Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Jingo Blowback

the digby

Last night Kevin approvingly linked to the same William Greider piece that I did and said:

On a related note, it makes me feel almost nostalgic to watch the toxic stew of cherry picking, half truths, and outright misrepresentations currently being used to demonize the UAE as a virtual arm of al-Qaeda. You know what it reminds me of? The way Bush & Co. tried to sell Saddam Hussein as Osama’s best buddy in the Middle East. It’s poetic watching the Bushies squirm when they’re on the receiving end of this stuff.

I think this comparison is off base. To the extent it is demagogic, this UAE outcry falls into the category of political ox-goring, the likes of which are seen every day in our system. Comparing it to the lies, distortion and institutional manipulation that led the nation into a war is vastly overstating it.

This would be better compared to the white house having a fake case of the vapors over Newsweak reporting that Korans had been defaced at Guantanamo and “causing” the riots in the mid-east. The head of the joint chiefs of staff said the whole thing was used as an excuse by the heavies in Afghan politics, but that didn’t stop the administration from lecturing the press about revealing these accusations. Many people accepted the idea that Newsweak erred, particularly when it was shown that the report was unreliable. Bush and his boys had been saying that revealing information about torture and abuse was playing into the enemies’ hands for months, so this fit perfectly with their “loose lips sink ship” rhetoric. In this case, Bush has been saying “we’re fighting ‘them’ over there so we don’t have to fight ‘them’ over here” for years. Saying now that it’s ok to bring “them” into our ports creates cognitive dissonence. They have only themselves to blame for the outcry.

In both the UAE port outcry or the Newsweak outcry, the demagogic argument coming from the administration is that these things will harm our image in the middle east and make it more difficult for us to prosecute the war on terror. It works fine as long as it doesn’t conflict with one of their other demagogic arguments. But neither of these flaps come close to the invasion of Iraq for sheer bad faith and demagogic overkill.

Besides, there is a legitimate reason to be wary of the UAE being involved with US port management and calling it racism, in particular, is puerile nonsense. Like Pakistan, another close ally in the war on terror, the UAE have been playing both ends against the middle for a long time. We all understand that and accept it. They have to deal with the vicissitudes of their own political situation which doesn’t always accrue to our benefit. Welcome to the real world where the black and white formulation of “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” is shown as the bullshit it always was. As Yglesias says here:

… the UAE isn’t a strategic partner of the United States in the way that the UK is. The number of countries who have British-style security relationships with the United States can be counted on one hand, if not one finger. We share intelligence with the British that we wouldn’t share with Portugal, much less Dubai. An ally as close as Israel has been known to screw us over in defense and intelligence matters because, hey, countries have different interests. A private British firm operates in the context of the rule of law; a state-owned enterprise in Dubai . . . not so much. These are different countries in a thousand ways that have nothing to do with skin color. Pretending not to see the difference is childish and absurd. That a country hosts American military bases proves almost nothing — we have bases in all kinds of places.

I would suggest that if the UAE is holding access to their ports over our heads as a way to ensure this deal goes through, then we may have to evaluate whether they are even the nominal ally in the war on terror we think they are. That’s called blackmail. They can’t interfere with our domestic policies any more thaan we can interfere with theirs.

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Back To Normal

by digby

Ok, you are not going crazy. You did see a different template on this site earlier today. This blog’s oging to be changing a bit over the next little while. There may be some glitches for a while. That was a glitch.

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Remedial Journalism

by digby

Gosh, the Republicans must be so pleased with CNN’s new reporter Brian Todd. Discussing Libby’s motion that contends Fitzgerald lacks authority to bring charges because proper procedure were not followed, Todd asserted:

“Here’s the procedure: He or she has to be appointed by the president. He or she has to be confirmed by the senate. He or she has to answer to top justice officials whenever they want to bring and indictment of grant immunity. None of these things have occurred in the case of Mr Fitzgerald. He was appointed by an acting Attorney general. He was never confirmed by the Senate. He has had sweeping power in this case to do as he chooses.”

I guess he didn’t have time to check the Department of Justice Web site:

Patrick J. Fitzgerald began serving as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois on September 1, 2001. The United States Senate confirmed his nomination by unanimous consent and President Bush signed his commission on October 29, 2001.

He was named special counsel by an acting attorney general because the attorney general recused himself from the case.

Here’s what the GAO had to say about Fitzgerald’s mandate:

“The parameters of his authority and independence are defined in the appointment letters which delegate to Special Counsel Fitzgerald all (plenary) the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department’s investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity with the direction that he exercise such authority independent of the supervision or control of any officer of the Department. [13]. In addition, Department officials informed us that the express exclusion of Special Counsel Fitzgerald from the application of 28 C.F.R. Part 600, which contains provisions that might conflict with the notion that the Special Counsel in this investigation possesses all the power of the Attorney General, contributes to the Special Counsel’s independence. [14] Thus, Special Counsel Fitzgerald need not follow the Department’s practices and procedures if they would subject him to the approval of an officer or employee of the Department. For example, 28 C.F.R. 600.7 requires that a Special Counsel consult with the Attorney General before taking particular actions.”

That took me five minutes with Google. I would imagine that Brian Todd could have had some flunky do the same thing before he proclaimed that Fitzgerald’s appointment hadn’t followed this procedure. It doesn’t prove anything, of course, but it does show that there might just be some legitimate differences of opinion as to whether or not their claim has merit. You don’t have to be a lawyer to know that the law requiring that the special counsel be appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate meant that he or she must be a US Attorney, not that he or she must be a special appointment by the president to investigate his own administration. That wouldn’t exactly make sense, now would it?

It’s theoretically possible that a judge will rule in Libby’s favor on this, but it is highly unlikely. You’d think that Todd would have at least picked up a phone this morning and called a legal analyst who might clue him in on the other side’s arguments. When he said/she said makes sense — as in a legal case — they don’t do it. When it comes to global warming or intelligent design they fall all overthemselves giving equal time to hucksters and fools.

Why do journalists have such a hard time understanding these distinctions?

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Civil War

Khalizad is worried

“What we’ve seen in the past two days, the attack has had a major impact here, getting everyone’s attention that Iraq is in danger,” Mr. Khalilzad said in a conference call with reporters.

The country’s leaders, he added, “must come together, they must compromise with each other to bring the people of Iraq together and save this country.”

Mr. Khalilzad’s comments are the most explicit acknowledgment so far by an American official of the instability of the situation, and the fragility of the entire American enterprise here. The killings and assaults across Iraq that began Wednesday have amounted to the worst sectarian violence since the American invasion.

…In the deadliest assault, 47 people returning from a protest were pulled off buses south of Baghdad on Wednesday and shot in the head, an Interior Ministry official said Thursday. Three journalists from Al Arabiya, the Arab satellite network, were abducted and killed Wednesday in Samarra, near the ruined shrine. Seven American soldiers were also killed Wednesday in unrelated attacks involving roadside bombs.

Political and religious leaders, including President Jalal Talabani and Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose followers are believed to be involved in much of the anti-Sunni violence, called for restraint.

Bring it on, indeed. A terrible situation, and a confused one, in which al-Sadr, of all people, feels compelled to urge restraint.

For the purpose of discussion, if Khalizad is this blunt, we should probably assume that reality is far, far worse. Iraq is gone, or at the very least, rapidly moving that way.

Now what? Three states, Shia, Sunni, and Kurd? A violent, anarchic “state of nature”? How will humanitarian aid reach the sufferers if there is no Iraq left? What are the short term/long term implications for terrorism both within the Middle East and against the US and US citizens? What can be done, in any event, to counter the development of a disintegrated Iraq becoming a breeding ground for terrorism. Are efforts to “save” Iraq a priori doomed to failure?

And aside from the questions of humanitarian aid, the most crucial question: in a post-Bush world, what is the United States’ – our – moral obligation to the people of the former Iraq?

Thomas Friedman once said that it’s not every day you get to see a political experiment in action. Well Tom, here it is. Happy?

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Extra! Extra! Neoconservatism Discovered To Be Screaming Yellow Bonkers!

by tristero

Why are the so-called “conservative intellectuals” in the United States so hellbent on reinventing a square wheel? Anyone with half a brain and half an education knows better than to bother. But there they are, with their T-squares marking off 89 degree angles – can’t even get that straight – and sawing away for years on one patently idiotic idea or another before finally announcing what liberals have known all along: It was a patently idiotic idea.

For the latest, here’s Francis Fukuyama’s epiphany. Turns out neoconservatism is… a really bad idea. Who knew? Well I knew, and I didn’t need tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq to know it. And so I think a prayer is called for:

Dear God,

Please deliver us from the hideous locust plague of conservative pseudo-intellectuals. Sinners we may be in Thine eyes, and unworthy of thy Divine Love, but Jesus Kee-rist! Cut us some friggin’ slack, already! Fire and brimstone, eternal damnation, I ain’t gonna argue with you. But, seriously, God, we really don’t deserve any more Fukuyamas, y’know? So ease up.

Please.

Love,

Tristero

Hobgoblins

by digby

I’m quite impressed by the Washington Post editorial board’s intellectual consistency

Friday, February 24, 2006; Page A14

If members of Congress really want to burnish their “tough on terrorism” credentials, they should start by focusing on real presidential lapses, which are sufficient, and forget about the phony ones. As Mr. England said yesterday, the war on terrorism demands that the United States “strengthen the bonds of friendship and security . . . especially with our friends and allies in the Arab world.” That means allies should be treated “equally and fairly around the world and without discrimination,” he said. And he suggested that it is the terrorists who want the United States to “become distrustful, they want us to become paranoid and isolationist.”

If so, they must be feeling pretty content right now.

Yes, that’s right. If we become distrustful of our allies, the terrorists will have won:

Wednesday, January 25, 2006; Page A18

SHORTLY AFTER Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush famously declared that other countries must choose between supporting the United States and supporting terrorism, and that those that harbored al Qaeda would be treated as the enemy. In the years since, he has refrained from applying that tough principle in practice — which is lucky for Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Ever since the war on terrorism began, this meretricious military ruler has tried to be counted as a U.S. ally while avoiding an all-out campaign against the Islamic extremists in his country, who almost surely include Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. Despite mounting costs in American lives and resources, he has gotten away with it.

Rockefeller Sticks In The Shiv

by digby

Glenn has been writing a lot about the administration pursuing journalists in the NSA illegal spying scandal and he sounds a very important alarm. But I think they should think long and hard about how far to take that considering their history. It’s a can of worms they will regret opening. Here’s a good example of what kind of ugly little fish-bait might come slithering out.

From Murray Waas:

The vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made exactly that charge tonight in a letter to John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence. What prompted Rockefeller to write Negroponte was a recent op-ed in the New York Times by CIA director Porter Goss complaining that leaks of classified information were the fault of “misguided whistleblowers.”

Rockefeller charged in his letter that the most “damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of intelligence agencies.”

Later in the same letter, Rockefeller said: “Given the Administration’s continuing abuse of intelligence information for political purposes, its criticism of leaks is extraordinarily hypocritical. Preventing damage to intelligence sources and methods from media leaks will not be possible until the highest level of the Administration cease to disclose classified information on a selective basis for political purposes.”

Exhibit A for Rockefeller: Woodward’s book “Bush at War”.

Read the whole thing. I was unaware that the CIA had been instructed to cooperate with Woodward. I thought he was simply allowed to listen in on classified White House meetings:

One former senior administration official explained to me: “This was something that the White House wanted done because they considered it good public relations. If there was real damage to national security—if there were leaks that possibly exposed sources and methods, it was not done in this instance for the public good or to expose Watergate type wrongdoing. This was done for presidential image-making and a commercial enterprise—Woodward’s book.”

The Bush adminstration suffers from terminal hubris, so I am not sure they completely understand the implications of this. They seem to think they can get away with “leaking” classified information for political purposes with impunity while screaming to high heaven about real whistelblowers leaking classified information to expose wrongdoing by them. There was a time they could do that sort of thing and get away with it. I suspect that time is past. There is too much blood in the water.

This does explain why Woodward was so nervous about the Plame matter, though. He was leaked a ton of selective classified information by powerful people to help make a bogus case for war. He makes Novak look like an amateur.

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The Gay Governor

by digby

This guy is so uncool Republicans will assume he’s one of them and vote for him by mistake. Blagojevich for president!

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich wasn’t in on the joke.

Blagojevich says he didn’t realize “The Daily Show” was a comedy spoof of the news when he sat down for an interview that ended up poking fun at the sometimes-puzzled governor.

“It was going to be an interview on contraceptives … that’s all I knew about it,” Blagojevich laughingly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a story for Thursday’s editions. “I had no idea I was going to be asked if I was ‘the gay governor.’ “

The interview focused on his executive order requiring pharmacies to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control.

Interviewer Jason Jones pretended to stumble over Blagojevich’s name before calling him “Governor Smith.” He urged Blagojevich to explain the contraception issue by playing the role of “a hot 17-year-old” and later asked if he was “the gay governor.”

At one point in the interview, a startled Blagojevich looked to someone off camera and said, “Is he teasing me or is that legit?”

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Live By Demagoguery, Die By Demagoguery

William Greider is right on the money.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf:

David Brooks, the high-minded conservative pundit, dismissed the Dubai Ports controversy as an instance of political hysteria that will soon pass. He was commenting on PBS, and I thought I heard a little quaver in his voice when he said this was no big deal. Brooks consulted “the experts,” and they assured him there’s no national security risk in a foreign company owned by Middle East Muslims–actually, by an Arab government–managing six major American ports. Cool down, people. This is how the world works in the age of globalization.

Of course, he is correct. But what a killjoy. This is a fun flap, the kind that brings us together. Republicans and Democrats are frothing in unison, instead of polarizing incivilities. Together, they are all thumping righteously on the poor President. I expect he will fold or at least retreat tactically by ordering further investigation. The issue is indeed trivial. But Bush cannot escape the basic contradiction, because this dilemma is fundamental to his presidency.

A conservative blaming hysteria is hysterical, when you think about it, and a bit late. Hysteria launched Bush’s invasion of Iraq. It created that monstrosity called Homeland Security and pumped up defense spending by more than 40 percent. Hysteria has been used to realign US foreign policy for permanent imperial war-making, whenever and wherever we find something frightening afoot in the world. Hysteria will justify the “long war” now fondly embraced by Field Marshal Rumsfeld. It has also slaughtered a number of Democrats who were not sufficiently hysterical. It saved George Bush’s butt in 2004.

Bush was the principal author, along with his straight-shooting Vice President, and now he is hoisted by his own fear-mongering propaganda. The basic hysteria was invented from risks of terrorism, enlarged ridiculously by the President’s open-ended claim that we are endangered everywhere and anywhere (he decides where). Anyone who resists that proposition is a coward or, worse, a subversive. We are enticed to believe we are fighting a new cold war. But are we? People are entitled to ask. Bush picked at their emotional wounds after 9/11 and encouraged them to imagine endless versions of even-larger danger. What if someone shipped a nuke into New York Harbor? Or poured anthrax in the drinking water? OK, a lot of Americans got scared, even people who ought to know better.

So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai business?

Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows the inflated fears are bogus. So do a lot of the politicians merrily throwing spears at him. He taught them how to play this game, invented the tactics and reorganized political competition as a demagogic dance of hysterical absurdities, endless opportunities to waste public money. Very few dare to challenge the mindset. Thousands have died for it.

Bush’s terrorism war has from the start been in collision with the precepts of corporate-led globalization. One practices hyper-nationalism–Washington gets to decide where it goes to war, never mind the Geneva Convention and other “obsolete” international restraints. Yet Bush’s diplomats travel the world banging on governments for trade rules that defenestrate a nation’s sovereign power to run its own affairs. The US government regards itself as comfortable with this arrangement since it assumes the superpower can always get its way. Most citizens are never consulted. They are perhaps unaware that their rights have been given away, too.

It would be nice to imagine this ridiculous episode will prompt reconsideration, cool down exploitative jingoism and provoke a more rational discussion of the multiplying absurdities. I doubt it. At least it will be satisfying to see Bush toasted irrationally, since he lit the match.

Indeed.

A commentator on CNN just said that if the US becomes isolationist and refuses to engage our neighbors the terrorists will have won. (I’m looking forward to hearing John Bolton sing “Blowing in The Wind” at the next meeting of the UN security council.)

The New York Times reports:

“If the furor over the port deal should go on, Mr. England said, it would give enemies of the United States aid and comfort: ‘They want us to become distrustful, they want us to become paranoid and isolationist.'”

Republican voters, if you question the port deal, the administration
thinks you’re a traitor.

Update: John Aravosis doesn’t think much of Gordon England.

Update II: For unknown reasons the NY Times has scrubbed the England quote from its story. It’s still in this story in the SF Chronicle.

Castrati Chat

by digby

Rush has been on a strange tangent the last couple of days. Aside from his strange sensitivity to the feelings of terrorist supporting middle eastern potentates (which actually makes sense when you stop and think about it) he also appears to be somewhat obsessive on other subjects:

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m tempted to say that we are on “Summers’s eve.” We are at Summers’s eve. I know Summer’s Eve is also — I think; I used to be an expert in these things — a feminine deodorant spray, but it’s also — it also designates, ladies and gentlemen, that we are in the last days of the administration of Larry Summers as president of Harvard. And, by the way, this happened — I think we need to change the name from Harvard to Hervard, because a bunch of angry feminazis took him out simply because he spoke the truth about diversity on campus and the differences in men and women.

The feminist movement is still alive and well, and it contains the central belief there’s really no difference between men and women, we’re all the same, we’re all just conditioned differently, but we can all do what everybody else does, we’re all equal, there is no inherent difference. Now, you think I’m laughing when I — joking when I suggest they change the name from Harvard to Hervard; they changed the word “history” to “herstory” at one point, remember, in the militant feminist movement. In fact, maybe we can have two schools, Hisvard and Hervard, and just sequester the students. Hervard: Übersexuals need not apply, metrosexuals would be welcome, but the few slots are very competitive. Transsexuals, your scholarship’s in the mail before you even apply.

And this, from the same day, is just strange:

OK, so there’s that. Lemme put that aside. Next little story, and this — this actually is from Sunday. It’s an Associated Press story: “Ginsburg bears burden without O’Connor. It’ll be a one-woman show in the Supreme Court starting Tuesday. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the only female among the nine justices, and she’s not so happy about it.” So, resign. If you don’t like it, resign. If you don’t like being the only woman on the court, then go somewhere else. Besides, David Souter’s a girl. Everybody knows that. What’s the big deal? I’m talking about attitudinally, here, folks. You gotta — you just — Dawn [studio transcriber] agrees. She’s nodding her head in agreement.

The day before that:

Speaking of Jimmy Carter, did you see what his son, Jack, said? …”I am pro-choice as far as a woman choosing. But I am against abortion.” Well, there is a totally worthless view. This is just his version of, “I support the troops, but I don’t support the war.” Or “I’m against slavery, but I oppose freeing the slaves. I’m for jobs, but I’m not for Wal-Mart. I’m for open government, except when a Democrat’s in office, and I want to have the power to do what I want to do without anybody seeing me.”

I mean these people are just — they are so — just total wimps. Come on, Jack, tell us what you really believe, and stand for something, and come out and lead on that basis, Jack. This is — “No, I wanna make sure I don’t offend the women.” This — this is — here you go. Classic example of the castrati, the new castrati. Jack Carter is — has been castrated by the feminization of this culture since he grew up. He’s — he’s three years older than I am. He was subject to the same pressures I was, plus probably even more, what with his dad being in there in the White House and so forth.

You heard, of course, that he and Daryn Kagan broke up recently. (I know, I know)

It sounds like Rush has even more issues with women than he did before. It also sounds like he’s heavily trolling his favorite porn sites. He’s got transexuals and castrati on the brain again.

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