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Turdblossom Special

Via Pre$$titutes

If it comes to pass that Karl Rove is indicted, or even if he loses his security clearance (which he damned well should) I would hope that someone in Washington has the guts to smash this fellatory daydream in Mark Helperin’s face and twist it like a grapefruit until he screams for mercy. I’m not sure if “The Note” think this is funny or if they seriously believe that Karl Rove was just an innocent bystander in the Plame outing, but either way their little fantasy is ludicrous.

Pretending that they are writing in the future on a day when Rove comes to the podium and finally speaks, they write Rove’s speech for him:

“I have a statement to make before taking your questions.”

“Now that the special counsel has informed me that I will not be charged in his investigation, I thought I should come to this podium and tell you the straight Texas truth about my role in this case.”

“In short, my counsel advises me that there is no controlling legal authority that says that any of my activities violated any law.”

“Just kidding. Lighten up, Plante.”

“When news reports began regarding allegations that Valerie Wilson’s name was improperly released to the media, I was asked by several colleagues here at the White House if I had played a role in illegally releasing the name of Mrs. Wilson. I said at the time that I had not. That was my best recollection at the time I was asked.”

“Subsequently, three things occurred. One, the special counsel’s investigation began, and both he and the President — as well as the White House counsel — asked those of us working in the government not to speak publicly about the case in any way.”

“Two, my colleague and friend Scott McClellan on several occasions repeated what I had in good faith told him — that I had not played any part in breaking the law and disclosing her name. As a result, he mislead you more often than my lawyer, Luskin, which is really something when you think about it.”

“Third, after an e-mail was belatedly discovered through the normal search process at the White House, my recollection was refreshed and I recalled that I did have one brief conversation with one reporter in which I mentioned Mrs. Wilson’s role in her husband’s trip to Niger.”

“Because of the first development — the absolute barrier to speaking about the case — I was unable to deal in a timely manner with the second two developments in a public way. This had the unfortunate effect of bringing into question the credibility of the White House and my own public credibility. For that, I am sorry.”

There was, of course, no absolute barrier about talking about the case. Indeed, his lawyer discussed it constantly both on backround and in the open. This is nonsense.

Furthermore, Karl Rove has a photographic memory. He did not forget speaking to Cooper and he did not forget speaking to Libby about Novak writing a story about “Wilson’s wife.” Sure, Karl could say this, but nobody would believe it except his little cheerleading squad at The Note. The partisan shills might dutifully repeat it, but they wouldn’t believe it either. This is because it’s completely unbelievable.

Karl has cultivated quite a mystique over the years. He is considered by one and all, on both the right and the left, to be a Machiavellian genius, or as ex-Democrat and media maven Mark McKinnon, his most devoted sycophant, puts it, “a chess master who always sees 12 steps ahead.” He worked very hard to create that image and playing the dizzy blond won’t work now.

Why, everyone knows that Bush’s Brain’s tactical brilliance is legendary. It’s obvious that Boy Genius’s political skills are unparalleled. He has been lauded for his special brand of slash and burn politics since his earliest days, doing dirty tricks in the college Republicans. He doesn’t play hardball politics, he plays beanball politics. He cannot play innocent. Ever.

In this case, regardless of any illegality, his tactics were no different than usual — low, partisan and ruthlessly over the top. Here is what he reportedly said to the grand jury:

President Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel’s investigation of the matter.

But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

This is what the man does and it’s how he got his creature George W. Bush in the white house. From whisper campaigns about Ann Richards being a lesbian to siccing the FBI on Jim Hightower, he honed his skills as an assassin for more than 20 years in Texas. He’s proud of it.

The LA Times reported last summer that Rove was just as obsessed as Libby and for trivial reasons by comparison:

Prosecutors investigating whether White House officials illegally leaked the identity of Wilson’s wife, a CIA officer who had worked undercover, have been told that Bush’s top political strategist, Karl Rove, and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, were especially intent on undercutting Wilson’s credibility, according to a person familiar with the inquiry.

While lower-level White House staff members typically handle most contacts with the media, Rove and Libby began personally communicating with reporters about Wilson, prosecutors were told.

A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said Rove’s interest was so strong that it prompted questions in the White House. When asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove responded: “He’s a Democrat.”

Karl Rove was in the middle of a ruthless, partisan campaign to “discredit” Joe Wilson with leaks. He, as “Official A,” went to Libby and told him that Robert Novak was going to write a column “about Wilson’s wife.” He told Chris Matthews that Wilson’s wife was “fair game.”

Yet The Note wants us to actually swallow this utter bullshit that the brilliant, masterful, political genius Karl Rove “forgot” his conversation with Matt Cooper in which he spilled the beans about Wilson’s wife. In a court of law, perhaps Pat Fitzgerald would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rove lied about that. In the court of public opinion, it is as ridiculous as the idea that OJ didn’t do it.

Perhaps Karl can spend the rest of his tenure in the White House looking for the real leakers.

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It’s Confirmed: Dog Bites Man.

You may recall Colonel Laurence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Colin Powell who recently caused a…hullabaloo when he shocked, shocked everyone with his report of the existence of a cabal that has hijacked foreign policy under Bush. Well, Colonel Wilkerson now tell us the orders to torture prisoners came from the highest levels of government, specifically Cheney’s office.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the good Colonel’s been able to put two and two together, but among others, investigative journalist Mark Danner’s been saying much the same thing all along, long before Bush’s ratings tanked (to still dismayingly high levels). Danner’s reporting on the torture scandal has been detailed, meticulous, superb, accurate, and ignored.

By the way, does Danner appear regularly on major network TV news or panels? Any rumors he might replace David Brooks at the Times, who has been screwing up royally (unless Brooks’s purpose has been to increase Friedman’s relative stature at the Times as a prose stylist and deep thinker)?

No harm in asking.

Ken, We Hardly Knew Ye. But That Was Enough.

Tomlinson resigns from the CPB board. Remember? He’s the guy who hired someone to watch Bill Moyers and report on all the heinous liberalism going on. Among those dastardly, “anti-administration” liberals were Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), and ex-congressman Bob Barr (R-Hypocrite). Unfortunately, Tomlinson remains head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. So it’s too early to breathe a sigh of relief, but it is a step in the right… excuse me, proper direction.

Update: Kevin K. in comments reminds us that there’s many more where Tomlinson came from still on the board, and that There’s some majorly awful programming coming up. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Bush was deliberately trying to destroy PBS. But he wouldn’t do that, would he?

Interestingly, in the midst of all of the attention to the CPB’s fight against liberal bias, the agency quietly announced a round of grantees for its “America at a Crossroads” project (6/27/05). Among the projects receiving CPB support are The Case for War, a film about neoconservative Richard Perle made by Perle’s longtime friend Brian Lapping; The Sound of the Guns, a film about former CIA director William Colby made by Colby’s son; Soldiers of the Future, which “will tell the story of Donald Rumsfeld’s recent efforts to transform America’s military”; Warriors, in which American Enterprise editor Karl Zinsmeister argues that the U.S. military “attracts a cross-section of citizens motivated by idealism and patriotism”; and Studying Hatred, a film by David Horowitz co-author Peter Collier.

And in Spring, 2006, be sure to watch the much anticipated documentary, “Big ‘Behind’: A Profile of Tim LaHaye.”

The Rhetoric Was Part Of The Policy

All this nonsense about Clinton and other Democrats saying the same thing as Bush, so Bush couldn’t have been lying is driving me nuts. It’s bad enough that they trot this out as an excuse for their own fuck-up, but when they conveniently forget that they were against the action Clinton took at the time to meet the threat (because it interefered with their blow-job trial) it’s infuriating.

Seetheforest has Trent Lott’s famous quote after Clinton announced Operation Desert Fox, but I’ve got another one:

Armey said in a statement. “After months of lies, the president has given millions of people around the world reason to doubt that he has sent Americans into battle for the right reasons.”

I won’t say it.

Here’s the real problem. Clinton said the usual boilerplate about Saddam being a dangerous guy and how he wanted to get weapons of mass destruction and how we had to be credible with our threats of force to keep him in line. And when Saddam stepped way out of line in 1998 he ordered the massive bombing operation that got all the Republicans’ panties in a twist because it happened at the time of the all important fellatio impeachment.

On the night he ordered the bombing, here is how Clinton explained American policy:

…we will pursue a long-term strategy to contain Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction and work toward the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its people.

First, we must be prepared to use force again if Saddam takes threatening actions, such as trying to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction or their delivery systems, threatening his neighbors, challenging allied aircraft over Iraq or moving against his own Kurdish citizens.

The credible threat to use force, and when necessary, the actual use of force, is the surest way to contain Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction program, curtail his aggression and prevent another Gulf War.

Clinton said that American policy was that if Saddam took certain threatening actions, we would use force.

Bush and Cheney said that Saddam might take threatening actions, so they had to invade.

That’s quite a different threat assessment. Clinton never suggested an invasion and occupation to deal with Saddam, his policy was to contain him with threats and judicious use of force when he provoked us. And apparently it worked. There were, after all, no weapons of mass destruction and he had perpetrated none of the other actions that would have led to a need for further use of force as of 2002.

General Zinni ran Operation Desert Fox and believed that it had crippled Saddam’s weapons capabilities. Inspectors, of course, could have verified that fact and Saddam allowed them back into the country in 2002 under the “threat of force.”

Even I wondered for a bit if Bush might actually be bluffing about invasion in the beginning, because 9/11 gave us some momentum to saber rattle to get inspectors back in. I suspect that some of the Senators who voted for the Iraq resolution held out some hope that this was what Bush had in mind — it had, after all, been Bush I and Clinton’s policy and it had kept Saddam contained and toothless for a decade. After about five mionutes of pondering the question I realized that Bush was deadly serious and there wsn’t a chance in hell that he could have the necessary finesse to pull something like that off. He wasn’t, after all, “into nuance.”

There was a lot of bellicose talk for years about Saddam because a public show of serious intent was part of the containment strategy. But until Commander Codpiece came along and empowered his neocon cabal of Iraq nuts, nobody was suggesting that the US military invade and occupy the country. Indeed, nobody thought it would be necessary in order to keep Saddam in check.

A lot of Democrats (including both Clintons) made a political gamble that after 9/11 they had to support the invasion because if it was successful they would have been tagged as soft. They were fighting the last war, Gulf War I, in which many Democrats looked foolish for having objected to such a painless, inexpensive, glorious victory. I’m afraid that many of the Democratic leadership bet on the wrong horse —- again. It is, sadly, a testament to how badly they deal with foreign policy that they got it wrong both times. A lot of us out here in Real Murika didn’t because we weren’t playing politics — just assessing the situation and deciding whether it made sense.

Still, it was undoubtedly difficult. 9/11 had cast a spell on our country, abetted by a media that turned the “war on terror” into an epic pageant of national pride and patriotism to such an extent that to question, much less oppose, was an act of political courage. There are very few politicans of either party with much of that:

Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chafee (R-RI)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (D-FL)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wellstone (D-MN)
Wyden (D-OR)

Those were the Senators who voted against the resolution. How good, smart and prescient they appear today. The ones who didn’t showed lousy instincts. When the president is an idiot, it should be easy to conclude that he is not going to make good decisions about the need for war — or anything else. Millions of us knew the constant blathering about Bush’s great “leadership” after 9/11 was hype. They should have too.

But still, even the most craven Democratic opportunist cannot be held responsible for the administration’s repeated assertion’s that Saddam was a “grave and gathering danger” or that the Bush Doctrine was dutifully printed out from the PNAC web-site and distributed after 9/11 without any serious consideration of its ramifications. Bush was pushing a line that had many people wondering if he didn’t know something thast the rest of us didn’t. It was incomprehensible to a lot of Americans that an American president would be so reckless as to launch a war on unverified information.

There was no good reason to stage an invasion based upon the threat assessment we had. 9/11 actually made that proposition more dangerous and short sighted than it would have been before. They knew this, which is why they hyped the threat with visions of mushroom clouds and nefarious drone planes disguised a crop dusters. They knew that if we relied solely upon the threat assessment that the Clinton administration relied upon, the country would not back their war. So they lied.

The true irony is that it now appears that Clinton managed to accomplish what Bush said needed to be done, with a heavy bombing campaign during his own impeachment. (Talk about multi-tasking.) Bush came along and spent billions of dollars, stretched our military beyond its capabilities, destroyed our international credibility and got tens of thousands killed to accomplish something that had already been done in 1998. What a cock-up.

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Foreign Policy Magazine And A Little From Foreign Affairs, For Extra Measure.

I’ve been subscribing to Foreign Policy for a few years now, but ever since they gave Newt Gingrich several pages to propose an American Ministry of Propaganda, I haven’t had much desire to do much more than glance at it. The current issue is different. It’s terrific, doing precisely what I hoped the zine would do. Not that I agree with everything, far from it, but it stirs the pot and gets some lesser-known stories out in provocative ways.

Take, for instance, this good news story about Iraq. Or so it seems at first. Commander James Gavrilis captured/liberated/whatever Ar Rutbah less than a month after the official start of the war. Spending around $3000 and relying on what sounds like a reality-based perspective on the situation, he managed to get the town back on its feet:

My initial approach to governing was very authoritative; it eliminated anarchy and allowed Iraqis to debate the details of democracy rather than survival. What the Iraqis needed was an interim authority to get them back on their feet. While the interim mayor and I provided this stability, the city council’s role was to oversee the mayor and to provide input, not necessarily to make policy. The laws and values of their society and culture were just fine. All we needed to do was enforce them. The city council was an important body for dialogue, debate, and legitimacy. But by initially limiting its decision-making power, we made sure the council couldn’t paralyze our progress.

Representatives in the city council included teachers and doctors, lawyers and merchants. At one town-hall meeting, a few of these professionals asked me about elections. They said the tribal sheiks and imams did not represent their interests, and they wanted to have a say in their government. I explained that they couldn’t vote right away because we had no election monitors or ballot boxes. Still, they insisted. Two rudimentary elections were held in the grand mosque to reconfirm the interim mayor—and Americans were not involved in either vote.

As an alternative to Saddam’s regime, the particular form of democracy was not as important as the concept of a polity that provided for the individual. That was really what Iraqis missed under Saddam. Good governance had to precede the form or type of democracy. Because we were effective in providing services, were responsive to individual concerns, and improved their lives, the Iraqis gravitated toward us and the changes we introduced. However, we didn’t have to change much. Ar Rutbah already had a secular structure that worked. We just put good people in office and changed the character of governance, not the entire infrastructure.

[snip]

One day, a few tribal sheiks came to complain of looting at night in some parts of the city. So, knowing that some of the sheiks were behind some of the looting, I established a neighborhood watch. I put them in charge and had their men act as the watchmen. And the sheiks were held accountable if the looting continued. I also had a team patrol those areas at night at random. The stealing ended abruptly.

[Snip]

n the end, I spent only about $3,000. This sum included the salaries of the police, the mayor, the army colonel, and a few soldiers and public officials. We paid for the crane and the flatbed trailers to move the generators to the city for electricity, and for fuel to run the generators. And we picked up the tab for other necessities, such as painting, tea, and copies of the renunciation form. But the change did not depend on the influx of funds; the Iraqis did a lot themselves. The real progress was the efficient and decent government and the environment we established. Without a lot of money to invest, we made assessments and established priorities, and talked with the Iraqis, exchanging ideas and visions of the future.

We intended to work ourselves out of our jobs, and when conditions were right we took steps back.

A very moving, hopeful story, and I’m not being anything other than sincere in saying so. But there’s just one teensy little problem with making this a textbook case example of why Iraq should have been invaded, which becomes obvious as the article winds down.

You see, unfortunately, Commander Gavrilis and his band of brothers were there for all of two weeks, and then they left. And then:

Although the Iraqis continued the work we started, the follow-up coalition forces did not. The distance between the locals and the troops widened. The Iraqis were eventually exposed and vulnerable to regime loyalists’ retribution and intimidation by foreign fighters. The local Iraqi security forces never developed to the point where they were stronger than the gangs of insurgents; they were never brought into a larger political or security framework of an Iraqi government so that they could be part of a collective security system. Left alone, the Iraqis simply couldn’t hold off the foreign fighters who passed through the city, using Ar Rutbah as a way station en route to Baghdad and Ramadi.

Now, you might think at first that this helps the argument of the liberal hawks, that Bush/Iraq could have worked had the occupation simply been more competent. Actually it doesn’t. Here’s part of the reason why.

As it happens, a few days earlier, I had read this remarkably bad article about Vietnam by Melvin Laird in Foreign Affairs about his tenure as Secretary of Defense during Nixon. Short version: “Don’t blame me for Vietnam. The guys before me got us into that mess, I did a great job, but I didn’t have time to finish, and the guys who came after me totally fucked it up.”

Now, there are major differences between Vietnam and Iraq, to be sure. Among them is that Commander Gavrilis seems like an intelligent, down to earth man, justly proud of his competence in a difficult situation while Secretary Laird reminds us what an arrogant, mistaken, paranoid son of a bitch he was thirty plus years ago. But the trajectory of failure is the same and, I’m afraid, entirely predictable. Let’s, for argument’s sake, take both men at their word, that they did a good job (a stretch with Laird, but bear with me). The problem is that no matter how good a job they could do, inevitably someone would replace them who wouldn’t do as good a good job, who didn’t care as much, who wasn’t as informed, who didn’t have the same combination of street instincts, commonsense, and decency that led to a temporary positive outcome. The main point is this: As Commander Gavrilis himself notes, any positive development was temporary and highly contingent. Because so little can be depended upon in such a volatile, and little understood, situation – be it Vietnam or a town in occupied Iraq – reversals due to incompetence and unexpected problems are all but certain. And let’s not forget that incompetence during occupation was only one of many areas that had to go well in Iraq. There was national and international law and opinion, the economy, the insurgency, and the prospect that major US armed forces could be required elsewhere. Many of these did go well (despite Bolton’s efforts to create total havoc, US forces didn’t have to relocate to Korea, thank God) but Iraq still failed. The problem was that nearly all contingencies had to go well, and unless you’re Bill Bennett on a roll, that’s impossible.

In any event, it surely would have taken more good luck than even Andrew Lloyd Webber possesses to have pulled off Ar Rutbah for another two weeks. Amd to imagine that democracy could actually take root then and flourish 2 1/2 years later is a pie in the sky fantasy. Not even Commander Gavrlis could have kept the situation moving forward that long. Not after Abu Ghraib, for instance.

As with Vietnam, (which despite Laird’s assertions did not in any way benefit from his clear-eyed genius as Defense Secretary, simply because there was no benefit to be had except to morticians and artificial limb manufacturers), Iraq could not work out. Incompetence, or insurgency, coalition atrocities, or sheer ignorance, or a combination of all four, was inevitable, and predictable.

And finally, I say with genuine sorrow: Commander Gavrilis’ efforts, no matter how admirable, were, in any significant sense, predictably doomed never to last long enough to make much difference in avoiding the tragic reality of Iraq’s people today.

Now, there are several other articles in Foreign Policy well worth reading that are equally interesting and subtle. For example, here’s a profile of Zarqawi. What makes this article important is not only that we learn who Zarqawi is, but his significance. He is no rare anomaly, like the fabulously wealthy and fanatical bin Laden. Zarqawi is just a halfway smart lowlife thug, warped by 7 years of imprisonment with torture, transformed into a committed jihadist, originally only a reluctant an ally of al Qaeda, and finally, as a result of the American invasion/occupation, advanced to the position of “emir” for al Qaeda in Iraq. Now, guess what? As Peter Bergen and Alec Reynolds make clear in a brilliant article in the same issue of Foreign Affairs where the odious Laird held forth, there are likely to many, many more Zarqawis in Iraq’s, and America’s, future. And that, too, was predictable, and predicted.

Another article from Foreign Policy, seemingly just an innocuous roundup and overview of scholars is equally subtle and chilling. Take a look at this chart of the leading lights in foreign policy studies. As the article notes, “nearly all are white men older than 50.” I’ll add to that that there is not a single native Arab speaker on that list and at least two of the so-called wise men in foreign policy -Huntington and Fukuyama – hold what can only be described, in the kindest terms, mostly worthless opinions. Women may join the list soon, the article notes. That’s all to the good, but the level of sheer mediocrity of the “scholars” on this list is astonishing, and is not likely to change much if one or two of the worst names are replaced by capable women.

Another part of this deceptively bland-seeming article notes a very scary statistic:

When asked what region was most strategically important to the United States today, a resounding 58 percent answered the Middle East and North Africa. Yet, only 7 percent of U.S. international relations scholars specialize in the region. This gap may explain why the American intelligence community is still advertising for Arabic speakers.

Well, yes, it just might explain it. That, and the fact that openly gay specialists in Arabic aren’t welcome, too.

35% Of The American Public Living In Alternate Reality

Be afraid, be very afraid. After all that is happened, more than 1/3 of all Americans “approve” of Bush’s presidency. What will it take to wake these people up? What horrible things would Bush and his gang have to do – or not do – to drive his poll numbers further south?

And let’s try to be creative here. As enjoyable as fellatio, cunnilingus and its many delicious variations are for most of us, suggesting Bush get caught in flagrante delicto with Official A – or a horse, or whomever – just simply is not that original. Allow yourself to think way, way, outside the box (and the bedroom, and the bathroom), and let your imagination roam: What more could Bush inflict on us that he hasn’t already done, to make matters so bad his approval ratings would fall to a more reasonable, but still alarmingly high, number, say 10%?

Would he have to publicly declare his desire to be dictator? Nope, been there, done that. How about establish gulags in Eastern Europe? He’s beaten you to the punch.

Any ideas? It’s not that easy.

The Geography Of The Psyche

I was puttering around earlier working on something else and I came across this hilarious paper dealing with the spousal notification issue from the “men’s rights” perspective.

Writing jointly for the Court on this aspect of the [Casey] decision, Justices O’Conner, Kennedy and Souter struck down the spousal notification requirement as in impermissible infringement on a woman’s right to privacy. The Court offered three basic reasons for holding that a wife could not be compelled to inform her husband of her intent to abort.

1. First, the Court discounted the husband’s interests by pointing to the realities of nature:

“[i]t is an inescapable biological fact that state regulation with respect to the child a woman is carrying will have a far greater impact on the mother’s liberty than on the father’s

In other words, because the fetus is in the woman and not the man, the woman’s interests trump.

This makes sense. I would even fo so far as to say that because the fetus is in the woman, the woman’s interests trump — the fetus. This fellow disagrees:

This reasoning might be questioned on several fronts. First, it is not the case that the biology is all with the women. As dozens of studies of couvade syndrome indicate, expectant fathers experience biological symptoms of pregnancy along with their partners. Both partners may feel nausea, irritability, food cravings, indigestion, and so on. Both can anticipate discomforts from pregnancy and the stresses of infant care. While the man’s aches and pains are “psychosomatic,” and are likely to be less intense than the woman’s, they are not inconsequential. Men and women both experience biological effects of pregnancy.

And they both have that glow…

In any event, the right to privacy recognized in Roe v. Wade is not based on biology only, but also on issues of emotion and identity. Justices O’Conner, Kennedy and Souter stated as much in Casey, observing that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy. These choices include the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. This is not the language of biology, but of religion or philosophy.

And if men choose to define their “concept of existence, of meaning, of the mystery of life” as being pregnant, the law should give them equal rights to the female body that is actually, you know, biologically pregnant. That’s called equality.

The greater maternal involvement in biological pregnancy cannot by itself resolve these larger issues. What matters, in addition to the physical effects on the body, are the consequences of abortion for the individual’s basic value structure and self-concept. Once the liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment is phrased in terms of choices and a concept of the self, rather than biology alone, the argument that the woman’s interests should trump the man’s requires further elaboration. Both men and women face choices about their roles as parents and their concepts of their own identities. Both men and women become bonded with the fetus. The fetus may be physically growing in the woman’s belly, but in the geography of the psyche, it is inside the man as well. To exclude expectant fathers from juridical notice on grounds of biology is to miss the importance of pregnancy in a man’s concept of himself as a parent and a procreative being and his vision of the meaning of his life.

I suspect that this guy’s concept of himself would be less enthusiastic about sharing the burden of pregnancy if the geography of the testicles were squeezed in a vise for 18 hours as he tried to expel a cantaloupe through his penis. It would very likely change his vision of the meaning of his life, as well.

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A Most Convenient Escape

Turns out a “top al Qaeda operative” escaped before he could testify to “abuse” by an American soldier. Of course, I believe it. No doubt in my mind. I mean, it’s not like they would lie about something like that, right? Permit a prisoner to escape or hide him (or worse) to prevent more embarassing revelations of torture. No, they just wouldn’t do that. That’s not what Americans – who live in a democracy and value freedom – do.

[Update: More misinformation…sorry, I meant details… about the escape here.]

Excellent

What Reid did was a superb variation of the strategy I was talking about yesterday. But Reid, brilliant fellow, ignored my suggestion simply to focus back on Traitorgate. No,he broadened it to our advantage, stressing the notion that Digby and others have emphasized, that the real subject of Traitorgate is the systematic, deliberate lying about Saddam’s WMD before the war. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

Now, whatever it was Bush was talking about yesterday – does anyone remember? – well, Reid has the opportunity get to that when he’s good and ready. And this gives me hope that when he does, Reid won’t just roll over and surrender. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

Extra unexpected bonus: Watching Frist lose it today in real time, it’s clear Reid’s unmasked the true face of Cat Mengele. Oh, the embarassing soundbites tonight! Meow!!!

[Update: The gift keeps on giving. Reid’s action also puts considerable pressure on Cheney, because, as I just recalled, Cheney’s new security adviser, John Hannah, was linked to bogus information on Iraq. This means that some enterprising reporter might just think to ask whether it was all that appropriate for Cheney to hire Hannah as it really appears Cheney is just trying to extend the coverup about the prewar intelliegence.

Amazing how much good a touch of spine can do.

One final thought. When Bush, et al, get over their shock, their retaliation is gonna be quite ugly. And just as surprising. Watch out, Harry. You can expect that what Bush did to McCain will be just a mild foretaste of what’s gonna happen.]

Secret Session!

So Harry Reid has called for the long awaited Phase II investigation into the Iraq debacle and they are going into a closed secret session to discuss it. The Republicans are squealing like pigs in a slaughter house.

Kyra and Ed Henry on CNN are characterizing it as “bickering” and “working against the interest of the American people.” Interestingly, Frist is calling it a “stunt” and “uncivil.” (No word yet from anyone about the substance.)

The Democrats should not back down on this. The Republicans are going to portray themselves a victimized and martyred, weeping like little bitty babies about “betrayal.” Oh mercy me, pass the smelling salts — that mean Harry Reid has “stabbed” Scarlett O’Frist in the back!

Fuck them. This is what an opposition party does and it’s long overdue. You want to change the subject, motherfuckers? Think again.

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