Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Bubble Boy

Some critics and supporters of US President George W. Bush agree on an intriguing explanation for his poor showing in his first debate with Democratic rival John Kerry: Blame it on the White House “bubble.”

[…]

Even allowing for heightened protection around him in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Bush has taken unusual pains to insulate himself from hard questions from those who disagree with him.

He has held fewer press conferences than any modern president — including his father, former president George Bush — and aides who disagreed publicly with him have generally recanted swiftly and humbly or left the administration.

[…]

Bush on Wednesday blamed his facial expressions on what he said were Kerry’s constantly shifting or even contradictory views on Iraq saying: “You hear all that and you can understand why somebody would make a face.”

But the president rarely hears a discouraging word, as he is largely isolated from critics, reporters, bad news, and a public deeply divided over the March 2003 Iraq invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

One of his reelection campaign’s staple events is dubbed “Ask President Bush,” a session in which he takes questions from friendly audiences of campaign aides and carefully screened supporters with nary a heckler in sight.

The first question at one such event on October 4 was a good example of the feedback he typically gets: “Mr President, first, we just want to tell you that we pray for you every night as our President.”

Bush has repeatedly declared that he mostly ignores newspaper coverage, telling Fox News television in September 2003 that he prefers to “get briefed by people who probably read the news themselves.”

This would be interesting except for the fact that evidence is that Junior has always been an ass. He’s extremely spoiled and while the power of the presidency has undoubtedly magnified that characteristic, it’s fundamental to his character. There’s a reason why he’s called “smirk.”

Here’s a great illustration from the 2000 election. Via TNR, this is from the November 2000 issue of Newsweek:

Aboard Bush’s plane, [John] McCain’s chief strategist, John Weaver, had–without thinking–pulled a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich off the snack cart and eaten it. Bush came aboard the plane and asked the flight attendant for his PB&J. She had to tell him it was gone. “It’s gone?” Bush said, disbelieving and suddenly angry. “Who ate my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?” After a minute Weaver impishly raised his hand. “I did,” he said. “Fine,” said Bush. “Don’t eat any more of his food,” McCain cracked, sotto voce. A few people chuckled, and Bush returned to his seat to pout.

Observers have known about his childish imperiousness forever and and it has been easily discerned by those in the public who care to see, in his press conferences andpublic appearances. He is a petty tyrant.

Bob Woodward showed it very well in his hagiography of the post 9/11 Little Caesar version of Junior:

“I’m the commander in chief, see, I don’t need to explain, I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting part about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”

Not even the American people, apparently.

Or let’s go back even further to my personal favorite from The Dallas Morning News, Feb. 25, 1990:

“I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.”

Isn’t that nice? Others were dying in a war he supported, he didn’t feel like “shooting out his eardrum” so he nobly decided to “better himself” by learning to fly airplanes on the taxpayers dime and then quitting for reasons about which we can only speculate.

Was he in a bubble when he made those selfish choices? Was he in a bubble when he made that statement twenty years later?

Here’s a telling one:

Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. “He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn’t get past,” Allison recalled. “He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too.”

Bush mocking Karla Faye Tucker may be the most emblematic of his lack of empathy and immaturity, but there are hundreds of documented incidents of Bush’s mask slipping, both when he was younger and more recently in his Rove-created adult persona. At heart, he is a snotty little smart ass who has no respect for anything.

The presidential bubble may have made it impossible for his handlers to stop him from being his cocky self instead of hiding behind Rove’s carefully crafted facade of the regular Joe. After last Thursday’s debacle I assume that someone has tried to put the mask firmly back in place.

Then again, maybe not. The man behind the mask is the real Bush and last Thursday I got the sense that he was yearning to breathe free. Judging from his smirking and preening on the stage two days ago when he delivered his “major” speech, he didn’t seem to have learned his lesson. The men behind the curtain may have lost control of their creation.

We’ll see tonight if he can keep his two selves integrated or if the inner Bush emerges once more.

Sanctioned Liar

The vice president said he found other parts of the report “more intriguing,” including the finding that Saddam’s main goal was the removal of international sanctions.

“As soon as the sanctions were lifted, he had every intention of going back” to his weapons program, Cheney said “…the sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams. Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars.”

November, 2000

Millions of dollars of US oil business with Iraq are being channelled discreetly through European and other companies, in a practice that has highlighted the double standards now dominating relations between Baghdad and Washington after a decade of crippling sanctions.

Though legal, leading US oil service companies such as Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Flowserve, Fisher-Rosemount and others, have used subsidiaries and joint venture companies for this lucrative business, so as to avoid straining relations with Washington and jeopardising their ties with President Saddam Hussein’s government in Baghdad.

Halliburton, the largest US oil services company, is among a significant number of US companies that have sold oil industry equipment to Iraq since the UN relaxed sanctions two years ago.

Oopsie. It appears that Saddam was making those perverted billions with the help of Unka Dickie himself.

And, waddaya know. It looks like old Dick, Iraq and Iran were the real axis of evil. All three of them wanted badly to get rid of sanctions and get down to the business of making big bucks and lethal weapons.

Vice President Dick Cheney, who has called Iran “the world’s leading exporter of terror,” pushed to lift U.S. trade sanctions against Tehran while chairman of Halliburton Co. in the 1990s.

[…]

Cheney argued then that sanctions did not work and punished American companies. The former defense secretary complained in a 1998 speech that U.S. companies were “cut out of the action” in Iran because of the sanctions.

It sure was lucky for Unka Dick that Saddam was willing to “pervert” the oil for food program so that Halliburton could launder its involvement through European countries and avoid being “cut out of the action.” Too bad Tehran didn’t have such a convenient method to funnell money to its good friends. It forced Dick to have to lobby for lifiting the sanctions, making him look bad.

We’ve come full circle. They have so lost touch with reality that Cheney is now implicating himself in Saddam’s WMD programs and he doesn’t even realize it.

Gimme Them Hearts ‘N Minds

Sympathy for al-Zarqawi grows among Iraqis amid U.S. airstrikes

Correction:

I wrote in a post below that the administration had never given a definitive and believable reason for the need to invade Iraq (and play into Osama bin Ladens’ hands by creating a fertile recruiting ground in the heart of the middle east.) I hereby stand corrected. Today the president announced that we had to invade because Saddam was abusing the oil for food program in a bid to convince countries and companies to lift the sanctions and if we had then lifted the sanctions he might have gotten materials that could have resulted in his possibly being able to create a weapon of mass destruction that might have been given to terrorists at some later date. Certainly, that was a grave and gathering danger that could not be allowed to stand for one day beyond March 18th, 2003.

Please excuse the error.

“Bush lost his momentum”

The AP-Ipsos Public Affairs poll, completed on the eve of the second presidential debate, showed a reversal from early September, when the Republican incumbent had the momentum and a minuscule lead. With bloodshed increasing in Iraq, Kerry sharpened his attacks, and Bush stumbled in their initial debate.

Among 944 likely voters, the Kerry-Edwards ticket led Bush-Cheney 50 percent to 46 percent. The Oct. 4-6 survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The race was tied 47-47 percent among all registered voters, with a 2.5 point margin of error. Other polls show the race just as tight.

Nearly three-fourths of likely voters who were surveyed said they had watched or listened to the first presidential debate last week. Some 39 percent said they came away with a more favorable view of Kerry, while just 8 percent felt better about Bush.

[…]

Nearly six in 10 of all the people questioned – likely voters or not – said the country was headed on the wrong track, reflecting a gloomy national mood that could jeopardize Bush’s re-election bid. His overall approval rating among likely voters, 46 percent, was at its lowest point since June – down from 54 percent in late September.

[…]

Dowd and his fellow Republicans have also said Bush would prevail because he’s considered the strongest leader in a time of war. That is now open to debate.

On the question of who would protect the country, Bush led Kerry 51 percent to 45 percent among likely voters – down from the 20-point lead that Bush held in a Sept. 7-9 poll by AP-Ipsos.

Bush’s approval rating on handling foreign policy and the war on terror was 49 percent – down from 55 percent in a Sept. 20-22 poll by AP-Ipsos.

Forty-four percent of likely voters approve of the commander in chief’s handling of the war in Iraq, down from 51 percent in the late-September poll. It was 49-46 Bush on the question of who is best suited to handle Iraq, within the poll’s margin of error.

On the eve of Friday’s debate, Bush was forced by a critical new report to concede that Iraq did not have the stockpiles of banned weapons he had warned of before the 2003 invasion. Still, he insisted Thursday, “we were right to take action” against Saddam Hussein (news – web sites). Kerry renewed his assertion that Bush had misled voters and mismanaged the war.

Virtually across the board, Bush’s approval ratings were as low as they have been since June. Kerry gained among women, opening a 12-point lead while slashing the president’s advantage with men.

Less than half of likely voters, 47 percent, approve of Bush’s performance on the economy and just 43 percent give him good marks for other domestic policies.

Bush and Kerry are considered equally likable, after Bush’s ratings went down and Kerry’s went up for an 11-point swing.

Slightly more voters consider Kerry honest, a reversal from last month. Far more voters consider Bush decisive (73 percent) than Kerry (43 percent), but the gap closed by 8 points.

Kerry widened his lead on the question of who would create jobs, with 54 percent favoring him and 40 percent Bush.

Permanent War

Via Kevin at Catch, I see that Matt Taibbi infiltrated another campaign, this time the Republicans.

Here’s an interesting observation:

The problem not only with fundamentalist Christians but with Republicans in general is not that they act on blind faith, without thinking. The problem is that they are incorrigible doubters with an insatiable appetite for Evidence. What they get off on is not Believing, but in having their beliefs tested. That’s why their conversations and their media are so completely dominated by implacable bogeymen: marrying gays, liberals, the ACLU, Sean Penn, Europeans and so on. Their faith both in God and in their political convictions is too weak to survive without an unceasing string of real and imaginary confrontations with those people — and for those confrontations, they are constantly assembling evidence and facts to make their case.

But here’s the twist. They are not looking for facts with which to defeat opponents. They are looking for facts that ensure them an ever-expanding roster of opponents. They can be correct facts, incorrect facts, irrelevant facts, it doesn’t matter. The point is not to win the argument, the point is to make sure the argument never stops. Permanent war isn’t a policy imposed from above; it’s an emotional imperative that rises from the bottom. In a way, it actually helps if the fact is dubious or untrue (like the Swift-boat business), because that guarantees an argument. You’re arguing the particulars, where you’re right, while they’re arguing the underlying generalities, where they are.

Once you grasp this fact, you’re a long way to understanding what the Hannitys and Limbaughs figured out long ago: These people will swallow anything you feed them, so long as it leaves them with a demon to wrestle with in their dreams.

This tracks with my pet theory, “The Action Is The Juice.”

These people aren’t really about politics, ideology, faith or winning. They are about fighting. Losing this election will not shut them up — indeed, they will be invigorated by the loss, reassured in their view that they are a victimized minority.

This fight, sadly, will not end after we win on November 2nd. In many ways it will just be beginning. But at least the reins of power will no longer be exclusively theirs and we can begin to reverse the damage.

I actually think that lefty bloggers and their readers will be more important after the election than before. Unless the election is a complete landslide, in which case the other side will be knocked back on its heels for a short time, we will have to be prepared to continue the battle within days. Remember, the Republicans have had an entire machine in mothballs for the past four years that is in the exclusive business of destroying a Democratic presidency. They like being on the offensive and they make a tidy profit at it. Many of these people don’t mind Junior losing one damn bit.

corrected for grammatical boo-boo

Blind Man’s Bluff

Via Kevin Drum I see that the Duelfer reports says that Saddam was willfully mysterious about his weapons capability because he was obsessed with the threat of Iran:

Hussein often denied U.S. assertions that he possessed banned weapons in defiance of U.N. resolutions, but for years he also persisted in making cryptic public statements to perpetuate the myth that he actually did have them. The Iraq Survey Group believes that he continued making those statements long after he had secretly ordered the destruction of his stockpiles.

Based on the interrogations, it appears that Hussein underestimated how seriously the United States took the weapons issue, and he believed it was vital to his own survival that the outside world — especially Iran — think he still had them.

It was a strategy, Hussein has told his FBI interrogators during the last 10 months, that was aimed primarily at bluffing Iraq’s neighbor to the east.

“The Iranian threat was very, very, palpable to him, and he didn’t want to be second to Iran, and he felt he had to deter them. So he wanted to create the impression that he had more than he did,” Duelfer, the Iraq Survey Group head, told members of the Senate on Wednesday.

If I may take a little bit of credit here, I posited a version of that theory back in July of ’03, not specifically highlighting Iran, but saying that it was likely a bluff to boost his prestige and deterrent in the region and within his own regime:

Saddam was a strongman dictator who maintained his power, both within the country and in the region, through fear and violence. Kowtowing to the UN and especially to the US would have substantially weakened his reputation as a ruthless tyrant who was willing to do anything to stay in power. If a totalitarian shows weakness, the whole house of cards can come tumbling down. It’s possible that he felt he had to bluff or lose his grip on power from within and encourage aggression from his neighbors.

In light of another revelation in the Duelfer report, I think that the other point in that paragraph — that Saddam was afraid of losing power from within — also turns out to be probable.

Shortly before the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq last year, Saddam Hussein gathered his top generals together to share what came to them as astonishing news: The weapons that the United States was launching a war to remove did not exist.

“There was plenty of surprise when Saddam said, ‘Sorry guys, we don’t have any’ ” weapons of mass destruction to use against the invading forces, a senior U.S. intelligence official said.

[…]

The new accounts contradict many U.S. assumptions about relations between Hussein and his senior aides, as well as American views on what Hussein was doing and how he saw the outside world before the invasion.

For example, many in the U.S. intelligence community had believed that Hussein’s sycophantic generals kept him in the dark about the state of Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs — that is, that the dictator was misled by associates who told him what he wanted to hear.

Far from being misinformed, the report says, Hussein was micromanaging Iraq’s weapons policy himself and kept even his most loyal aides from gaining a clear picture of what was going on — and, more important, not going on — with the program.

“Saddam’s centrality to the regime’s political structure meant that he was the hub of Iraqi WMD policy and intent,” the report concluded.

Back when I wrote that earlier post, in light of the fact that Saddam was likely only bluffing, I went on to wonder whether our new doctine of preventive war was such a good idea:

The big question, however, is whether it is reasonable to believe that the most powerful country in the world bought this 3rd rate dictator’s gamesmanship and if it did, whether it is reasonable to have a doctrine of preventive war if our top flight, super sophisticated intelligence services are so easily duped.

If the clumsy posturing of a not-too-bright tyrant is now the only evidence we need to launch an invasion then we are in for a very bumpy ride. (And, I would like to propose that we simply start flushing thousand dollar bills down the toilet rather than continue to fund a defense and intelligence apparatus that is incapable of verifying whether or not these claims have any basis in reality.)

In truth, the hyping of the evidence speaks for itself …If Saddam bluffed and we knew he was bluffing (or certainly should have known) then somebody needs to ask what purpose was served for the people of the United States and Britain for their governments to call that bluff.

I still wonder why nobody asks why, if they actually believed that Saddam had WMD, they felt the need to overhype the threat so grandly and why they felt so comfortable putting 140,000 American troops in the direct line of fire. I have always thought they knew he was a paper tiger.

Clearly, they had other reasons for invading and none of those reasons have ever been publicly acknowleged. (The crap about “liberation” is, of course, utter nonsense. Bush and Cheney have never given a moment’s thought to someone else’s freedom in their entire life.) Everybody has their theory, from establishing military dominance in the middle east and seizing the oilfields to a primitive racist need to punish some arabs for 9/11 to revenge for the attempted assasination of Bush Sr.

That we still have no definitive reason for this invasion — good or bad, right or wrong — says everything.

Losing It

Andrew Sullivan posted a very disturbing letter yesterday which seemed to indicate that the US might be in danger of losing control of Baghdad. If US forces can’t control the Green Zone, then they can’t control anything:

From: “Baghdad, USConsul”

To: “Baghdad, USConsul”

Subject: Warden Message

Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 14:36:13 +0000

Warden Message – Increased Security Awareness within the International Zone

On October 5, 2004, at approximately 1 pm, U.S. Embassy security personnel discovered an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at the Green Zone Café. A U.S. Military Explosive Ordnance Detachment safely disarmed the IED.

American citizens living or working in the International Zone are strongly encouraged to take the following security precautions:

* Limit non-essential movement within the International Zone, especially at night.

* Travel in groups of two or more.

* Carry several means of communication.

* Avoid the Green Zone Café, the Chinese Restaurants, the Lone Star restaurant and Vendor Alley.

* Conduct physical fitness training within a compound perimeter.

* Notify office personnel or friends of your travel plans in the International Zone.

**** Conduct a thorough search of your vehicle prior to entering it.

Consular Section

US Embassy Baghdad

Today, the insurgents launched an attack on the Sheraton hotel, where the journalists stay, and naturally CNN is obsessing on it. These pictures are not helpful.

The Republicans are going to start howling that the Kerry campaign is gleeful that things are going badly in Iraq as they point out the endless numbers of Bush failures. But, I have news for them. If Bush and Cheney weren’t running on the “you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes” platform, they would not be so vulnerable on this issue. Their unwillingness to face reality is what’s dragging them down more than the situation itself.

Maybe if Junior took a little more interest in history and a little less interest in believing his own hype, he might just have learned something from a president in his own lifetime — Lyndon Johnson. Sadly for him, he won’t even have a signature issue like the “Voting Rights Act” or the comfort of a landslide election to comfort him in his dotage. He’s a loser in every sense of the word.

Tricksters

The next time you hear one of the cable gasbags going on about Democratic voter fraud or the fact that they Florida is outstripping Democrats in registration keep this in mind:

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating 1,500 voter registration forms received by the Leon County elections office that apparently were altered to register local students as Republicans.

[..]

In St. Petersburg, former Mayor Charles Schuh received a letter saying he was ineligible to vote in the Aug. 31 primary because his registration application wasn’t received on time. He later learned that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now had turned in a registration form with his correct name, address and phone number, but the wrong date of birth, final four digests of his Social Security number and gender.

[…]

He was allowed to vote after showing elections officials his voter registration card and telling them the incorrect registration application wasn’t submitted by him. Schuh said the registration form with his name was turned over to the state attorney’s office along with 14 others that appear fraudulent.

State Attorney Bernie McCabe said all appeared to be turned in by ACORN.

“It does not appear right now that it can result in any impact on the election because the phony people aren’t going to be voting, but it certainly creates a lot of work for everybody,” McCabe said. “The supervisors of elections have enough on their plates than worrying about people turning in phony cards.”

While he said ACORN is willing to help investigators, he said the problem appears to be caused by paid workers falsifying forms in order to make quotas.

The interesting thing about this is that Florida ACORN is a liberal group, dedicated to a living wage and oppostion to the Bush tax cuts, yet it appears to have some paid workers registering students as Republicans. That seems a bit odd, don’t you think?

If I were a suspicious person, I might think that some enterprising GOP dirty tricksters were infiltrating liberal voter registration groups.

Go Where They Need You

Since California is in the bag, I decided sometime back to make the supreme sacrifice and go to Las Vegas and help them GOTV. (Hey, Nevada is an important swing state…)

I noticed that Josh Marshall linked to America Coming Together so that people can volunteer to help out where it’s close and I realized that I should plug them again, too. They are very good at helping you plan on whatever budget you can can come up with.

If you are near one of those swing states or can get there sometime in the next month, particularly on election day, sign up.

It’s also worth noting that even if people don’t apply for an absentee ballot, in many states you can vote early, which is what I plan to do. You just go down to the designated polling place in your town and vote like it was election day. (I didn’t know you could do this until this election.) We can start turning out the vote early. It may be just a matter of giving people a lift to the polls or gathering a group of friends.