Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Strawberries

by digby

So, the big news emerging from the Libby trial so far is that Dick Cheney was so obsessively Queeglike about Joseph Wilson that he was even writing out talking points for his little dog Scooter to yap at reporters.

As predicted, this trial has also been fascinating for its insight into the relationship between the White House and the press corps. Cathie Martin, the VP press liason who testified yesterday said some things that had Dana Milbank at the WaPo all a twitter:

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. Option 1: “MTP-VP,” she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under “pro,” she wrote: “control message.”

“I suggested we put the vice president on ‘Meet the Press,’ which was a tactic we often used,” Martin testified. “It’s our best format.”

No kidding.

And let’s not forget that Russert was up to his neck in the story and failed over and over again to tell his viewers that and repeatedly put on a little acting performance, pretending surprise and sometimes even referring to himself in the third person. No wonder Cheney was thrilled to use him as his favorite propaganda outlet.

Here’s a fun little trip down MTP memory lane from September of 2003, where Cheney engages in his usual lies and delusions, but also pretends that he doesn’t really know anything about Wilson.

We now know, of course, that by the time he gave this interview, he had been neurotically pre-occupied with Wilson for months and knew every detail of how the Niger trip went down.

Joe who?

MR. RUSSERT: Now, Ambassador Joe Wilson, a year before that, was sent over by the CIA because you raised the question about uranium from Africa. He says he came back from Niger and said that, in fact, he could not find any documentation that, in fact, Niger had sent uranium to Iraq or engaged in that activity and reported it back to the proper channels. Were you briefed on his findings in February, March of 2002?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, “What do we know about this?” They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, “This is all we know. There’s a lot we don’t know,” end of statement. And Joe Wilson—I don’t who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.

Uhm … Lie.

I guess the intriguing thing, Tim, on the whole thing, this question of whether or not the Iraqis were trying to acquire uranium in Africa. In the British report, this week, the Committee of the British Parliament, which just spent 90 days investigating all of this, revalidated their British claim that Saddam was, in fact, trying to acquire uranium in Africa. What was in the State of the Union speech and what was in the original British White papers. So there may be difference of opinion there. I don’t know what the truth is on the ground with respect to that, but I guess—like I say, I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came…

MR. RUSSERT: The CIA did.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who in the CIA, I don’t know.

Liar.

And here comes some world class bullshit:

MR. RUSSERT: If they were wrong, Mr. Vice President, shouldn’t we have a wholesale investigation into the intelligence failure that they predicted…

VICE PRES. CHENEY: What failure?

MR. RUSSERT: That Saddam had biological, chemical and is developing a nuclear program.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: My guess is in the end, they’ll be proven right, Tim. On the intelligence business, first of all, it’s intelligence. There are judgments involved in all of this. But we’ve got, I think, some very able people in the intelligence business that review the material here. This was a crucial subject. It was extensively covered for years. We’re very good at it. As I say, the British just revalidated their claim. So I’m not sure what the argument is about here. I think in the final analysis, we will find that the Iraqis did have a robust program.

How do you explain why Saddam Hussein, if he had no program, wouldn’t come clean and say, “I haven’t got a program. Come look”? Then he would have sanctions lifted. He’d earned $100 billion more in oil revenue over the last several years. He’d still be in power. The reason he didn’t was because obviously he couldn’t comply and wouldn’t comply with the U.N. resolutions demanding that he give up his WMD. The Security Council by a 15-to-nothing vote a year ago found him still in violation of those U.N. Security Council resolutions. A lot of the reporting isn’t U.S. reporting. It’s U.N. reporting on the supplies and stocks of VX and nerve agent and anthrax and so forth that he’s never accounted for.

So I say I’m not willing at all at this point to buy the proposition that somehow Saddam Hussein was innocent and he had no WMD and some guy out at the CIA, because I called him, cooked up a report saying he did.

That’s crazy. That makes no sense. It bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever. And in terms of asking questions, you bet I do. I’ve seen in times past when there’s been faulty intelligence, because they don’t always get it right; I think, for example, of having missed the downfall of the Soviet Union. And so I ask a lot of questions based on my years of experience in this business, but that’s what I get paid to do.

They got away with this nonsense for years. He said in the same breath that the intelligence services are “very good” at what they do, implying that it was ridiculous to question the intelligence,then says they don’t always get it right. He claims that Saddam wouldn’t say “come look” — except he did, they found nothing, and the US invaded anyway. Nobody mentions that in April 2001, it was reported that Cheney’s energy task force had been in favor of lifting the sanctions and that Halliburton had done business in Iraq when he was president of the company.

I can sort of understand it. The lies were so spectacularly dense and overwhelming, building one upon the other, that I’m not sure even a skeptical and courageous press corps could have unraveled them in real time. So total was the mendacity, spin and fantasy that it had a sort of paralyzing effect — in our soundbite world they seemed impossible to effectively rebut, particularly when the Republicans lashed out like rabid dogs against anyone who even tried. They had done an excellent job of co-opting a large number of the opinion makers who could have made a difference before they invaded, (many of whom are still making excuses.) It was a very thorough snow job.

This is the real problem. It’s been demonstrated that if an executive is willing to operate without integrity or adherence to democratic norms, he truly can get away with anything. And as we are seeing today with this escalation in Iraq and provocation of Iran, he doesn’t even have to be demagogic or popular. He’s the decider, he can do whatever he wants. He only answers to “history” (when he’ll conveniently be dead) not the people.

These people are proving that a president can get away with anything (but an illicit blowjob) if he’s willing to push the envelope. And that is exactly what Dick Cheney set out to do when he chose himself to be the defacto president back in 2000.

The Libby trial may be the only chance we have to see any of this aired in a controlled environment where both sides operate by the same rules, time is not determined by the need to advertise erection cures and people are bound to tell the truth. I’m looking forward to seeing what unfolds over the next few weeks.

And here’s hoping that Libby really does call Vice President Queeg to the stand.

Update: Jane Hamsher is back blogging and getting ready to see Dick Cheney on the witness stand rolling those ball bearings between his sweaty little palms. Welcome back!

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Mickey Is A Wingnut

by digby

I’m sure that most of you have read about the dust-up between the blogger Spocko and ABC/Disney wherein Disney shut down his blog for posting pieces of air pollution they call talk radio at ABC’s KSFO and alerting advertisers. It caused quite a stir. Disney was very angry that someone would use their clips without obtaining permission despite the fact that it was non-commercial and fell easily under fair use doctrine.

I wonder what Disney’s planning to do about this:

In a move that could rekindle a heated political debate, Fox News said Thursday that it planned to broadcast footage from ABC’s controversial miniseries “The Path to 9/11” that was edited out of the docudrama amid criticism that it inaccurately portrayed the Clinton administration’s response to the terrorism threat.

The outtakes, scheduled to air Sunday, depict then-national security advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger refusing to approve a CIA request to attack Osama bin Laden, an event that Berger and the Sept. 11 commission say did not occur.

The final version of the movie that aired on ABC in early September still included the scene, but it had been toned down after protests from top Democrats.

Several minutes were culled, including an exchange in which Berger is depicted hanging up on then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to a Fox News producer who has seen both versions.

The previously unaired footage is scheduled to be broadcast at 6 p.m. Sunday on “Hannity’s America,” a new show with Sean Hannity, one of the cable news network’s most popular hosts.

Fox News obtained the outtakes by taping a public talk that Cyrus Nowrasteh, writer and producer of “The Path to 9/11,” gave to a World Affairs Council chapter last Friday at Cal State Channel Islands. Nowrasteh discussed making the docudrama and played several minutes edited out of the movie.

Is Disney really going to allow its rival Fox to make money from their mini-series without properly licensing that footage? Really?

I would hate to think their lawyers believe it’s in the company’s best interest to send cease and desist letters to internet critics of their far right radio hosts for violating copyright and will do nothing when rightwing conservative Sean Hannity does exactly the same thing for commercial purposes on a rival network.

That might make somebody think that Disney has an ongoing, demonstrable bias toward right wing conservative politics, even to its shareholders’ detriment. That can’t be right.

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Creating The Debate

by digby

Ezra and others have noticed that Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric about health care is not backed up by any kind of bold proposal:

“In possibly the most telling section,” I wrote, “he gives a great riff on health care, which manages to totally inspire while not actually saying anything sweeping or controversial. Watching it, you’d swear he just promised the stars, the sky, and universal insurance, when he really just committed to electronic records.”

[..]

Viewed more cynically, this is consensus-driven rhetoric. As folks involved in health policy well know, universal health care as an abstraction polls through the roof. Actual plans, policies, and specifics tend to meet with more resistance. Mirroring that relationship, Obama is advocating universal health care the idea while mentioning nothing but high-polling, broadly-agreed miscellanea. That’s not to say that he couldn’t step forward tomorrow morning with a brilliant, bold idea for moving this debate forward. But he’s not there yet, and he is, contrary to what some protest, offering policy ideas. His specifics are electronic records, health care for kids, and more discussion. No one will disagree with those policies, but then, there’s a reason for that.

Kevin Drum goes even further here.

I have no idea what Obama’s intentions are, but I disagree that there is no utility in engaging in sweeping, inspirational rhetoric on this without a lot of specific proposals to back it up.

I agree that as an abstraction health care is easy. Why not? But it’s also important to understand that the issue has not yet reached one of those transcendent places that makes massive change seem imperative and that’s where some soaring Obama rhetoric is very useful.

This is quite good:

On this January morning of two thousand and seven, more than sixty years after President Truman first issued the call for national health insurance, we find ourselves in the midst of an historic moment on health care. From Maine to California, from business to labor, from Democrats to Republicans, the emergence of new and bold proposals from across the spectrum has effectively ended the debate over whether or not we should have universal health care in this country.

This is important. Universal Health Care, the concept, is far from settled, but Obama is just seizing the issue and saying that it is. And he’s doing it with inspirational rhetoric that makes you feel as if it’s an inexorable tide of progress, daring those who would try to stop it.

We are a long way from any plans and frankly I don’t particularly want to hear about them yet in detail. I just want to know if the Democrats are prepared to say that they believe in universal health care. If they don’t believe that then I want to hear why. That’s the bright line that Obama is drawing and I think it’s pretty smart.

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Can We Win This Time?

by digby

Rick Perlstein has two very important articles running right now that everyone should read. I would really love it if our Democratic representatives, especially, would read them, so if any of you have some extra time on your hands and would like to forward the articles to your Democratic congressperson and Senators, you would be doing a public service.

Democrats do not understand their own history and because of that they are allowing certain GOP myths to govern their decisions about Iraq. Perlstein’s articles vividly describe how the history of Vietnam has been distorted, how it was done, who did it and why the Democrats find themselves battling fake ghosts instead of riding on the backs of real ones.

First Perlstein writes in Salon about how the congress brought the Vietnam war to an end and exactly how they did it. He outlines several important lessons:

1: “Forthright questioning of a mistaken war by prominent legislators can utterly transform the public debate, pushing it in directions no one thought it was prepared to go.”

2: “Congress horning in on war powers scares the bejesus out of presidents.”

3: “Presidents, arrogant men, lie. And yet the media, loath to undermine the authority of the commander in chief, trusts them. Today’s congressional war critics have to be ready for that. They have to do what Congress immediately did next, in 1970: It grasped the nettle, at the president’s moment of maximum vulnerability, and turned public opinion radically against the war, and threw the president far, far back on his heel.”

And perhaps the most important lesson in this moment:

Grass-roots activism works. The Democratic presidential front-runner back then, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, afraid of being branded a radical, had originally proposed instead a nonbinding sense-of-the-Senate resolution recommending “effort” toward the withdrawal of American forces within 18 months. He found himself caught up in a swarm: the greatest popular lobbying campaign ever. Haverford College, which was not atypical, saw 90 percent of its student body and 57 percent of its faculty come to Washington to demonstrate for McGovern-Hatfield. A half-hour TV special in which congressmen argued for the bill was underwritten by 60,000 separate 50-cent contributions. The proposal received the largest volume of mail in Senate history. Muskie withdrew his own bill, and became the 19th cosponsor of McGovern-Hatfield.

Muskie’s sense-of-the-Senate resolution was the wrong thing to do — just as Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Joe Biden’s sense-of-the-Senate resolution, cosponsored with Republican Chuck Hagel, is the wrong thing to do. Congressional doves, by uniting around a strong offensive — eschewing triangulation — weakened the president. McGovern-Hatfield did not pass in 1970. But the campaign for it helped make 1971 President Nixon’s worst political year (until, that is, Congress’ bold action starting in 1973 to investigate Watergate). By that January, 73 percent of Americans supported the reintroduced McGovern-Hatfield amendment.

John Stennis, D-Miss., Nixon’s most important congressional supporter, now announced he “totally rejected the concept … that the President has certain powers as Commander in Chief which enable him to extensively commit major forces to combat without Congressional consent.” In April the six leading Democratic presidential contenders went on TV and, one by one, called for the president to set a date for withdrawal. (One of them, future neoconservative hero Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, differed only in that he said Nixon should not announce the date publicly.)

This was a marvelous offensive move: It threw the responsibility for the war where the commander in chief claimed it belonged — with himself — and framed subsequent congressional attempts to set a date a reaction to presidential inaction and the carnage it brought. When the second McGovern-Hatfield amendment went down 55-42 in June, it once more established a left flank — allowing Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to pass a softer amendment to require withdrawal nine months after all American prisoners of war were released. Senate doves, having dared the fight, were doing quite well in this game of inches.

They also, incidentally, did extremely well in the 1972 election.

The current presidential hopeful club is afraid because they think they are going to be “McGovern’s.” But they also forget that the reason Nixon resigned was because his massive game of dirty tricks in the 1972 election were exposed in Watergate. His 1972 landslide was hardly won on the merits — a fact that was proven by the fact that the Democrats even gained a Senate seat in that election. McGovern was the wrong presidential candidate (and let’s not forget, Nixon’s personal choice, which is why he destroyed Muskie) but the anti-war agenda was a winner — practically, morally and politically.

Perlstein continues:

We can likewise expect a similarly nasty presidential campaign against whomever the Democrats nominate in 2008. But we can also assume that he or she won’t be as naive and unqualified to win as McGovern; one hopes the days in which liberals fantasized that the electorate would react to the meanness of Republicans by reflexively embracing the nicest Democrat are well and truly past. What we also should anticipate, as well, is the possibility that the Republicans will run as Nixon did in 1968 and 1972: as the more trustworthy guarantor of peace. Ten days before the 1972 election, Henry Kissinger went on TV to announce, “It is obvious that a war that has been raging for 10 years is drawing to a conclusion … We believe peace is at hand.” McGovern-Hatfield having ultimately failed twice, its supporters were never able to claim credit for ending the war. That ceded the ground to Nixon, who was able to claim the credit for himself instead. He never would have been able to do that if he had been forced to veto legislation to end the war

.

I highlighted that line above because it’s the single thing I fear the most. I don’t believe that after all these years of vicious conservatism that most liberal activists are that naive. But I do believe that all this beltway babble about bipartisanship is designed to make the media and then the electorate believe that the only way a Democrat can win is by being the most passionless bowl of lukewarm water. (Listen to our very good friend Frank Luntz’s advice — he’s always got our best interests at heart, right?)

And I worry greatly that as a result the man people will look to to lead us out of the quagmire will be the war hero John McCain. He can be McGovern without the hippies, Nixon without the slush fund, a hawk who supported the war but by 2008 will have reluctantly decided that he needs to step in to end it. With a secret plan, no doubt.

One has to wonder how we got to the point where even anti-war politicians who were around at the time don’t know about their own successes, or if they do, cannot acknowledge them. That’s where Perlstein’s other article comes comes in.

It seems that the myth of the congress “abandoning the troops” and thus leading to American defeat came from our bestest bipartisan hero, Gerry Ford:

There is a popular fantasy that liberals in Congress, somehow, at least metaphorically, abandoned American troops in Vietnam–and that, if liberals had their way, they’d do it again in Iraq. This notion was nurtured in the bosom of popular culture–as when Sylvester Stallone, in Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), sent back to the jungles of Vietnam by his old commander, plaintively asks, “Sir, do we get to win this time?” But it survives even in elite discourse–as when Nixon’s former defense secretary, Melvin Laird, wrote–in a Foreign Affairs article called “Iraq: learning the lessons of vietnam”–that “the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973.”

[…]

Early in 1974, Nixon requested a support package for the South Vietnamese that included $474 million in emergency military aid. The Senate Armed Services Committee balked and approved about half. A liberal coup? Hardly. One of the critics was Senator Barry Goldwater. “We can scratch South Vietnam,” he said. “It is imminent that South Vietnam is going to fall into the hands of North Vietnam.” The House turned down the president’s emergency aid request 177 to 154; the majority included 50 Republicans. They were only, as I wrote in The New Republic (“The Unrealist,” November 6, 2006), honoring what Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger privately believed. They had gladly negotiated their peace deal under the assumption that South Vietnam would fall when the United States left. What would it have cost to keep South Vietnam in existence without an American military presence? The Pentagon, in 1973, estimated $1.4 billion even for an “austere program.” Nixon and Kissinger were glad for the $700 million South Vietnam eventually got (including a couple hundred million for military aid), because their intention was merely to prop up Saigon for a “decent interval” until the American public forgot about the problem. By 1974, Kissinger pointed out, “no one will give a damn.”

Apparently, they didn’t tell Gerald Ford. He addressed the nation in April of 1975, eight months after becoming president, and implored Congress for $722 million in military aid. The speech was overwhelmingly and universally unpopular–the kind of thing that made Ford seem such a joke to the nation at the time. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak called it “blundering.” Seventy-eight percent of the public was against any further military aid; Republicans like James McClure of Idaho and Harry Bellmon of Oklahoma opposed the appropriation. Republican dove Mark Hatfield said, “I am appalled that a man would continue in such a bankrupt policy”–and Democratic hawk Scoop Jackson said, “I oppose it. I don’t know of any on the Democratic side who will support it.” The Senate vote against it was 61 to 32.

Leading up to the vote, however, Saint Gerald made extraordinary claims–saying that “just a relatively small additional commitment” to Vietnam (compared with the $150 billion already spent there) could “have met any military challenges.” With it, “this whole tragedy”–the imminent fall of Saigon–“could have been eliminated.”

So much for the Pentagon’s claim that $1.4 billion would be an “austere program.” So much for Nixon and Kissinger’s belief that “South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway.” Ford’s miraculous $722 million somehow became enshrined in public memory as the margin that assured American dishonor. As Laird put it in that Foreign Affairs essay, “[W]e grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory. … We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973.”

It is that little piece of mythic propaganda that has our current politicans turning themselves into pretzels over using the power of the purse to stop this war. It’s a testament to the ongoing success of the conservative movement’s potent disinformation machine.

But Democrats need to stop battling these ghosts at least long enough to look at how the anti-war movement actually operated and how the congress used wily legislative positioning to both reflect the popular will and move the president toward it.

The public memory of congressional votes on Vietnam from 1970 through 1975 is almost hallucinogenically jumbled. Republican propagandists rely on the confusion. This slender reed of a myth–that congressional liberals are responsible for the fall of South Vietnam–conflates the failed 1970-1971 votes to end the war in South Vietnam, and the overwhelmingly popular (and, on Nixon and Kissinger’s terms, strategically irrelevant) vote to limit military aid to South Vietnam. It is but a short leap for a public less informed than Laird to reach the Rambo conclusion: that this was just the last in a comprehensive train of abuses–exclusively Democratic and liberal–that kept us from “winning” in Vietnam. And that, adding in the mythology about prisoners of war in Vietnam, American troops were, roughly speaking, “abandoned” there.”

It requires some filthy lies to sustain. But the fact that a sad old man is allowed to propound some of them in the foreign policy establishment’s journal of record shows how successful it remains. And the fact that the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination seems to take it as second nature that she has to defend herself against them shows it, too. Stop it now. No responsible American politician has ever cut funding an American troop needed to fight while he or she was in the field. No responsible American politician ever would. Limiting the number of troops in the theater of operations is not cutting funding for American troops. Neither, of course, is withdrawing them “over the horizon.” Nothing’s getting stabbed in the back here except reason.

Word. But that would be the standard conservative M.O. for the last decade or so.

I’m loathe to ever agree with David Brooks about anything but I’m very afraid that he may have been right when he said (about another issue):

DAVID BROOKS: Right. Legislating is a terribly difficult skill, and I don’t think too many people in Congress have it right now. Lyndon Johnson obviously had it. It is incredibly difficult, incredibly complicated…And that will involve the sort of gamesmanship and insider playing and a set of skills of how to negotiate a deal that — I think a lot of those skills have been lost in the last 20 years. I’m not sure many people have them on Capitol Hill of either party.

The only good news in that is that the president is no Johnson or Nixon so maybe it evens out.

One other thing I think is worth mentioning. As Perlstein points out in both articles, the country had turned against the war in huge numbers by the early 70’s. The funding votes were bipartisan with even stalwarts like Goldwater signing on. But there were other things happening that continued to roil the country — the counter-culture and leftist extremism. The Republicans managed to mix all that social angst into one big anti-Democratic stew that rebounded very badly on McGovern (who, as Perlstein points out, was a very bad candidate) and confused the political history of the era to this day.

But today there are no Weathermen or SLA’s out there talking revolution. The main fronts in the culture war are located on the right, not on the left. It is a different day, even if those who lived through Vietnam are as muddled by the myths that sprang up later as anyone who came behind.

Whether any of us like it or not, that era is defining the present one. So, it behooves our Democratic representatives to at least decontruct this stuff for themselves so they can deal effectively with the war and wield their power as a congressional majority most effectively. To do that they need to read these two articles by the historian who has spent the last few years immersed in the politics of the period — a man who wasn’t even born until the late 60’s and has no axe to grind. He has something important to tell them.

Project Vote Smart has all the contact information you need, including staff members. if you are so inclined to send these articles along, please do.

Update: Young people, educate yourselves. Seriously. It’s important.

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DLC Dance

by digby

Harold Ford has never been my favorite Democrat and now that he’s running the DLC I assumed he would set my blood boiling even more than in the past. But I just saw him interviewed by Blitzer and he did not succumb to the temptation to use liberals as his foil — indeed, he argued with Blitzer’s entire premise which was that the party was divided along crazies vs centrist lines. He even interrupted to point out that the DLC had strongly backed “progressive” legislation during the 90’s like family and medical leave.

More importantly, he came out strongly against the escalation, which was my biggest concern. True, he did use Republicans Warner and Hagel as his benchmarks for seriousness, which was annoying, but it was a minor transgression compared to what I expected. (I understand the politics of claiming bipartisanship on the war, but a mention of some Democrats in there would have been helpful.)

Ford is a talented politician. It would be nice to see him use his gifts for good. If he can persuade the DLC that they do not need to reflexively trash their fellow Democrats, even when Wolf Blitzer is tossing them opportunity after opportunity to do so, then perhaps they will not be the pernicious influence on the political discourse that they grew into during the 90’s and the Bush years. Baby steps.

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Wonder Working Hack

by digby

Bush’s former speechwriter Michael Gerson, (purveyor of the evangelical dog-whistle crapola that permeated every presidential speech for years)praised his former employer’s SOTU address on Tuesday to high heaven (ahem) and took Jim Webb to task for his lousy writing skills, incoherence and all around terrible speech. Yes he did.

The Democratic response by Virginia Sen. James Webb was also memorable, in a different way. Whenever a politician puts out to the media that he has thrown away the speechwriters’ draft and written the remarks himself (as Webb did), it is often a sign of approaching mediocrity. This was worse. Senator Webb made liberal use of clichés: the middle class is “the backbone” of the country, which is losing its “place at the table.” I am not even sure there is a literary term for a mixed metaphor that crosses two clichés. And Senator Webb’s logic was as incoherent as his language (the two are often related). No “precipitous withdrawal”—but retreat “in short order.” Fight the war on terror vigorously—except where the terrorists have chosen to fight it. It is, perhaps, a good thing that James Webb earned a job as senator. As a speechwriter he would starve.

Perhaps he’d go back to award winning literature instead. The man has too much dignity to stoop to churlish hit-pieces on Newsweek online, that’s for sure.

Blogger and professional speechwriter Dan Conley, who thought the speech was as good as everyone but Gerson did, delivers an extremely satisfying point by point rebuttal.

An excerpt:

Gerson then throws in another analysis of Webb — paraphrasing Webb’s overall foreign policy message as “Fight the war on terror vigorously—except where the terrorists have chosen to fight it.” Yes, this comes from the man who wrote “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” That line applied domestically as well as internationally … if you cannot support the Bush approach to the War on Terror, you are one of them, the others, the evil ones. Your phone records will be taken, your conversations tapped, your mail opened and if you support an opposing point of view, you will be attacked as a traitor or coward. That’s Gerson’s legacy.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Michael Gerson helped Bush sell some of the worst policies and most divisive ideas in American history, all covered in goo-goo Christian rhetoric that made many people think he was speaking in grand biblical terms. Yesterday, he let his real petty and mean conservative self show through. He and Bush really are soul brothers.

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Cultural Quagmire

by poputonian

You could make many jokes about the re-emergence of the mutaa arrangement (temp wife) in Iraq, but the situation is too tragic to laugh about.

Temporary ‘Enjoyment Marriages’ In Vogue Again With Some Iraqis

BAGHDAD — Fatima Ali was a 24-year-old divorcee with no high school diploma and no job. Shawket al-Rubae was a 34-year-old Shiite sheik with a pregnant wife who, he said, could not have sex with him.

Ali wanted someone to take care of her. Rubae wanted a companion.

They met one afternoon in May at the house he shares with his wife, in the room where he accepts visitors seeking his religious counsel. He had a proposal. Would Ali be his temporary wife? He would pay her 5,000 Iraqi dinars upfront — about $4 — in addition to her monthly expenses. About twice a week over the next eight months, he would summon her to a house he would rent.

The negotiations took an hour and ended with an unwritten agreement, the couple recalled. Thus began their “mutaa,” or enjoyment marriage, a temporary union believed by Shiite Muslims to be sanctioned by Islamic law.

The Shiite practice began 1,400 years ago, in what is now Iraq and other parts of the region, as a way to provide for war widows. Banned by President Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led government, it has regained popularity since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq brought the majority Shiites to power, said clerics, women’s rights activists and mutaa spouses.

I wonder if the mutaa is part of Cheney’s claim today of “enormous successes” in Iraq. The local thinkers don’t see it as such:

Many intellectuals consider ancient traditions such as these an obstacle to Iraq’s effort to become a more modern, democratic society. In recent years, extremist religious groups have gained more power in Iraq.

“These steps are taking the whole country backwards and are definitely hurdles to the advancement of the country,” said Hamdia Ahmed, a former member of parliament and a women’s rights activist in Baghdad. “The only solution is to separate Islam from politics.”

But, the guvmint sees it another way …

Shiite clerics and others who practice mutaa say such marriages are keeping young women from having unwed sex and widowed or divorced women from resorting to prostitution to make money.

They say a mutaa marriage is not much different from a traditional marriage in which the husband pays the wife’s family a dowry and provides for her financially.

“It was designed as a humanitarian help for women,” said Mahdi al-Shog, a Shiite cleric.

According to Shiite religious law, a mutaa relationship can last for a few minutes or several years. A man can have an unlimited number of mutaa wives and a permanent wife at the same time. A woman can have only one husband at a time, permanent or temporary. No written contract or official ceremony is required in a mutaa. When the time limit ends, the man and woman go their separate ways with none of the messiness of a regular divorce.
…
Opponents of mutaa, most of them Sunni Arabs, say it is less about religious freedom and more about economic exploitation. Thousands of men are dying in the sectarian violence that has followed the invasion, leaving behind widows who must fend for themselves. Many young men are out of work and prefer temporary over permanent wives who require long-term financial commitments. In a mutaa arrangement, the woman is entitled to payment only for the duration of the marriage.

“It’s a cover for prostitution,” said Um Akram, a women’s rights activist in Baghdad. “Some women, because they don’t want to be prostitutes, they think that this is legal because it’s got some kind of religious cover. But it is wrong, and they’re still prostitutes from the society’s point of view.” Um Akram, like the mutaa spouses interviewed, asked that only parts of her name be published.
…
Ali had a normal marriage once. It lasted only three months because the couple did not get along. Her chances for another permanent marriage, she said, were slim. Men often prefer virgins over widows and divorced women, she said.

She welcomed Rubae’s proposal because he was a well-known sheik in her neighborhood. Her family was fond of him. “He was a good guy, and he was a religious man,” she said.
…
Both Shiite and Sunni Muslims allow men to have more than one permanent wife, but they disagree over mutaa.

Most Shiites believe that the prophet Muhammad encouraged the practice as a way to give widows an income. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, has sanctioned it and offers advice on his Web site.

Um Ahmed, a 28-year-old woman from Najaf, lost her husband in 2005 when he was caught in the crossfire of a fight between two Shiite militias.

Soon after his death, she had her first mutaa relationship, with a man who was in a permanent marriage. He paid her 50,000 Iraqi dinars upfront — or $38 — and gave her money whenever she needed it during their six-month relationship.

She said she needed it often. She is a tailor and the only one in her family of 10 who works.

“When a human being needs money, the need will make a person do anything,” she said. “It’s better than doing the wrong things. This is religiously accepted.”

Many Sunnis believe that the practice is outdated and ripe for abuse. They also see it as more evidence of Iranian influence on Iraqi life. Mutaa is widespread in Iran’s Shiite theocratic state.

“It is a big insult to women,” said Ibtsam Z. Alsha, a Sunni lawyer and the head of the organization Women for the Common Good of Women.

Women’s rights activists also bemoan what they say is an increase in mutaa on college campuses. Some female students do it for money. Others do it for love when their parents forbid them to marry a man from another sect.

A cultural quagmire … and we’re in the middle of it and about to send more.

My Two Moms

by poputonian

In the comments to the previous thread, Corrine notes that Mary Cheney and Heather Poe face a big dillema and could be SOL in Virginia:

… since Mary & Heather live in Virginia, under Virginia’s brand spanking new constitutional amendment that declares marriage to be exclusively heterosexual, [Heather] can’t claim any parental rights since the law doesn’t recognize any other relationship that approximates marriage.

What to do?

Well, the family could move to Canada.

Court rules that child can have two mums

TORONTO (Reuters) – A five-year-old Canadian boy can have two mothers and a father, an Ontario court ruled this week in a landmark case that redefines the meaning of family and examines the rights of parents in same-sex relationships.

In a ruling released on Tuesday, the Ontario Court of Appeal said the female partner of the child’s biological mother could be legally recognized as the boy’s third parent.

The biological father, named on the boy’s birth certificate, is a friend of both women and is taking an active role in the child’s life.

“It is contrary to (the child’s) best interests that he is deprived of the legal recognition of the parentage of one of his mothers,” Justice Marc Rosenberg wrote in the ruling, which did not name the three parents or the child.

“Perhaps one of the greatest fears faced by lesbian mothers is the death of the birth mother… Without a declaration of parentage or some other order, the surviving partner would be unable to make decisions for their minor child.”

On the other hand, Dick Cheney’s whole world is collapsing and he might invade up nort’ — Dena, Interrobang, Cathie, watch out — and it looks like he would get at least some inside nutball support:

The Alliance for Marriage and Family, a coalition of several groups that promote a traditional family structure, had filed as an intervenor in the case.

“We think there are many good reasons for continuing to uphold the definition of family as two parents,” said Joanne McGarry, executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, one of the groups represented by the alliance.

“Once you remove it from the realm of nature and the realm of traditional moral and religious teachings, who’s going to decide how many parents a child can have? What’s so magical about three, maybe there could be more.”

O Canada.

Crazy Man

Cheney went on Wolf Blitzer and demonstrated that he has totally lost touch with reality:

BLITZER: Here is what the president said last night. “We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence would spill out across the country and, in time, the entire region would be drawn into the conflict. For America, this is a nightmare scenario.” He was talking about the consequences of failure in Iraq. How much responsibility do you have, though — you and the administration — for this potential scenario?

CHENEY: Well, this is the argument, that there wouldn’t be any problem if we hadn’t gone into Iraq.

BLITZER: Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

CHENEY: Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would, at this point, be engaged in a nuclear arms race with Ahmadinejad, his blood enemy next door in Iran.

BLITZER: But he was being contained, as you well know, by the no-fly zones —

CHENEY: He was not being contained. He was not being contained, Wolf. Wolf, the entire sanctions regime had been undermined by Saddam Hussein.

BLITZER: But he didn’t have stockpiles —

CHENEY: He had corrupted the entire effort to try to keep him contained. He was bribing senior officials of other governments. The Oil-for-Food Program had been totally undermined. And he had, in fact, produced and used weapons of mass destruction previously, and he retained the capability to produce that kind of stuff in the future.

BLITZER: Which happened in the ’80s.

CHENEY: You can go back and argue the whole thing all over again, Wolf, but what we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do. The world is much safer today because of it.

There have been three national elections in Iraq. There’s a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically-elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed, his sons are dead, his government is gone. And the world is better off for it.

You can argue about that all you want. That’s history. That’s what we did, and you and I can have this debate. We’ve had it before, but the fact of the matter is, in terms of threats to the United States from al Qaeda, for example, attacks on the United States — they didn’t need an excuse. We weren’t in Iraq when they hit us on 9/11.

BLITZER: But the current situation there is–

CHENEY: The fact of the matter was that al Qaeda was out to kill Americans before we ever went into Iraq.

BLITZER: The current situation there is very unstable. The president himself speaks about a nightmare scenario right now. He was contained, as you repeatedly said throughout the ’90s, after the first Gulf War, in a box, Saddam Hussein.

CHENEY: He was — after the first Gulf War, had managed to kick out all of the inspectors. He was provided payments to families of suicide bombers. He was a safe haven for terrorism, one of the prime state sponsors of terrorism, designated by our State Department for a long time. He’d started two wars. He had violated 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions.

If he were still there today, we’d have a terrible situation.

BLITZER: But there is —

CHENEY: No, there is not. There is not. There’s problems — ongoing problems — but we have in fact accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that’s been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off. They have got a democratically-written constitution — first ever in that part of the world. They’ve had three national elections. So there’s been a lot of success.

BLITZER: How worried are you —

CHENEY: We still have more work to do to get a handle on the security situation, and the president’s put a plan in place to do that.

BLITZER: How worried are you of this nightmare scenario, that the U.S. is building up this Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with an enormous amount of military equipment, sophisticated training, and then in the end, they’re going to turn against the United States?

CHENEY: Wolf, that’s not going to happen. The problem is, you’ve got —

BLITZER: They’re — warming up to Iran and Syria right now.

CHENEY: Wolf, you can come up with all kinds of what-ifs; you’ve got to be deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is, we’ve made major progress. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet.

There’s more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.

But the biggest problem we face right now, is the danger than the United States will validate the terrorist’s strategy, that in fact what will happen here, with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, where the pressure is from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorist’s strategy, that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task — That we don’t have the stomach for the fight. That’s the biggest threat.

Awesome, isn’t it?

His demeanor was extremely hostile and aggressive. Blitzer tried to inject some truth into the interview but Cheney would have none of it — much like his earlier showdown with harpy wife, Lynn.

What with the sophomoric salvo against Clinton in the WaPo yesterday by daughter Liz, it appears that the Cheney family is having a very public meltdown.

John Amato has a nice piece of the interview up over at C&L. You’ll especially like this:

BLITZER: []your daughter, Mary. She’s pregnant. All of us are happy she’s going to have a baby. You’re going to have another grandchild. Some of the — some critics are suggesting — for example, a statement from someone representing Focus on the Family, “Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for children. Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean that it’s best for the child.” Do you want to respond to that?

CHENEY: No.

BLITZER: She’s, obviously, a good daughter –

CHENEY: I’m delighted I’m about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf.

And obviously I think the world of both my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you’re out of line with that question.

BLITZER: I think all of us appreciate –

CHENEY: I think you’re out of line.

Right. He’s out of line for asking about it. James Dobson, on the other hand, is treated like royalty. These Cheneys are clearly the ones who invented conservative upside-downism, which shouldn’t be surprising since Lynn wrote the book on liberal moral relativism. Black is white — evil is good — conservatives are moral.

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“Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard…”

by digby

Via TBOGG. As hard it is to believe, after being roundly ridiculed for his embarrassing “Shane” metaphor from four years ago, Howard Fineman is using those cowboy metaphors again:

George W. Bush wanted to be Harry Truman (patron saint of embattled presidents) in his State of the Union speech, but he may have reminded voters of Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. You know the famous scene: the giddy pilot in a cowboy hat hops aboard his own payload to Armageddon.

Here’s the thing. Nothing Bush said last night was any more “Pickens” than what he’s been saying since 9/11. He never sounded like Shane.

Here’s his most famous moment:

“I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!”

Here’s Slim Pickens in “Dr Strangelove”:

Well, boys, I reckon this is it – nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain’t much of a hand at makin’ speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin’ on back there.

Bush’s famous bullhorn moment is no more moving and meaningful than Major T.J. “King” Kongs pep talk. Less actually. (And in fairness to Fineman, there were even more egregious metaphors: people were not just calling him “Shane,” they were comparing him to Shakespeare’s Henry V and Winston Churchill.)

Bush has also been making the same SOTU speech over and over and over again ever since 2002. He wasn’t Shane or Hal then any more than he is now. He always looked as if he didn’t understand half of what he was saying and he only got animated when he talked about boom-boom and evil.

Last night:

From the start, America and our allies have protected our people by staying on the offense. The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing, and free-flowing communications are long over. For the terrorists, life since 9/11 has never been the same.

Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not happen. We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented — but here is some of what we do know: We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We broke up a Southeast Asian terrorist cell grooming operatives for attacks inside the United States. We uncovered an al Qaeda cell developing anthrax to be used in attacks against America. And just last August, British authorities uncovered a plot to blow up passenger planes bound for America over the Atlantic Ocean. For each life saved, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave public servants who devote their lives to finding the terrorists and stopping them.

Every success against the terrorists is a reminder of the shoreless ambitions of this enemy. The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that is the case, America is still a Nation at war.

Here was 2003:

This nation can lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature. And this nation is leading the world in confronting and defeating the man-made evil of international terrorism…

To date, we’ve arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al Qaeda. They include a man who directed logistics and funding for the September the 11th attacks; the chief of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf, who planned the bombings of our embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole; an al Qaeda operations chief from Southeast Asia; a former director of al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan; a key al Qaeda operative in Europe; a major al Qaeda leader in Yemen. All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way — they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.

We are working closely with other nations to prevent further attacks. America and coalition countries have uncovered and stopped terrorist conspiracies targeting the American embassy in Yemen, the American embassy in Singapore, a Saudi military base, ships in the Straits of Hormuz and the Straits the Gibraltar. We’ve broken al Qaeda cells in Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, London, Paris, as well as, Buffalo, New York.

We have the terrorists on the run. We’re keeping them on the run. One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.

yee. hah.

Fineman and his little friends ate it up at the time. Now they think it’s foolish. It was always foolish.

It’s not a new insight, by a long shot.

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