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Tribal Leadership

Q: The Vice President, who I see standing over there, said yesterday that Saddam Hussein has long-established ties to al Qaeda. As you know, this is disputed within the U.S. intelligence community. Mr. President, would you add any qualifiers to that flat statement? And what do you think is the best evidence of it?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Zarqawi. Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda. He’s the person who’s still killing. He’s the person — and remember the email exchange between al Qaeda leadership and he, himself, about how to disrupt the progress toward freedom?

Probably the murkiest and most intriguing feature of this man of many mysteries is the question of Zarqawi’s relations with Osama bin Laden. Though he met with bin Laden in Afghanistan several times, the Jordanian never joined al Qaeda. Militants have explained that Tawhid was “especially for Jordanians who did not want to join al Qaeda.” A confessed Tawhid member even told his interrogators that Zarqawi was “against al Qaeda.” Shortly after 9/11, a fleeing Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the main plotters of the attacks, appealed to Tawhid operatives for a forged visa. He could not come up with ready cash. Told that he did not belong to Tawhid, he was sent packing and eventually into the arms of the Americans.

Zarqawi and bin Laden also disagree over strategy. Zarqawi allegedly constructed his Tawhid network primarily to target Jews and Jordan. This choice reflected both Zarqawi’s Palestinian heritage and his dissent from bin Laden’s strategy of focusing on the “far enemy” — the United States. In an audiotape released after the recent foiled gas attack in Amman, an individual claiming to be Zarqawi argued that the Jordanian Intelligence Services building was indeed the target, although no chemical attack was planned. Rather, he stated menacingly, “God knows, if we did possess [a chemical bomb], we wouldn’t hesitate one second to use it to hit Israeli cities such as Eilat and Tel Aviv.”

[…]

The slaughter of Shias touches on another Zarqawi beef with bin Laden. While both men follow the strict code of Salafi Islam, which reckons Shias as apostates, bin Laden prides himself on being a unifying figure and has made tactical alliances with Shia groups, meeting several times with Shia militants. Zarqawi, by contrast, favors butchering Shias, calling them “the most evil of mankind . . . the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy, and the penetrating venom.” American military officials hold Zarqawi responsible not only for assassinating Shia religious leaders in Iraq, but also for the multiple truck bombings of a Shia religious festival this past March, which killed 143 worshippers.

But though bin Laden and Zarqawi differ on strategy, Zarqawi too cloaks his plans for mass murder in the language of the religious zealot. To Zarqawi, “religion is more precious than anything and has priority over lives, wealth, and children.” He considers Iraq ideal for jihad especially because “it is a stone’s throw from the lands of the two Holy Precincts [Saudi Arabia] and the al Aqsa [mosque, in Jerusalem]. We know from God’s religion that the true, decisive battle between infidelity and Islam is in this land [Greater Syria and its surroundings]. . . .” On the tape of the beheading of Nick Berg, entitled “Sheikh Abu Musab Zarqawi executes an American with his own hands and promises Bush more,” Zarqawi rages, “Where is the compassion, where is the anger for God’s religion, and where is the protection for Muslims’ pride in the crusaders’ jails? . . . The pride of all Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and other jails is worth blood and souls.”

The CIA has verified that Zarqawi himself spoke on the tape and personally beheaded Berg. Similarly, the videotaped beheading of Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal in February 2002 was carried out directly by another jihadi leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The latter, like Zarqawi, never swore allegiance to bin Laden. In this bloodthirsty crowd, it appears that slitting the throat of an American Jew wins laurels.

In January 2004, Iraqi Kurds captured a message from Zarqawi in Iraq to bin Laden. Zarqawi offered bin Laden a chance to expand al Qaeda’s role in Iraq. Victory, Zarqawi instructed, meant fomenting sectarian war between Shiites and Sunnis. There are no indications that bin Laden responded, and there are now signs of cooperation between some Iraqi Shia and Sunni militants. Are bin Laden and Zarqawi running competing terrorist organizations in Iraq?

[…]

Zarqawi exemplifies Sunni terrorism after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, what some call “al Qaeda 2.0.” The Western counteroffensive decimated al Qaeda’s leadership, stripped the organization of safe havens and training camps, and disrupted its command and control. Former al Qaeda subsidiaries became franchises, receiving inspiration from bin Laden’s occasional messages but operating independently. Historically speaking, the dynamic of revolutionary movements favors the most radical faction — the Jacobins, not the Girondists, the Bolsheviks, not the Menshiviks. If this dynamic prevails in contemporary Sunni terrorism, Abu Musab al Zarqawi represents the future.

A very nasty customer indeed, if this is true and if he’s still alive. And, of course, if he is let’s not forget it will be no thanks to our president:

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

I’m sure Junior believes that Zarkawi being in Iraq proves something about 9/11, al Qaeda and the GWOT, despite all the evidence to the contrary. He believes the same thing many of his supporters believe which is that that all arabs are pretty much the same and in his mind that includes Persians, Afghans, Indians (and probably Mexicans and Frenchmen too.) The subtleties are for pussies. His gut tells him that the arabs will only do what we tell them to do (in the name of freedom and democracy, of course) if we show them who is boss. He is, after all, famously “not into nuance.”

I think that the distinctions between the various players in the mid-east are simply not relevant to him, and neither is it of interest to his supporters. “They” are different from “us,” but “they” are all the same. He gave himself away with his little aside last month in which he said:

There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.

I think we know what we’re really dealing with, don’t we?

“My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in years”

Natasha at Pacific Views had an interesting little chat with one of the Republican conmen … er, grassroots people’s movement representatives who are protesting Fahrenheit 911.

Let’s just say they aren’t really the toppermost of the poppermost of the PR world, if this is the best they can do.

For information on how to combat the Drudge-enhanced smear campaign and boycott, go to PoliticalStrategy.org to get everything you need.

Beat Me Hurt Me

Let’s see here. Do you want to run the table, or do you want to go eat lunch?

Hold on a second, I’ll get you in a minute, please. A little patience in front of the President here.

How many questions? One question apiece. If we’re going to stand out here in 100-degree temperature, let’s just have one question.

You can pass your question on to some other person, and I might call on them. I’m not so sure I’m going to be so international this press conference. (Laughter.) The first question was about am I concerned about economic vitality? I’m pleased with — what?

Go ahead, Terry. No, you’ve asked your question. Terry. Hold on for a second. Terry. Thank you, though

Which question do you want me to answer?

Q:Well, I think they’re related; both —

No, they’re not — (laughter.)

Q Please, I’ll say, please.

Look, it’s very hot out here, we’ve got a President from a — a respectful President here. Why don’t you just ask one question, i f you don’t mind? I don’t mean to be telling you how to do your business. All right, I’ll answer both. (Laughter.)

The second part was what? I forgot. It was so long ago that you asked it —

Q I know, I apologize, I was long-winded.

Okay, a couple more questions. Yes. Let me work my way through the TV readers.

Which one, you or Sanger?

I’m getting distracted over here, there seems to be some noise.

And then the naked emperor snapped his towel one more time at the cowering press corps and walked away as they all sang, “thank you sir, may I have another,” in unison.

He was very clear on one thing. Between bouts of showing the press whose bitch they are, he repeatedly assured them that he’s a leader who leading and the American people know he’s leading because he’s led. And, he’s leading us in the fight against darkness and hatred by killing the terrorists on their own turf and then defeating the forces of evil wherever it may be, god-bless-us-everyone.

First, it’s in our interests that we defeat terrorists there than fight them here. That’s our short-term security interest.

Secondly, it’s in our long-term interests that we work for free societies in parts of the world that are desperate for freedom. And the reason I keep saying that, Wendell, is because I know that a free society is a peaceful society. And America is interested in working with friends to promote the peace. And that’s what we’re doing. The short-term solution for our security problem is to find the terrorists and bring them to justice before they hurt Americans again; is to deny them training bases; is to deny them affiliates and allies in the war on terror. That’s what we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq. The long-term solution is to promote free societies that are able to defeat the forces of pessimism, darkness, intolerance and hatred.

And then he went into his office and defeated the forces of pessimism by ordering up some torture of Afghan cab drivers right after he shined the light of freedom on the Geneva Conventions and declared them dead. After lunch he planned to end intolerance and hatred by holding thousands of innocent Iraqis in unlimited detention. He is the president of a free society, after all. He can legally set aside any laws he deems … unfree.

This idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious

Back in the early blog days, I used to read Instapundit regularly. Compared to the neanderthal wingnuts I commonly sparred with on bulletin boards and the like, he was a breath of fresh air. But, after 9/11, like so many, he stopped making sense on a regular basis and I ended up having to put him in the “life is too short” file. Since then, when I do check in over there or follow a link I am quite stunned at how knee jerk he has become, even while there are nuggets of good sense still sometimes tucked between the lines.

Yglesias reminds me today of both why I used to like him and why he is so insufferable today:

I find it hard to respond to these things in terms of cost-benefit. My law school mentor Charles Black once said that of course you can come up with scenarios — the classic ticking-nuclear-bomb example — where torture might be justified. And you can be sure that, in those cases, if people think it’ll work they’ll use it no matter what the rules are. But there’s a real value to pretending that there’s an absolute rule against it even if we know people will break it in extraordinary circumstances, because it ensures that people won’t mistake an ordinary remedy for an extraordinary one.

Well said.

I also think that the rather transparent effort to use this against Bush — often by people who think nothing of cozying up to the likes of Castro, for whom torture and murder are essential tools of governance — has caused the Abu Ghraib issue to be taken less seriously than perhaps it ought to be.

Taking the second part first, when, exactly, did Reynolds decide that he had to ass-kiss the Right with such sycophantic upside downism? It’s “the Left’s” fault because if they didn’t make such a big deal out of it — and hold Bush accountable — people would take the issue more seriously. What Gillepie-esque nonsense. It’s that kind of hackery that makes Reynolds unreadable.

The first part of his analysis, as Yglesias points out with his “well said”, is quite interesting and relevant, however. It’s one that people don’t talk much about, perhaps because to debate it openly would render the concept useless. It’s a bit cynical and even a bit dishonest, but Yglesias can see the utility of it and so can I, Dershowitz’s torture[d] theories notwithstanding.

The idea that the “ticking time bomb” scenario might call for someone to break the law (and face the consequences of doing so) gets to the nub of our concerns with torture and the right of self-defense. As Reynolds points out, people will likely employ torture in a real ticking time bomb scenario whether it is legal or not. It is ridiculous to think someone wouldn’t if the scenario were as straightforward as it’s always presented. But, by outlawing acts of torture in all circumstances you prevent using torture in interrogations that are not ticking time bomb scenarios because you force the person who breaks that prohibition to show that it was a matter of self-defense. The bar is high. It must be so obvious that prosecutors or a jury of your peers can see that your actions directly saved the lives of specific would-be victims.

It would be a transparent legal process that everyone can judge based on the specific facts of the case. Finding that someone acted in self-defense under these circumstances would no more nullify our prohibition against torture than finding a policemen who acted in self-defense by shooting an armed man threatening people at a bus stop nullifies our prohibition against murder. The individual circumstances, reviewed in an open legal process, are all that would ever be required to justify the “ticking time bomb” torture defense. And, since there are an infinitesimal number of ticking time bomb cases, this specific circumstance is interesting but largely theoretical and therefore it’s actually a red herring.

The real problem we face here is determining what does and does not constitute a ticking time bomb and what does and does not constitute self-defense. And, that is where the Bush administration has gone so far off the rails as to be flying.

It’s not just that the torture memos explicitly give the president unprecedented powers to set aside the laws of the land (something the “libertarian” Reynolds should at least get a little bit exercized about), but that after 9/11, the Bush administration decided that the definition of self-defense is unlimited, even including preventive war. Under their definition pretty much anything goes. Somebody looks at you sideways — kill him. Why take a chance he might have a gun and shoot you first? Somebody says somebody might have some useful information? Torture him. It could save lives. In that sense, all threats, real or imagined, immediate or potential, are considered ticking time bombs that we have a right and obligation to diffuse any way we can.

This definition of self-defense is what makes it possible to excuse wanton torture, unprovoked aggression, lying and manipulation and usurpation of democracy itself. And what makes it so dangerous is that it allows it to be done under the rubrik of patriotism and the rule of law.

I have no doubt that many Americans see any act that might prevent further attacks as justified. Perhaps there are even quite a few who believe that if many thousands of innocent people, including children, are swept up in this “preventive” activity, it is a sad but necessary and moral thing. But, in order for this make any sense at all one would have to assume that the government has some idea what the threat is in the first place and knows who can tell them what they need to know to prevent it.

Unfortunately, recent events have just proven on the grandest scale imaginable that our government wouldn’t wouldn’t know a ticking time bomb if it fell into the oval office with a goddamned sign on it. The Bush administration did, after all, just invade a country on the basis of a threat that simply didn’t exist after ignoring people running around with their hair on fire for months about a threat that actually did. I’m afraid I just don’t have a lot of faith in these fellows’ ability to know when we are and aren’t being threatened. So, perhaps it’s best not to leave the definition of what constitutes self-defense in the hands of such incompetents and rely instead on the long established legal definitions that stood us in good stead through 223 years. Human beings, it turns out, aren’t very good at playing God.

The extreme overreaction of the government to the attacks of 9/11, heinous as they were, and its subsequent willingness to dispose of all previously agreed upon limitations to its ability to act in “self-defense” led directly to pictures of torture being shown all over the world — pictures symbolizing American indecency, immorality, incompetence and relentless will to power. And there is a paper trail that leads directly to the oval office where the man who sits behind the desk there says that he never ordered anything illegal and the world should be comforted by that.

If not that man, then who should we hold responsible for the utter vacuousness that has replaced a previously complex system of belief in the rule of law and inalienable human rights with a lizard brain definition of self-defense they wrap in meanlingless terms like “moral clarity?” The only people I see imitating Castro these days are sitting in the White House.

Tragedy Preceded By Farce

Sizzling, right on the money commentary by William Pfaff in the International Herald Tribune. Simple, straightforward and devastating. I can’t excerpt any of it because every word is necessary. Read the whole thing and then send it to your friends.

Meanwhile, Back On Pluto

Kevin has more Reagan Lunacy from Comrade Norquist:

One of the considerations in favor of a Reagan $100 bill, Norquist said, is that the $100 bill is favored in many foreign countries as the currency of choice and “Reagan was a world leader.”

“But the $100 bill is also the currency of choice of people who sell cocaine, and that is not so good.”

Bet On It

It’s official. Clinton will definitely help Kerry win the election, probably in a huge way. How do I know this?

[Dick]Morris believes that “by sucking up the oxygen in the room during July, Clinton cripples Kerry and forces him to compete for attention with a charismatic former president”. He predicts that the Massachusetts senator “will look a decided second-best to Bill Clinton”.

Morris is the Bizarro Oracle of Delphi. If he predicts something, the exact opposite will come true. He has a very impressive record. For example:

“Eventually, France will cave to the U.S. position.” – On the Iraq/war alliance, New York Post, February 4, 2003

“Republican members of the Senate want their own person controlling the floor so they can have an independent voice … When they reconvene in January, Trent Lott will still be there for one good reason: The Republican senators don’t want him to go.” – New York Post, December 16, 2002

“(U)nless (GWB) starts this war on schedule in September … he’s going to lose Congress.” – Fox News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, August 5, 2002

How should we interpret these insights, do you think?

“Bill Clinton is using his long-awaited autobiography to help Hillary win the vice presidential spot on Sen. John Kerry’s ticket.”

“If Bill, who has trouble finishing anything and procrastinates constantly, actually finishes the book, there is a reason. Likely she was nagging him to do it so he could raise the pressure for her.”

According to Morris, Clinton blackmailed Kerry by threatening to release the book during the campaign. Since he IS releasing the book during the campaign, we must assume that Kerry did not succumb to the blackmail. Which means that Hillary will not be on the ticket.

But, since this came from Morris, it must mean that Clinton DIDN’T blackmail Kerry so there was no blackmail for Kerry to deal with in the first place. Therefore, oddly, Hillary will also not be on the ticket but for the opposite reason that Morris asserts.

It takes a while to get the hang of reading those Morris tea leaves, but once you do it’s money in the bank.

Via pandagon and Campaign Desk

Double Whammy

As much as I loved his howl of outrage (posted below) Alterman also gets something wrong:

“Bill Clinton is about to do the same thing to John Kerry with his book that Ronald Reagan did to George W. Bush by dying: remind everybody of everything the old guy was and the current guy is not.

Nope. Clinton is about to do the same thing to George W. Bush that Reagan did to him by dying: he also is going to remind everybody of everything he was and the current guy is not. The contrast is between presidents, not candidates.

This helps Kerry, the man who Clinton will be promoting right along with his book.

Compare and contrast.

Today Eric Alterman howls at the outrageous conduct of the Bush administration. The complaints are about huge matters of war and civil liberties and presidential actions that have extraordinary consequences for the entire world:

It’s hard to say which is the best representation of what this war is doing to and has done to this country. Is it the lies that were told to get us into it? Is the fact that we are picking up innocent people off the street and torturing them? Is it that we have suspended the most basic civil liberties in our own country? Is it that the work of professional intelligence agencies has been corrupted? Is it that we have drawn resources away from the fight against Al Qaida which has completely regrouped? Is it that we are creating more terrorists? Is it that more than seven hundred Americans have been killed and thousands have been seriously injured? Is it that thousands of Iraqis have been killed but nobody is keeping an account of the numbers of their deaths? Is it that we are now more hated around the world than we have ever been? Is it that we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars while actually decreasing our security? Is it that we are doing all this while starving the most crucial homeland security programs? Is it that everyone who told the truth about what was being planned has been dismissed and seen their characters attacked? The usually soft-spoken and moderate intelligence analyst and author Thomas Powers does not exaggerate when he notes that Bush and the neocons have “caused the greatest foreign policy catastrophe in modern U.S. history.”

Now take a look at a similar howl of outrage from William Kristol The Weakly Standard, August 31, 1998

WHERE ARE THE RESIGNATIONS?

…For seven months, the president asked his staffers and supporters to lie. He assured them — some of them personally — that he had told the truth when he denied a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Ann Lewis and Paul Begala; Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala; Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt: All of them were lied to by the president. And all of them, in turn, were sent out to lie to the rest of us on his behalf.

[…]

As Charles Krauthammer said, “This is the point at which cynicism turns into moral depravity.” And the night of August 17 was the moment at which loyal service to Bill Clinton (already morally problematic) crossed the line into self-abasement.

Does no one in the administration realize this? The president engages in sordid activity in the White House — in the Oval Office — with a 21-year-old intern. He lies about it. He attempts to cover it up. Now he admits (albeit grudgingly and partially) to the truth. Yet none of his staff, no member of his administration, and almost no Democratic official seems to want to hold the president truly accountable for his actions — by demanding that he resign. And, in the absence of Clinton’s willingness to go, not a single person who works for him seems to have the honor to leave himself.

Is this an unrealistically high expectation? I don’t think so. I worked in two administrations, first for Bill Bennett, then for Dan Quayle. It goes without saying that neither of them would have done what Bill Clinton has done. It also goes without saying that, if either of them had done something even remotely so disgraceful, he would have resigned. But I honestly believe that, if either man had resisted resignation, my colleagues and I would have told him he had to go. Failing that, we ourselves would have resigned.

Bill Clinton is not a man of honor. But are there no honorable men around him? Can his staff and cabinet be lied to without consequence? Is there nothing that will impel them to depart? They need not become vociferous critics of the president. They need not denounce him. A quiet, principled leave-taking would suffice. But it would be refreshing if one of them refused to be complicit any longer in the ongoing lie that is the Clinton White House. Apparently, not one of them is willing to do that.

[…]

Personal loyalty is an admirable trait, and so is political loyalty. Up to a point. Government officials work for the nation, not simply for the president. They swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president. To remain loyal to a president who lies is to make oneself complicit in his lies. To remain loyal to a man who has brought shame to his office is to make oneself complicit in that shame. At some point, blind loyalty must yield to principled honor. When?

Stirring, wasn’t it? From the son of the Neocon Godfather himself.

How did the nation survive the great Fellatio Threat of 1998 — a year which, not incidentally, Clinton bombed the shit out of Iraq (likely taking out any possible remaining WMD) and came this close to killing bin Laden. Not good enough for old Bill, PNAC wetdreams notwithstanding. Clinton’s manly member was causing a constitutional crisis.

Today we have lying on a massive scale about matters of war and national security and Bill isn’t worried. He isn’t exercized about the president asserting a right to set aside laws and order torture. Back in 1998, Clinton’s lie about his sex life required that the entire white house staff resign if the president didn’t. But, when it comes to lying about terrorism, nuclear weapons or Bush-approved pictures of Iraqi men being sexually tortured, Republicans are “outraged at the outrage.”

What absurd people these neocons, especially, are. It was clear then that those who were in high dudgeon about this naughty nothingness as if it meant something important were much too trivial to be entrusted with real power. For all of their dreams of world domination, (it seems almost cartoonish now) they are incredibly childlike and naive. They may have more respect for book learning, but these people have much more in common with Bush’s embarrassingly immature worldview than they’d ever admit to their cosmopolitan friends in Georgetown.

More broken Kristol at Liberal Oasis.

Useful Idiot

Come on Hitchy-poo. You’re almost there.

You know your grubby little neocon friends are a bunch of scumbag totalitarians in democratic drag, don’t you? And you know you blindly aligned yourself with a movement that pretended to be all about “liberation” when, in fact, it was all about domination. Bad move. Very bad move.

In the sober light of day, hung over and awash in moral clarity, you know it. Go ahead. Confess. We won’t even put you in a painful stress position. You’re already in one, aren’t you?