Lindsay On Edwards And Bloggers
by tristero
Lindsay Beyerstein of the great blog Majikthise has an article in Salon about why she turned down the gig of blogging for the Edwards campaign before Amanda and Shakes were hired and then “scalped” by the extreme right. Great streetsmarts on display and an excellent analysis of the role independent bloggers can/do/should have in political campaigns.
Thanking The Academy
by digby
I’m going to be gravely disappointed if Scorcese doesn’t finally win. And I’m looking forward to seeing Etheridge sing her great song and (hopefully) seeing “An Inconvenient Truth” get even more exposure to the world. It’s not hyperbole to say it may be the most important movie ever made.
Every Oscar night I think about the time years ago that I went to a party that was attended by Satcheen Littlefeather, the woman Brando designated to receive his oscar and give a speech about Native American rights. My ditsy sis-in-law was introduced to her and said, “Oh right, you’re the woman who accepted the award for Marlo Thomas!”
The opening was great. Everyone present who was nominated got a moment to be applauded by their peers. Very nice.
Happy Oscars.
Update:
Congratulations to President Gore!
Congratulations Melissa Etheridge!!
C&L has the video of Al’s speech here.
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Crazy-Man
by digby
US Vice-President Dick Cheney has raised the possibility of military action to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
He has endorsed Republican senator John McCain’s proposition that the only thing worse than a military confrontation with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran.
In an exclusive interview with The Weekend Australian, Mr Cheney said: “I would guess that John McCain and I are pretty close to agreement.”
The visiting Vice-President said that he had no doubt Iran was striving to enrich uranium to the point where they could make nuclear weapons.
He accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of espousing an “apocalyptic philosophy” and making “threatening noises about Israel and the US and others”.
He also said Iran was a sponsor of terrorism, especially through Hezbollah. However, the US did not believe Iran possessed any nuclear weapons as yet.
“You get various estimates of where the point of no return is,” Mr Cheney said, identifying nuclear terrorism as the greatest threat to the world.
“Is it when they possess weapons or does it come sooner, when they have mastered the technology but perhaps not yet produced fissile material for weapons?”
Mr Cheney also condemned Kevin Rudd’s plan to withdraw all Australian combat troops from Iraq. Although he did not mention the Opposition Leader by name, Mr Cheney said the withdrawal of Australian troops “would clearly be a disappointment from our standpoint”.
He encouraged further Australian involvement: “The more allies we have and the more committed they are to the effort, the quicker we can anticipate success.”
[…]
Earlier, in an address in Sydney to the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, Mr Cheney had emphasised the importance of the challenge of defeating Islamist terror, underlining the long-term nature of the struggle for the US and its allies.
“We have never had a fight like this, and it’s not a fight we can win using the strategies from other wars,” he said.
[…]
“The world’s better off now that (Saddam Hussein) is dead and there’s a democratically elected Government in his place in Baghdad,” he said.
“The Iraqi people are well on the road to establishing a viable democracy.
“In the long term when we look back on this period of time that will be a remarkable achievement. We’re not there yet. We’ve still got a lot to do.”
In Dick Cheney’s upside-down world, the fearsome GWOT is akin to the “War of the Worlds” and we have to be prepared to blow up the planet rather than submit to the aliens. And Iraq is a huge success.
Arthur Silber puts this in perspective, here and here.
Meanwhile, Cheney is running all over the world prattling on like Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane”, Bush is robotically grunting some nonsense about “pertecktin’ the troops” and pundits are trying to make us believe that this is some sort of extremely clever ruse that will end with Iran metaphorically falling to the ground and crying uncle. As if “extremely clever” and Dick ‘n George can ever be mentioned seriously in the same breath.
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Zero Tolerance
by digby
Not that I advocate operqating like this because it smacks of fascism and makes me sick, but if you want to see how an extremely effective right wing advocacy group works, this is how its done:
‘Terrorist’ Remark Puts Outdoorsman’s Career in Jeopardy
Zumbo’s Criticism of Hunters Who Use Assault Rifles Brings Unforgiving Response From U.S. Gun Culture
SEATTLE — Modern hunters rarely become more famous than Jim Zumbo. A mustachioed, barrel-chested outdoors entrepreneur who lives in a log cabin near Yellowstone National Park, he has spent much of his life writing for prominent outdoors magazines, delivering lectures across the country and starring in cable TV shows about big-game hunting in the West.
Zumbo’s fame, however, has turned to black-bordered infamy within America’s gun culture — and his multimedia success has come undone. It all happened in the past week, after he publicly criticized the use of military-style assault rifles by hunters, especially those gunning for prairie dogs.
“Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity,” Zumbo wrote in his blog on the Outdoor Life Web site. The Feb. 16 posting has since been taken down. “As hunters, we don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them. . . . I’ll go so far as to call them ‘terrorist’ rifles.”
The reaction — from tens of thousands of owners of assault rifles across the country, from media and manufacturers rooted in the gun business, and from the National Rifle Association — has been swift, severe and unforgiving. Despite a profuse public apology and a vow to go hunting soon with an assault weapon, Zumbo’s career appears to be over.
His top-rated weekly TV program on the Outdoor Channel, his longtime career with Outdoor Life magazine and his corporate ties to the biggest names in gunmaking, including Remington Arms Co., have been terminated or are on the ropes.
The NRA on Thursday pointed to the collapse of Zumbo’s career as an example of what can happen to anyone, including a “fellow gun owner,” who challenges the right of Americans to own or hunt with assault-style firearms.
In announcing that it was suspending its professional ties with Zumbo, the NRA — a well-financed gun lobby that for decades has fought attempts to regulate assault weapons — noted that the new Congress should pay careful attention to the outdoors writer’s fate.
“Our folks fully understand that their rights are at stake,” the NRA statement said. It warned that the “grassroots” passion that brought down Zumbo shows that millions of people would “resist with an immense singular political will any attempts to create a new ban on semi-automatic firearms.”
Kevin says the message is that there’s no point in apologizing in America today. But I have never seen any liberal advocacy group completely destroy one of their own’s livlihood over one remark with which they disagree, apology or not. I’m not saying some wouldn’t want to, or haven’t tried even, but they just don’t have the clout with their followers or that kind of killer instinct. The NRA is the most effective lobbying group in American history because of its savvy political lobbying and its take no prisoners attitude. They are totalitarian gun nuts who have completely cowed the political system of this country. If that doesn’t keep you awake night, nothing will.
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Thus, The Gates Of Hell
by tristero
[UPDATE: Digby discusses the same article below that I do here. I apologize for the inadvertent duplication (I was finishing up my post and didn’t realize Digby had already discussed it), but I hope our combined interest will serve to pique your curiousity about the comlete article, one of Hersh’s greatest, and a deeply important read.]
Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker has a concise article explaining only a fraction of the fiendishly complex twists and turns of the political situation in the Middle East right now. As you read it – and you’ll have to read it several times even to begin to understand the vertigo-inducing complexities – perhaps, like me, you will shudder to remember that the US is led by a “gentleman’s C+” and a demented flake who shot his friend in the face, neither of which have had a lick of genuine experience in the Middle East, not to mention a glimmer of understanding as to how the world works. These are the people who deliberately are sending your children, your friends, and your neighbors to mutilation and death in a faraway desert for no sensible purpose whatsoever.
I’ve excerpted some quotes from the article. But really, it bears reading in full. The situation makes the study of string theory seem like beginner’s Sudoku :
“The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them…
…the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours…
..the former senior intelligence official said that the current contingency plans allow for an attack order this spring. He added, however, that senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were counting on the White House’s not being “foolish enough to do this in the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008…
…In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S government consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran
Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more secular Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at Mecca between the two factions. However, Israel and the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)
The third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria…
During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting “to hijack the state,” but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. “Salafis are sick and hateful, and I’m very much against the idea of flirting with them,” he said. “They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly…”
In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict…”
The Bush Administration has portrayed its support of the Siniora government as an example of the President’s belief in democracy, and his desire to prevent other powers from interfering in Lebanon…
The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, a earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became know as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings.
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.
I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)
Rube Goldberg Policy Contraption
by digby
After you watch a presidential admnistration for a while you begin to see shifts in policy or different phases of the old ones by the way the officials all speak. In the case of the Bush administration, it’s remarkably easy because they robotically and fanatically follow talking points. They are, as we’ve seen many times, more concerned with marketing than subtance and place a very high premium on properly “rolling out their product.”
So, when president Bush used the phrase “protect our troops” followed by everyone from Gates to Rice, my antennae were way up; it was obvious that it was a potential cassus belli for an attack on Iran. January 11, 2007:
SEC. RICE: Well, I think General Pace has spoken to what we think the necessity is and what it is we intend to do. We’ve made very clear to the Iranian government and the Syrian government, for that matter, that we don’t expect them to continually engage in behavior that is destabilizing to the Iraqi government but also that endangers our troops, and that we will do what is necessary for force protection.
But we leave to those who deal with issues of force protection how these raids are going to be taken out (sic). I think you’ve got an indication of that in what has been happening, which is the networks are identified, they are identified through good intelligence, they are then acted upon. It is without regard to whoever is in them, whatever the nationality. And we’re going to protect our troops.
Then in her appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month:
“Obviously, the President isn’t going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq.I do think that everyone will understand that—the American people and I assume the Congress expect the President to do what is necessary to protect our forces.”
Today we have a new article from Seymour Hersh that is so mindblowing that you must do yourself a favor and go and read the whole thing right now. It’s called “The Redirection” and it starts like this:
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”
Think about this for a moment. The crackerjack Bush administration — which failed to anticipate the rise of Iran once they removed its dangerous enemy from the scene — is supposed to be able to recognize who’s who among these various Muslim players and deftly play all the factions against one another in a very discrete and high stakes game in which they finesse a final outcome that brings about peace and security.
Oh. My God.
But apparently we needn’t worry because Prince Bandar is on the scene helping Dick Cheney sort everything out:
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
In case anyone forgot, Al Qaeda are Sunni radicals. And most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. But let’s assume they weren’t. Can anyone believe that this administration is capable of playing such a delicate geopolitical chess game? Dear God, these are people whose idea of playing checkers is to up-end the board and do a victory dance. Let’s just say that subtlety isn’t their stong suit.
This is what Bush and Cheney are talking about when they say that history will vindicate them. The believe that by tearing the middle east to pieces, when it finally settles down after years of carnage and bloodshed, they will get credit for the clever plan that set it in motion.
Read it all. There’s much more and it’s fascinating stuff. And frightening.
This is the part that gets me. When Bush brought that war criminal piece of garbage Elliott Abrams back in to the government we all should have known they were going down this road:
The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings.
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.
I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)
[…]
The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives.” It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.”
The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.
“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”
It is amateur hour and these zombies must be stopped. Until the Democrats, and the country, recognize this undemocratic and criminal element in our politics it is going to continue every time the Republicans take power. When they have a congressional majority with a Republican president they steal the country blind and when it’s a Democrat they harrass him so badly that its a miracle he is able to function. When they have the presidency they become despotic criminals. This has been true for the last 30 years.
And now the Bush administration has spawned untold numbers of future war criminals who will claw their way back into power so they can “prove” they were right the first time. This pattern is repeating itself over and over again and we simply have to figure out a way to put an end to it.
Today we have the DOD equivalent of Brownie running around with boatload of cash making deals with Muslim extremists and Saudi princes, whom the administration has divided up into completely useless designations of “reformer” and extremist.” Nobody knows who’s talking to who or what agenda they really have. Liberals think up complex plots like this and make them into movies. Republicans steal billions from the taxpayers and actually try to implement their hare-brained schemes.
Meanwhile, in case you’ve been away from the media for a while, Anna Nicole Smith is still dead and Chris Matthews and Cokie Roberts are desperate to find out if Bill Clinton is “being a good boy.” We’re in trouble.
Update: John Amato has the footage of Seymour hersh this morning on Wolf Blitzer. It’s a corker:
HERSH: …And in looking into that story, and I saw him in December, I found this. That we have been pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia is putting up some of this money, for covert operations in many areas of the Middle East where we think that the — we want to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.
They call it the “Shiite Crescent.” And a lot of this money, and I can’t tell you with absolute certainty how — exactly when and how, but this money has gotten into the hands — among other places, in Lebanon, into the hands of three — at least three jihadist groups.
There are three Sunni jihadist groups whose main claim to fame inside Lebanon right now is that they are very tough. These are people connected to al Qaeda who want to take on Hezbollah. So this government, at the minimum, we may not directly be funneling money to them, but we certainly know that these groups exist.
[…]
We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11, and we should be arresting these people rather than looking the other way…
Saturday Night At The Movies
They’re gonna crucify me: Mayflower in reverse
By Dennis Hartley
Back in 1972, the U.S. government handed a certain British émigré a rather abrupt eviction notice, informing him and the missus that they had 60 days to get out of the country or face deportation proceedings.
This event would likely have not caused much of a ripple in anyone else’s life, had the folks in question not been a married couple known to millions simply as “John & Yoko”. And so began a highly politicized, four-year legal battle for citizenship, chronicled in the documentary The US vs. John Lennon, now available on DVD.
You know the back story: After a very public and controversial courtship, John Lennon and Yoko Ono marry in 1969, the Beatles break up, and the couple begin making their own headlines with a series of mildly political “performance art” media stunts (starting with the relatively benign “Bed-In For Peace”) and then move to NYC in the early 70’s, where they begin to openly sympathize with the “radical” American political groups of the time, much to the chagrin of the Nixon administration. The apparent last straw for Tricky D.& Co. was John and Yoko’s 1972 appearance at a charity concert to help cover legal fees for White Panther Party founder John Sinclair, who had been jailed ostensibly on drug charges, but was considered by many at the time to be a political prisoner.
Declassified documents now prove that, from day one, there was direct inter-agency manipulation of John and Yoko’s deportation proceedings, from the FBI all the way up to the Oval Office, resulting in a nearly four-year long persecution that was probably best described by Lennon himself, who referred to the machinations as “Kafkaesque”.
The film features great archival footage, with recollections from the likes of Bobby Seale, John Sinclair, Geraldo Rivera, Noam Chomsky, Ron Kovic, Paul Krassner, George McGovern, and, er, G. Gordon Liddy (guess whose side he’s on). The most insightful comment comes from the ever-glib Gore Vidal, who, when asked what it was about Lennon that made him such a threat to the Nixon cabal, says: “He (Lennon) represented Life, and was admirable. Mr. Nixon, and (for that matter) Mr. Bush, represent Death, and that’s bad.” (Perhaps that is a bit of an over-simplification, but so true.)
The film is a tad dry in its execution (it was produced by VH-1, which likely accounts for the rote “Behind the Music” approach) but it’s still a compelling tale, and an important one. It has much to say about what is going on right now with the “dissent vs. disloyalty” issue (Dixie Chicks, anyone?) and the dangers of being governed by an administration that parcels up the Bill of Rights like customized selections from a dim sum cart.
Enemies of the State: Dixie Chicks – Shut Up & Sing
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Xenophobes R Us
by digby
There has been very little discussion of this issue, but I predict it’s going to rise to the surface in the future and it’s not going to be pretty. The other day the new Dem governor of Ohio made some waves by saying that Ohio wouldn’t be a welcome place for Iraqi refugees. He changed his mind a couple of days later.
Right now, Iraq is experiencing one of the most serious refugee crises in modern history.Millions of people are fleeing the country, most of whom are in the professional and middle class. In Vietnam we were faced with a similar situation that resulted in a terrible exodus with many thousands of boat people winding up in refugee camps, some of whom were eventually allowed to come to th US. This is going to end up being a very different situation. We are more
culpable for this crisis even than that in Vietnam and yet there is almost no chance that we will allow more than a handful to come into the US, despite the fact that many of them were helpful to the US occupation and therefore, probably need the protection of the US government after what we’ve done.
The right hasn’t settled yet on whether they are going to make their argument agianst settling Iraqis in the US on that basis of the GWOT or on immigration. I’m sure they’ll have arguments prepared for both sides. You can bet they will not want these arabs over here. After all, aren’t we fighting (“liberating”) them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here?
Tom Tancredo is getting out in front of course, firing the first salvo:
COOPER: Well, we’ve been talking about the growing humanitarian crisis that the war in Iraq has created, forcing millions of Iraqis from their homes.
Almost 2 million are in Iraq and homeless. Many others have fled to Arab countries. One million are in Syria; 750,000 are in Jordan; and somewhere between
80,000 and 130,000 are believed to be in Egypt; and 40,000 are in Lebanon.
Only a few hundred are actually here in the United States. Now before the break, we told you about the Bush administration’s new plan to allow some 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the U.S. this year. People who have helped the U.S., worked as interpreters or who face real threats.
The plan is facing fierce opposition from both sides of the aisle and sparked an intense debate. I saw just how passionate people on either side of the issue are when I spoke with Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Edina Lekovic of the Muslim Public Affairs Council earlier tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Congressman Tancredo, some of the Iraqis are applying for refugee status. These are people who have risked their lives working for U.S. forces as translators, doing intelligence work, as drivers. There are those who say, look, why shouldn’t we help those?
REP. TOM TANCREDO (R), COLORADO: I’ll tell you one reason why we shouldn’t. Not too long ago we found out about a number of Iraqis here in the United States that had committed some other crimes. That is to say, they committed — they were aliens here. They committed a crime. They were tried, convicted. They were supposed to be deported under those kind of conditions.
Come to find out, Iraq is a country, one of about 20, that refuses to accept their aliens back to their country after they’ve committed other crimes in the United States.
I don’t care what they’ve done in Iraq before. There is a law, actually on the books today, Anderson, that says that if a country refuses to take back its aliens that have committed crimes in the United States, we should not give them any visas.
Well, there’s always Gitmo.
COOPER: All right, you know what about this? The congressman is saying, look, there’s a law in the books, which we’re not supposed to allow Iraqis in if they’re not willing to accept Iraqis who have committed crimes back into Iraq.
EDINA LEKOVIC, MUSLIM PUBLIC AFFAIRS COUNCIL: Well, look, that seems like a bit of political maneuvering and selective application of the laws, given that the Iraqi people should not be standing there to pay the price for this type of selective application.
What we’re talking about is a humanitarian crisis on the scale that certain humanitarian organizations are saying could soon rival the crisis in Darfur.
COOPER: Well, Congressman, if they did decide to change that law in Iraq, if Iraq did accept it, would you then be in favor of allowing some 7,000 Iraqi refugees into America?
TANCREDO: I would be in favor of accepting those that can be actually identified as coming here under humanitarian conditions and as refugees. That policy we’ve already established.
But I’ll tell you that, you know, it isn’t as if these people, first of all, are trapped in Iraq. That’s another situation. Where they are today, for the most part, is not in Iraq. They have gone to other countries. And now we are thinking about being pressured to take them from the countries where they are presently occupying.
LEKOVIC: Hold on there, with all due respect, Congressman, there are over 100,000 Iraqis who are fleeing Iraq each month, according to the U.N. There are over 2 million refugees from Iraq, as well as 1.7 million internally displaced people. There is a huge crisis on our hands here.
And right now, that burden is unfairly being shouldered by nations in the region like Jordan and Syria, which haven’t even signed onto the U.N. convention on refugees. And our own nation has.
COOPER: What Edina seems to be arguing is that there is a moral obligation, given that we went to war, that we take care of a certain number of refugees since this war has created.
TANCREDO: Yes.
COOPER: Do you believe that?
TANCREDO: We have done that in the past, certainly in Vietnam and other places. And I understand that. And I’m telling you that we have a refugee policy. It is the most liberal in the world. There are no caps on it. I understand that.
My complaint here and concern is with the Iraqi government today. The fact is, we should use this as pressure to get them to accept back their people who have committed crimes when they’re here.
COOPER: What do you think should be done with — with that huge tide of refugees?
TANCREDO: Well, what should be done with them is being done. And that — in the case of what we can do. That is to try and construct — help construct an Iraqi government in which those people can feel safe to return to the country of origin. That is the real task here.
COOPER: Edina, I’ll give you the last word.
LEKOVIC: Well, that’s just a part of the picture: 7,000 is a very paltry number. And we can’t forget the fact here that there are people involved. There are people whose lives have been devastated. We have promised that we would save — we would rescue them from malnutrition, from mayhem, from murder.
And that is precisely what they are facing every day and why they are leaving the country in large droves.
Congressman Tancredo is the same man who a few years ago said that we should consider taking out Mecca in order to send a message to the terrorists. So…
TANCREDO: Whoa — that is absolutely…
LEKOVIC: … this gentleman is not the man to be…
TANCREDO: You have no respect, ma’am, because you would say a thing like that.
LEKOVIC: … discussing this type of problem to preserve all human life.
TANCREDO: Well, that is absolutely untrue that I said we should take out Mecca in order to send a message.
LEKOVIC: Sir, you said we should consider it.
TANCREDO: It was never to, quote, “send a message.” And that is an entirely inaccurate way…
LEKOVIC: Sir, did you say that we should consider taking out Mecca?
TANCREDO: What I said was, well, do you want to fight that battle again? I’m happy to. But what I’m telling you is what you just said is not only inaccurate, but I think it’s disingenuous.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Well, as always, we care about the facts on 360. We checked the transcript of Congressman Tancredo’s interview with talk show host Pat Campbell.
When asked how he would respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons, he said, quote, “If this happens in the United States and we determined that it is the result of extremist fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites.”
Campbell said, “You’re talking about bombing Mecca?”
And Tancredo responded, “Yes.”
Tom Tancredo proves that he is just an all around xenophobe armed with an excuse for deomnizing foreigners no matter who they are. This is not a big surprise. He hasn’t fully developed his argument yet, but he will.
Ms Lecovic is a very effective spokeswoman. She made steam come out of Tancredo’s ears.
And good old Anderson did the work of a real journalist. Good for him.
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If We Only Had A Pony
by digby
Last night’s Shields and Brooks was a rather hallucinogenic experience as David Books told us how great things would be going in Iraq if only it wasn’t Iraq.First off, Shields explained why the Brits have been so “successful” in Basra:
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, it’s symbolically, I think, important, Jim. I mean, the reality behind the move is that, as Tony
Cordesman from Strategic and International Studies said, Basra was lost a year ago,and Brits have had to withdraw to the airport.
It’s now just a Shia stronghold. There is no tension. There’s no civil war there, because there’s no Sunnis. And it’s a little bit like saying that there wasn’t any racial tension in Fargo or Moorehead, North Dakota, during the civil rights struggle. There weren’t any racial minorities.
For some unknown reason, this led Brooks to explain that Basra was an example of how well things would be going if Iraq were more like Fargo:
JIM LEHRER: David, the idea that withdrawing — a lot of the attention on this has been drawn to the fact, hey, wait a minute, the Brits are withdrawing troops, and we’re sending more in. How do you see this?
DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times: Well, I would point to the same distinction Mark made, that Basra is not Baghdad. Basra is a Shia community, mostly Shia. It doesn’t have the sectarian violence.
And, to me, what Basra is, it’s a window on — suppose there wasn’t the sectarian violence in Baghdad or in Iraq. Well, where would we be? We would have our expectations not met. We would not have sort of democracy that we hoped for when going in.
Nonetheless, we would not have the sort of civil war we see in Baghdad, and we would be withdrawing, too. But Baghdad has this sectarian violence; Basra doesn’t.
What a fascinating little parlor game. Why such useless specualtion is considered worthy of discussion on a new program, however,is a mystery.
But here is where I’d really like to get some of that good stuff that Brooks is smoking:
DAVID BROOKS: … I mean, I think the Brits once had 40,000 troops. Then they went down to 7,100. And this is a drawback to 5,400, so it’s not as if Tony Blair is running away.
I mean, Tony Blair has been steadfast in believing in the mission and keeping troops there, despite incredible political pressure. So, you know, I don’t think he’s totally answering to the pressure. I think it’s a response to the reality.
So, Blair has withdrawn troops from 40,000 to about 5,000 but that means he’s been steadfast in keeping troops there. Hookay.
Then Brooks went into fine whine:
JIM LEHRER: Speaking of domestic realities in the United States of America, David, what do you make of the Senate plans? They’ve been talking about probably going to start next week to try to reauthorize or change the legislation that originally authorized the military action against Iraq.
DAVID BROOKS: This is like “Back to the Future.” They’re going to go in a DeLorean back to 2002 and un-vote the vote they made.
I love this. Apparently we have a new rule in politics which says that once you’ve passed a bill, you are not ever allowed to revisit it, no matter what happens, even if the circumstances change significantly. I knew these people believed in the constitutional theory of “original intent” but I didn’t know they had decided to apply it to current legislation. Good to know.
Moreover, Bush is stubbornly refusing to listen to the American people and that makes him a hero. Indeed, the mark of a truly great American president is his willingness to do defy the citizens of his nation:
DAVID BROOKS: You know, the big difference to me is, you know, George Bush — you can say what you like about his operation of the war, but he took a look at what should happen in Iraq, and it was the surge. He knew it was going to be unpopular, but he was going to be for it, even though it was unpopular.
Is there any Democrat willing to stand up and be for something unpopular or even take a position? I really don’t know what the Democratic positions are.
There are individual positions, but when it comes to resolutions, there’s this Murtha business, which is sort of funny, reallocate the relocation of the troops, the intervals which they go in and out. Then there’s the Levin-Biden plan, which is to go back to 2002 and somehow reauthorize that bill.
Why don’t they take a position and say, “I’m for this. This is what we think should happen in Iraq. We think the war is lost. We think we should get out”?
Or, “We don’t think the war is lost. We should do this”?
But it’s all poll-driven, and that’s my problem with the Democratic plans that are all evolving. They’re all poll-driven. It’s the party right now with the soul of a campaign manager.
But didn’t we just see the results of one very special kind of poll recently?
MARK SHIELDS: I don’t agree. We do have elections in this country, other than polls. We had an election last fall in which the Republicans, largely on the issue of Iraq, and largely on the issue of the stewardship of the president and vice president of that war, and the conditions and circumstances under which we got into that war, and the way it had been maintained, lost control of the Congress.
That was the reason. The Republicans say that; Democrats say that. So that’s not a poll. That’s not a focus group. That’s the American people having expressed it, their feelings for it.
The president is apparently indifferent, immune. He has a four-year term, so he’s indifferent to the plight of members of his own party, as their position becomes increasingly unpopular.
The Bush administration has always been indifferent to the will of the people. He won the presidency in 2000 on a hummer with the help of his brother’s political machine and his father’s supreme court judges. But he governed from the get as if he’d won all 50 states in a landslide. They see elections as a way to gain political power,(excuse me — “political capital”) and that’s it. They have no interest in what the people voted for or what issues they cared about and they got away with it for six years until the people finally saw through their Rovian flim flam and judged them for their actual performance.At this point they are madly scrambling to preserve his legacy and set up his successor for the fall. The party is on its own.
Shields then took a gratuitous swipe at Move-on but I guess that’s necessary to preserve his status in the punditocrisy since he was otherwise quite aggressive toward the befuddled Brooks:
DAVID BROOKS: The difference is, Bush takes a look at Baghdad. He says, “We’ve got to pacify Baghdad to give the Maliki government the space to do what it needs to do,” so he says we’re going to send in 20,000 more troops. That is a clearly understandable policy, whether you think it will work or not.
The Democrats do not have a clearly understandable policy. They’ve got this subterfuge about changing the schedules, which as Murtha said is just an excuse to starve the surge. Then they’ve got this, “Go back to 2002.”
If they want to get out, and if they think it’s lost, do what Governor Vilsack said, “We think we should get out. Here’s our timetable. We think we should get out.’
Instead, you’ve got Hillary Clinton at first saying, “We’re going to cap,” and then changing her position a week later, and saying a 90-day withdrawal.
You’ve got slow withdrawal with Obama. You’ve got subterfuge. You’ve got nothing. You’ve just a series of dodges.
MARK SHIELDS: You don’t have a party speak with a single voice, David, when you’re out of power.
DAVID BROOKS: They’ve had resolutions coming up in the House. Put forward a resolution.
MARK SHIELDS: They put forward a resolution. It carried in the House last week. They’d like to put up a resolution in the Senate, as well.
But, I mean, the only policy the Republicans have is the president’s policy. And it’s increasingly winning less and less support, both in the country and in his own Republican caucus.
This is exactly correct. All this nonsense about how the Democrats have “too many plans” should be an indictment of the GOP who continue to blindly follow their ineffectual leader in spite of the fact that they know he is on the wrong track and has been repudiated by the citizenry. These people should think twice about looking down their noses at politicians who follow the will of the people and be a little bit more concerned about what their constituents will
think of their misguided loyalty to a failed president.
Brooks is very depressed these days and struggling to find some purchase on a partisan argument. But he’s saddled with Junior and Cheney’s magnificent failure and is beginning to sounds as incoherent as they do.
I recall that Democrats sounded very similar during the Johnson years, although there was a lot more boldness within the Democratic party that in the GOP today. But many Democrats id scramble to justify their president’s policy and ended up suffering for it. Richard Nixon was certainly captive of Vietnam also but there has never been any question that it was Lyndon Johnson’s war from the moment he escalated it.
Iraq is going to be even worse for the Republicans. This is Bush’s war from the “moment of conception” and the longer the Republicans support him the more ownership they all take of it as well. As has been true so often during this administration, if Bush had taken yes for an answer and adopted the Iraq Study group recommendations, he could have probably succeeded in forcing some of the Democrats to take some of that ownership. (You can’t underestimate the siren call of the “centrist” solution to the DC establishment). Bush and Cheney’s inflated pride got in the way and now the Party can’t or won’t shake off his rotting albatross of a war. And they’re choking on it.
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Who Ya Gonna Call?
by digby
An update on the case of the Reverend Lonnie Latham: apparently, the ACLU has filed a brief on his behalf. Don’t get me wrong, I think the ACLU should defend the constitution without regard to the case, but nonetheless it always sticks in my craw just a bit to hear these rightwingers rail against the ACLU until they find themselves on the receiving end of an overzealous prosecutor.
And in case anyone’s of a mind to argue that the ACLU is anti-religion, here’s proof that it isn’t, although all the “Stop The ACLU” wingnuts certainly are howling:
But let’s tell the truth as we know it – the ACLU despises the fact that this nation is one that operates under Judeo-Christian principles. This is not a Muslim nation or a Hindu or Buddhist nation. This is a Christian nation, even if our morality is going down the sewer. This nation was founded by men who believed in the Christian God. There is no problem for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or others who want to practice their own “faith” here in America. We afford them that privilege under the 1st Amendment. But our foundation is that of the Judeo-Christian faith. If the ACLU doesn’t like it, I suggest they go to Communist Cuba or China where they can practice their godlessness. I’m getting sick of being told that all religions are equal. They are not!
Sigh.
Join the ACLU.
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