Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Blowing Off Steam

by digby

It’s probably overkill for me to post about this hour long Pamela Atlas Shrugs “interview” with John Bolton since so many others have already commented. But I thought it was worthwhile to emphasize something about it that Glenn Greenwald mentioned in passing. This interview was done last Saturday. Does everyone remember what was going on last Saturday?

Masood Haider from UN adds: Kofi Annan announced on Saturday night that he had been in touch with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon and that both had agreed that the end of fighting would take effect at 8 am Monday in Lebanon and Israel.

“I am happy to announce that the two leaders have agreed that the cessation of hostilities and the end of the fighting will enter into force on Aug 14, at 0500 hours GMT,” Mr Annan said in a statement released here.

It wasn’t just an ordinary day. It was the day when the ceasefire was being finalized. And while I understand that he was probably still stinging from having had his ass handed to him by the French, it was still inappropriate to give an hour long interview with a psychotic fawning righwing blogger who asked him questions like this:

Pamela: So much faith in the Lebanese government I do not understand. A puppet of Syria, who is a puppet of Iran. Iran is Barzini here. You see the Godfather? Okay? So a question about it. Who props up that government? I mean if the Israeli, if the IDF, which is, although when I was in Israel, I gotta tell you, a bunch of baby-faced kids. I know they’re always portrayed in the media with Darth Vader helmets and the Israeli war machine. I’m telling you, the cutest kids ever. But if they couldn’t contain, and I think there’s an element of that that no one really wants to talk about. I wonder how much the US government was surprised that Israel didn’t go in, bing-bang-boom, and knock these suckers out. Forget about Israel for a second, even though it’s difficult for me, right and wrong, good and evil, and all that. Let’s discuss real politics, shall we? It’s in America’s best interest that Hezbollah be eliminated. I mean this is not just Israel’s problem. You know who Hezbollah is. You know where they are. So I think there was an element of surprise. Do I think it’s Olmert’s weakness? I do. Did I campaign wildly for Bibi? I did. Do I have a vote? I don’t. So I think Israel also, you know it’s interesting, when I was in Israel, you could see the country was in short of like a shock, like a 9/11 shock. Here they had banked so much on land for peace and peace, even this sh–, even a bad peace, sorry about that, John, is better than a good war, so to speak, although I don’t subscribe to that. I understand that the current, modern civilization does, to which they’re going to pay dearly, but that’s besides the point. Such stock we’re putting in the Lebanese government, who is totally kowtowing to Hezbollah. You put every remark by the crying Siniora, I mean, another Godfather moment. You remember Godfather, Frank Sinatra, it was supposed to be Frank Sinatra, he’s crying, you’re godfather. Same thing happens, somebody slap him. So how could you have so much faith in the Lebanon government? I mean, I want to believe, John. I believe in you. I want to believe.

It might be worthwhile to see if Chris Matthews or CNN are interested in this story. Pamela would be more than happy to go on television, I’m sure, and explain how she got an exclusive interview with the US Ambassador to the UN right in the middle of the biggest crisis of his tenure. It would be a fascinating story.

The last I heard, we were shy one vote for a filibuster. I think we all have noticed that appointments cannot be derailed on substance. A nominee can be a raving lunatic with a Nazi paper trail a mile long and they will still get through. A person will only be defeated or withdraw if the charge is trivial and easy to understand.

This could be it. Pamela is beyond crazy and this is actually the second interview, I believe, with her idol John Bolton (with whom she seems to have a rather odd familiarity.) I think she would look very fetching in a blue dress.

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One Toe In The Water

by digby

A lot of people are going to take issue with Joe Klein for this week’s column about the Connecticut race, and with good reason. (Armando does so, here.)

But I am not going to join that party. I have been very hard on Klein for years for his anachronistic political analysis, but I am sensing that something has changed and I think it’s worth recognizing.

Setting aside his weak defense of triangulation as a governing strategy and his misplaced hope that after all the excitement of these last few years the political system will settle down into a nice bipartisan era of good feelings if the Democrats don’t go off the deep end (tell it to Dobson, Limbaugh and Kristol, Joe), I think his piece is actually amazingly right-on in some important respects. He seems to have had an epiphany recently and finally figured out how we got to where we are, if not how to get out of it. Since Klein is a major voice of the insider conventional wisdom, I think we are making progress.

Forget all the silliness he writes about “blognuts” and and his predictable he said/she said rendition of the post Lamont challenges to both parties and get a load of this:

Much was made of Cheney’s venting, and it is a bit too easy, after six years of this bilge, to dwell on the Vice President’s aura and miss the essential felony of the Bush White House—that it has tried to run a war without bipartisan support. Indeed, it has often attempted to use the war for partisan gain. To be sure, there is some grist to the Republican portrayal of Democrats as a bunch of wimpy peaceniks. All too often in the post-Vietnam past—the first Gulf War, for example—the default position of the Democratic Party has been to assume that any prospective use of U.S. military power would be immoral. But Bush’s initial post-9/11 response was not one of those times. The invasion of Afghanistan and an aggressive effort to destroy al-Qaeda were supported by just about every Democratic politician. Many leading Democrats even gave Bush the authority to invade Iraq, although most did so, I suspect, for reasons of political expediency. One of the most convincing arguments offered by the bloggers is that the Democratic establishment should have been far more skeptical than it was about a pre-emptive, nearly unilateral assault on an Islamic country.

In 2004 Bush and Karl Rove managed to flummox the Democrats by conflating the war in Iraq with the war against al-Qaeda and insisting that any Democratic reservations about Iraq were a sign of weakness. This was infuriating. It was Bush’s disastrous decision to go to war—and worse, to go to war with insufficient resources—that transformed Iraq into a terrorist Valhalla. It is Bush’s feckless prosecution of the war that has created the current morass, in which a U.S. military withdrawal could lead to a regional conflagration. Rove may avert another electoral embarrassment this November with the same old demagoguery, but his strategy has betrayed the nation’s best interests. It has destroyed any chance of a unified U.S. response to a crisis overseas. Even the Wall Street Journal’s quasi-wingnut [quasi???? — ed] editorial page cautioned, in the midst of a typical anti-Democratic harrumph, “[No] President can maintain a war for long without any support from the opposition party; sooner or later his own party will begin to crack as well.”

That’s about as harsh an assessment of Bush’s failures as I’ve read anywhere. He has absorbed the message that supporting Iraq was a bad move from the get. He has absorbed the message that the bipartisanship he loves and values was destroyed by the Republicans, not the Democrats. And while he still bemoans the fact that Dems are weak on security, he does so with much less energy than he has in the past and lays the current disaster directly at the feet of the Republicans and their hyper partisan governing style. This is a good sign.

It’s true that he fails to note his own (and others in the political establishment’s) complicity in the terrible decision to back Bush’s Iraq policy. And he blandly repeats the trope about the Democrats going back to the 70’s (but notably fails to conjure the magic “McGovern” word even once.) However, it’s far more important that he has come to recognize, somehow, that the Republicans “wave the bloody shirt of Islamist terrorism as a partisan bludgeon.”

This is a big deal as we go into the 06 and 08 elections. If the punditocrisy and the media chatterers can be encouraged to see this clearly, as Klein has done, we might finally be able to change this national security narrative and take these GOP thugs down.

Furthermore, despite Klein’s desperate attempt to find equivalence, anybody can see that compared to “waving the bloody shirt of Islamist terrorism as a partisan bludgeon,” the “blognuts” rejecting Clintonian triagulation isn’t even in the same league when it comes to extremism. After all, one is exploiting global death and destruction for political gain while the other (even if you think it’s a political mistake) is just routine internecine politics. There simply isn’t any equivalence and it’s quite clear that Joe Klein knows it, even if he isn’t ready to abandon his irrelevant position as a “raging moderate.”

So, I say welcome to the reality based pool, Joe. Go ahead, you can jump all the way in. The water’s fine.

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Bad Move Rising

by digby

This is unbelievable. Rahm Emmanuel had better be behind the scenes twisting arms so hard he’s given himself carpal tunnel system because his public stance is ridiculous:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the party’s congressional campaign committee, thought Lieberman’s presence could help Democrats, because the senator “will be talking about raising the minimum wage, energy policy – echoing the Democratic candidates’ message.”

Uhm no. The Senator will be talking about how the Democrats are weak on security and that the party is on the brink of being taken over by uppity negroes and dirty hippies. He made his position quite clear:

“If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them and they will strike again.”

and

“I am committed to this campaign, to a different kind of politics, to bringing the Democratic Party back from Ned Lamont, Maxine Waters to the mainstream, and for doing something for the people of Connecticut. That’s what this is all about: which one of us, Lamont or me, can do more for the future of our people here in Connecticut. And on that basis, I’m going forward with confidence, purpose and some real optimism.”

The RNC couldn’t have written a better set of talking points. But they didn’t have to. Lieberman and his cronies have internalized all the anti-liberal propaganda of the last few years and have obviously come to believe it themselves (as have many others of the political class.) He has drawn the lines quite clearly.

Emmanuel’s statement really puzzles me which is why I posited that he must be twisting arms behind the scenes. I kind of get why Shumer might hedge his bets because if Lieberman pulls it out there will be a blow job contest of epic proportions to see with whom Lieberman will caucus. (I’m betting it’s the GOP. They always take their dates out for lobster and Dove bars before they take them home — just ask Margaret Carlson.)But Emmanuel stands to lose the whole enchilada if this message that Lieberman is really a Democrat persists.

Less than an hour after Lieberman announced he’d run as an independent, Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, rushed out a statement praising the senator; Reps. Christopher Shays, R-4th District and Nancy L. Johnson, R-5th District, later followed suit.

All three Republican districts are on every national insider’s list of the 15 to 20 shakiest House seats in the nation. Democrats need a net gain of 16 to win control of the House for the first time since 1992, and polls and pundits see the party as having a good chance.

Connecticut is one of the party’s key targets. Though each of the three Republican incumbents is considered moderate, and routinely opposes GOP leaders on social issues, they all have to defend consistent records of support for President Bush on Iraq and economic issues.

All seemed to be grabbing for Lieberman’s coattails.

Conveying Lieberman as even slightly acceptable is to say that the three endangered Republican congressional representatives’ mushy, useless centrism is acceptable too.

And in the big picture is devastating. Rove is obviously going to try to keep the focus on the Connecticut “Dems in disarray” theme and use poor old Joe as the poster boy for the good old days when Democrats were strong and manly. Every day that Joe stays in the race reinforcing GOP talking points is a good day for Republicans. (It’s an even better day for them when the Democratic establishment goes wobbly because of a little trash talk on national security.)

None of this is the fault of the Democrats of Connecticut who chose to replace Joe Lieberman. It’s the fault of the spoiler who refuses to take no for an answer and is going out of his way to help Karl Rove win in the fall. It is a bad tactic for any Democratic leader to now spit in the faces of Connecticut Democratic voters and imply that their decision doesn’t matter. It will help Republicans in Connecticut and beyond. Even worse, the message will demoralize Democrats nationwide just when they are feeling that they might actually be able to effect some change. If Democratic leaders want to suppress Dem turnout in the fall, going soft of Lieberman is the way to do it.

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Friends And Allies

by digby

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. George W. Bush, September 20, 2001

U.S. and European officials described Pakistan yesterday as the hub of a plot to down transatlantic flights, saying the young British men allegedly behind the planned attacks drew financial and logistical support from sponsors operating in Karachi and Lahore.

At least 17 suspects in British custody for the aviation plot have family ties to Pakistan, and several had traveled there in recent months to seek instructions and confer with unknown conspirators, intelligence officials said yesterday, discussing several elements of the investigation on the condition of anonymity.

Pakistan’s government, portraying itself as a reliable ally against terrorism, said it had made at least seven arrests connected to the plot but insisted that the conspiracy was centered in neighboring Afghanistan. Two of the men in custody there were British citizens.

[…]

U.S. intelligence analysts say they believe that the principal remaining leadership of al-Qaeda is hiding in Pakistan. Despite increased cooperation between the Islamabad government and Western powers since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, they say, the number of extremists inside the country may be on the rise and elements of Pakistan’s intelligence services remain sympathetic to their cause.

On Friday, the British government portrayed Pakistan’s cooperation as vital in undoing the alleged bombing conspiracy, but some U.S. officials said that five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, they are far from countering, or even understanding, the level of threat emanating from Pakistan’s lawless regions and bustling cities.

[…]

Two intelligence sources suggested that Pakistan had replaced Afghanistan as a center for terrorist activities and expressed frustration with the attempts of Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to exert control over huge swaths of territory.

The senior administration official did not play down the problem but insisted that the situation is better today than it was five years ago. “Prior to 9/11, the whole region was a safe haven,” the official said. “You see attempts from Pakistan to affect this, but it’s still part of a long-term element of our battle against terrorism.” Pakistani officials say the country’s efforts are sincere and pursued at major cost in lives and money.

Ok. let’s be generous here and say that the Pakistani government is doing the best it can. The population is probably the most sympathetic to al Qaeda of anywhere in the world. It’s the epicenter of al Qaeda philosophy. It’s not easy even for a military dictatorship to deal with this and it’s more helpful to have them at least ostensibly on our side than otherwise.

But this makes absolutely no sense at all:

Pakistan is building a new nuclear reactor that could produce enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a report said.

It said the major expansion of its nuclear program could prompt an intensified arms race in South Asia.

But US officials and congressional aides, who confirmed the Pakistani plan, said it was unlikely to derail a nuclear cooperation accord with India or the sale of US-made F-16 jets to Islamabad.

News of the planned new Pakistani facility was confirmed as the US Congress faced targets for action this week on both an Indian cooperation accord and the F-16s deal.

“We have been aware of these plans, and we discourage any use of that facility for military purposes such as weapons development,” White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters.

He said the administration “discourage(s) expansion and modernisation of nuclear weapons programs, both of India and Pakistan,” nuclear rivals who refused to sign the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

While US officials knew about the reactor project, congressional aides said the US Congress was largely unaware until a report in the Washington Post on Monday citing an analysis of satellite photos and other data by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

The analysis concluded Pakistan was building a second larger heavy water reactor at its Khushab complex that could produce enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year.

Construction apparently began sometime after March 2000.

But the analysis said Pakistan did not appear to be hastening completion, possibly due to shortages of reactor components or weapons production infrastructure.

The administration preferred to keep the project quiet because public disclosure “probably will aggravate concerns in India” as well as on Capitol Hill, one US official said.

Are you feeling safer?

And then there was the inexplicable decision to allow acknowledged nuclear proliferator AQ Khan to skate with a televised apology. This from an administration that continues to make a fetish of ensuring that nuclear weapons do not find their ways in to the hands of terrorists or nations hostile to the US.

So, last week we have what appears to be a rather elaborate but low tech terrorist plot unravelled that shows that terrorists are still operating out of Pakistan. Pakistan is also ramping up its nuclear operations with the knowledge of the administration, which kept that knowledge from the US congress until a couple of weeks ago.

Why is this not considered a problem by anyone in Washington? Do they honestly believe that this combination of al Qaeda, nuclear weapons and a tenuous military dictatorship whose intelligence services are sympathetic to bin Laden is not worth worrying about —- while we obsess over Iraq and Iran?

Apparently. It’s one of those issues that has confounded me from the beginning. Al Qaeda style Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is a real threat. Their methods are designed for maximum effect and are almost guaranteed, if successful, to create a disproportionate and inchoate response. And yet the country that is the hive of such terrorism (with a government police force that is reputed to be sympathetic to it) is considered to be an ally on the par of Great Britain — which is a target just like the US. It makes no sense and it’s one of the primary reasons that we can be sure that the neocons are no more serious about terrorism than they have ever been.

Repeat after me — these people do not really care about terrorism. They never have. If you read their manifestos from before 9/11, terrorism is a footnote. They ignored Richard Clark and the CIA when they took office. Bush told his briefer on August 6th 2001 “ok, you’ve covered your ass” when he was told “bin Laden determined to strike in the US.” They think that terrorism is only threatening as part of an official nation state apparatus. They are completely rigid in their thinking, refusing to consider new evidence, even decades after they’ve been proven wrong.

And not only do they not see terrorism as a real threat, their own obsessions with toppling middle eastern states virtually guarantees that terrorism will continue to rise. Their unearned reputation for competence in this area is another case of Republican upisdownism in full effect.

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The Fall Line

by digby

NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

Waiting normally wouldn’t have been a problem, but because of the Connecticut primary they had to roll out their new product in August this year.

Update: The plot thickens

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Elvis Has Left The Blogosphere

by digby

This one covers just about every piece of braindead conventional wisdom, smug dismissive elitism and shallow political insights it’s possible to hit in one short cable TV segment. And it’s done with a blatant rightwing slant that obviously feels so natural and comfortable to these bobble heads they aren’t even aware of what they’re saying. From CNN’s “money” show:

SERWER: The blogosphere is always an interesting place to go for a wacky and sometimes wise commentary on major stories. CNNMONEY.com managing editor Allen Wastler joins us now with a closer look on what the bloggers are saying about this new terror threat.

Allen lay it on us.

ALLEN WASTLER, CNNMONEY.COM: This is the blogosphere you just got to love it. People shoot from the hip and go at it. Politics we were talking about earlier in the show, it just boils right in this. It’s like distilled for you. And of course the right wing is making the most noise. Check out one of the guess bloggers. Check out this comment. “If you want to believe that George W. Bush and the Patriot Act are the greatest threats to our way of life, you won’t have much trouble finding a professor on a nearby college campus to buttress your theory. But its past time we face the facts and realize this is our new normal.” That was the position taken by a lot of the right wing siders.

Hey, people want to hurt us. There are terrorists out there, and this is a manifestation of that effect. Now of course, you got the other side, OK. Now the other side was basically, well, the threats out there. But you haven’t really been acting that entire well about it. Check this out from America blog. “Bush was briefed about the attack days ago while he was on vacation. And guess what, he stayed on vacation. Sound familiar?” Of course, referencing previous Katrina oops. So you know, they are coming from that point of view and trying to hammer it.

And of course they always accuse the other side. And you can change right and left wing interchangeably here. Because they always accuse the other side of oh, you are playing politics. Now this time it’s the left again also from Americablogs. That referencing remembers Dick Cheney commented on the Lieberman/Lamont election before the London plot was revealed to the public. And said that basically Lamont’s win would give aid to the al Qaeda types. Here’s a comment from Americablog. “Knowing that this story was about to break, Cheney invoked al Qaeda in purely political terms. Once again, Cheney is using terrorism for political purposes.”

But, I put it to you, OK. If the administration had messed up and not caught something, would the left wing be putting it to political purposes?

HARRIS: Very good.

WASTLER: You know? It can go either way. And that’s what you are seeing on the Internet here. It’s sort of distilling this argument.

HARRIS: Allen, I have to ask you, one of the treats sometimes about going to the blogosphere is that you hear all manner of conspiracy theory.

WASTLER: Of course there are always the Republicans. Maybe they released this the going into November elections. I sort of dismissed the conspiracy theory. Just because the conspiracy theory comes out so often, it’s kind of like status quo now.

HARRIS: Right.

VALLIERE: If things are so poisonous right now to come full circle. We talked earlier about 1968. This may be the most poisonous political environment since the late ’60s. So I’ve given up. I just look at the economic fundamentals. Don’t you guys think that one of the big stories this summer is that interest rates had peaked. Whether you look at housing rate is sensitive, my sense is the worst is over on interest rates.

WASTLER: You get that sense, but I think the Feds will go back to hiking. We haven’t seen the interest rate game play out yet. If you look at some of the latest figures, the “Wall Street Journal” surveys this week showing that costs are going up out of the commerce department. You have some of these things I think the Feds are taking a little pause right now, but I think they will have to jump back in maybe one or two more hikes.

VALLIERE: I think Ben Bernanke are pretty dubbes (ph), I think they are going to dominate.

WASTLER: We got a bet, Greg.

SERWER: Of course you can always find a blog who would link Ben Bernanke into some sort of plot tied into something going on in the Middle East that would make Syriana look perfectly sane.

WASTLER: Elvis is always at the center.

I think I just understood something I’ve previously been unaware of. The financial media are even more stupid and even more blissfully unaware of their stupidity than the political media. It explains a lot.

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Bonanza!

by digby

Speaking of Karl Rove being back in the saddle, this has been the most popular story on AOL news for the last 24 hours:

Bush Makes Promise to Dead Soldier’s Mom

Says He’ll Get Her Reports on How Son Died

CLINTONVILLE, Wis. (Aug. 12) – Nearly three years ago, Beth Karlson’s son died in Iraq. Barely a day after meeting with President Bush, the mother said Friday that she’s much closer to getting some answers about the incident that killed her son.

“We just got off the phone with the White House. It is in the process,” she said Friday. “I am not bashful. When you got his ear, you might as well do something.”

Karlson said she was among some families of soldiers killed in Iraq who had private meetings with Bush at an Oneida police station Thursday during his trip to Green Bay that included a fundraiser for Republican U.S. House candidate John Gard.

Her son, Army Staff Sgt. Warren S. Hansen, 36, was one of 17 soldiers killed when two Blackhawk helicopters collided above Mosul on Nov. 15, 2003.

Karlson, 63, said that during her and her husband’s “very personal” meeting with the president, she brought up her frustration in obtaining the official Army report about the crash.

Karlson said Bush promised that he would look into the matter and get her the reports.

“It was a very private meeting and that is the way we want to keep it,” she said Friday. “He is a wonderful man. How many other presidents have sat down with the families? None that I know of.”

[…]

“He said, ‘I just love the military. There’s just something about military families.’ And he thanked us for raising the type of child we did. That’s part of what he wrote in the scrapbook,” Karlson told the newspaper.

Ok, here we go. Bush the fearless terrorist killer and benevolent Dad is back. It must be election time. Rove thinks he can squeeze out one more win through the bullhorn. They are going full out with a turbo-charged version of their tried and true “Democrats are effeminate pansies and the Republicans are real manly men” campaign. The loving president Dad who manfully “comforts the moms and widders” is a staple of such imagery, making it seems as though attacking him is attacking them.

The constant reference to McGovern is this season’s Swift Boat smear. Since Karl doesn’t have a single candidate to tar with cowardly Vietnam stories he has chosen instead to run against the fabled “left wing” of the Democratic party circa 68-72. The point is less to convince the electorate than it is to trash talk the Democrats into backing off a harsh critique of the war. And it’s remarkably effective. As we can see from countless articles and columns of the past few weeks, nothing sends the timorous insider Dems scurrying like an accusation that the Party is in the clutches of the crazy liberals. The man knows his adversaries.

But the other side of the coin is to present the Codpiece as grown-up contrast and rehab his reputation. Bush is, aftger all, remarkably unpopular and he is what’s dragging down the party. Part of the plan requires him and all his minions to swagger and talk tough, of course. But this formulation of the hippie kids running amuck also needs something less confrontational: the patient parent who can calm the waters. Here comes Ben Cartwright, the pops of the Ponderosa whose credo was”A man’s never wrong doing what he thinks is right.”

I don’t think it’s going to work again. It’s like the third sequel of a bad movie. The hippie extremist plot is absurd, the hysterical dialog is unintentionally funny and the actors are out of shape and looking old. Worst of all, the star is now box-office poison.

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Upisdownism Makes A Comeback

by digby

It appears that virtually the entire right side of the political spectrum has chosen to disseminate an abject lie. It’s everywhere and it’s permeated the media to such an extent that until I signed on this morning and got around to reading the Washington Post even I didn’t know it was a lie — and I tend to pay attention to this stuff. (Imagine how this has slipped into the conventional wisdom among people who only casually tune in.)

Here it is: the British arrests prove that we need programs like the illegal wiretapping and further prove that the press has been irresponsible by reporting about such illegal secret programs. The truth is precisely the opposite. (Glenn will take you through the details.) The British and the Americans followed the laws of their respective countries that require warrants — and the terrorist plot carried on using telephones and bank transfers long after it was “revealed” in the press that the government was tracking communications and financial transactions.

This has been a memorable week of such deep spin swallowing among the press. The Lieberman loss has somehow been morphed into great news for the Republicans and the thwarting of the terrorist attacks in Britain using legal means supports the president’s absolute need to use illegal methods to stop terrorist attacks. We’re through the looking glass again people. Karl Rove is definitely back in the saddle.

(And the press corps breathes a huge sigh of relief — they hate having to report bad news for the GOP. Republicans make their lives a living hell when they do it.)

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Keeping Secrets

Reading Scott’s discussion of how the UK went about uncovering the recent terror plot (and how the right is trying to lie about it), I was reminded of how difficult it is for three people to keep a secret, let alone 24 or more. Of course, that’s not to takeaway from the enormous hard work, and yes, luck, our cousins on the other side of the pond had this time. But the fact remains that keeping secrets just isn’t that easy.

One can’t expect 100%, certainly. But as I see it, without a doubt the most bizarre aspect of the 9/11 attacks were not that they were imagined and plotted but that they actually happened. Even assuming an incompetent CIA and FBI, there were many, many signs that summer and fall that something was up (start with the 9/11 commission report and work your way through Pretext to War, The One Percent Doctrine, and a slew of other books). But for some strange reason all those signs were missed ignored, failed to rise to the higher echelons. Of course, I would be the last person to suggest that George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were unspeakably, unforgivably, negligent by ignoring the clear warnings of the Clinton administration on Al Qaeda – complaining about all the attention being focused on “just one man;” snickering, “Okay, you’ve coverd your ass” when folks from CIA came to brief them.

Actually, I confess it. I just lied to you. I was one of the first to suggest that the Bush administration, through its utter incompetence, bears a heavy responsibility for the carnage of 9/11. I was saying so a few hours after the attacks to my friends from Finland who called to make sure that we were ok.

If nothing else, the exposure of the latest potential atrocity simply highlights how incompetent the Bushites were. No, they didn’t “let it happen” and it certainly wasn’t a black op to boost Bush in the polls.* It’s just that, well, Richard Clarke had been pushed aside, John O’Neill had quit in disgust to manage WTC security, Robert Mueller was the new kid on the block,and John Ashroft was proofreading an arrangement of “When the Eagle Soars” for seven kazoos and musical saw. Meanwhile, many others were simply ignored and let the obsessive, paranoid and quite essential monitoring of bin Laden’s activities drop.

That failure to pay attention to reality is a hallmark of the Bush administration.

*I know some commenters disagree, but you’ll first have to explain to me how, if this was some sort of nefarious Rovian plot, George Bush was caught on video during the attacks reading “My Pet Goat” to a classroom in Florida. The least we’d expect would be for Bush to be strutting around on in full Commander Codpiece regalia, not flitting in sheer panic all over the country.

No, folks, it was simple stupidity and negligence that enabled bin Laden to wreak havoc in the US – they should have been caught and they could have been if anyone up top had been paying attention. I’ll leave open the question as to whether Rove slapped his forehead on 9/11 and exclaimed, “Damn! Wish I’d thought of that!” Even if he didn’t – and frankly, I’ve always assumed that day Carl was probably cowering under a desk somewhere, overcome by the stench of fresh ca-ca in his pants and wouldn’t have it together to think of much of anything else – the fact remains that within hours of the carnage, the Bush administration treated the attacks as if it were a gift from God to fastlane the prep for an Iraq War and hasten their intended evisceration of the US Constitution.

Conspiracy Theory

by digby

Kevin Drum makes an interesting observation that I haven’t heard anyone else voice:

British and American counterterrorism agencies have been tracking 50 al-Qaeda (or al-Qaeda-ish) terrorists for over a year. They were under intensive surveillance the entire time and never had any chance of pulling off their plans. What’s more, the investigation has probably provided us with hundreds or thousands of additional leads to keep tabs on.

I wonder: what lesson will al-Qaeda draw from this? Osama bin Laden may be a religious fanatic, but he’s not stupid, and my guess is that he’ll conclude that in a post-9/11 security environment it’s simply impossible to keep a plot this big a secret. There are too many entry points and too many ways for a single mistake to derail the whole thing.

Bin Laden may be fond of big statements, but I wonder if this failure will convince him and his compatriots to think smaller? Is our future now more likely to be full of lots of little attacks rather than the occasional big one?

Big conspiracies are very hard to keep quiet. In Europe and North America at least, stepped up law enforcement has made an elaborate Islamic terrorist plot harder than ever. Kevin’s speculation may very well be correct and if so, that is good news. It’s not that small bore terrorist attacks are a good thing, mind you, but simply that they have less shock value and are less likely to provoke the kind of mindless desire to lash out that led so many to support to absurd responses like Iraq. If this is true, perhaps we can, over time and with different leadership, deal with this threat more intelligently in the future.

The problem, of course, is talking these bloodthirsty, WWIII wingnut armageddonists down from the ledge.

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