Author: digby

Last Refuge

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

[…]

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahmad’s Ugly Secret

Josh Marshall hints about a dark episode from the mid-90’s featuring our favorite Iraqi cocktail party guest. I’m guessing this is it.

Keeping Track

The fabulous Mary over at the Left Coaster (and also Pacific Views) alerts me to a Truth Squad compilation of Administration lies leading up to the war. Bookmark this baby for future reference.

I honestly think that one of the keys to the Bushies’ “success” is the sheer volume and magnitude of outrages they perpetrate. It’s exhausting keeping up with them and the resultant static makes even a hard core news junkie like me want to pick up a cheap novel or mindlessly watch TVLand just to keep my head from exploding.

I salute those who have taken on the immense project of keeping track of the truth. It’s going to be important in the coming months.

Oldie Goldie

Andrew Northrup at The Poor Man, does an excellent job of deconstructing this Weekly Standard hit job on Clark (regarding his comments on Meet The Press about the effort to connect 9/11 with Saddam Hussein immediately after the attack on the WTC.)

However, it is important, I think, that we remember that this kind of parsing of extemporaneous speech to make it appear that someone is “slick,” rather than just humanly imprecise is a Wurlitzer tactic that goes back to 1992. They take a comment and spread the idea throughout the media that it was deliberately misleading and further that it represents a character flaw on the part of the person who uttered it. Tucker and Sean and their ilk snidely hammer the accusation to a Dem talking head who then spends his entire time (when he isn’t being interrupted) explaining the statement to prove that the intent was not what these guys are saying it was.

We look defensive, they sound confident and the public is confused. Eventually they believe that there must be something to the charges because the endless parsing of it sounds lawyerly, desperate and boring. The charge gets dropped and another, similar, charge is leveled and the process begins again.

It is the death of reputation and credibility by a thousand small smears.

Therefore, I think we have to respond in two different ways to such charges. In print (and on blogs and elsewhere) we should analyze the charges in detail and keep an accurate, truthful record of the entire episode.

But, on television and for quotes in the print media, Democrats should never allow ourselves to get mired in such detail. We need to get past our need (as rational people) to defend with the facts and, instead, attack with the truth.

For instance, when a Democrat is confronted by Tweety or Scarborough about Clark’s “lie” on Meet the Press, he should not allow himself to get involved in the minutiae of the charge and instead should simply point out that it is well documented that the administration set out to tie Saddam to the WTC attack, without evidence, from the earliest hours of the event. Talk about the “unassailable” Bob Woodward’s account in Bush At War and Rumsfeld’s directive to “pull it all together” just 5 hours after the Pentagon was hit.

Of course, big shot Republicans put out the word all over the media about Saddam being behind 9/11. Everybody knows that. The TRUTH is that:

… Perle, Woolsey, Gaffney, and Kristol were using the same language in their media appearances on 9/11 and over the following weeks.

”This could not have been done without help of one or more governments,” Perle told The Washington Post on Sep. 11. ”Someone taught these suicide bombers how to fly large airplanes. I don’t think that can be done without the assistance of large governments.”

Woolsey was more direct. ”(I)t’s not impossible that terrorist groups could work together with the government…the Iraqi government has been quite closely involved with a number of Sunni terrorist groups and — on some matters — has had direct contact with (Osama) bin Laden,” he told one anchorman in a series of at least half a dozen national television appearances on Sep. 11 and 12.

That same evening, Kristol echoed Woolsey on National Public Radio. ”I think Iraq is, actually, the big, unspoken sort of elephant in the room today. There’s a fair amount of evidence that Iraq has had very close associations with Osama bin Laden in the past, a lot of evidence that it had associations with the previous effort to destroy the World Trade Center (in 1993)”.

The “facts” in this matter are that Clark made an extemporaneous statement on television that has been widely interpreted incorrectly. He corrected it on the record. All of the Democratic candidates are going to do that from time to time; it is part of public speaking. But, using this minor bit of confusion to imply that he was untruthful or misleading is just another example of the Wurlitzer’s coordinated “dazzle ‘em with bullshit” attack strategy.

It is what killed Al Gore in the press last time and we simply have to stop letting them dictate the terms of the debate that way. One way to do that is to stop being defensive and stop miring ourselves in detail before the public. It makes us look geeky and weak next to the bellowing neanderthals. We must ignore their taunts and remind ourselves that going after our guy is calculated misdirection. We need to keep the audience looking at what we want them to see, and not let the other side direct the show.

The New York Times Is Fair and Balanced, Too!

Atrios makes note of the factual but incomplete graf in today’s New York Times article about Bush’s speech today. It says that Bush never directly tied Saddam to 9/11; he merely claimed that Saddam and al Qaeda are of the same ilk. Atrios replies:

While Bush did never directly claim that Saddam had a direct role in the attacks of Sept. 11, he has said far more than that they “are of the same ilk.” He has claimed several times that they are active partners.

And he has made manipulative associations about Saddam and 9/11 over and over again.

“Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people and to all free people.

If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks.

The attacks of September the 11th, 2001, show what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.

We are determined to confront threats wherever they arise. I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons.”

Please. His speechwriters put those images together for a reason. They wanted people to associate 9/11 with Saddam Hussein.

And how about our good friend Condi? Notice the artful turn of phrase she uses here:

No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on Sept. 11, so we don’t want to push this too far, but this is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clearer, and we’re learning more,” Rice said.

That was in September of 2002.

How about Bill Kristol on September 12, 2001 from NPR:

I think Iraq is, actually, the big, unspoken sort of elephant in the room today. There’s a fair amount of evidence that Iraq has had very close associations with Osama bin Laden in the past, a lot of evidence that it had associations with the previous effort to destroy the World Trade Center (in 1993)”.

And then, there’s the

mother of all pieces of evidence, the smoking gun, the proof that the administration sought to directly tie Saddam with 9/11:

According to an account by veteran CBS newsman David Martin last September, Rumsfeld was ”telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks” five hours after an American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon.

Martin attributed his account in part to notes that had been taken at the time by a Rumsfeld aide. They quote the defense chief asking for the ”best info fast” to ”judge whether good enough to hit SH (Saddam Hussein) at the same time, not only UBL (Usama bin Laden). The administration should ”go massive…sweep it all up, things related and not”, the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying.

Wolfowitz shared those views, according to an account of the meeting Sep. 15-16 of the administration’s war council at Camp David provided by the Washington Post’s Bill Woodward and Dan Balz. In the ”I-was-there” style for which Woodward, whose access to powerful officials since his investigative role in the Watergate scandal almost 30 years ago is unmatched, is famous:

”Wolfowitz argued (at the meeting) that the real source of all the trouble and terrorism was probably Hussein. The terrorist attacks of Sept 11 created an opportunity to strike. Now, Rumsfeld asked again: ‘Is this the time to attack Iraq’”?

Powell objected”, the Woodward and Balz account continued, citing Secretary of State Colin Powell’s argument that U.S. allies would not support a strike on Iraq. ”If you get something pinning Sept 11 on Iraq, great”, Powell is quoted as saying. But let’s get Afghanistan now. If we do that, we will have increased our ability to go after Iraq — if we can prove Iraq had a role”.

Upon their return to Washington, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz convened a secret, two-day meeting of the DPB chaired by Perle. Instead of focusing on the first steps in carrying out a ”war on terrorism”, however, the discussions centered on how Washington could use 9/11 to strike at Iraq, according to an account in the Wall Street Journal.

Is this stuff just bullshit then? Not worth mentioning? If they’re going to point out that Junior never “directly” tied Saddam into 9/11, the least they can do is also point out that some in the administration were determined from the very beginning to use 9/11 to justify an invasion of Iraq.

I’m sure I remember the New York Times always pointed out in its later articles about the Lewinsky scandal that Clinton did not “directly” lie when he said he’d never had “sexual relations with that woman.” The dictionary meaning of “sexual relations” is sexual intercourse and he actually had oral sex with her. They were always very, very conscientious about making that clear even though everybody on the planet knew that he was implying that he hadn’t had any kind of sex with her. I’m pretty sure they did that, didn’t they?

Taunting the Bull

“Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York or Saint Louis or Los Angeles,”

Wow. I thought that the wingnuts playing the Wurlitzer might say something like this, but it’s pretty damned provocative coming from the President.

If he meant that we were fighting terrorism abroad so that someday Americans will no longer have to fear terrorism at home, then his speech writers worded it very badly. Because this could easily be read as another version of “Bring ‘Em On,” only instead of daring Iraqis to kill American soldiers in Iraq; he’s daring terrorists to kill American citizens in America.

That isn’t flypaper. He’s not saying that we’ve drawn the terrorists all to the same place so we can kill them more efficiently. It’s taunting the bull.

Imagine you are bin Laden or some other terrorist nutball and the President of the United States says that by attacking Afghanistan and Iraq he’s keeping you from attacking the US. You’re a loser. You are so weak that as long as we “confront” you abroad you can’t commit violence in New York, St. Louis or Los Angeles.

It’s very disconcerting to have to rely on Osama bin Laden and a bunch of fundamentalist holy warriors to be restrained and sophisticated enough to recognize that the President of the United States is just trash talking. It would be extremely unfortunate if terrorists took his statement as a dare to prove him wrong.

Correction:

I wrote in my post below Waiting For Wesley, that the Esquire article from which I excerpted a long passage had not made the rounds of Blogovia. I was wrong. It appears that the article had been discussed at some length by several bloggers, one of whom — the great Nitpicker — even excerpted the same passage that I claimed hadn’t been blogged!

ooops.

I’d read the article at the time but didn’t blog it for a number of extremely complicated reasons (Actually, I just didn’t get around to it.) I ran a technorati search for links before I wrote the post and only found a small handful of blogs that mentioned the article so I was under the mistaken impression that it hadn’t been discussed in any depth. I’m thinking now that maybe the article wasn’t yet on-line at the time it was being talked up.

That’s what I get for not Googling…

Apologies to anyone else who posted on the story much earlier than I.

Still …. it’s a good time to bring it up again, no? Clark’s about to announce.

Update: Here’s another fine post by Antidotal from weeks ago excerpting the passage in the Esquire article.

Great minds think alike — but some are a little more on the ball than others. Mea culpa.

They should have gone for Tom Selleck

Everyone seems to be confused by the fact that Ahnuld isn’t doing better in the polls but the reason is completely obvious.

They cast the wrong guy.

This is another example of Republicans failing to understand popular culture. Sure, people are stupid enough to vote for an inexperienced movie star. And, this recall election was a perfect opportunity to slide one in because of the very short campaign.

But, didn’t it occur to anybody that the only reason it would work would be because the star’s established image fit the role already?

I would imagine that if you polled every casting director and studio executive in Hollywood, you couldn’t find one who would have (willingly) ever cast him as governor in a serious film. His best role is a monosyllabic robot, for God’s sake, and they kept his lines to a minimum for a reason. He can’t act.

If the state voters had wanted a robot for governor why would they have bothered to recall Gray Davis?

Waiting For Wesley

I am a little bit surprised that this incredible article in the August Esquire about Wesley Clark hasn’t made the rounds in Blogovia. Anyone who is intrigued by the possibility of the general getting in should read it.

I’ve written several enthusiastic posts about him in recent months, and I’ve been very interested in a Clark run since the day I saw him testify before the Senate the lead up to the Iraq resolution vote. Not only was his analysis absolutely on target, he was tremendously self-assured, well spoken and telegenic. I thought at the time that he would make an excellent candidate. I didn’t know if he was a Democrat but he was clearly not a neocon.

If anyone is interested in reading just how prescient Clark was that day, you can read the transcript here :

(And if you are interested in reading some really disrespectful Republican nastiness, pay special attention to the “questioning” of these generals by patriotic Senators Bunning and Sessions.)

This statement is particularly interesting in light of recent events:

I think that there is a substantial risk in the aftermath of the operation that we could end up with a problem which is more intractable than we have today. One thing we’re pretty clear on is that Saddam has a very effective police state apparatus. He doesn’t allow challenges to his authority inside that state. When we go in there with a transitional government and a military occupation of some indefinite duration, it’s also very likely that if there is an effective al Qaeda left — and there certainly will be an effective organization of extremists — they will pour into that country because they must compete for the Iraqi people; the Wahabes with the Sunnis, the Shi’as from Iran working with the Shi’a population. So it’s not beyond consideration that we would have a radicalized state, even under a U.S. occupation in the aftermath.

[…]

If we go in unilaterally, or without the full weight of international organizations behind us, if we go in with a very sparse number of allies, if we go in without an effective information operation that takes us through the — and explains the motives and purposes and very clear aims and the ability to deal with the humanitarian and post-conflict situation, we’re liable to super-charge recruiting for al Qaeda.

This appearance and his testimony before the House informed my thinking quite a bit on the Iraq invasion. He believes in multilateralism, as frustrating as it can be, not so much because it spreads the risk, but because it gives leaders and politicians of other countries a stake in a positive outcome. That translates into long term commitment, something that is absolutely essential to dealing with terrorism, failed states and nation building. This article written right after 9/11 strikes just the right note between righteous fury and intelligent, deliberate analysis

And as illustrated in the quote above, he was concerned from the very beginning about the potential negative consequences of an occupation in Iraq and how it would affect our efforts to combat al Qaeda. There were others, like Bob Graham, who also voiced this concern, but I never heard any one else theorize that terrorists would pour into Iraq after the war and transform it into a radicalized state under US occupation.

His comments not only reflected an informed strategic military worldview, as you would expect, they also showed a very complex and sophisticated analysis of the global political implications of where the administration was taking us. It was obvious to me that Wesley Clark isn’t just smart. He’s brilliant. Overachieving Clinton-brilliant.

(Meanwhile the President of the United States was either babbling, “They live in caves…we’re gonna smoke ‘em out”” or he was speechifying in phony flowery words and phrases that were so inauthentic that there were times you wondered if he even comprehended what he was saying.)

Like most Democrats I believe that the President of the United States should be very smart. According to beltway CW, this is an absurd view held only by overeducated, Volvo driving, Birkenstock wearing liberals who are the lowest form of American life and should be ignored if not imprisoned.

It would seem that the sad pathology of the inner city that disparages education and good grammar has strangely overtaken the Republican Party and many of those who make their living commenting on politics. It is now considered gauche in these circles to be “too” smart. The common understanding is that Americans prefer a leader who symbolizes their own mediocrity.

So, the big money Republicans simply market a slow but recognizable brand name and tell the apparatchiks not to mention that he is walking around stark raving naked. All that takes is cash and they have plenty.

We Democrats, however, have to find candidates who are not only brilliant, passionate and eminently qualified, which the base insists upon, but we must also pick someone who has appealing looks, an unassailable personal biography, an engaging personality, Southern roots and a heroic, masculine image so that the clueless swing voters and the giggling bimbos of the press have something to keep them sufficiently entertained during those long boring speeches with all the big words.

Clark is smart, to be sure, but he’s got all the other good stuff, too.

He’s got a very high Q rating and handles the press with the aplomb of a film star. He has a winning smile and an easy laugh. He knows how to speak in simple terms about complex issues. He is a proven military hero, a respected world leader, a southerner and a self made man who worked hard and succeeded at everything he tried.

In other words, he is the man who George W. Bush is pretending to be.

A genuine, traditional, all-American, patriotic winner.

* Word to the wise, draft Clarkers. You’ve got to show some pictures and footage of Clark in uniform. Those 4 big stars are a symbol of Clark’s experience, integrity and leadership. We need to work that mojo. In post modern America it’s all about the symbols, metaphors and memes.

That’s what I’m talking about

And, since nobody else has done it, I’ll post this little anecdote from the Esquire article. Even cynical, pragmatic old me got a little bit of a chill down my spine when I read it. It’s a great story and every Clark supporter should spread it around the water cooler and the dinner table:

In August 1995, the general—three stars, working as J-5 for the Joint Chiefs—went to Bosnia as part of the negotiating team Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had put together to end the civil war that had resulted in the massacre of as many as eight thousand Muslim men and boys at the town of Srebrenica the month before. In Belgrade, Clark had met for the first time Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who was sponsoring the Bosnian Serbs. Now the team had to travel to Sarajevo.

Told that the airport in Sarajevo was too dangerous to fly into, the team decided to drive and asked Milosevic to guarantee its safety on a road held by Bosnian Serbs. Milosevic did not, and so the team wound up taking a fortified Humvee and an armored personnel carrier on a pitched, narrow, winding mountain road notoriously vulnerable to Serb machine-gun fire.

Clark and Holbrooke went in the Humvee, the rest in the APC. In his book, the general describes what happened this way: “At the end of the first week we had a tragic accident on Mount Igman, near Sarajevo. [Three members of the team] were killed when the French armored personnel carrier in which they were riding broke through the shoulder of the road and tumbled several hundred meters down a steep hillside.”

It is not until one reads Holbrooke’s book, To End a War, that one finds out that after the APC went off the road, Clark grabbed a rope, anchored it to a tree stump, and rappelled down the mountainside after it, despite the gunfire that the explosion of the APC set off, despite the warnings that the mountainside was heavily mined, despite the rain and the mud, and despite Holbrooke yelling that he couldn’t go.

It is not until one brings the incident up to the general that one finds out that the burning APC had turned into a kiln, and that Clark stayed with it and aided in the extraction of the bodies; it is not until one meets Wesley Clark that one understands the degree to which he held Milosevic accountable.

For more on General Clark, visit

the Clarksphere

the Wesley Clark weblog

draft clark

the Clark Coalition

And for a tittilating bit of DC scuttlebutt on the Clark campaign, check out HoyPuhLoy

Leave No Child Behind

The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has told the BBC the US military is hoping to release children it is holding there.

The BBC’s Gordon Corera, in Guantanamo Bay, says the US’s interviews with the three children – aged between 13 and 15 – reveal they may have been coerced into fighting in Afghanistan.

General Geoffrey Miller who leads operations at the camp is seeking to have the children released in recognition of their age and co-operation, our correspondent says.

“These juvenile enemy combatants were impressed, were kidnapped into terrorism. They have given us some very valuable intelligence. We are very close to making a recommendation on their transfer back to their home countries,” General Miller said.

Special treatment

The children have been kept separate from the 700 adults being held at the camp, located on the southern Cuban coast.

They have been held with no access to a lawyer or understanding of what will happen to them, our correspondent adds.

But the children have been given access to games, even videos, as well as an extensive education programme.

This has led to the belief that they can be rehabilitated

Calling Mr. Kafka, Mr Franz Kafka. Please pick up the white courtesy telephone.

Is anybody beginning to wonder what in the hell is really going on down there? Why do I have a feeling that our pride in our vaunted Western values may be a tiny bit misplaced these days?

This is absolutely, fucking sick. If the most powerful country on earth is so vulnerable that we have to lock up some 12 year old Afghan kid in a goddamned concentration camp then this whole thing is hopeless.

The Camp Commandant has apparently come to the professional judgment that these kids can be rehabilitated so at least we won’t have to give them a secret trial before we kill them.

And they’ve had video games!