Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Big Squeeze

So Judy got her super-duper-double-special waiver finally and was sprung. Of course, it makes no more sense today than it did two months ago but the NY Times is intent upon keeping up the fiction for their intrepid girl reporter:

… the discussions were at times strained, with Mr. Libby and Mr. Tate asserting that they communicated their voluntary waiver to Ms. Miller’s lawyers more than year ago, according to those briefed on the case. Mr. Libby wrote to Ms. Miller in mid-September, saying that he believed her lawyers understood that his waiver was voluntary.

Others involved in the case have said that Ms. Miller did not understand that the waiver had been freely given and did not accept it until she had heard from him directly.

What a bunch of crap. Here’s the nut:

In written statements today, Ms. Miller and executives of The New York Times did not identify the source who had urged Ms. Miller to testify. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, said that Mr. Fitzgerald had assured Ms. Miller’s lawyer that “he intended to limit his grand jury interrogation so that it would not implicate other sources of hers.”

Mr. Keller said that Mr. Fitzgerald had cleared the way to an agreement by assuring Ms. Miller and her source that he would not regard a conversation between the two about a possible waiver as an obstruction of justice.

First of all, why is Bill Keller involved in this to this degree? He’s her editor, not her lawyer. Was he involved in the negotiations or is he reporting the story? If it’s the latter, why would that be? Don’t they have any reporters who can interview Judy and get the facts?

More importantly it seems obvious now that Jeralyn was right; Judy’s real issue was being asked about her other sources under oath. It looks like they came to some sort of agreement about that. (No Bolton?)

It also appears at least possible that Fitzgerald was threatening to charge both Libby and Miller for obstruction of justice for talking to one another — whether that referred to the conversation noted in the article between the two of them and their lawyers this month or an earlier conversation is unclear.

The question is what Fitzgerald got in return for agreeing not to ask Judy about her lovers ..er sources. And don’t think he didn’t get something in return.

In case anyone’s wondering if Fitzgerald is really the tough guy everyone thinks he is, check out this story from last week about the Governor George Ryan trial in Illinois. You’ll notice that he flipped Ryans “political son” by arresting his mistress and squeezing her until she convinced him to testify:

Whether the jury believes Fawell, given his previous vow never to testify against Ryan and subsequent flip-flop when prosecutors put heat on his fiancee, is important for Ryan’s defense.

“I’m still not overly comfortable with participating,” Fawell told a federal judge last Oct. 28 during a teary testimonial to try to keep his mistress-turned-fiancee, Andrea Coutretsis, out of prison. “I don’t relish testifying against George Ryan.”

Fawell, 48, was once the heir to DuPage County political royalty. His mother is Beverly Fawell, a former state legislator. His father is Bruce Fawell, a former chief judge in the county. And his uncle, Harris Fawell, was a respected congressman from Naperville.

Scott Fawell rose through the GOP political ranks rapidly, serving as a driver for then-U.S. Sen. Charles Percy, lobbyist for the tollway authority and campaign operative for then-Gov. Jim Thompson. He ended up working for then-Lt. Gov. Ryan, and helped Ryan win a close race in 1990 for secretary of state.

Ryan rewarded him with the chief of staff job and then the nearly $200,000-a-year plum of running the agency that oversees McCormick Place and Navy Pier.

So if Ryan indeed has figurative bodies buried somewhere, as prosecutors allege, Fawell is in position to know the location. He gave prosecutors a 45-page sworn statement.

Fawell talked about special secretary of state office leases prosecutors say Ryan illegally steered to co-defendant Warner. He also took yearly vacations to Jamaica with Ryan, trips a businessman who got an office lease would reimburse the duo for, according to prosecutors.

Among other things, Fawell also supposedly knows about alleged selling of low-digit license plates for campaign contributions. He helped set up a scheme in which secretary of state workers would do campaign work on state time, prosecutors say. And when it came time to cover up the illegal political activity, prosecutors likely will try to prove Fawell told Ryan about massive document-shredding that was going on.

A jury found Fawell guilty for his part in the corruption scandal. He’s serving a 6¨-year sentence at a federal work camp in Yankton, S.D.

Fawell, however, gave his testimony to prosecutors reluctantly, a fact that Ryan’s defense team undoubtedly will bring to jurors’ attention.

“I’m not going to sell myself out just to save myself,” Fawell said after his sentencing in late June 2003. “I’m not sitting on any bomb of George Ryan’s. I’m not going to go in there and make up stories about him just to save myself, which unfortunately that’s the game (prosecutors) like you to play.”

That, however, was before Fitzgerald’s office charged Coutretsis, formerly of Long Grove. Coutretsis, a mother of two and Fawell’s one-time assistant at McPier, faced a prison sentence for perjury before persuading Fawell to turn on Ryan. In return, she could get six months or probation. Fawell could get six months shaved off his sentence.

Do you think that Fitzgerald was impressed with Judy’s “principles” or her desire for a super-special-in-person-blood-oath waiver from Scooter? Right. He didn’t do this for meaningless testimony or just for fun. He got something important.

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Keep Your Children Out Of The Room

I spoke too soon when I said earlier that there have been no blow jobs in Washington since the Honor and Integrity crowd took over.

I just watched Brit Hume “interview” Tom DeLay.

Update: Oh Jesus, Chris Matthews just performed a full-on deep-throat on the Hammer.

It’s a rather unorthodox “interviewing” technique to make your interviewees argument for him by never shutting up and only allowing him to nod in agreement while you rake his enemies over the coals on his behalf. But then, they don’t call ’em mediawhores and pre$$titutes for nothin’.

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Librulism ‘R Us

In case you are tired of hearing me rail on about racism and other topics that make people uncomfortable, check out this extremely well-reasoned argument by Scott Lemiuex of Lawyers, Guns and Money on the topic of abortion.

I plan to take up the subjects of animal rights and freeing Mumia, so be warned…

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Criminals Much?

So, we have a federal probe implicating the president’s number one political advisor and the vice president’s chief of staff in the violation of laws protecting CIA agents and possibly lying to federal investigators.

We have a multi-pronged investigation into a lobbyist who happens to be a very close associate of Tom DeLay,Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove and the entire Republican leadership going back to their youth as members of the College republicans. This lobbyist is now implicated in a mafia murder plot and has been arrested on charges affiliated with that crime.

A member of the Bush administration who is a good friend and associate of all of the above was arrested this week for lying to the Feds about his good friend the lobbyist.

The majority leader of the Senate is now officially under investigation by the SEC and federal prosecutors for insider trading involving potentially many millions of dollars.

The majority leader of the House was just indicted by a Texas Grand jury for violating laws prohibiting the use of corporate money in campaigns.

I am so relieved that the Republicans restored honor and integrity to Washington. There hasn’t been even one blow job in that town since they took power.

Update: Oh and that reminds me — David Drier is now the majority leader of the House of Representatives.

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Your Lyin’ Eyes

It’s depressing that you have to get this elementary with the American press, but you do. There is something called cause and effect. Any of you out there who don’t know what that means can use your friend, Mr Google, to find out what it is.

New Orleans is a largely black city. Most of those who did not evacuate were poor African Americans. In the day after Katrina, pictures of victims standing on rooftops emerged. Heroic rescues were filmed. In short order we saw pictures of looting — which immediately sent the wingnuts into a frenzy. This immediately led to cries for martial law — stories of shooting, killing and rape followed. (Interestingly, this story in which photojournalists on the scene were interviewed early on indicates that while looting and theft were common, the violence they observed was mostly perpetrated by nervous police.)

We do not know to what extent these stories inhibited the relief effort, but there is evidence that they did. A real post mortem should be able to sort that out.

Because of the paranoid fear of violence and many other things such as the necessary National Guard equipment being deployed to Iraq and a federal agency charged with stepping in where local and state governments are overwhelmed being incompetent in virtually every way possible — the conditions in New Orleans deteriorated rapidly as basic necessities and evacuations were delayed.

Let’s make it simple for everyone. The reports of violence were overblown. The reports of misery, dehydration, delayed medical care, no food and wretched conditions were not. And it is highly likely that it was the first that led, at least in part, to the second.

Yet, the New York Times fails to make that distinction and pretends that the the desperation was overblown.

During the first few days, as local officials grappled with the overwhelming disaster, Mr. Nagin and Mr. Compass were outspoken about how desperate the situation in their city was, though some of those statements are now coming under scrutiny, with some critics saying they exaggerated the situation.

An editorial in The Times Picayune today faulted the two New Orleans officials for their leadership during those first few days, and for their public statements about the direness of the situation.

“It’s understandable that in the tense and fractured days after Katrina, frightened people reported rumor as fact, and soldiers, police and even elected officials believed what they heard and passed it on.” the editorial said. “In the hell that descended after Katrina, almost anything, no matter how horrific, seemed possible.

“But now that we know better, it’s essential that people like Mayor Nagin and Superintendent Compass set the record straight, just as forcefully. That might mean saying, ‘I spoke too soon” or even, ‘I exaggerated,’ ” the editorial said.

The newspaper said that during an interview by Oprah Winfrey, Mr. Compass said “that babies were being raped.”

“Thank God it didn’t happen,” the editorial said.

The Times-Picayune editorial was quite specific. The New York Times was not.

And that, predictably, plays into this quixotic quest by right-wing bloggers to prove that the entire disaster was overblown, not just the violence. That is not going to fly.

Here’s a little reminder:

I urge everyone to click on the BagNews picture in the left column or click here and take a look at the amazing images shot by Alan Chin in New Orleans. He’s the one who shot the iconic picture of the elderly African American woman wrapped in the American flag. There can be no doubt of what happened in the after math of Katrina — horrible human suffering caused by a massive government failure.

The only question is why.

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Nothing To See Here

I’m sure most of you have already read Rick Perlstein’s op-ed that never ran over on Eschaton this morning. If you haven’t, go read it.

For some reason, no editorial board wanted to hear from a historian who was pointing out that wild rumors about racial violence are a regular feature of urban disturbances in America and should be treated skeptically by the press until real evidence emerges.

I imagine they thought that Perlstein was playing the race card — like all us liberals do at the drop of a hat. Nobody wants to hear it.

Meanwhile, here’s some more fallout — and another little illustration of why the Section 8 idea is meeting resistence:

GREENSBURG, La., Sept. 27 – The federal government, straining to find temporary housing for thousands of evacuees from New Orleans, has generally encountered hospitality in cities and towns in the gulf area. But the reception has been very different in the small parish of St. Helena.

Here, 80 miles northwest of New Orleans, white residents have spoken up at public meetings to oppose vehemently the construction of temporary housing for the evacuees, most of whom are black. The tension could complicate tentative plans by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to buy land in the parish for trailer lots.

“The only thing we see about these people on the news is what happened in the Superdome,” said Philip Devall, 42, a white resident of Greensburg, at a recent meeting of the parish government. “They’re rapists and thugs and murderers. I’m telling you, half of them have criminal records. I’ve worked all my life to have what I have. I can’t lose it, and I can’t stand guard 24 hours a day.”

About 2,000 evacuees have been staying with friends and family in the parish since Hurricane Katrina, and police officials here say that crime related to the newcomers has been virtually nonexistent. But many residents say that fear is the driving force behind their opposition.

“I want to know how many sex offenders they’re going to move in next to me,” said Marci Kent, 36, also a white resident of Greensburg, at the meeting. “And I got daughters, too.”

When one white man expressed concern at the meeting over possibly losing his valuables to lawless evacuees, a black woman turned around and angrily pointed a finger at him. “We work hard for what we got, too,” she said. “But these people need a place to stay.”

Yeah, that race card is bogus, all right.

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Rumors and Expectations

Pre$$titutes reports that righty bloggers are going all Claude Rains on us because they “just realized” that the media reported anarchy and violence in New Orleans that was unsubstantiated. Drudge is especially shocked that anyone would spread scurrilous rumors.

They are holding the media responsible for the Katrina aftermath and they are not entirely wrong. Of course the media should have been skeptical of these crazy rumors and should have wondered why they weren’t seeing any evidence of the alleged mayhem as they waded through the city. All I ever saw was a few desultory looters hauling around some boxes of sneakers.

The media certainly need to ask themselves some probing questions about why they were so gullible. It didn’t pass the smell test from the get as far as I was concerned. (But then as TBOGG pithily reminds us, it isn’t exactly the first time the media have bought into rumor and speculation hook line and sinker, now is it?)

But blaming the media is missing the point. They, like many others, chose to believe something for which there was no evidence. The press saw and reported the wretched spectacle of the evacuees living in horrible conditions, waiting and begging for help, but by that time everything was seen within the prism of the earlier (and ongoing) reports of violence. They need to do some soul searching about that.

Even those who lived it, for many reasons, saw the situation as anarchic and dangerous for their own reasons.

Bud Hopes, of Brisbane, was praised for saving dozens of tourists as the supposed safe haven of the city’s Superdome became a hellhole.

“I would have to say that Bud is solely responsible for our evacuation,” Vanessa Cullington, 22, of Sydney, told the Sunday Herald Sun by mobile phone from a bus carrying 10 Australians to safety in Dallas, Texas.

“I dread to think what would have happened if we hadn’t got out. It’s so great to be free.”

News of the group’s escape came as reports said as many as 10,000 people might have been killed by the hurricane and its aftermath, and President George Bush ordered more troops and an increased aid effort for the stricken Gulf of Mexico states.

As the Australians left the Superdome, food and water were almost non-existent and the stiflingly hot arena was filled with 25,000 people and the stench of human waste. Gangs stalked the tourists and women were threatened with rape.

“Bud took control. He was calm and kept it together the whole time,” Ms Cullington said.

Mr Hopes, 32, said: “That was the worst place in the universe. Ninety-eight per cent of the people around the world are good. In that place, 98 per cent of the people were bad.

“Everyone brought their drugs, they brought guns, they brought knives. Soldiers were shot.

“It was like a refugee camp within a prison.

“It was full on. It was the worst thing I have seen in my life. I have never been so frightened.”

Realising that foreigners were a target, Mr Hopes and the other Aussies gathered tourists from Europe, South America and elsewhere into one part of the building.

“There were 65 of us, so we were able to look after each other — especially the girls who were being grabbed and threatened.” Mr Hopes said.

He said they had organised escorts for the women when they had gone for food or to the toilet, and rosters to keep guard while others slept.

“We sat through the night just watching each other, not knowing if we would be alive in the morning.”

John McNeil, 20, of Brisbane, said the worst point had come after two days when soldiers had told them the power in the dome was failing and there was only 10 minutes worth of gas left.

“I looked at Bud and said, ‘That will be the end of us’,” Mr McNeil said.

“The gangs . . . knew where we were. If the lights had gone out we would have been in deep trouble. We prayed for a miracle and the lights stayed on.”

[…]

Mrs McNeil broke down when she saw images of her son leaving New Orleans.

“There have been times during this past week when we didn’t know if we would see him again,” she said.

Mr McNeil said he could see a change in his son.

“They’ve been traumatised,” he said. “I think they’ve witnessed several atrocities.”.

They worked themselves into a frenzy, just as a whole lot of other people did.(98% were bad!!!) They may have been threatened. I have no way of knowing. But it was a long way from “atrocities.” The reports of others — many of whom were white — at the Superdome don’t bear out their story. These were people who were convinced that because they were the minority, they were going to be killed. But there are many other whites who didn’t see themselves threatened this way at all. Perceptions were everything. Beliefs and prejudices about race and class were everything.

It was even as if some people expected it to happen, somewhere in their subconscious, even before the rumors started. Check out this post at 10:05 am on Monday, August 29th, when people still thought “a bullet had been dodged” in New Orleans, long before anyone realized that the cavalry was waiting for massive reinforcements before it would dare to enter the barbarous city:

ATTN: SUPERDOME RESIDENTS [Jonah Goldberg]
I think it’s time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you’re working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he’s not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It’s never too soon to be prepared.
Posted at 10:05 AM

You can’t blame the MSM for that. They hadn’t even begun to report the mayhem that shortly caused Peggy Noonan (and her latest manly hero, Haley Barbour) to call for the looters (a useful euphemism) to be shot on sight.

At 10:45 on the morning after the hurricane, Jonah has already called forth the “Lord of the Flies” image that would be emblematic of New Orleans the next few days. (This google search shows just how many references there were.) Jonah made a few more peurile remarks about how the loss was worse for middle class families and the like before he finally settled down and realized that the disaster was of epic prooprtions. But he predicted the “anarchy” even before the rumors that turned out to be false began. It existed in his mind. I think it existed in a lot of people’s minds.

(If you’d like some real fun, go to the Corner link and read Rich Lowry’s comments as he breathlessly clips items and snippets of news reports about violence and mayhem.)

I’m not letting the media off the hook. They too took these ridiculous stories on faith and there were serious consequences to them being circulated. But the question that must be asked isn’t why the media reported them — the question is why so many people, including the media, were so willing to believe them in the absence of any real evidence.

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Modern GOP Noblesse Oblige

The internal polls must be worse that we thought. They are really grasping at straws:

Facing criticism that he appeared disengaged from the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina, President Bush has been looking for opportunities to show his concern. But the White House will take the effort a step further Tuesday, venturing into untested waters by putting the nation’s first lady on reality television.

Laura Bush will travel to storm-damaged Biloxi, Miss., to film a spot on the feel-good, wish-granting hit “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” Mrs. Bush sought to be on the program because she shares the “same principles” that the producers hold, her press secretary said.

In its standard format, the popular ABC series finds hard-pressed but deserving families, sends them away for short vacations and then, in a whirlwind of carpentry and appliance-shopping, gives them new homes. This time, though, the show will broadcast from an underserved shelter near Biloxi, where a convoy of trucks stocked with everything from mattresses to pants will arrive, courtesy of Sears, one of the show’s sponsors.

It’s not clear exactly what Mrs. Bush will do, but Tom Forman, executive producer and creator, said he is hoping that she’ll just pitch in and help unload.

Next week, the cabinet will appear on the special New Orleans version of Survivor, where the Bush team will loll around the pool in Crawford deciding what to have for dinner while the all black 9th ward team lives on bugs and swims through snake infested flood waters to safety. The winners will have their capital gains taxes cut to zero.

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Twisted Psyches

Via John at Americablog, I found this article about the warporn site from the Online Journalism Review that is quite interesting.

Near the end the author briefly addresses what I think is the most disturbing aspect of this disheartening story — the combination of sexual pornography and real violent images.

While it was difficult for me to ascertain the motivation for people who were posting gory photos to NTFU, I did talk to Steven Most, a psychology postdoctoral fellow at Yale University who has studied the effects of violent and sexual images. He helped explain what these horribly violent images had in common with the nude photographs of women.

“They both seem to be particularly arousing in an emotional way,” Most said. “Emotional stimuli can be rated in different ways. You could see something and rate how positive or negative it is. But separate from that is how arousing the image is. A positive picture of a cute puppy dog could be positive but not that arousing, whereas a picture of an opposite sex nude could be just as positive but be rated as extremely arousing. And a picture of a mutilation could be rated as extremely negative but highly arousing. Lately there’s been a lot of theories saying that what we’re drawn to is the arousing nature of an image regardless of whether we see it as negative or positive.”

I am not a psychologist but I think it would be very surprising if combining these arousing sexual and violent images did not result in twisting some people’s psyches. It cannot be healthy to get your thrills through deadly, bloody violence and sexual images in the same place, at the same time in the same way. The porn site is a “girlfriend and wife” site — it’s not professional porn stars. Those images of the naked girls next door are being given away for free to men who are posting pictures of mangled bodies of people they purport to hate with every fiber of their being. It is worlds colliding in a very dangerous way.

Sexual sado-masochism has been out there for millenia but it is highly ritualized fantasy. This is all too real. I have to think that it is problematic that people are getting so negatively and positively aroused by real death and gore at the same time.

There is something very disturbing about the images of sexual torture we’ve seen and heard about in this war, generally. The forced masturbation, the pyramids, the female interrogators and the fake menstrual blood, the constant nudity, all of it. Violence against prisoners in the new Human Rights Watch report is expressed as “fucking” instead of beating. Not “fucking up” or “fucking with” — just plain “fucking” as in “I walking in and saw him fucking the prisoner.”

I cannot help but think that something has gone terribly wrong here. From the top of the hierarchy ordering sexual humiliation techniques, to obscure web-sites selling war gore and pictures of girls next door together, this is a very sexualized war and it’s damned strange, particularly coming from a regime that pretends to be an arbiter of strict sexual morals.

It’s clear that the leadership of this country is extremely concerned with consensual sex between two adults but they find images of sexual violence and kinky torture techniques to be thoroughly acceptable among soldiers and useful to the war effort. This is a very odd perception and one that leads us back to the conclusion that something extremely unhealthy has invaded our body politic.

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Another “F” Word

I hesitate to bring this up because nothing is more impolitic these days. After reading excerpts from this article over at the Cunningrealist, I was quite taken aback. I knew that Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire was covered up but I was unaware that he was also a vocal opponent of the Iraq war.

My first shocking thought after reading it was that a high profile star like him could have been seen by someone as a very dangerous guy. He might have been fragged.

It’s hardly better that Americans killed him by accident. But it is better. I no longer trust what any official says about the Iraq war. There seem to be no limits. If it’s true that the military routinely forces innocent people into stress positions so painful they pass out, anything could be true. Even that.

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