It’s amazing how the media gets stuck on certain narratives and how hard it is for them to change. On Hardball today, Matthews had on Charlie Cook and Stewart Rothenberg, both of whom are non-partisan, clear thinking political analysts. Chris began by bringing up the president’s low poll ratings, the trouble the Republicans are having on the war, the bad press and all of it. Within minutes, as always happens on these shows, they were dissecting the deep, intractable problems …. with the Democrats.
Rothenberg, to his credit, did bring up that it wasn’t actually necessary for the Democrats to have a single message right now since we are a year from the elections and the Republicans are imploding. This led to a discussion of how the Democrats are the captive of special interests.
It’s clear that the gasbags haven’t yet developed a vocabulary or a framework from which to describe and understand the new political reality. Matthews, in particular, can’t wrap his arms aroud the idea that the Republicans are tanking. He compared Bush to Henry the Fifth today (yup) and got all brow furrowed and confused trying to understand how it could happen that Bush is so unpopular.
This is something that the elite media and the Bush administration have in common. They can’t adjust to changing circumstances. Once their narrative/gameplan/talking points are set, you have to pry them out of their brains with a crowbar.
I hope that Democrats are prepared for the fact that they are going to have to wage the 06 election as if they are 30 points down and Bush is still astride his destrier cutting a swathe through every competitive district in the country. No matter how low he goes in the polls, or how much the public is disgruntled with republican rule, the media are going to portray the Democrats as even worse. We’ll have to win a few “surprises” before they can adjust their plot line.
Nobody is going to ask me who should be hired at The New York Times to replace Judith Miller, but if they did I would say that they should hire the best and most unsung national security reporter in the country — Jason Vest. If you are unfamiliar with his work, do yourself a favor and have Mr Google look him up. He’s a real reporter, not a stenographer, but he also has an impressive interest and grasp of the history of various groups, cabals and individuals who make up the current national security establishment and the Bush administration. And lo and behold, he actually writes about them. This is a huge key to understanding these otherwise inexplicable people and their motives. I highly recommend that you read his pieces wherever they come up and I will continue to bring them to your attention.
Today, he has written a piece on torture for the National Journal that is fascinating because he’s spoken to old guard CIA who have had some experience with this stuff in the past. They all agree that the moral dimension is huge, but there are good practical reasons for not doing it as well. These range from the difficulty in getting allies to cooperate because of their distaste for such methods to the fact that the information is unreliable.
But the thing I found most interesting is the observation that it does something quite horrible to the perpetrators as well as the victims:
“If you talk to people who have been tortured, that gives you a pretty good idea not only as to what it does to them, but what it does to the people who do it,” he said. “One of my main objections to torture is what it does to the guys who actually inflict the torture. It does bad things. I have talked to a bunch of people who had been tortured who, when they talked to me, would tell me things they had not told their torturers, and I would ask, ‘Why didn’t you tell that to the guys who were torturing you?’ They said that their torturers got so involved that they didn’t even bother to ask questions.” Ultimately, he said — echoing Gerber’s comments — “torture becomes an end unto itself.”
[…]
According to a 30-year CIA veteran currently working for the agency on contract, there is, in fact, some precedent showing that the “gloves-off” approach works — but it was hotly debated at the time by those who knew about it, and shouldn’t be emulated today. “I have been privy to some of what’s going on now, but when I saw the Post story, I said to myself, ‘The agency deserves every bad thing that’s going to happen to it if it is doing this again,'” he said. “In the early 1980s, we did something like this in Lebanon — technically, the facilities were run by our Christian Maronite allies, but they were really ours, and we had personnel doing the interrogations,” he said. “I don’t know how much violence was used — it was really more putting people in underground rooms with a bare bulb for a long time, and for a certain kind of privileged person not used to that, that and some slapping around can be effective.
“But here’s the important thing: When orders were given for that operation to stand down, some of the people involved wouldn’t [emphasis mine –ed]. Disciplinary action was taken, but it brought us back to an argument in the agency that’s never been settled, one that crops up and goes away — do you fight the enemy in the gutter, the same way, or maintain some kind of moral high ground?
To some extent civilization is nothing more than leashing the beast within. When you go to the dark side, no matter what the motives, you run a terrible risk of destroying yourself in the process. I worry about the men and women who are engaging in this torture regime. This is dangerous to their psyches. But this is true on a larger sociological scale as well. For many, many moons, torture has been a simple taboo — you didn’t question its immorality any more than you would question the immorality of pedophilia. You know that it’s wrong on a visceral, gut level. Now we are debating it as if there really is a question as to whether it’s immoral — and, more shockingly, whether it’s a positive good. Our country is now openly discussing the efficacy of torture as a method for extracting information.
When Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase “defining deviancy down” he couldn’t ever have dreamed that we would in a few short decades be at a place where torture is no longer considered a taboo. It certainly makes all of his concerns about changes to the nuclear family (and oral sex) seem trivial by comparison. We are now a society that on some official levels has decided that torture is no longer a deviant, unspeakable behavior, but rather a useful tool. It’s not hidden. People publicly discuss whether torture is really torture if it features less than “pain equavalent to organ failure.” People no longer instinctively recoil at the word — it has become a launching pad for vigorous debate about whether people are deserving of certain universal human rights. It spirals down from there.
When the smoke finally clears, and we can see past that dramatic day on 9/11 and put the threat of islamic fundamentalism into its proper perspective, I wonder if we’ll be able to go back to our old ethical framework? I’m not so sure we will even want to. It’s not that it changed us so much as it revealed us, I think. A society that can so easily discard it’s legal and ethical taboos against cruelty and barbarism, is an unstable society to begin with.
At this rather late stage in life, I’m realizing that the solid America I thought I knew may never have existed. Running very close, under the surface, was a frightened, somewhat hysterical culture that could lose its civilized moorings all at once. I had naively thought that there were some things that Americans would find unthinkable — torture was one of them.
The old Lebanon hand that Vest quotes above concludes by saying this:
I think as late as a decade ago, there were enough of us around who had enough experience to constitute the majority view, which was that this was simply not the way we did business, and for good reasons of practicality or morality. It’s not just about what it does or doesn’t do, but about who, and where, we as a country want to be.”
Now that we’ve let the torture genie out of the bottle, I wonder if we can put that beast back in. He looks and sounds an awful lot like an American.
A lot of people are linking to this fascinating Rolling Stone article on John Rendon, king of wartime propaganda. I’ve written extensively about the Office of Global Communications and the WHIG, but I didn’t know that Rendon was involved. I should have. It’s exactly his kind of gig.
I became aware of Rendon after Gulf War I, when it was revealed that he had had a big hand in “shaping the debate.” But it shouldn’t be assumed that he was the only PR firm involved in such things. Many of you will remember that none other PR giant Hill and Knowlton orchestrated one of the most amazing examples of prowar flackery ever documented:
… nothing quite compared to H&K’s now infamous “baby atrocities” campaign. After convening a number of focus groups to try to figure out which buttons to press to make the public respond, H&K determined that presentations involving the mistreatment of infants, a tactic drawn straight from W.R. Hearst’s playbook of the Spanish-American War, got the best reaction. So on October 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill at which H&K, in coordination with California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter, introduced a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah. (Purportedly to safeguard against Iraqi reprisals, Nayirah’s full name was not disclosed.) Weeping and shaking, the girl described a horrifying scene in Kuwait City. “I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital,” she testified. “While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers coming into the hospital with guns and going into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.” Allegedly, 312 infants were removed.
The tale got wide circulation, even winding up on the floor of the United Nations Security Council. Before Congress gave the green light to go to war, seven of the main pro-war senators brought up the baby-incubator allegations as a major component of their argument for passing the resolution to unleash the bombers. Ultimately, the motion for war passed by a narrow five-vote margin.
Only later was it discovered that the testimony was untrue. H&K had failed to reveal that Nayirah was not only a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, but also that her father, Saud Nasir al-Sabah, was Kuwait’s ambassador to the U.S. H&K had prepped Nayirah in her presentation, according to Harper’s publisher John R. MacArthur’s book Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War. Of the seven other witnesses who stepped up to the podium that day, five had been prepped by H&K and had used false names. When human rights organizations investigated later, they could not find that Nayirah had any connection to the hospital. Amnesty International, among those originally duped, eventually issued an embarrassing retraction.
They hate us because we’re so good. God bless America.
This essay in today’s LA Times makes my head hurt. It’s by a professor of media studies and history at Rutgers and it is called “Attack secrets, not leaks:”
As a critic of both the Iraq war and the administration’s political ruthlessness, I appreciate the satisfaction of seeing a White House operative nabbed for what seems like petty revenge. As a former and still-occasional journalist, I agree with the criticisms of Miller’s credulous prewar reporting, which helped legitimize claims that Saddam Hussein posed a danger to the United States. As a former assistant (and still a friend) to Woodward, I’ve often heard the rap that he’s too close to those in power.
However, I also believe that the frame that the news media have used for presenting this story is badly warped.
Instead of dwelling on horse-race details about who leaked what to whom and when, pundits should be debating the fundamental issue: Should leaking be criminalized in the first place? Instead of cheering the Plame investigation and vilifying the reporters caught in its web, we should be deploring the probe and applauding the reporters for gaining access to classified material, however ugly the leakers’ motives.
I understand this principle. If you “criminalize” leaks then people will stop leaking and the public will be less informed. But that principle exists to serve the far more important principle of the public’s right to know. That is what has become badly warped.
Why in the world should we applaud reporters for getting access to classified material but not writing a story about the powerful government leakers who leaked that classified information in order to obscure the facts and hide the truth? I’m not crying for Plame (although I think it’s a traitorous act to cavalierly expose a WMD specialist for petty reasons at a time like this.) What I’m interested in is the fact that the executive branch used classified information to secretly discredit a critic and the press doesn’t understand that withholding that story, not the identities of those who did it, is outrageous and worthy of condemnation.
The Fitzgerald probe is a peculiarity that is merely shining a light on a common practice among insiders that they clearly don’t understand is wrong. In the case of both Miller and Woodward, they wrote nothing about the case until they were forced by the law and their lameass, tardy editors. Their protection of their sources actually superceded their larger obligation to inform the public. This happened throughout this saga to greater and lesser degress, wherein a number of reporters gave lawyerly answers and talked about the case as if they didn’t know the answers to the questions they were asking, acting the part of journalist instead of actually being journalists. As I wrote earlier, as far as I can tell, Matt Cooper (and I should add, Knut Royce and Tim Phelps) were the only ones who actually understood what the story was.
Nobody is saying that they should have revealed the names of their sources, but they damned well should have revealed the substance of their conversations with those sources. Moreover they should have revealed to the public that the administration was using underhanded methods to discredit a critic. The fact Woodward and Miller (and others) wrote no stories is not a reason to excuse them — it’s the main reason to condemn them.
We hear a lot of whining about how they didn’t write stories because they didn’t want to be subpoenaed or the prosecutor asked them not to say anything (which is a genuinely baffling genuflect to government power.) I feel their pain, but that is the chance they take when they traffic in classified information. Their job is a risky business and while I’m sure they hope they aren’t going to have to face a prosecutor for it, it’s always got to be in the back of their mind that it could happen. The government tries to keep secrets and the press tries to dig them out.
Surely, everyone can see where that breaks down in this story, right? The idea that the “ugly motives” of government officials is irrelevant is preposterous in this case. The first question should have been, why is the powerful Scooter telling me this on backround? Why isn’t the president’s right hand man Rove saying this on the record? Would George Bush fire them if he knew they were revealing this information? If it’s relevant to Wilson’s report and casts doubt on his credibility, why aren’t they saying this publicly?
There are only two possible reasons that Libby, Rove and the other leakers would not go on the record. The first is that they knew Plame’s status was classified. The second is that they were trying to smear Wilson and didn’t want the public to know that. Either way, reporters should have understood they were being used by powerful forces to obscure the truth, not reveal it.
There is no legitimate reason for a top administration official to anonymously leak classified information to support the administration’s position. You can see a case in which a top official would legitimately leak classified information to cast doubt on the administration’s policy with which he disagrees, but not the other way around. The executive branch classifies information in the first place, presumably because it’s not supposed to be public. If they feel that the information is important and necessary to make public in order to support their policy, they can declassify it, call a press conference, give an interview, write a paper. Or they can shut up and find another way to advance their position. What they shouldn’t be able to do is have it both ways — use classified information to wage turf wars or discredit administration critics by having the press cover their asses. And yet that’s what happened. Top members of the Bush administration know they can get away with this because they believe that the chumps in the press will even go to jail rather than reveal their dirty deeds (which they went to great pains to remind the press to do.) That is “up is downism” taken to an extreme.
I agree that it’s not the job of the journalist to worry about the legal ramifications for Rove and Libby. Reporters are in the business of reporting classified information if it is in the public interest. (See: Pentagon Papers) However, reporters are not supposed to be in the business of advancing the administration’s position through this means. That is an abuse of confidentiality. The highest level of government has both the power and the responsibility to debate its critics openly and honestly. If they refuse to do that, the press shouldn’t do it for them behind a shield of anonymity. It subverts democracy.
Rove and Libby (and the others) may not have anonymously leaked because they knew Plame’s status was classified. It is just as likely that they did it for the same reason they always do — they were playing dirty pool and didn’t want to attach their names to it. This is what all these jaded members of the beltway refer to as “hardball politics.” And like hundreds of examples before this, the press docilely went along in order to preserve its access.
The reporter’s privilege is a means to an end, not the end in itself. It exists to serve the public’s right to know. And yet in this case, as in so many others in recent years, it’s been used to obscure the truth, spin the facts, serve the powerful to the detriment of the public.
To pretend that motives don’t matter, that all sources are equal, that it doesn’t matter if a source lies or uses the reporter as a cover for unethical behavior, is to devalue the principle until it has no meaning. Apparently, many of the elite media are so “entangled” with their sources and so inured to dirty politics that they can’t see this.
For the press to shield immensely powerful individuals from being responsible for these actions stands the entire principle underlying the reporter’s grant of confidentiality on its head. The point of it is to allow people to criticize their government without fear of professional reprisals, not so that powerful government officials can discredit their critics without fear of public reprisals.
I would only add that this morning it sounded as if the courtiers, as represented on the Stephanopoulos circle jerk and Newsweak, have decided that the source is Richard Armitage.
If this is so (and it may very well be — Armitage was a major souce for “Plan of Attack”) it doesn’t impact Libby’s legal case but it changes the focus of the narrative a bit. We have been operating under the assumption that the leak was coordinated directly out of Cheney’s office, with some help from the WHIG, which included Karl Rove and Stephen Hadley. If Armitage was telling Woodward about Plame as “idle gossip” in a conversation at the State Department, the Bush apologists (and the elite media — for different reasons) will call that coordinated leak scenario into question.
If it does turn out to be Armitage, regardless of the political implications, I think that it’s actually quite likely that the Woodward leak probably happened just as he describes it — passing on idle gossip. Via Talk Left’s excellent rundown of the Armitage theory, we have an article from The LA Times last August that discusses Armitage’s access to the information:
After a June 12 Washington Post story made reference to the Niger uranium inquiry, Armitage asked intelligence officers in the State Department for more information. He was forwarded a copy of a memo classified “Secret” that included a description of Wilson’s trip for the CIA, his findings, a brief description of the origin of the trip and a reference to “Wilson’s wife.”
The memo was kept in a safe at the State Department along with notes from an analyst who attended the CIA meeting at which Wilson was suggested for the Niger assignment. Those with top security clearance at State, like their counterparts in the White House, had been trained in the rules about classified information. They could not be shared with anyone who did not have the same clearance.
Less than a month later, Wilson went public with his charges. The next day, July 7, this memo and the notes were removed from the safe and forwarded to Powell via a secure fax line to Air Force One. Powell was on the way to Africa with the president, and his aides knew the secretary would be getting questions.
Woodward says he had the conversation with his source in mid-June, so it fits that Armitage might have recently read this memo and shared the insider info with Woodward. The Bush administration observed no rules, as far as I can tell, about classified information when it came to Bob Woodward. It explains why Woodward would have been so adament about this not being anything more than idle gossip, because that’s exactly how he heard it from his pal Dick. According to the article, that Armitage memo didn’t leave the safe until Wilson went public so it could have easily been just a delicious tittilating tidbit Armitage threw out there, not realizing where this story was going. (Powerful administration sources discussing classified matters under the caveat that they must never reveal the information is apparently so common in DC now that reporters don’t even understand what’s wrong with it.)
If my simple scenario is true, then the wingnuts will claim that it proves there was no coordinated leak. If others in the Bush administration were gossiping about this then it wasn’t a smear job at all, just simple socializing around the water cooler. This is, of course, nonsense. It would only mean that Woodward and Armitage were socializing around the water cooler (on deep backround.) We already know that Libby and Rove, on the other hand, were rabid dogs working overtime to discredit the CIA (Libby) and destroy “a Democrat” (Rove )through underhanded leaks and then lying about it under oath. One doesn’t necessarily affect the other.
If Armitage was Novak’s source as well, which Newsweak claims, then Occam’s Leak doesn’t apply. It’s not believable that Armitage would have casually gossipped about this to both reporters. I’ll withhold judgment until I see any evidence besides Isikoff’s observation that Armitage isn’t a “partisan gunsliger” to back that up.
Back in August, when George W. Bush crossed the Mendoza Line with a disapproval rating in the Gallup Poll of 56 percent, he still had four men left to pass for the title of most unpopular president in modern history: Jimmy Carter (59 percent), George H. W. Bush (60 percent) Richard Nixon (66 percent), and Harry Truman (67 percent). I predicted that the way things were going, he could speed past Carter and Bush 41 “within the next month.”
I was wrong—it took the president two months.This week’s Gallup puts his disapproval at 60 percent, which means father and son share third place on the all-time list. Bush 43 always said he learned an important political lesson from Bush 41, and now we know what it was: Don’t hit bottom too early. If you’re going to be the third-most unpopular president, do it in your second term, so you have some time to stop and smell the Rose Garden.
It’s an awesome achievement for one family to produce two of the four most unpopular presidents in modern times. If there were a Mount Rushmore for rejection, the Bushes would have half the place to themselves.
RAWA – the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan – was one of the most vocal groups speaking out against the Taliban when no one was listening. Now, one of their members responds to the bromides being wholesaled by a Republican observer to the recent elections. Since those of us in the US have been fed news about Afghanistan that is entirely propaganda, these words probably will read as shrill, hysterical, and suspiciously “radical.” I wish they were, but they are not. I followed international news reports pretty closely of the first Loya Jirga after the Taliban fell, the one which first “elected” Karzai. It was a total sham. The US did everything possible to undermine the proceedings, not that they would have been much less corrupt if the US had stayed away. And RAWA’s description of the Northern Alliance, the drug farmers,the warlords, and the abuse of women’s rights also jibes with numerous reports that fly under the radar of mainstream American news. And for all the suffering the Afghans have endured since what even The Nation described as the “just war” of invasion, the US failed to achieve its prime objective: Bring Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar to justice.
The US started the fracas by not replacing religious tyranny with democracy, by not relying on the people, but rather by siding with the NA, the very worst enemies of our people. It goes without saying that Afghans will not see as their “liberators” those who drove the Taliban wolves through one door and unchained the rabid dogs of the NA through another. How a nation “sees as liberators” those who have blown to shred not the terrorists but thousands of innocents? How can simple Afghans “see Americans as liberators” while the “liberators” are going to woo their men in the government and in the parliament to approve the establishment of the US bases on our soil for decades, which obviously goes contrary to the independence of the country? Our people say that if Americans were their liberators, they should have not allowed about 200 criminals and arch enemies of democracy to pave their way to the parliament and provincial council. After four years the people see that the “liberators’” promises for them were all lies. And bear it in mind, Ms. Tebelius, that our ruined people have no doubt that those with the disgraceful stories of Abu Ghraib cannot be their “liberators”. Do we need to recite abuses of the “liberators” in Afghanistan?
…
After 9/11 when the U.S. resorted to bomb our wounded country and take the lives of several thousands innocent civilians it helped the bloodthirsty NA seize power. The NA is comprised of those millionaire rapists busy in the opium trade under the very nose of the US troops. They are the people behind the insecurity, kidnappings, embezzlement of billions of dollars of foreign aids, injustices, anti-women constraints, covering up of the day light murders, and so on and so forth.
They include the likes of Dr Abdullah, Younis Qanooni, Zia Massud, Karim Khalili, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Mohaqiq, Sarwar Danish, Ms. Mosouda Jalal, Nematullah Shahrani, Ismail Khan, Ms. Sediqa Balkhi, Rasul Sayyaf, Ikram Masoomi, Rashid Dostum, Mullah Fazil Hadi Shinwari, Ms. Amena Afzali and others are stained with the blood of tens of thousands of Kabul residents. All of these ladies and gentlemen have the disgraceful scar of inhuman brutalities against our people in the blackest years of 1992-1996. They are “our” ministers, vice presidents and advisors to the president. Most of the Afghan ambassadors, governors, secretaries and other high ranking officials are also affiliated with NA mafia.
…
It is not difficult to predict what will be the result of the “miracle” election about which you take comfort. A parliament filled with the most cruel, misogynist, anti-democracy, and reactionary fundamentalists headed by such disgusting drug traders as Sayyaf, Qanoni, Rabbani, Mohaqqiq, Pairam Qul, Hazrat Ali, and their likes. These U.S. backed religious fascists will never “spread democracy”, but rather try to “legitimate” and perpetuate their bloody domination on our people by sitting in the legislature as “lawmakers”.
Ms. Tebelius, anybody who wants to be regarded as a friend of the people of Afghanistan and not of the present regime, she/he has to expose the fundamentalists and their dangerous agenda and avoid to dance to the tune of the US government or its blue-eyed boys in Afghanistan. As Aldous Huxley wrote, “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human”. Please don’t play the role of a propagandist.
Moreover by naming the most scandalous elections in the world “the miracle of Afghanistan”, you have insulted millions of Afghans who didn’t vote for the murderers of their beloved ones. Can’t you feel how painful and disgusting it is to propagate such nonsense?
Update: Jen in comments linked to these beautiful pictures of Afghanistan. It certainly is one of the most photogenic countries in the world.
Half of those surveyed said President George W. Bush was right to suggest that “intelligent design” — the notion that God played a role in evolution — be taught alongside Charles’s Darwin’s theory in public schools while 37 percent thought he was wrong to do so.
The Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll found that 69 percent agreed that “evolution is what most scientists believe, so it should be taught in public science classes.” Twenty percent said they believe “scientists are wrong, so evolution should not be taught” while 11 percent suggested teaching both views or were undecided.
Just 23 percent of those surveyed said “humans evolved from other animal species through natural selection” while 54 percent said they believe “God created the universe and humans in a six-day period,” Seventeen percent said “God caused humans to evolve from other species.” Six percent were undecided, the Cincinnati Post, a Scripps Howard paper, reported.
A sizeable majority believe that the earth was literally created in six days. But they also think that kids should be taught “what most scientists believe” even though they don’t believe it themselves. Huh?
And only 11% think that ID should be taught alongside evolution but 50% think the president was right to suggest that it should be.
We are obviously dealing with a very confused public on this subject. I think the way to deal with this may be to take a positive stand for teaching comparative religion in public schools. That may just satisfy the majority who clearly don’t want to say they believe in evolution but know in their hearts that their kids need to understand it if they don’t want to be mullet-headed morons unable to function in modern society.
I took comparitive religion in high school and it was a very interesting class — not to mention a really easy A. I’m sure the kids would get behind this too.
Kevin at Catch reads Little Green Footballs so I don’t have to poke my eyes out with an ice pick:
Has anyone here tried to phone, e-mail, fax, or otherwise contact the political slut, John “the coward” Murtha? You, know, the maggot who is being quoted by Al-Jazeera (see nationalreview.com)? I have attempted to call this creature since last night (phone still busy), fax him (busy yesterday and today), and he does not accept e-mails from people outside of his district. This man is a tumor, a slime, a piece of shit and I don’t give a DAMN that he served in Vietnam! My Dad served in Korea, my father-in-law in Vietnam, and my cousin in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite their courage and service, NONE of them can tell me (who has not served) or any other American citizen that I cannot hold an opinion regarding US-based military operations. Murtha, GO FUCK YOURSELF!
Somebody needs a nap. The Republican caucus needs a nap too. Mean Jean Schmidt called John Murtha a coward on the House floor and then had to withdraw her remarks. As we speak they are staging a strange enraged kabuki vote supposedly designed to embarrass the Democrats. And according to Roll Call they are going to go after Murtha on ethics:
Republicans acknowledge that Murtha’s Iraq statement — coming from a Member with strong military credentials — is driving their renewed focus on the ethics questions surrounding the veteran Democratic lawmaker.
“It strikes at the heart of his credibility on [military] issues,” said the GOP lawmaker. “He’s put himself on the frontline.”
Murtha’s statement has completely driven them round the bend, from LGFers to members of congress. It’s interesting because it’s not like others haven’t been saying this stuff. He’s just one congressman from Pennsylvania. Why all the drama? I think it’s because he symbolizes a particular constituent — the war hawk who recognizes that we aren’t winning and that the “war” is, in fact, unwinnable. They are suddenly sweating and agitated because they know that if they are losing guys like him, they are losing the whole enchilada.
So it was Woodward who picked up the phone after Fitzgerald’s press conference and reminded his White House insider source that, contrary to Fitzgeralds apparent belief that Libby was the first to spill the beans to a reporter, the source had told Woodward about Plame sometime earlier.
In his press conference announcing Libby’s indictment, Fitzgerald noted that, “Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.” Woodward realized, given that the indictment stated Libby disclosed the information to New York Times reporter Miller on June 23, that Libby was not the first official to talk about Wilson’s wife to a reporter. Woodward himself had received the information earlier.
According to Woodward, that triggered a call to his source. “I said it was clear to me that the source had told me [about Wilson’s wife] in mid-June,” says Woodward, “and this person could check his or her records and see that it was mid-June. My source said he or she had no alternative but to go to the prosecutor. I said, ‘If you do, am I released?'”, referring to the confidentiality agreement between the two. The source said yes, but only for purposes of discussing it with Fitzgerald, not for publication.
Kevin Drum wonders why Woodward would do such a thing since it doesn’t legally impact Libby’s case. My guess is that he and his source thought it would impact the Libby case and that they were consciously tripping up the shameful junkyard dog prosecutor. After all, the entire DC press corps dutifully reported that it had tripped up Fitzgerald when it was revealed — even though it didn’t.
Woodward believed that Fitzgerald was on a Ken Starr fishing expedition:
Woodward expressed some surprise that Fitzgerald hadn’t contacted him earlier in the probe, but had high praise for the prosecutor whose investigation he has openly criticized on television. During his time with the prosecutor, Woodward said, he found Fitzgerald “incredibly sensitive to what we do. He didn’t infringe on my other reporting, which frankly surprised me. He said ‘This is what I need, I don’t need any more.'”
This should not have surprised him. Fitzgerald has not been reported to have coerced any journalists to talk about anything but the Plame case and within strict agreed upon limits (despite many of our fondest hopes.) Woodward thought he was out of control because he has been listening to administration spin. But then, that’s what he does.