Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Put A Bork In It

The Carpetbagger Report asks Since when did Bork become a martyr? — and links to Jonathan Chait’s column in the LA Times that explains why Bork actually was a completely unacceptable wingnut. Nowadays, of course, he’s seen as the Joan of Arc if the right wing freakshow, but the truth is that he makes even Scalia look halfway reasonable. I recall him saying on Larry King one night during the Clinton panty raid that the president could be impeached for committing a depraved act — oral sex. He’s nutty as a fruitcake.

When I was researching something else recently I came across this little known fact (at least to me) and I wonder if anyone out ther can verify it. Maybe it’s common knowledge and I missed it — wouldn’t be the first time.

According to Wikipedia:

In the years after the Saturday Night Massacre, a well-known joke said that “borking” was “firing a man for doing exactly what he was hired to do” (i.e. Judge Bork had “borked” Archibald Cox, whose job had been to investigate criminal activities in the Nixon White House). After Bork’s confirmation hearings, however, a new meaning was given to Bork’s name: to be borked is to have one’s presidential appointment defeated by the U.S. Senate.

I knew, of course, that Bork fired Cox and I knew he was reviled for it by all but the most rabid Nixon defenders. But I never heard that called Borking. If it’s true, and the Republicans have managed to completely change the meaning of that term, then you really have to hand it to them. And Borkie owes them his immortal soul.

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Thinking Ahead

“We know that after September the 11th, our country must think differently. We must take threats seriously, before they fully materialize.”

Three weeks before London’s bus and subway bombings, a Senate committee voted to slash spending on mass transit security in the United States, a decision sure to be reversed when Congress returns next week.

[…]

In a stroke of bad timing, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted last month to slash money for rail and transit security grants to state and local government by a third from the $150 million devoted to them this year. As of May, none of the money had been distributed by the Homeland Security Department.

I don’t know, money’s pretty tight. We’ve got a useless war costing us a billion a week and we have to take the threat of having to pay taxes on your multi-million dollar estate seriously, before it materializes. There’s not a lot of extra scratch around for protecting the most obvious terrorist targets. Maybe we could station some prayer teams around the subways and bus lines.

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Send Him To The Naughty Chair

I’m tired of these Democrats acting like they won the election. Somebody needs to stand up and say, “When you win the election, you pick the nominees. Until then, shut up! Just shut up! Just go away! Bury yourselves in your rat holes and don’t come out until you win an election. When you win an election, you can put all these socialist wackos, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, all over the court, but until then, SHUT UP! You are really irritating me.”

I’m guessing Rush is under some stress these days and I don’t blame him. As much as I hate him, I am very much against prosecutors having the right to fish around in your medical records. I believe strongly in a right to privacy. Just like the socialists Ginsburg and Breyer. And unlike the Real Americans Scalia and Thomas.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Rush thinks he should have a right to privacy, too. I wonder if he wants the One And Only True Party to ask prospective nominees about their views on that subject or if he just believes that Dear Leader knows what’s best? He should probably get on the Dick-phone and say something because I don’t think the right to privacy is a big item on the GOP agenda. In fact, it’s highly likely that the new and improved wingnut supreme court is going to make it much more possible to put Rush in jail. There’s a silver lining to everything, I suppose.

I’m hearing this “shut up until you win an election” theme a lot and not just on the issue of confirming judges. Evidently, there is some belief on the right that if you gain a majority it means that you are not to be opposed. Which makes me wonder why we have a legislature at all. The last I heard all citizens have a right to representation to speak and oppose and do what they believe is in the interests of their constituents. For the more that 60 years that the Republicans were completely out of power or had to share it, they spoke up quite eloquently in opposition. I don’t recall the cries for them to “crawl back into their ratholes” until they won an election.

It’s an interesting insight into the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of the modern Republican party. Evidently a majority means that you shouldn’t even have to hear the opposition, much less take their input into consideration. It’s quite obvious that Rush is frustrated that even when he wins he doesn’t get to rule with total dominance. In fact, he seems more angry now than when The One True party was sharing power. It’s a remarkably immature and privileged worldview that says you should not only get your own way in all things but that you should get it without any effort at all.

And it’s creepy how preternaturally sure they seem that they will never lose another election. Either that or Rush is just a gasbag who has some neurotic need to articulate every half baked misfired synapse that passes through his cerebral cortex. And that’s pretty creepy, too.

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*ouch*

The PM was sipping tea at 10.30am when it was confirmed by his chief of staff Jonathan Powell that terrorists had hit London with force.

Mr Blair was given a chilling telephone briefing by Home Secretary Charles Clarke, who had just chaired a security meeting in a bomb-proof bunker under Downing Street.

Visibly-shaken, the PM went back to finish a session with G8 leaders but left early to make a live TV statement, vowing never to surrender to terrorists.

The contrast with President Bush’s reaction to the news about the September 11 attacks could not have been more stark.

After planes slammed into the twin towers the world saw an aide whisper the news to Mr Bush who reacted with wide-eyed panic.

The President was bundled on to his jet and kept away from Washington and New York while Vice-President Dick Cheney took shelter in a secret bunker.

But yesterday Mr Blair was strong and defiant and flew back to London to take charge of the crisis.

I especially like the “bundled on his jet” part. Where he showed resolve, of course.

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Rovedirt

A new story focusing on Rove in the WaPo:

Questions Remain on the Leaker and the Law

There’s a lot of interesting info, most of which we who have been following the story know, but which has not been put all together in a mainstream story. It’s quite provocative.

But here’s one little tid-bit I’m not actually sure about:

Fitzgerald long has made a distinction in his investigation between conversations held before Novak’s column was publicly available (it was moved to his newspaper clients on July 11, 2003) and after, on the assumption that once Plame’s name was in the public domain, there was no criminal liability for administration officials to discuss it. Which may be one reason it could be difficult to obtain indictments.

We don’t actually know if this is true. There has been speculation that the law may not actually say that. From Josh Marshall 3/24/04:

A couple weeks back a legal memo fell into my hands from the sky. And it suggests that even the facts Rove has apparently admitted to put him in clear legal jeopardy.

[…]

The essential argument is that the law, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, does more than simply prohibit a governmental official with access to classified information from divulging the identities of covert operatives. The interpretation of the law contained in the memo holds that a government insider, with access to classified information, such as Rove is also prohibited from confirming or further disseminating the identity of a covert agent even after someone else has leaked it.

I won’t try to explain it anymore than that. The memo is only a few pages long and I’ve marked the key passages.

There is one point the author of the memo doesn’t raise. My layman’s reading of the memo suggests to me that it would be critical to ascertain whether Rove learned of Plame’s identity before the Novak article appeared or whether he learned of it for the first time when he read Novak’s column.

If the latter, then I’m not sure the argument contained in the memo holds up.

Here’s the memo(pdf). Read it for yourself.

If its true that Rove could be held liable for making Plame “fair game” after Novak’s column, if he learned of her status before the column, then Arianna’s reported speculation among the cognescenti last night about a “meeting between Rove and Libby” makes sense, regardless of whether Rove was the original leaker..

In any case, I don’t think it’s actually been determined that Rove could not be prosecuted for spreading the tale after Novak’s column. Everybody is just assuming that because it’s “out there” that government officials continuing to spread classified information is not a crime. That may not actually be so.

It’s possible that Rove’s arrogance may get him in big trouble:

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.

I discovered the Marshall post via this very helpful timeline put out by American Progress Action Report

Faith Based Law Enforcement

The crippling reach of methamphetamine abuse has become the nation’s leading drug problem affecting local law enforcement agencies, according to a survey of 500 sheriff’s departments in 45 states.

More than half of the sheriffs interviewed for a National Association of Counties survey released Tuesday said they considered meth the most serious problem facing their departments.

“We’re finding out that this is a bigger problem than we thought,” said Larry Naake, executive director of the association. “Folks at the state and federal level need to know about this.”

About 90 percent of those interviewed reported increases in meth-related arrests in their counties over the past three years, packing jails in the Midwest and elsewhere.

The arrests also have swamped other county-level agencies that assist with caring for children whose parents have become addicted and with cleaning up toxic chemicals left behind by meth cookers.

The report comes soon after the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy restated its stance that marijuana remains the nation’s most substantial drug problem. Federal estimates show there are 15 million marijuana users compared with the 1 million that may use meth.

Dave Murray, a policy analyst for the White House, said he understands that the meth problem moving through the nation is serious and substantial. But he disagrees that it has become an epidemic.

“This thing is burning, and because it’s burning, we’re going to put it out,” he said. “But we can’t turn our back on other threats.”

That is a very, very stupid choice of words for a drug policy analyst to use:

At a conference on the scourge of methamphetamine, one item on the agenda was a tour of a seemingly unlikely place: a burn unit.

Legislators, doctors, social workers and law officials — including the federal government’s second highest-ranking drug czar — walked the halls of Vanderbilt University Medical Center regional burn center, where seven of the 20 patients were injured by fires and explosions in clandestine meth labs.

Vanderbilt doctors told Joseph Keefe, deputy director of the Office on National Drug Control Policy, and the other participants that meth cases are increasingly common and are driving up state medical expenditures. The costs of treating critically injured burn victims typically exceed $10,000 a day each — and most meth patients don’t have health insurance.

“As bad as this may sound, as a burn doctor I almost wish another drug, one less volatile that doesn’t regularly explode during the manufacturing process, would come down the pike to overtake the popularity of meth,” said the center’s director, Dr. Jeff Guy.

Standing in the doorway of one patient’s room Tuesday, Guy told Keefe that the man had spent 45 days in a hospital from an October meth blast and “has gone out and blown himself up again.”

Meanwhile the scourge of marijuana addiction has created a national shortage of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream.

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Intellectual Compost

This is fascinating. Ben Adler asked a bunch of leading conservative intellectuals whether they believed in evolution. As far as I can tell only about half of them have any intellectual integrity whatsoever, and only one is definitively honest in my opinion: Charles Krauthamer, if you can believe that. Richard Brookheiser and William F Buckley get honorable mentions.

Remember, these are highly educated people. The problem is not that they may believe in God or have a religious view of the origins of the universe. That is quite easily explained. It’s the weaselly, mushy way they try to divert the question elsewhere or explain what they know is a ridiculous position. It’s as if they are all terribly afraid that James Dobson might read TNR and berate them for not having a religiously correct fundamentalist view. William Kristol, as always, is the slickest guy around.

William Kristol, The Weekly Standard

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I don’t discuss personal opinions. … I’m familiar with what’s obviously true about it as well as what’s problematic. … I’m not a scientist. … It’s like me asking you whether you believe in the Big Bang.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I managed to have my children go through the Fairfax, Virginia schools without ever looking at one of their science textbooks.”

Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I’ve never understood how an eye evolves.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “Put me down for the intelligent design people.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “The real problem here is that you shouldn’t have government-run schools. … Given that we have to spend all our time crushing the capital gains tax I don’t have much time for this issue.”

David Frum, American Enterprise Institute and National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I do believe in evolution.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “If intelligent design means that evolution occurs under some divine guidance, I believe that.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t believe that anything that offends nine-tenths of the American public should be taught in public schools. … Christianity is the faith of nine-tenths of the American public. … I don’t believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle.”

Stephen Moore, Free Enterprise Fund

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I believe in parts of it but I think there are holes in the evolutionary theory.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I generally agree with said critique.”

Whether intelligent design or a similar critique should be taught in public schools: “I think people should be taught … that there are various theories about how man was created.”

Whether schools should leave open the possibility that man was created by God in his present form: “Of course, yes, definitely.”

Jonah Goldberg, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Sure.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I think it’s interesting. … I think it’s wrong. I think it’s God-in-the-gaps theorizing. But I’m not hostile to it the way other people are because I don’t, while I think evolution is real, I don’t think any specific–there are a lot of unknowns left in evolution theory and criticizing evolution from different areas doesn’t really bother me, just as long as you’re not going to say the world was created in six days or something.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t think you should teach religious conclusions as science and I don’t think you should teach science as religion. … I see nothing [wrong] with having teachers pay some attention to the sensitivities of other people in the room. I think if that means you’re more careful about some issues than others that’s fine. People are careful about race and gender; I don’t see why all of a sudden we can’t be diplomatic on these issues when it comes to religion.”

Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Of course.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “At most, interesting.”

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: “The idea that [intelligent design] should be taught as a competing theory to evolution is ridiculous. … The entire structure of modern biology, and every branch of it [is] built around evolution and to teach anything but evolution would be a tremendous disservice to scientific education. If you wanna have one lecture at the end of your year on evolutionary biology, on intelligent design as a way to understand evolution, that’s fine. But the idea that there are these two competing scientific schools is ridiculous.”

William Buckley, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I’d have to write that down. … I’d have to say something more carefully than I can over the telephone. I’m a Christian.”

Whether schools should raise the possibility that the original genetic code was written by an intelligent designer: “Well, surely, yeah, absolutely.”

Whether schools should raise the possibility–but not in biology classes–that man was created by God in his present form? : “Yes, sure, absolutely.”

Which classes that should be discussed in: “History, etymology.”

John Tierney, The New York Times (via email)

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I believe that the theory of evolution has great explanatory powers.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I haven’t really studied the arguments for intelligent design, so I’m loath to say much about it except that I’m skeptical.”

James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I could not speak fluently on the subject but I know what the basic argument is.”

Whether schools should teach intelligent design or similar critiques of evolution in biology classes: “I guess I would say they probably shouldn’t be taught in biology classes; they probably should be taught in philosophy classes if there is such a thing. It seems to me, and again I don’t speak with any authority on this, that the hypothesis … that the universe is somehow inherently intelligent is not a scientific hypothesis. Because how do you prove it or disprove it? And really the question is how do you disprove it, because a scientific hypothesis has to be capable of being falsified. So while there may be holes in Darwinian theory, while there’s obviously a lot we don’t know, and perhaps Darwinian theory could be wrong altogether, I think whether or not the universe is designed is just a question outside the realm of science.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “It probably should be taught, if it’s going to be taught, in a more thoroughgoing way, a more rigorous way that explains what a scientific theory is. … You know, my general impression is that high school instruction in general is not all that rigorous. … I think one possible way of solving this problem is by–if you can’t teach it in a rigorous way, if the schools aren’t up to that, and if it’s going to be a political hot potato in the way it is, and we have schools that are politically run, one possible solution might be just take it out of the curriculum altogether. I’m not necessarily advocating that, but I think it’s something that policy makers might think about. I’d rather see it taught in a rigorous and serious way, but as a realistic matter that may be expecting too much of our government schools.”

Norman Podhoretz, Commentary (via email)

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “It’s impossible to answer that question with a simple yes or no.”

Richard Brookhiser, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “It doesn’t seem like good science to me.”

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: “No.”

Pat Buchanan, The American Conservative

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Do I believe in absolute evolution? No. I don’t believe that evolution can explain the creation of matter. … Do I believe in Darwinian evolution? The answer is no.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “Do I believe in a Darwinian evolutionary process which can be inspired by a creator? Yeah, that’s a real possibility. I don’t believe evolution can explain the creation of matter. I don’t believe it can explain the intelligent design in the universe. I just don’t believe it can explain the tremendous complexity of the human being when you get down to DNA and you get down to atomic particles, and molecules, atomic particles, subatomic particles, which we’re only beginning to understand right now. I think to say it all happened by accident or by chance or simply evolved, I just don’t believe it.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “Evolution [has] been so powerful a theory in Western history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and often a malevolent force–it’s been used by non-Christians and anti-Christians to justify polices which have been horrendous. I do believe that every American student should be introduced to the idea and its effects on society. But I don’t think it ought to be taught as fact. It ought to be taught as theory. … How do you answer a kid who says, ‘Where did we all come from?’ Do you say, ‘We all evolved’? I think that’s a theory. … Now the biblical story of creation should be taught to children, not as dogma but every child should know first of all the famous biblical stories because they have had a tremendous influence as well. … I don’t think it should be taught as religion to kids who don’t wanna learn it. … I think in biology that honest teachers gotta say, ‘Look the universe exhibits, betrays the idea that there is a first mover, that there is intelligent design.’ … You should leave the teaching of religion to a voluntary classes in my judgment and only those who wish to attend.”

Tucker Carlson, MSNBC

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I think God’s responsible for the existence of the universe and everything in it. … I think God is probably clever enough to think up evolution. … It’s plausible to me that God designed evolution; I don’t know why that’s outside the realm. It’s not in my view.”

On the possibility that God created man in his present form: “I don’t know if He created man in his present form. … I don’t discount it at all. I don’t know the answer. I would put it this way: The one thing I feel confident saying I’m certain of is that God created everything there is.”

On the possibility that man evolved from a common ancestor with apes: “I don’t know. It wouldn’t rock my world if it were true. It doesn’t sound proved to me. But, yeah I’m willing to believe it, sure.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t have a problem with public schools or any schools teaching evolution. I guess I would have a problem if a school or a science teacher asserted that we know how life began, because we don’t so far as I know, do we? … If science teachers are teaching that we know things that in fact we don’t know, then I’m against that. That’s a lie. But if they are merely describing the state of knowledge in 2005 then I don’t have problem with that. If they are saying, ‘Most scientists believe this,’ and most scientists believe it, then it’s an accurate statement. What bothers me is the suggestion that we know things we don’t know. That’s just another form of religion it seems to me.”

Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “To the extent that I am familiar with it, and that’s not very much, I guess what I think is this: The intelligent designers are correct insofar as they are reacting against a view of evolution which holds that it can’t have been guided by God in any way–can’t even have sort of been set in motion by God to achieve particular results and that no step in the process is guided by God. But they seem to give too little attention to the possibility that God could have set up an evolutionary process.”

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: “I guess my own inclination would be to teach evolution in the public schools. I don’t think that you ought to make a federal case out of it though.”

David Brooks, The New York Times (via email)

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I believe in the theory of evolution.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I’ve never really studied the issue or learned much about ID, so I’m afraid I couldn’t add anything intelligent to the discussion.”

And these are the people who railed against campus political correctness.

What do you suppose it’s like to be intellectually held hostage by people who you know for a fact are dead wrong on something? It must be excruciating.

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Big Man

“I was most impressed by the resolve of all the leaders in the room,” Bush said. “Their resolve is as strong as my resolve. And that is we will not yield to these people, will not yield to the terrorists.”

I’m sure everyone feels much beter knowing that the leaders of the G8 impressed the president with how much like him they are. Lord knows he’s impressed with himself.

Update: Via Kevin at Catch: How can he speak with his mouth so full?

FLASHBACK TO SEPTEMBER 11 [John Podhoretz]
Tony Blair’s shellshocked appearance during his initial statement earlier this morning offers the best rebuttal yet to the sleazy Michael Moore-style attack on President Bush’s behavior on the morning of September 11. It would have been a disaster for Bush to have spoken as the choked-up Blair was. This is intended as no criticism of Blair, who was clearly under a far different sort of burden at the G-8 than Bush was sitting in a classroom in Sarasota. But Blair is not the leader of the free world, Bush is, and had he seemed unable to collect himself — as would surely have been the case in that first hour after Andy Card told him about the attack on America — I can’t imagine what the day would have been like. Not that the president’s first words on 9.11, an hour after the attacks, were strong and focused. But they were more controlled.

Reading My Pet Goat while the WTC was under attack was a show of “resolve.”

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Roaring Back

Andrew Sullivan wrote:

“I wonder if this attack will be in some ways a reverse Pearl Harbor, when Britain rouses itself to a fuller commitment to the war that was already underway elsewhere, the way America finally threw its full weight behind Britain in 1941. Britain, of course, has already been deeply involved, in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this war has now struck home – in one of the most diverse and liberal and dynamic cities in the world. May the lion roar back.”

I would dearly love to know exactly what this “roaring back” would entail. Britain has already been, as he points out, roaring in Afghanistan. And it has been roaring in Iraq. It has roared in tandem and on command to everything the Bush administration asked of it.

I’m genuinely curious about this. Who should the coalition of the willing attack in retaliation for this? Where should we invade? How do the Brits go about “rousing itself to a fuller committment” … and to what?

They helped us gin up phony evidence to invade Iraq and were with us all the way. They helped us invade Afghanistan to topple the government that supports al Qaeda. They have turned a blind eye to abduction, rendition, imprisonment and torture of suspected terrorists. They support our decision employ the most coldhearted realpolitik imaginable in propping up friendly dictators in places like Uzbekistan and necessary military dictators in Pakistan.

What exactly is the macho, codpiece wielding “roaring back” plan this time? What, pray tell, is our next military move in the global war on terror?

Update: I see that Matt Yglesias is already on this. He quotes Sub-commandante Rich Lowry of the 101st keyboarders:

There should be retaliation. Find a terror camp somewhere and hit it. Terrorists should, for these purposes, be treated as one nation, and all should be held responsible for any one attack.”

I think we are a little bit past that, don’t you? We’ve already held an entire country that had nothing to do with terrorism responsible, invaded it and occupy it today. Simple missile attacks against some unassociated terorist camp sounds positively Clintonian.

No, if our response to terrorism is to continue to try to impress these terrorists with our big swinging machismo we have raised the stakes quite a bit after our little Iraq adventure. It hasn’t worked out very well as a showcase for our Imperial dominance. The only way to up the ante now is to invade a strong military country that had nothing to do with the attacks and attempt to kick their asses to show what will happen if anybody fucks with us. Russia maybe? Maybe that would “send the message” that we are too tough for terrorists to mess with. That is assuming we can do it without fucking it up, of course. Unfortunately, our track record in this regard isn’t so hot.

We might need to rethink the “retaliation” against uninvolved parties plan. It hasn’t exactly been a winner so far.

JohnS in the comments writes:

Here’s a quote from one of Sullivan’s emailers suggesting a fairly reasonable form that the “roaring” could take:

Londoners (Brits) will fight back. That is obvious. Always have always will. One thing I’ve got to disagree with you on is that there will be a push for policy change but not for the reason Galloway and others suggest. Brits will demand that we hand over the calm south to Iraqis and move troops (in particular SAS) to Afghanistan. There are some people in the mountains that we need to settle a score with.

I don’t think anybody could argue with that. Like most traitorous liberal america-haters I’ve always thought it was logical to actually go after the perpetrators instead of locking up cab drivers in cuba and invading other countries for no apparent reason. If Britain decides that they havd to go and finish the job we screwed up in Afghanistan — and pull out of Iraq to do it — I don’t find that unreasonable.

But this whole question reminds me of this interesting little tid-bit from Juan Cole’s recent article in Salon:

When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001, he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq. Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the risks to the United Kingdom of an “Iraq first” policy in Washington.

Meyer told Vanity Fair, “Blair came with a very strong message — don’t get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the Taliban.” He must have been terrified that the Bush administration would abandon London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale of Iraq. But he managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, “Bush said, ‘I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.'” Meyer also said, in spring 2004, that it was clear “that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn’t be to discuss smarter sanctions.” In short, Meyer strongly implies that Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan first by promising him British support for a later Iraq campaign.

Sadly, we didn’t actually finish the job in Afghanistan did we? And Blair got punked.

Of course, it’s important to point out that this terrorist attack may have had nothing whatsoever to do with Afghanistan. This genie is out of the bottle and it may very well have been a home grown operation with minimal direction or guidance from the “top brass” of al Qaeda. Which is why we really, really need to shut down the bloodlust right now and start thinking. The fact that this is called a ‘war” does not mean that there is an appropriate military solution. Unfortunately, that may lead to other equally ineffective and toxic solutions.

Ironically, Sullivans’ quote above was (confusingly)in response to an excerpt from this post by Johann Hari. The piece to which he refers is about the fact that the bombs were exploded in arab neighborhoods. Sullivan fails to quote this last part of Hari’s piece and it’s the most important point:

But another fight began yesterday: to defend our civil liberties – and especially those of the decent, democratic Muslim majority – in an age of terror. I headed for the East London Mosque – a few minutes’ walk away from the bomb in Aldgate – to watch afternoon prayers. Chairman Mohammed Bari said, “Only yesterday, we celebrated getting the Olympics for our city and our country. But a terrible thing happened in our country this morning… Whoever has done this is a friend of no-one and certainly not a friend of Muslims. The whole world will be watching us now. We must give a message of peace.” Everybody in attendance agreed; many headed off to the Royal London Hospital to give blood. But they were afraid the message would not get out: several people were expecting attacks on the mosque tonight.

Since the “retaliation” against other countries have not quelled the terrorist danger, as we knew it wouldn’t, I will not be surprised if we begin to see the fighting keyboarders begin looking closer to home.

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Brave People

Londoners are no strangers to terrorism.

London terror attacks of the past 25 years

In the past 25 years London has been rocked by regular attacks, mostly by Irish republican groups but today’s bombing is by far the most bloody with at least 33 people killed and hundreds injured.

The last attack was a car bomb in Ealing Broadway on August 3, 2001. The explosion, blamed on the Real IRA splinter group, caused no fatalities but injured seven people on a street full of restaurants and pubs.

Earlier in the same year, there were three separate attacks by the Real IRA. In mid-April and then early May, two small incendiary devices exploded at exactly the same spot outside a postal depot in Hendon, North London. No one was injured in the first attack but one passer-by was hurt in the second.

A month earlier, a bomb exploded outside the BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane, West London. The device, which was planted inside a black cab, detonated as bomb disposal experts attempted to carry out a controlled explosion. One person suffered minor injuries in the attack and the landmark building was badly damaged.

In September 2000 the Real IRA fired an anti-tank rocket at MI6’s headquarters in Vauxhall Cross, South London, causing damage to the intelligence service building but no injuries.

In the summer of 2000, bomb disposal experts performed two controlled explosions on a device planted on the Tube line near Ealing Broadway underground station. The incident was just a month after an unsuccessful attempt to blow up Hammersmith Bridge.

These attacks were the first by Irish republicans since the IRA renewed its ceasefire in July 1997.

London was not free of terrorism in the intervening years because in May and June of 1999 the capital’s ethnic and gay communities were hit by three nail bomb attacks.

Dozens were injured and three people were killed in the space of two weeks when neo-Nazi extremist David Copeland planted the devices in Brick Lane, Brixton and Soho.

Before the nail bomb attacks, London had not suffered a terrorist incident since the IRA attempted to blow up Hammersmith Bridge for the first time in April 1996.

The bomb contained 32lb of Semtex making it the largest high-explosive device ever planted on the British mainland but only the detonator went off saving possibly hundreds of lives.

Two months earlier, in an incident similar to today’s explosion in Russell Square, Edward O’Brien, a member of the IRA, was killed when the bomb he was transporting exploded prematurely on a bus in the Aldwych in central London. The bus driver, another passenger and eight passers by were hurt in the explosion.

The incident came just a week after the IRA spectacularly ended its ceasefire with a massive bomb attack on Canary Wharf in east London’s Docklands area in February 1996.

Two local newsagents were killed in the attack and more than 100 injured. The bomb caused more than £85 million of damage.

Two years earlier the IRA launched a series of mortar rockets at Heathrow airport. The three separate assults, which occurred within the space of a week, caused widespread disruption but nobody was killed.

In the previous three years, between February 1991 and February 1994 the IRA launched 30 separate attacks in and around London. The most high profile was a mortar attack against Number 10, Downing Street when Prime Minister John Major was in residence. One of the rockets exploded in the garden injuring one person.

The most deadly attack was in April 1992 when a car bomb near the Baltic Exchange in the Financial District killed three people and injured 80 others.

In the 1980s, there were nine IRA attacks on London, the most deadly being the bombing of Harrods in December 1983. Three police officers and three civilians were killed and 90 people injured.

The 1980s also saw two other high-profile terrorist attacks on the capital. In 1984 WPC Yvonne Fletcher was killed and ten people injured after shots were fired from the Libyan People’s Bureau in central London.

WPC Fletcher had been helping control a small demonstration outside the embassy when she received the fatal stomach wound.

Three years earlier six gunmen held 26 people hostage at the Iranian embassy in London. After a six-day standoff, the SAS stormed the building killing five of the hostage takers and arresting one other. All bar three of the captives were freed unharmed. One died and two were injured in the cross-fire.

We need to remember that terrorism wasn’t invented on 9/11. Londoners have been putting up with this sick fear and horror for a long time. They are survivors.

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