Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

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.

You Can’t Stretch

As we all know, 9/11 changed everything, most especially the GOP’s zealous regard for absolute truth telling in debates.

From Just My 2, here’s an interesting compilation of wacky Republican quotes from back in the year 2000 — when Al Gore mendaciously lied about who he accompanied on a trip to Texas.

Here’s my favorite:

BUSH: If there’s pattern of just exaggeration and stretches to try to win votes, it says something about leadership as far as I’m concerned, because once you’re the president, you can’t stretch.

Stop The Presses

Media Matters exposes the fact that Tim Russert is a whore. Seems he forgot to mention last night that he knew that Cheney had met Edwards before.

KATIE COURIC (Today co-host):… the vice president said he had never met John Edwards until tonight, talking about pretty much being an absentee senator, but you say that’s not true.

RUSSERT: No, it’s not true. In fact, on April 8th of 2001, they were on Meet the Press together. Dick Cheney first, and then John Edwards after him.

COURIC: Well, why did he say that?

RUSSERT: And they stopped and shook hands. They were at a prayer meeting together. I think what he was trying to — maybe he didn’t remember — but he clearly is trying to give the impression that John Edwards is a young ambitious man in a hurry who just doesn’t stop by the Senate and do his job in a serious way, but is out campaigning and politicking, suggesting it’s all politics. I was surprised that —

COURIC: On the other hand, if you — if you misspeak like that and — and are dishonest about it, that can backfire, right?

RUSSERT: Sure. I wish — I thought that John Edwards would call him on it right at that very moment. I still don’t know why. I think it goes to your point, he was always trying to find a — a bigger issue to take on.

Of course Little Russ forgot to mention any of that in the immediate aftermath of the debate when people were watching. This does not surprise me. But, since when did Katie Couric, like, totally turn into Malibu Barbie?

“It was interesting how they didn’t really respond to each other’s criticisms. Oftentimes they would — somebody would make a point, and then they wouldn’t be responsive, they would just say another point against that candidate.

No duh. It’s so wierd when they do that. It’s like they’re trying to change the conversation or something. It’s kewl that Katie totally noticed that too. And she’s only been in journalism for, like, 25 years. Awesome.

So It Goes

South Knox Bubba, one of my favorite bloggers, is being accused by a local wingnut of somehow inciting his followers to fire shots at the local GOP headquarters in the middle of the night.

Tim Mcveigh blew up a building killing hundreds and the wingnuts howled indignantly at the mere suggestion that the violent anti-government rhetoric spewing forth from every crazed talk show and right wing militia group at the time might have given old Tim the wrong idea about politics. Now this frail little fellow is fretting like a little old lady and accusing a very civil liberal blogger of “contributing to a potentially catastrophic atmosphere” with his allegedly “hateful tripe.” Hypocrisy doesn’t even come close to explaining this crap. They are living in another dimension.

SK Bubba’s blog is hardly a fiery leftist rant page. He links to non-liberal locals and rarely enters into the seriously profane (as I do.) A fair number of Republicans come over and spar in a reasonably friendly way in his comments section but there is no “hateful tripe,” as any sentient human would perceive it, anywhere near it.

He also lives in and writes about politics in Bush country in the age of Ashcroft and the Patriot Act. This kind of thing could get him into trouble.

And by the way — nobody knows who the hell shot into the building. As far as I’m concerned, the most likely suspect is this desperate little GOP attention seeker himself — probably drunk and a little too clever for his own good.

Update: Thanks to The Donkey in the comments, I have been forwarded Bubba’s hateful manifesto. Chilling.

Rewriting History

In his debate with John Edwards, Dick Cheney had a brand-new version of the events that led to war.

With virtually all of the administration’s original case for war in Iraq in tatters, Vice President Dick Cheney provided shifting and sometimes misleading arguments in last night’s debate with John Edwards about Saddam Hussein’s ties to terrorists and his access to weapons of mass destruction.

Cheney, responding to moderator Gwen Ifill’s first question, said that “concern” about Iraq before the war had “specifically focused” on the fact that Saddam’s regime had been listed for years by the U.S. government as a “state sponsor of terror,” that Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal operated out of Baghdad, that Saddam paid $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and that he had an “established relationship” with Al Qaeda.

But except for the allegation about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda—a claim that is now more in question than ever—the other examples cited by Cheney in Tuesday night’s debate never have been previously emphasized by Bush administration officials, and for good reasons.

More here

I’m thinking that, as with his attitude toward deficits, Cheney has adopted the credo of “Reagan proved just making stuff up doesn’t matter.”

Reading all the lies and corrections around the web today, I believe we might save ourselves some time if we just compiled all the things that Cheney said last night that were true.

Here goes:

Gwen, I want to thank you, and I want to thank the folks here at Case Western Reserve for hosting this tonight. It’s a very important event, and they’ve done a superb job of putting it together.

And the president, his first legislative priority was the No Child Left Behind Act. It was the first piece of legislation we introduced.

There’s a fundamental philosophical difference here between the president and myself.

The fact of the matter is, the president and I will go forward to make the tax cuts permanent

Yesterday, the president signed an extension of middle- class tax cuts.

Traditionally, that’s been an issue for the states. States have regulated marriage, if you will.

I’ve worked for four presidents and watched two others up close, and I know that there’s no such thing as a routine day in the Oval Office.

We saw on 9/11 that the next president — next decision a president has to make can affect the lives of all of us.

First of all, I’m not familiar with his cases.

Gwen, we think lawsuit abuse is a serious problem in this country.

Well, this is a great tragedy, Gwen, when you think about the enormous cost here in the United States and around the world of the AIDS epidemic — pandemic, really. Millions of lives lost, millions more infected and facing a very bleak future

Well, I think the important thing in picking a vice president probably varies from president to president. Different presidents approach it in different ways.

Well, I clearly believe that George W. Bush would be a better commander in chief.

That’s it. And, if you read the whole transcript you’ll see that I’m not really exaggerating.

Who’s MIA?

This morning, footage of Lynn Cheney is all over cable responding to the fact that there are pictures of Cheney and Edwards elbow to elbow at a three hour prayer breakfast by saying “I think we can all agree that going to prayer breakfasts is a good thing. But, don’t you think he should have gone to the senate once in a while?”

Clever minx, isn’t she? But, it may not be the best line of her storied literary career. As it turns out, there’s a good reason why Cheney would never have run into Edwards in the Senate. He only meets with Republicans:

As Cheney takes on high profile, Democrats can’t seem to find him

October 2, 2002:

As the Senate prepares to act on a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, Republicans say Dick Cheney has assumed an increasingly visible role on Capitol Hill.

By contrast, the Democrats report that they see little of the vice president. Cheney, a key advisor to President Bush on foreign policy issues, has become a frequent guest at the Senate Republicans’ Tuesday policy lunches, where he briefs them and answers questions. As a former White House chief of staff, secretary of defense and member of Congress, he has acquired an unusual amount of clout among GOP senators.

Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the chief Republican deputy whip, said Cheney’s counsel “is taken very seriously. It was before this situation, but I think right now, his counsel is sought out more and it’s given much greater depth and credibility.”

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member on the Select Intelligence Committee, said senators “naturally look to Vice President Cheney as a seasoned, experienced person who knows the issues regarding national security, [and] has been in the forefront of it.”

However, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he hasn’t seen Cheney “in months.”

Other Democrats, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.) also said they haven’t had much contact with Cheney since the Iraq issue began heating up earlier this year.

Asked why Cheney hasn’t reached out to Democrats, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, replied, “You’d have to ask him – if you can find him.”

Thanks to deborah for the tip.