Month: May 2007

Comin’ To Get Us

by digby

Josh Marshall posted this interesting quote, showing that Bush’s comments today (and a gazillion times before)are not exactly original:

If we quit Vietnam,” President Lyndon Johnson warned, “tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we’ll have to fight in San Francisco.”

That’s just as crackled as Bush’s nonsensical statement that the “oceans don’t protect us anymore” and that kind of dumbass reasoning is why Johnson was booted out. Jesus. The truth is that we lived under the possibility of nuclear annihilation with intercontinental ballistic missiles for decades. All it would have taken was one little slip-up or a bad moment of judgment and most of the planet could have gone up in smoke.

There is no existensial threat today that comes close to that, short of being hit by an asteroid, which means we have already proved that we can handle the problem of terrorism without turning into a bunch of hysterical ninnies squealing that they are coming to kill the children every five minutes. Here’s our tough guy in chief wringing his lace hankie and calling for the smelling salts just today:

Q Mr. President, yesterday you discussed Osama bin Laden’s plans to turn Iraq into a terrorist sanctuary. What do you think your own reaction would have been five years ago had you been told that towards the end of your term he would still be at large with that kind of capability, from Iraq, no less, and why — can you tell the American people — is he still on the run? Why is he so hard to catch?

THE PRESIDENT: … My point is, is that — I was making the point, Jim, as I’m sure you recognized, that if we leave, they follow us. And my point was, was that Osama bin Laden was establishing an external cell there, or trying to, and he’s been unable to do it. Precisely my point. That’s why we’ve got to stay engaged. Had he been able to establish an internal cell that had safe haven, we would be a lot more in danger today than we are. His organization is a risk. We will continue to pursue as hard as we possibly can. We will do everything we can to bring him and others to justice.

We have had good success in the chief operating officer position of al Qaeda. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi al Rabium — there’s a lot of names, some of whom I mentioned yesterday, that are no longer a threat to the United States. We will continue to work to bring him to justice — that’s exactly what the American people expect us to do — and in the meantime, use the tools we put in place to protect this homeland.

We are under threat. Some may say, well, he’s just saying that to get people to pay attention to him, or try to scare them into — for some reason — I would hope our world hadn’t become so cynical that they don’t take the threats of al Qaeda seriously, because they’re real. And it’s a danger to the American people. It’s a danger to your children, Jim. And it’s really important that we do all we can do to bring them to justice.

(This is what Al Gore is really talking about, by the way, in his “Assault On Reason” — powerful people fearmongering in complete gibberish.)

Update: Speaking of presidential blasts from the past, a reader happened to send this in to me today.

Which chickenshit Democrat said this?

“Once the terrorist attacks started there was no way that we could really contribute to the original mission by staying there as a target just bunkering down and waiting for further attacks. I don’t think we have lost as yet, although I know things don’t look too bright. As long as there is a chance we are not bugging out. We are moving to deploy into a more defensive position.”

.

You Say Shia, I Say Sunni

by digby

Perlstein noted that the president’s little white slip was showing again this morning when he started blathering about “these people” who will come over and kill us in our beds if we leave Iraq. (He also repeated his previous dire warning that “they” are a threat to the reporters’ children.)

My favorite little “oops” along this line, however, was this one:

There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.

He’s an inspiration.

But then, the whole Iraq invasion is essentially racist. Really — why else did we invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 except as a grand exercize in “they all look alike to me” mentality? And Bush’s signature line “they’ll follow us home!” is nothing more than off-the-shelf racial fear mongering.

Apparently, the assumption among leading pundits is that we are all just as racist as the president. Instaputz sent me this lovely little excerpt from Joe Klein’s new column:

… without a political deal, the sectarian conflict between the Sunnis and Shi’ites will intensify—and eventually explode when the U.S. military pulls back from Iraq. The stakes in Iraq then become questions of moral responsibility and regional stability. “How many Srebrenicas do you have the stomach for?” a senior U.S. official asked me, referring to the Bosnian massacre by the Serbs in 1995. Given the antipathy of the American people for the war, I’d guess the public reaction would be, “Those Arabs are just a bunch of barbarians, and we could never tell the difference between Shi’ites and Sunnis anyway.”

I guess it’s the anti-war folks who can’t tell the difference between Sunni and Shia. Really?:

In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam–to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

Not that his likely successors have any more of a clue, even today:

MR. VANDEHEI: Mayor Giuliani, this question comes from Eric Taylor (sp) from California. He wants to know, what is the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’a Muslim?

MR. GIULIANI: The difference is the descendant of Mohammed. The Sunnis believe that Mohammed’s — the caliphate should be selected, and the Shi’ites believe that it should be by descent. And then, of course, there was a slaughter of Shi’ites in the early part of the history of Islam, and it has infected a lot of the history of Islam, which is really very unfortunate.

Afterwards all the braindead gasbags said that was a wonderful answer and the press believed them:

Chris Cillizza:…Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani looked like he might stumble when asked to explain the difference between Sunni and Shia but wound up getting it exactly right…

Anonymous: You said that Mayor Giuliani aced the Sunni/Shia question. What event in history was he referring to when he said “and then of course there was a slaughter of Shiites in the early part of the history of Islam, and it has infected a lot of the history of Islam, which is really very unfortunate”?

Chris Cillizza: I don’t claim to be an expert on the history of the Sunni and Shia. In the coverage I watched following the debate, it appeared as though Giuliani was factually correct about the differences between the two groups. That was all I was referencing. And, from a political standpoint, I think Giuliani dodged a major bullet with that question. I wonder how many of the ten men on that stage last night could have come up with something approximating a right answer on that question.

Rudy “got it exactly right,” you see, because he’s a religious scholar, even though it was a “trick” question:

GIULIANI: I honestly think we might have gotten tougher questions during the Fox interview, but they were substantive questions. During the MSNBC situation, we got some really good questions. But we also got some of the trick questions: Shia and Sunni.

You know, do I know the difference between Shia and Sunni? I felt like I was, you know, defending my doctoral thesis. It happens that I am a student of the history of religion.

HANNITY: Sure.

GIULIANI: So I knew the answer to that.

Mitt must be one too:

MR. ROMNEY: … I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another. This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.

Run fer yer lives!

Chris Cilizza, (who apparently doesn’t know the answer to the “trick” question either because he took the word of the crack post-debate MSNBC team for it) wondered if any of the ten men on the stage knew the answer to that question. But shouldn’t we wonder why they wouldn’t? These are the same ten men who say that the threat of Islamic terrorism is the most serious threat the world has ever faced and that they will “follow the terrorists to the gates of hell.” Those ten men are the ones who are running as the heroes who will kick any ass that stands in their way of defending truth, honor and the American way. Is it really too much to ask that know some basic facts about what is fueling the fighting in Iraq and what the threats we face actually are? Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations…

This merely illustrates that for the base of the Republican party, this election is stripping away all the codes and all the artifice about “compassionate conservatism” and going back to basics: fear and loathing of women and non-whites. They don’t care about fetuses and they don’t care about Jesus and they don’t really care about “family values” except to the extent it keeps their prerogatives in place. After years of listening them drone on about the culture war, they are likely to nominate a someone who is either a gun grabbing, cross dresser from New York City or a flip-flopping Morman from Taxachusetts — their “principles” and their insistence on “cultural affinity” are a crock. The only thing they really care about is trash-talking racist machismo. Let’s admit that and deal with it shall we, instead of playing these ridiculous culture war games and allowing them to twist us into a pretzel? The issue is clear:

Americans, do you want another arrogant cowboy dumbshit like George W. Bush running the world for another eight years? If so, vote Republican, because that’s the only thing they have to offer.

Update: Hah. I see that John Edwards said today:

“What we are seeing now in this campaign is John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and the other Republicans running for president of the United States are trying to be a bigger, badder George Bush. Is that really what America wants over the next four years?”

(I’d add dumber, but perhaps that literally isn’t possible.)

.

Missin’ It

by digby

Atrios mentioned this unusually obtuse Jack Shafer article in Slate in which he writes that Gore’s critique of the media is all about Britney Spears:

Al Gore and Thomas L. Friedman have co-discovered what ails our country. It’s national inattention to the most important issues.

Gore blamed the obsession with celebrity culture for the republic’s poor condition earlier this week on Good Morning America. Talking to Diane Sawyer, he accused both the people and the press of focusing on “Britney and K-Fed and Anna Nicole Smith and all this stuff, meanwhile, very quietly, our country has been making some very serious mistakes that could be avoided if we the people, including the news media, are involved in a full and vigorous discussion of what our choices are.”

[…[

Gore is right to fault celebrity news for blotting out coverage of climate change, health care, immigration, and international relations in such policy journals as People, Star, In Touch, and US Weekly and on such public-affairs programs as Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, and E! News. But a more generous definition of the press—one that includes daily newspapers, weekly magazines, general-interest TV news, and the Web—would find Gore’s argument lacking. By my back-of-the envelope estimate, your average big-city daily carries more news about immigration (or other significant issue du jour) in one day than it does about every celebrity on the planet in a full week.

He went on to cleverly suggest that Gore should actually take issue with sports because far more people read the sports page. This is, of course, silly, as Atrios pointed out, and a dreadful misreading of Gore’s specific critique, which is about the trivialization and tabloidization of the news media, and more specifically the trivialization of political news.

So, when Shafer wrote this, I could hardly believe it:

Maureen Dowd showcases Gore’s critique in her New York Times column today.

In case you missed it, here’s what Modo wrote:

It’s no wonder Al Gore is a little touchy about his weight, what with everyone trying to read his fat cells like tea leaves to see if he’s going to run.

He was so determined to make his new book look weighty, in the this-treatise-belongs-on-the-shelf-between-Plato-and-Cato sense, rather than the double-chin-isn’t-quite-gone-yet sense, that he did something practically unheard of for a politician: He didn’t plaster his picture on the front.

“The Assault on Reason” looks more like the Beatles’ White Album than a screed against the tinny Texan who didn’t get as many votes in 2000.

The Goracle does concede a small author’s picture on the inside back flap, a chiseled profile that screams Profile in Courage and that also screams Really Old Picture. Indeed, if you read the small print next to the wallet-sized photo of Thin Gore looking out prophetically into the distance, it says it’s from his White House years.

[…]

Diane was not so easily put off as he turned up his nose at the horse race and the vast wasteland of TV, and bored in for the big question: “Donna Brazile, your former campaign manager, has said, ‘If he drops 25 to 30 pounds, he’s running.’ Lost any weight?”

Laughing obligingly, he replied: “I think, you know, millions of Americans are in the same struggle I am on that one. But look, listen to your questions. And you know, if the horse race, the cosmetic parts of this — and look, that’s all understandable and natural. But while we’re focused on, you know, Britney and KFed and Anna Nicole Smith and all this stuff, meanwhile, very quietly, our country has been making some very serious mistakes that could be avoided if we the people, including the news media, are involved in a full and vigorous discussion of what our choices are.”

[…]

Mr. Traub said that, as he followed the ex-vice president around, the Goracle was “eating like a maniac: I watched him inhale the clam dip at a reception like a man who doesn’t know when his next meal will be coming.”

[…]

Doug Brinkley, the presidential historian, said that even though the fashion now is for fit candidates, after the Civil War, there was a series of overweight presidents. “It showed you had a zest for life,” he said. (The excess baggage may make Bill Clinton and Bill Richardson look roguish, but unfortunately, too many cheeseburgers and ice cream sundaes make Mr. Gore look puffy and waxy.) “Maybe,” Mr. Brinkley suggested, “Gore can sit in Tennessee and do it via high-definition satellite — like McKinley, just eat and sit.”

I would have thought that when Shafer said her column “showcased” Gore’s critique, he meant that her snide, bitchy superficial approach to politics is exactly what Gore was talking about. But he didn’t. Shafer’s article concentrates entirely on the mistaken idea that Gore is complaining that the media aren’t covering politics enough, which is only a very small part of the argument. His main complaint is that the news media insist on being shallow, gossipy little twits like their Queen Bee, Maureen Dowd, and she has rarely “showcased” her toxic brand of political commentary more obviously than she did in that column.

Maureen Dowd says she “speaks truth to power,” which she does. She tells them exactly what the puerile DC insiders really think of the people they know and cover and the country in which they live. According to the world of Modo, Democrats are all fat, gay bimbos in one way or the other and Republicans are rich, macho cartoons. (Now which of those stupid, facile stereotypes work to the advantage of those who are characterized that way and which ones work against them?)

That is what Gore is talking about — turning political coverage into gossip columns and treating the whole universe of news as an opportunity to demonstrate how cynically superior the commentator is to the useless schlubs all over the country who actually give a damn. It isn’t just on the op-ed pages or on the gasbag shows. It’s obviously a social norm that filters into the news pages and affects editorial choices. Watching Modo’s little cabal whisper and giggle about whether the Clintons are “doin’ it” and pointing and jeering at Gore scarfing the clam dip is like being at a perpetual eighth grade slumber party with the meanest girls in the world. It makes mature adults want to reach for the bourbon and hide out in the garage.

.

Educate Me, Please

by tristero

In the post below about the sheer idiocy of Bush’s stealth Iran policy: a commenter wrote:

Sorry, I see nothing wrong with taking actions to put pressure on an avowed adversary.

After a few moments’ thought, I realized that I had no idea what this statement means within the context of Iran/US relations except through the filter of the reality-warping propaganda of the Bush administration. So, acting under the assumption that there may be readers among you as confused as I was, I’d like to ask some basic (or if you prefer, stupid) questions of the more Iran-knoweledgeable people out there. Please provide links, if you know them.

Who exactly avows that Iran is an “adversary” of the United States? And on what grounds? Please be specific and please make sure you define exactly what is meant by “adversary.” I take the word to mean something close to “intractable foe committed to launching violent attacks on the United States and/or its immediate interests.”

(Or might the commenter mean that the United States is perceived by Iran as an adversary? If this is the case, I know enough about Iranian history since the Shah days to understand perfectly well why Iran would perceive the US as an adversary, but perhaps other readers might benefit.)

In the past 10 years, please remind me: How, exactly, has Iran concretely and significantly harmed United States’ interests? I don’t mean dopey speeches accusing us of Satanosity – hell, the mayor of London made similar speeches and no one’s suggesting nuking Big Ben. I mean actual actions against the United States. And to be crystal clear: not actions against Israel’s interests, or Lebanon’s, or Palau’s, but the United States’. And not merely poorly sourced acts against American troops in Iraq but clear evidence of actual high Iranian state involvement in such attacks.

How has Iran acted not simply in its own interests when it came to its foreign policy, oil production, and/or procurement of nuclear power, but acted in such a fashion as to pose unequivocally any level of existential threat to the United States (and please specify the level)? Again, to clarify, not simply against “global peace and security,” whatever the hell that is, but deliberately against the United States?

Specifically in regards to nuclear, does anyone know of any reputable experts that predict that Iran is an imminent threat, ie, will obtain and test a nuclear device within, say, 2 years?

I’m not very knowledgeable about Iran but I do think that I follow the news well enough to be aware of most truly serious dangers to the United States. Oddly enough, what Iran has actually done to harm the United States somehow seems to have slipped under my radar although I assume what happened must be Very Serious Indeed if plans to undermine, if not attack, Iran are in the works. I guess the media and the powers that be assume we know that is so so no one bothers going into the details. But somehow, I’ve missed it; it seems to me that there is much more imminent danger from America’s own homegrown nutjobs than from Iran.

Attention, all you Wolfowitzes-in-training: I’m not saying Iran’s just Norway with hijabs. I know it has a dreadful government and there is much that’s troublesome internationally about many of the people running Iran. But the purpose of the United States military and security services is quite clear: to defend American interests, not somehow make the world a better place. What’s in it for the U.S. to go to such effort to destabilize Iran, let alone nuke them? Not a thing, as far as I know.

Of course, a nuclear Iran is cause for serious concern – all countries with nuclear arms are cause for serious concern (and yes, that means Israel and the US, not just NoKo, Pakistan, India, etc.) – but from what I’ve studied, a nuclear-armed Iran is years away from becoming a reality. There is ample time to address that by forceful, intelligent, and hard-nosed negotiations.

So again, I ask: What has the Iranian government done in the past ten years that directly harmed, and is still harming the United States?

[Revised slightly after initial posting.]

Party LIke It’s 2002!

by tristero

In case anyone thought that dragging Gonzales, et al, out of the sewers and into the light of day would sober Bush up, and make him think twice before indulging in stupid, illegal, and dangerously destabilizing behavior, read this:

…President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

Kinda takes your breath away, don’t it? But the real kicker is that the only reason Bush authorized this sheer idiocy is because someone persuaded Bush not to greenlight – at least not yet – Cheney’s plans to attack Iran with the US military. That’s right: Bush actually thinks he’s taking the sensible, middle course, between the appeasers who foolishly urge negotiating with Iran, and the miltiary hawks.

From this, it should be clear that rather than backing down to Bush – eg, by agreeing to provide him with a blank check on Iraq – Congress should be doubling its efforts to restrain him from causing even more, and worse, international catastrophes. Consider the likely consequences of Bush’s Iran “policy.” If it actually did lead to the collapse of the present Iranian government, my God! As horrible as Iraq currently is, an Iran without a working central government will be many times worse. And not only for the hapless citizens, but for the rest of the world. But if it doesn’t lead to the government’s collapse – and dollars to donuts, it won’t – then Bush’s propaganda and currency manipulation will simply serve to infuriate Iranians and increase their support and solidarity with a government that will surely do everything it possibly can do to blame its problems – quite credibly – on the US. Bush’s actions are a textbook example of Lose-Lose foreign policy.

Dealing with a rogue president is a tricky business, to be sure, especially one as immature and ignorant as this one. But backing down is not an option. I, for one, dread an overt constitutional confrontation between Bush and the rest of the government (as many of you have said, we’ve been in a serious covert constitutional crisis since Bush entered the White House). But it is becoming distressingly apparent that the alternative to such a confrontation is a White House hellbent on embroiling a (now) very unwilling United States in as many unncessary and futile wars as it can dream up. Wars that will, due to the limitations of conventional American military resources, almost certainly involve nuclear weapons sooner or later. And rather than grapple with the near-certain prospect of Bush deploying nuclear weapons, an American constitutional crisis seems a downright reasonable and level-headed alternative.

BTW, the article includes a link to a groovy little photo essay about many of the Iran/Contra felons and fools. It should come as no surprise to learn that you and I are paying some of their salaries again; that’s right: they’re in the current Bush administration.

Don’t Ever Take Sides With Anyone Against The Family Again. Ever

by digby

Wow. What’s a guy got to do to prove his loyalty to these guys?

Guilty Of Insufficient Overreaching

Patrick Philbin is an unlikely victim of the war on terror. In fact, he’s one of its chief legal architects.

Philbin’s conservative bona fides are unimpeachable. Law clerk for federal appeals judge Laurence Silberman, the ideological godfather of scores of conservative lawyers, then for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

As a Justice Department official, he wrote a memo in November 2001 concluding that the president had the “inherent authority” to establish military commissions to try detainees. Wrong, the Supreme Court eventually said.

Philbin co-authored a memo the next month finding that federal courts had no power to hear habeas corpus petitions by Guantanamo Bay detainees. Wrong again, said the Supreme Court.

This wasn’t merely a lawyer zealously representing a client. Philbin, now in private practice, urged Congress in March not to close Guantanamo and transfer detainees here. Prisoners then “arguably will have constitutional rights” that they will seek to assert in court, he warned.

Philbin seemed like a shoo-in to become deputy solicitor general. But even he was not a true enough believer for the administration’s executive-power zealots, chiefly David S. Addington, then counsel and now chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.

His fault? Manning the legal barricades against the administration’s efforts to coerce Attorney General John Ashcroft to approve its extralegal warrantless wiretapping. Philbin was in Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004 when Alberto Gonzales and then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card arrived for the Wednesday Night Ambush.

Former deputy attorney general James Comey referred to Addington’s revenge in his Senate testimony last week by mentioning “one particular senior staffer of mine . . . had been blocked from promotion, I believed, as a result of this particular matter . . . That was Mr. Philbin.”

Philbin’s out of government now. So, too, aside from FBI Director Robert Mueller, are the rest of those who stood up to the administration.

Addington and Gonzales remain. That should chill anyone who believes in the rule of law, not rule by presidential fiat.

The Justice Department was corrupted from the very beginning of the Bush administration with extreme ideologues. But even that wasn’t good enough. Unless they were willing to behave like thugs, they were out.

Yet somehow Miss Goodie Goodling was quite comfortable in her job until some of those killjoy US Attorney’s objected to having their professional reputations smeared and caused a ruckus. What does that say about her?

Goodling seemed very sweet today explaining that she “crossed the line” but she “didn’t mean to” (also known as The Paris Hilton Defense — h/t TBOGG.) But let’s not forget one thing. She learned at the feet of one of the most venomous pit vipers of the GOP — Barbara Comstock — who also worked at the Justice department after running the Bush campaigns vicious oppo campaign in 2000. Goodling is no naif, just because she looks like one of those American Girl dolls. She admitted just today that she helped Karl Rove’s loathesome caging” specialist become the US Attorney of Arkansas, knowing full well what he did. (But I’m sure she didn’t “mean to.”) She’s made.

H/T to BB

Welcome Back To Bizarroworld

by digby

The more I think about this the more stunned I am. Back in 2002 I wrote somewhere else (can’t find it unfortunately) that there was no margin in any of the presidential contenders voting for the Iraq resolution. I understood they were leary of doing it after the first Gulf War went so well and they all had egg on their faces for opposing it — some of them had been unable to run in 1992 because of it. I got it.

But nonetheless it seemed obvious to me that by 2004, if the war was going well, they were unlikely to unseat Bush anyway and if it was going badly, they would have to do pirouettes on the head of a pin trying to explain why they voted for it, particularly when there were millions who knew it was wrong on the merits from the beginning.

Sure enough, we were forced to watch the extremely unpleasant spectacle John Kerry doing his clumsy pas de deux a thousand times trying to explain to the robotic press corps that he gave “authorization” to the president, but didn’t actually vote for war — and then later how he was for supplemental funding before he was against it. (Yes, I knew this was a “nuanced” position, but it disasterously played into every negative Democratic stereotype.)

Damned if we might be seeing the same thing unfold all over again. I accept that the supplemental funding bill will pass as is. And I accept that there will be some faithless Dems who will cross over and give Bush his “bipartisan” cover. Bush is determined to continue with this debacle and that still scares pols from conservative districts and states. (I won’t even go into the marshamallows who call themselves Republican “moderates” in more liberal districts, but I’m looking forward to helping the Dems defeat them.) But I never in a million years thought that we would re-run 2004 again, and the prospect of having to watch our candidates do verbal gymnastics explaining why they didn’t vote for the one thing that could have ended the war — de-funding — is almost incomprehensible. Every single day the Republicans are on television trash talking the Dems, saying, “if you are so against this war why won’t you use the power o’ the purse!” Here we have an opportunity for the presidential candidates to take a free shot and shut down this line of argument right now — and they aren’t jumping at the chance.

I criticized Hillary earlier, but it isn’t just her. Obama also said he needed to “read the legislation” first. Biden said he’s voting for it. I don’t know about Richardson — his web-site says nothing specifically about it although he is in favor of “de-authorizing” the war. To their credit, Dodd said he wouldn’t, Kucinich certainly won’t and Edwards gave a speech today challenging the very concept of the GWOT and said he wouldn’t vote for it if he were in the Senate. It’s our two front-runners who inexplicably need to think about it.

This seems like a no-brainer to me. In fact, it’s so obvious that I foolishly assumed it had been part of the calculation in making the deal — the silver lining was that it would allow the presidential candidates to come out clearly and decisively against the war without actually having to fight about it all summer. Maybe I don’t understand politics. But I would swear that this war and the president who insists on escalating it are extremely unpopular and that anyone who wants to lead the nation would be looking for ways to win a majority of votes. Silly me.

Update: Joan Walsh also makes a good point. It’s one thing to not have the votes and say you have to cut your losses. It’s quite another blow smoke up our asses about what a great victory this is. Citizens may not be political junkies who follow every procedural vote, but they know very well when somebody loses a stand-off. Walsh writes:

Americans have already “spoken out” on the war. They oppose it. They elected Democrats to end it. Now the Associated Press reports Reid’s boast that the compromise legislation would be the first war-funding bill sent to Bush since the U.S. invasion of Iraq “where he won’t get a blank check.” The president is absolutely getting a blank check, Harry, and Democrats should be honest about it. As proposed, the benchmarks are toothless; they have no consequences, and Republicans are making sure Bush can waive them and continue spending when — note that I didn’t say “if” — Nouri al-Maliki’s government fails to meet them.

If you think Reid’s happy talk was bad, you should have seen Rahm on the Newshour tonight. He was once a ballet dancer and he did a very nice Grand Jeté on the tip of a ball point pen, but it still wasn’t very convincing. They really shouldn’t try to spin this. If they have to lose, they could at least do it with some dignity.

.

Shhhh

by digby

I know we’re not supposed to bring up this topic, but it’s becoming so common that I think we probably need to have a little public chat about it.

From Rick Perlstein:

Stop it, stop it right now. Stop pretending Islamicists – or environmentalists or animal rights activists (which are, ridiculously, federal law enforcement and non-governmental terrorism-watchers’ next most obsessive concern) – are the only imminent terrorist threats to our nation. We now know that students at Liberty University were ready to napalm protesters at Jerry Falwell’s funeral. One of the suspects is a soldier at Fort Benning. [UPDATE: Falwell gave the kid a scholarship.] If the media does not start connecting some dots, they will have abdicated their citizenzship duties. How many times has the nation potentially come within a hair’s breadth of suffering a right-wing terrorist attack this spring? As of today, three, or possibly six times – at least that we know about.

Read the rest to get the full rundown.

I predict that we are going to see a remarkable resurgence of rightwing violence if the Democrats take full control of the government. These people are always surprisingly cooperative when the government is run by Republicans and then rediscover their “anti-government” beliefs when Democrats share or dominate the government. I can’t imagine why that would be.

We will also, sadly, see veterans involved in this. Aside from the PTSD they will come home to a world that isn’t very understanding. How could we be? They’ve been in hell. I suspect that some of them will be attracted to the rightwing militia (or worse) unless the government makes some very aggressive moves to help these people out and provide every kind of counselling and support they can think of. The last thing we need are hardened Iraq veterans finding solace with the rightwing terrorists.

Meanwhile, there is the usual wingnut freakshow who’ve been out of commission for a while. I’m sure they’re going to be looking for some action. As perlstein points out, they already are.

Update: Here’s another story about the “environmental terrorists.” If the government continues on this path, Mitt could double Gitmo by locking up the leadership of the Sierra Club. That would really make the GOP neanderthals cheer lustily.

.

Risky Business

by digby

I’ve been reluctant to write about the Iraq funding “deal” because it’s just so depressing — and yet so predictable. Democrats don’t have the votes, which we always knew. But they apparently also didn’t feel the desire to fight it out over the summer anyway and keep the pressure on those GOP moderates in difficult races. I honestly don’t think it was that risky. Bush’s approval ratings keep going down, down down and this way is getting more unpopular by the day. And even if there is no chance of a veto-proof Senate, you have to keep advancing the argument in an environment like this.

Robert Borosage at TomPaine expresses it well:

The Congress will now vote on a funding bill for Iraq that offers no change of course. Every legislator open to reason, concerned for the troops, worried about this nation’s real security, or accountable to the voters will vote against this bill.

Those who vote for it are voting to enable a rogue president. They are sacrificing the nation’s security and the lives of many young soldiers to stand with George Bush.

This vote will be registered. In every state and district of the country, voters will know where their legislator stands. There are no dodges, no excuses. Vote to sustain the rogue president’s ruinous course or vote against. This is a question of life and death, not of partisan politics or Beltway political poker. Every legislator is free to vote his or her conscience. Each should be held accountable.

I hope all these “moderates” of both parties think very, very hard before they seize the opportunity to vote for this deal because they think it will inflate their codpiece or prove their macho bonafides. This president is getting more unpopular by the minute. We are experiencing more American deaths in Iraq this month than at any time since the invasion. The Republican leadership brags publicly that torture is justified at the same time that our soldiers are being kidnapped. The entire middle east is unstable and getting worse all the time. These people need to search their consciences — and properly analyze the political situation.

This isn’t going to get any better for these people politically. They may think they’ll benefit from sticking with the president’s insane escalation, but they.are.wrong. This occupation (and presidency)is falling apart and the rapidly dwindling minority of Americans who support it will not reward “moderates” who failed to take a stand on such an important issue. In or out, that’s all there is.

Search your souls, people, but don’t think you are making a good political calculation by supporting this war. You are not:

Senate Democrats running for president face a dilemma this week in how to vote on the troop spending bill which no longer ties the $95.5 billion in funds for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to a binding timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal.

Either route chosen will bring with it huge potential political pitfalls, as Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., tacitly acknowledged Wednesday afternoon in her dismissive comments to reporters asking her how she will vote.

“When I have something to say, I will say it, gentlemen,” Clinton told journalists.

Because she is the front-runner for the nomination and because of the moderate persona she has worked hard to cultivate, the dilemma seems starker for Clinton.

If she votes for the bill, she will anger her party’s liberal base and endanger her chances of a Democratic presidential nomination.

If she votes against it, she will hand her potential Republican opponents an issue they can use to paint her as weak on defense in the general election.

The former first lady has spent much of her six years in the Senate cultivating a hawkish persona, impressing generals from her perch on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and, last June, telling an audience of liberal activists that making “a date certain” was a bad idea.

She has since abandoned that position, but clearly she and her advisers have been working hard to make her seem acceptable on matters of national security and defense.

Voting against the Iraq bill might hurt Clinton in this regard, more so than any other move leftward she has made during this presidential primary season when Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the war.

A top strategist for a Republican presidential front-runner, speaking on condition of anonymity, told ABC News that Clinton’s vote against the Iraq spending bill might help her in the short term in the Democratic primaries, but would be a gift to her potential GOP opponent should she win the Democratic presidential nomination.

“Clinton spent fair time in the Senate being a responsible defense type,” the strategist said, “and for her this decision is much thornier than in Obama’s case, since he already had this full-throated opposition to the war.”

Taking into account that this report is the usual Jake Tapper insider BS filled with GOP talking points, the fact remains that if Senator Clinton hasn’t learned her lesson by now she never will. Voting for the Iraq resolution was the biggest mistake she ever made and it remains the biggest obstacle to her winning the nomination. Democratic voters reluctantly forgave John Kerry and John Edwards for making that boneheaded decision the first time but they won’t do it again. If she votes with Bush on Iraq this time, it’s over. She will lose the left wing of her party completely.

In fact, I’m shocked that any of the Democratic candidates for president would even entertain a passing thought that they would vote for this thing. It was a bad political calculation in 2002 and it so much more stupid now that I can’t even wrap my mind around the idea that they aren’t rushing to the microphones to declare their vote against it.

This one’s easy for the Presidential candidates, if not the pants-wetting Red State moderates. This occupation is the most important issue to Democratic voters and things aren’t going to suddenly “turn around” before the election. It’s a disaster that will only get worse. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get the Democratic leadership to internalize that basic fact. On both a moral and practical basis, voting to continue this war on Bush’s terms is just plain wrong. No Democrat who backs Bush will get the presidential nomination and a good many Representatives and Senators who do may find themselves in an unwelcome primary fight. I hope they all make very sure they really want to throw in their lot with the Republicans to protect their right flank. They probably ought to start thinking about covering their left.

.

Politics and Pleasure

by digby

Watching James Sensenbrenner whine about the cost of this “fishing expedition” (Goodling’s testimony)and say “when I was chairman I never issued a subpoena unless I had to” is just too rich coming from one of the rabid impeachment circus managers who promptly went into a coma for the first six years of the Bush administration. Indeed, it’s quite a show watching all of those mighty House Managers who were once warriors in defense of the “rule ‘o law” when illicit sex was involved now being very, very disturbed by the prospect of this DOJ “witchhunt” against fine upstanding Republicans.

There was a time when they were very concerned, not just with the Rule ‘O Law, but even with the appearance of failing to uphold the Rule ‘O Law. It was quite inspiring:

Sensenbrenner: This is a direct attack on the rule of law in our country and a very public wrong that goes to the constitutional workings of our government … I want those parents who ask me the questions, to be able to tell their children that even if you are president of the United States, if you lie when sworn “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” you will face the consequences of that action, even when you don’t accept the responsibility for them.

It makes you want to sing “God Bless America” doesn’t it? Today, old Sensi isn’t quite so exercized about attacking the rule ‘o law. In fact, he thinks this whole thing is a big waste of time.

There is one thing both situations do have in common besides those hideous House Managers — both situations have to do with the president’s “pleasure.” As we have heard on an endless, mind destroying loop from Republicans, the US attorneys could legitimately be fired for failing to run their offices as a partisan electoral operation (any reason at all!) because they serve at the presidents pleasure. It’s nobody’s business why it happened and if the president wants to completely politicize the Justice department for electoral advantage, he has a perfect right to do it. In the impeachment case, Democrats said that the president’s private pleasure was nobody’s business and the conservative funded and dismissed Paula Jones case, particularly the irrelevant Monica Lewinsky questioning, was a partisan misuse of the justice system for political gain.

Perhaps these two views of “pleasure” actually represent the essential difference between the parties — conservatives get off on power and believe it should be kept private and unaccountable to the public and liberals get off on sex and believe it should be kept private and unaccountable to the public. You tell me which one upholds the constitution and which one threatens it.

Update: I’ll spare the FDL servers and point you instead to Steve Benen’s post that runs down the highlights of Christy Hardin Smith’s liveblogging. Lil’ Monica was out of the loop but she has had no problem pointing her finger at those who were in it.

.