode Island to the Democrats should Stephen Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, defeat Mr. Chafee in the primary. Citing poll data, Republican leaders said they saw no way someone as conservative as Mr. Laffey could win in a state as Democratic as this; as it is, they are increasingly worried about Mr. Chafee’s hopes in a general election.

[…]

In many ways, what is happening in Rhode Island is a mirror of what happened in neighboring Connecticut last month: an ideological challenge from the wings to an established senator who is seen as out of step with his party. In that case, a Democrat, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, lost a primary to Ned Lamont, who attacked Mr. Lieberman for his support of the war in Iraq and his dalliances with the White House.

The difference is that there was no serious Republican challenger in the Connecticut race, so the Democratic Party invested relatively minimal resources in Mr. Lieberman.

Uhm no. Actually, the difference between Connecticut and Rhode island is that the primary challenge in Connecticut was consciously waged because it was in a state with a safe seat. From the beginning, the cognoscenti have failed to understand the difference between that pragmatic political decision and a quixotic, suicidal run from the right by Club for Growth in Rhode Island that might cost the Republican party their majority. They still don’t. From the beginning they have portrayed the Lamont challenge as a stupid, dangerous purge by leftwing wierdos while Stephen Moore’s vicious Rhode Island jihad is treated as perfectly respectable.

This is what happens when people don’t question assumptions they made 30 years ago. For the last time — it isn’t 1968 and it isn’t 1972. It isn’t even 1992. It’s 2006 and the radicals today wear nice suits and drive nice cars and they are crazy, rightwing motherfuckers who don’t give a damn if they drive the Republican party — and America — right over a cliff. You’d think it would be obvious by now that the grown-ups are definitely not in charge.

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