Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

WTF

I think I’m just going to call this post my WTF post of the day.

First I read via Avedon and King of Zembla that the California National Guard doing surveillance on anti-war protesters may be a national strategy

A state senator frustrated with what he called “stonewalling” by the California National Guard said Tuesday he would launch contempt hearings against the state’s military unit for failing to turn over documents.

-Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove, sought the documents as part of his probe into the Guard’s new controversial intelligence unit. After squaring off with a top Guard official and a lawyer for the unit Tuesday, Dunn also threatened to seek subpoenas against dozens of current and former top Guard officials.

The hearing was the first since the Times Sacramento Bureau reported the existence of the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program last month. Internal Guard e-mails show the unit had high-level interest in a small Mother’s Day anti-war rally at the Capitol.

[…]

Before the hearing, the U.S. Army also dealt the committee a blow saying that a computer hard drive and a hand-held Blackberry used by the retiring California Guard colonel who oversaw the fledgling intelligence unit was federal property, and not subject to the subpoena.

The hard drive was erased the same day Dunn requested the Guard preserve all documents related to the unit.

WTF? So it really looks as if the California National Guard with the help of some members of the US Army was spying on anti-war protesters. This is nasty stuff. If it’s happening all over the country, it’s really nasty stuff.

One of the harshest questioners in the hearing was none other than Tom McClintock erstwhile GOP candidate for Governor. He’s very right wing, but sometimes this civil liberties issue creates strange bedfellows. And needless to say, he hates Schwarzenneger with a passion. But then, these days, who doesn’t?

For my second WTF, I find out that even prosecutors in the GITMO Kangaroo courts were appalled by the methods being used to find the “non-combatants” guilty. But, as with all these people who have expressed reservations, revulsion or concern about our handling of prisoners — from the bad apples at Abu Ghraib, to reports of the “Biscuit” teams using psychological torture, to the dog handlers’ testimony, to the FBI agents who were concerned about their legal culpability in inhumane treatment and rendition, to the highly placed members of JAG Corps worrying about complicity in war crimes, to the prosecutors at Guantanamo — they are all mistaken or they are whiners and complainers.

Every day we are learning about people who complained about the legality and morality of our treatment of prisoners and each and every time the defense department whitewashes it. This is becoming unsustainable.

This latest story today about the prosecutors in Guantanamo complaining about the legality of the process discusses a “personality” clash even though the prosecutors who complained were discussing specific instances of unethical and illegal behavior. It sounds to me as if they had some legal Geoffrey Millers down there, whose tactics were as offensive as Miller’s were.

And I suspect that the Colonel Borch mentioned in the article who calls these claims “monstrous lies” may be one of them. I wonder if when the dust settles we will find that Rumsfeld’s Pentagon routinely put the most incompetent and the most gung-ho, quasi-psychotic officers in charge. It would certainly fit the pattern of refusing to listen to anything but their own hype.

My final WTF for the moment is from Josh Marshall, who quotes Michael Barone actually putting finger to keyboard and writing this:

“Richard Nixon, by obstructing investigation of the Watergate burglary, unwittingly colluded in the successful attempt to besmirch his administration. Less than two years after carrying 49 states, he was compelled to resign.”

The intellectual contortions we are seeing on the right these days are quite magnificent. I’m just wondering when their heads will explode.

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Six Degrees Of Paul Hackett

Paul Hackett is asking the netroots to try out a new GOTV maneuver. It sounds like it might be worth a try, and I don’t see how it could hurt. Experimentation is a good thing. And if the candidate calls, we should probably answer, particularly when it doesn’t really take any effort to speak of.

Check it out. It will be fun to see if it has any impact.

They are also pushing to raise a few last minute bucks. Here’s the link.

Update: I understand that some people are quite upset with the idea of sending out an e-mail to your friends asking them to send an e-mail to their friends in the hopes of spreading the word virally. Some consider this spam, but I’m of the opinion that sending a mass e-mail to people you know is not the same as sending out unsolicited messages to strangers. In fact, i do it all the time. But to each his own.

People should be aware that chain e-mails have become a primary tool of the Republicans and they used them to great effect during 2004. Read this article from Harper’s about how they use them and the dishonesty and calumny they contained. (We are suggesting nothing like this.) Republicans are experts at direct mail and this is the hi-tech version of their vaunted mailing lists. Apparently they believe that it is quite effective and developed lists of people who would willingly start the chain. I don’t think it was used to get out the vote so much as perpetuate whisper campaigns and bad information. It occurred mostly under the radar. I think we can be quite confident that they are refining this technique and will be using it to great effect going forward whether we learn to use it or not.

It just doesn’t seem wrong to me to use the same method to simply ask your friends to pass on a GOTV message. It is slightly annoying but door knocking and phone calling strangers is far more intrusive and yet we do it all the time. It’s one of the more annoying aspects of grassroots politics, but its absolutely essential. You have to try to get people to vote however you can.

But everyone has to do what they think is right. I know what the Republicans think is right. Do what has to be done to win and if that means annoying their friends with an e-mail, they do it.

Update II: I forgot to include this link which explains how chain e-mails can be used effectively and for good, written by Phil Agre, information expert and one of the clearest thinkers about the current political scene around.

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Removing All Doubt

You can see why Bob Novak’s lawyers have told him to keep his mouth shut. Today he writes a column “defending” himself that opens up one big ole can of worms again.

Novak’s original column opened with this paragraph:

The CIA’s decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet’s knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided.

Had Novak left it at that there would have been no repercussions. But he went on to reveal that Wilson’s wife was the one who suggested him for the mission. And we know that it was the “wife” part of this story that was being spread all over town, not the fact that the decision to send Wilson to Niger was made in the bowels of the CIA.

This would have been a fairly standard issue character assassination if it hadn’t been for the fact that Plame was undercover. But she was, and the CIA told Novak that. Bill Harlow, former spokesman for the CIA, recently went on the record with the Washington Post and said that he had warned Novak off the story using the only language the CIA can use without revealing classified information. Novak claims in his column today that this simply wasn’t good enough:

So, what was “wrong” with my column as Harlow claimed? There was nothing incorrect. He told the Post reporters he had “warned” me that if I “did write about it, her name should not be revealed.” That is meaningless. Once it was determined that Wilson’s wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as “Valerie Plame” by reading her husband’s entry in “Who’s Who in America.”

Except he could have easily written the story without revealing that Wilson’s wife allegedly sent him on the mission at all. It was a colorful detail that didn’t mean anything unless you were Joe and Valerie Wilson and your careers and reputations were being destroyed. The substance of Novak’s story was that Cheney knew nothing of the mission, not who sent Wilson. It appears to me that this is exactly how Harlow assumed Novak would handle it when he warned him not to use Plame’s name if he wrote the story.

Why did Novak think Plame’s alleged involvement was important in the first place? He certainly didn’t spell it out in his column. He just dropped it out there. In fact, there has still not been, to this day, any satisfactory explanation from him or anyone else involved as to why it was so significant that Plame allegedly suggested her husband for the job. Other than casting aspersions on Wilson’s manhood, creating the impression that he wasn’t qualified or sending a message to critics, I can’t conceive of any legitimate reasons why it would be considered worth reporting — particularly since the CIA had not given him an unequivocal green light. Reporting her involvement can only be seen for what it was: character assasination and political retribution.

Novak knew what Rove and Libby wanted him to do and, alone among his peers, he ran with the petty little detail they were working hard to get into the papers. And now he has the nerve to get indignant when he gets called on it. Douchebag For Liberty doesn’t even begin to describe it.

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They’re Good At It

It just occurred to me how offensively stupid it is for some Washington chickenhawk to be saying the GOP is going to “bury” an Iraq war veteran.

US Military Fatalities at 7/31/05: 1796

National Democrats Please Listen

If you want a message that will resonate with red staters — maybe even some of those macho white working class Nascar males who pride themselves on their independence — this is how you do it:

“I don’t need Washington to tell me how to live my personal life or how to pray to my God,” he said.

The Republicans spent multi-millions over the last 25 years selling the idea that the American people want the government “off their backs.” We should piggy back our candidates right on the back of that marketing slogan and ride it to victory.

What the national Democratic party needs to recognise is that when many people heard the Republicans saying that, they thought that they were talking about literally getting the government “off their backs” not just lowering their taxes. Instead, the Republicans are creating a national government that seeks to intrude in the most personal of ways, interfering with people’s religious and moral choices. That wasn’t what the independent, individualistic western style libertarian signed on for. They are ours for the taking if we have the nerve to say what Paul Hackett said up there.

Combine that with some big ticket ideas like “guaranteed health insurance for all Americans” with a foreign policy narrative that refocuses the threats and policy prescription in the proper direction as Matt Yglesias talks about here, and we have the essence of a Democratic message that will resonate.

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Pull The Other One

Talk Left points to this post about a joint US Canadian raid day before yesterday in Canada to arrest a marijuana seed distributer on charges that his seeds are being used by Americans to break the law. Selling the seeds in not illegal in Canada, but the Americans persuaded the canadians that they should be able to reach across the border and arrest their citizens. The story is complex, but if you are interested in this subject I recommend you check it out.

I was struck by one quote by the US Attorney in Seattle under whose auspices this bust came about:

“The fact is, marijuana is a very dangerous drug,” Sullivan said. “People don’t say that, but right now in America, there are more kids in treatment for addiction to marijuana than every other illegal drug combined.”

Now, I can’t say for sure, but I would bet a million dollars if I had it that this is flat out bullshit. Certainly, the “very dangerous” part is flat out bullshit. And I cannot believe that there are more kids in treatment for marijuana “addiction” than all other drugs combined. This is your government lying in your face. The kids know it and as a result they disregard all the warnings about drugs (like meth — a very, very serious problem.)

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Back In Ohio

I don’t know how many people are following the corruption scandals in Ohio, but they are doozies — just flat out graft in the highest reaches of the Ohio Republican party. It’s one reason why Paul Hackett may just have a chance to win. Combine that with the outrages documented in “What Went Wrong In Ohio” and the GOP is becoming so discredited as an institution that its brand is suffering.

Jean Schmidt has been running from the Ohio bigwigs implicated in the scandal as fast as her bandy little legs will carry her. But it appears that in these last couple of days her lies about knowing some of the major players are unravelling. Swing State project has the story.

In another display of the GOP’s irony and history impaired lameness, the Washington Post reports today why the national GOP decided to throw a bunch of last minute money at Schmidt:

“He called the commander in chief a son-of-a-[expletive],” said NRCC spokesman Carl Forti. “We decided to bury him.”

I suppose he took off his shoe and pounded on the table too.

In many ways, they really are “Red” states.

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How We CIA

Arthur has a must read post up dissecting Highpockets’ tribalism and the meaning of plaid pants and cultural paranoia. (If you aren’t checking in with his blog frequently you are missing some of the most consistently amazing cultural and political analysis in the blogosphere.) I’ll leave that fascinating topic to him for now, but he does mention one thing in passing that I’d like to expound on a bit; the wingnuts and the CIA.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Plame affair has brought up an interesting political contradiction: the right is now openly contemptuous of the CIA while the left is a vocal supporter. I think it’s probably a good idea to clarify that bit so we don’t get confused. The fact is that both sides have always been simultaneously vocal supporters and openly contemptuous of the CIA, but for entirely different reasons.

I usually don’t speak for “the left” but for the purpose of this discussion I will use my views as a proxy for the lefty argument. I’m not generally a big fan of secretive government departments with no accountability. I always worry that they are up to things not sanctioned by the people and it has often turned out that they are. I have long been skeptical of the CIA because of the CIA’s history of bad acts around the world that were not sanctioned or even known by more than a few people and were often, in hindsight, wrong — like rendition, for instance. I don’t believe that we should have a secret foreign policy operation that doesn’t answer to the people. They tend to do bad shit that leaves the people holding the bag.

But I didn’t just fall out of the back of Arnold’s hummer, so I understand that a nation needs intelligence to protect itself and understand the world. I also understand that the way we obtain that information must be kept secret in order to protect the lives of those who are involved in getting it. I have never objected to the idea that we have spies around the world gathering information about what our enemies are up to. I also think that intelligence should, as much as possible, be objective and apolitical. Otherwise, we cannot accurately assess real threats. If the CIA (and the other intelligence agencies) only make objective analyses, the buck will stop at the president, where it always properly should.

Therefore, I see this Plame affair — and the larger matter of the pre-war WMD threat assessment — as a matter of compromised intelligence and an extension of the 30 year war the right has waged against what it thinks is the CIA’s tepid threat analysis. Never mind that the right’s hysterical analyses have always turned out to have been completely wrong.

But then accuracy was never the point because the right takes the opposite approach to the CIA’s proper role. They have always been entirely in favor of the CIA working on behalf of any president who wanted to topple a left wing dictator or stage a coup without congressional knowledge. This is, in their view, the proper role of the CIA — to covertly advance foreign policy on behalf of an executive (of whom they approve) and basically do illegal and immoral dirty work. But they have never valued the intelligence and analysis the CIA produced since it often challenged their preconcieved beliefs and as a result didn’t validate their knee jerk impulse to invade, bomb, obliterate, topple somebody for reasons of ideology or geopolitical power. The CIA’s intelligence often backed up the success of the containment policy that kept us from a major bloody hot war with the commies — and for that they will never be trusted.(See Team B, and the Committee on the Present Danger parts I and II.)

Therefore, the right sees the Plame affair as another example of an inappropriately “independent” CIA refusing to accede to its boss’s wishes. They believe that the CIA exists to provide the president with the documentation he needs to advance his foreign policy goals — and if that includes lying to precipitate a war he feels is needed, then their job is to acquiesce. When you cut away the verbiage, what the right really believes is that the US is justified in invading and occupying any country it likes — it’s just some sissified, cowardly rule ‘o law that prevents us from doing it. The CIA’s job is to smooth the way for the president to do what he wants by keeping the citizen rubes and the allies in line with phony proof that we are following international and domestic laws. (This would be the Straussian method of governance — too bad the wise ones who are running the world while keeping the rest of us entertained with religion and bread and circuses are so fucking lame.)

Back in the day, they used to just admit that they were engaging in Realpolitik, and as disgusting as that is, at least it was more honest than the current crop of neocons who insist that they are righteous and good by advancing democracy and vanquishing evil using undemocratic, illegal means. It makes me miss Kissinger. At least he didn’t sing kumbaya while he was fucking over the wogs.

I have no idea where people who don’t pay much attention to the political scene would come down on this. It may be that they think the government should have a branch that does illegal dirty work. But I suspect they would also think that the president should not be allowed to run a secret foreign policy or stage wars for inscrutable reasons. Indeed, I think most people would find it repugnant if they knew that there are people in government who think the president of the United States has a right to lie to them in order to commit their blood and treasure to a cause or plan that has nothing to do with the one that is stated.

Of course, that’s exactly what happened with Iraq. The right’s greatest challenge now is to get the public to believe that they were lied to for their own good.

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Volunteer For Hackett

I just got this e-mail from Bob Brigham of Swing State Project:

Man, cellular laptop cards are great. I’m riding in Paul Hackett’s motorcade and live-blogging over at Swing State Project.

The campaign has momentum and is peaking perfectly, but needs more people. It would be great if you could post a general call for the netroots to get down to Ohio 2nd district. People have been reading about this on the blogs and coming from all over, Philly, Michigan, Florida and a whole helluva lot of netroots people from Ohio. So far, over 7,000 people have donated. Let’s see if we can get 1% to go volunteer for GOTV.

We need a few hundred more people and every available Democratic volunteer in the area is already plugged in. Let’s finish the job.

Ask people to call HQ at (513) 735-4310.

It’s a long shot, but if Hackett could pull this out it might be considered the kind of bellweather that Harris Wofford was back in 1991. It could change the media dynamic considerably for ’06.

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Testy, Testy

Wow. Anyone who hasn’t seen this Jean Schmidt interview with David Gregory over at Crooks and Liars needs to check it out.

Let’s just say that if the election turns on which candidate has the most winning personality, Hackett should win in a lanslide. Yikes.

Update: I hope the canvassers are armed with this information as they spread the word this week-end. It may be too late to make much of it, which is too bad. it would be a nice test case of the new libertarian red state Dem vs the religious extremist red state Republican paradigm:

…here’s one fact her side is carefully guarding, knowing only about 10 percent of those registered will vote Tuesday: her extreme views. If voters from places like Mariemont, Anderson Township or Hyde Park knew fully what Schmidt believed, they might sit out the election or switch over for once to a Democrat, especially one like Hackett.

Here’s the backup. During the campaign Schmidt is on leave as president of the Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati. Now, no one should begrudge her that commitment. It’s personal and religious. But does that commitment affect her political judgment and fitness? Second District voters must decide that.

But go to her group’s Web site, www.affirminglife.org/ index.asp, and click around through the many buttons and pages and you’ll learn she and her cohorts abhor living wills. Huh? Isn’t that the one lesson from the Republican exploitation of Terri Schiavo — that we should immediately get willed up? She says no.

Her local Right to Life site to this day says Schiavo was executed. And that you shouldn’t buy Levi jeans or anything Microsoft or Johnson & Johnson baby cream or read The New York Times. And they say no to the promise of embryonic stem cell research that could help our relatives and friends survive diseases and crippling paralysis.

Flat out, Schmidt is a political extremist. Of course, she thinks those fringe views put her in the 2nd District mainstream. I don’t think so, not with the suburban masses or even the man farming a rural field while his wife packs lunches for the kids waiting for their long school bus ride.

No doubt Schmidt will turn out her Right to Life friends on Tuesday. They believe their numbers will be enough for at least a victory.

But the more mainstream voters come to realize she’s a friend of Taft’s and the leader of such a fringe group, they might conclude she’s not Rob Portman, she’s not like them. And putting in a Democrat, especially one who still wears the Marine uniform and has economic success but with colorful, earthy edges, could be the more comfortable choice.

It all comes down to what people know, when they know it and whether they’ll care. We’ll soon know.

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