Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Consummate Prick

Has there ever been a more blatantly partisan Attorney General than the Crisco Kid? This testimony today was contemptuous, dishonest and disturbingly inappropriate. In any other administration someone who acted out as he did today would be fired:

Attorney General John Ashcroft strongly defended the Bush administration and himself today before the 9/11 commission, laying the blame for intelligence failures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks squarely on the presidency of Bill Clinton.

Mr. Ashcroft said Al Qaeda was able to plan and carry out the attacks that killed some 3,000 people in large part because of policies of the Clinton administration and its deliberate neglect of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s computer technology.

[…]

Mr. Ashcroft said that to the contrary, he personally went to the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, on March 7, 2001, and urged her to scuttle what he characterized as an ineffective policy of the Clinton administration specifying that Mr. bin Laden had to be captured, and only in a way that lawyers would approve.

“Even if they could have penetrated bin Laden’s training camp, they would have needed a battery of attorneys to approve the capture,” Mr. Ashcroft said sarcastically.

Mr. Ashcroft said that he wanted “decisive, lethal action” and had told Ms. Rice, “We should find and kill bin Laden.”

The attorney general sounded almost contemptuous as he spoke of a “legal wall” put into effect in 1995 to separate criminal investigators from intelligence agents in an effort to safeguard individual rights.

I’m afraid that Mr Ashcroft has a strange understanding of his job description. It was not his responsibility to tell the administration that he “wanted decisive, lethal action” overseas. It was his responsibility to deal with terrorism threats in the United States, a responsibility he failed miserably to meet.

I believe that he lied outright today when he denied (under oath) that he told Picker that he didn’t want to hear about terrorism anymore.

BEN-VENISTE: And according to the statement that our staff took from you, you said that you would start each meeting discussing either counterterrorism or counterintelligence. At the same time the threat level was going up and was very high. Mr. Watson had come to you and said that the CIA was very concerned that there would be an attack. You said that you told the attorney general this fact repeatedly in these meetings. Is that correct?

PICKARD: I told him at least on two occasions.

BEN-VENISTE: And you told the staff according to this statement that Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this anymore. Is that correct?

PICKARD: That is correct.

Ashcroft:

“First of all, Acting Director Pickard and I had more than two meetings,” Mr. Ashcroft said evenly. “We had regular meetings.”

And far from turning away from briefings on terrorism, Mr. Ashcroft said, “I care greatly about the safety and security of the American people and was very interested in terrorism, and specifically interrogated him about threats to the American people, and domestic threats in particular.”

All of his actions indicate that he didn’t want to hear about terrorism. I’ll be expecting some harsh words from Senator Catkiller on the floor of the Senate tomorrow. Words like perjury and “letter of resignation.”

Yeah, I know. And people in hell want icewater.

Stretch?

A couple of other questions I’d like to see raised in Junior’s thrid prime time news conference:

1) Three months ago you proposed an ambitious multi-billion plan to send a mission to Mars and establish a permanent base on the moon in the next few years to harvest materials to process into rocket fuel and breathable air. How much of a priority will you place on this initiative in a second Bush administration?

2) There is no mention in your speeches of your immigration proposal announced this January, allowing large numbers of foreign guest workers to temporarily work legally in the United States. Do you plan to put the muscle of the White House behind the legislation proposals sponsored by Senators McCain and Hagel this session?

Chutzpah

E.J Dionne quotes Bush at a fund raiser last week saying: “We stand for a culture of responsibility in America. We’re changing the culture of this country from one that has said, if it feels good, do it, and if you got a problem, blame somebody else, to a culture in which each of us are responsible for the decisions we make in life.”

I heard that fundraising speech (dutifully shown in its entirely live on CNN) and I too was struck by the unbelievable irony of his statement. It’s actually beyond ironic. It’s deluded.

In my fantasy America a reporter would repeat those lines to Bush tonight and then ask him if he thinks there are any problems — from 9/11 failures to the economy to Iraq — for which he bears any responsibility.

But, I’m sure that is impossible. Instead, we will hear the “journalists” ask him something like “how soon will you be able to bring democracy and freedom to Iraq?” at which point he’ll filibuster incoherently for half an hour blathering on about good ‘n evul ‘n thugs ‘n caves ‘n smoken ’em out. Then he’ll tell a reporter how ugly he is and everyone willl laugh uproariously at his comedic genius and go home.

Ahmad At The Helm

I said the other day that I didn’t know how to fix the problem in Iraq, but I do know that a good first step would be to uncermoniously dump that charlatan opportunist Ahmad Chalabi. According to this Cheney and Wolfowitz are as committed to him as ever:

Why did they do it? It seemed a safe bet to the civilian echelon policymakers at the Department of Defense when they approved Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer’s fateful decision to close down the newspaper of Muqtada al-Sadr and to arrest an aide to the young firebrand Shiite cleric. Even after Shiite Iraq had erupted into fury over the moves on Saturday, April 3, top-level Pentagon policymakers were privately still convinced it was all a storm in a teacup.

A small event on Sunday, April 4, the very day after the move against al-Sadr prompted the revolt, provides the missing piece to the puzzle. For that was when the CPA announced the name of Iraq’s putative new defense minister for the post-June 30 government. His name is Ali Allawi and he is a loyal, close associate of Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. More, he is Chalabi’s nephew.

[…]

There is no way that the move against al-Sadr was undertaken without Chalabi’s prior knowledge and explicit approval. Instead, given the extraordinary degree to which the Pentagon policymakers and Vice President Dick Cheney continue to privately disparage the far more accurate, sober and reliable professional assessments of the U.S. Army’s own tactical military intelligence in Iraq, it appears clear that, yet again, Chalabi was the tail that wagged the dog. He could have been expected to urge the move on al-Sadr in the first place.

The benefit to him is obvious. Chalabi believes — as do his still-worshipful Pentagon backers — that he has the blessing of supposedly moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the mainstream chief religious authority of the Iraqi Shiites, to take power on July 1 with the force of 110,000 U.S. soldiers and their automatic weapons behind him.

However, just as the neocons lead President Bush by the nose, and Chalabi leads them by the nose, Sistani and the Iranians have been leading him by the nose.

Sistani’s policy toward the CPA and Chalabi has been no different from the way he survived as an ayatollah all those years under Saddam Hussein, which was no mean feat. Sistani is playing a cautious waiting game and avoiding the ire of those who currently are top dog in Baghdad. He will drop Chalabi — and the United States — at the drop of a hat as soon it becomes clear that they cannot run or tame Iraq.

[…]

The myth of Iraqization of this war is now dead. The Pentagon masterminds remain determined to push Chalabi through as prime minister and absolute ruler of Iraq de facto on July 1. GOP heavyweights have even been assured around Washington that hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks from U.S. companies to Chalabi to do business in Iraq will be used for a good cause: to spread democracy in — read, destabilize — neighboring Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Political Warrior

Kos and Susan are asking: “Why is Kerry running?”

Obviously, there are many reasons any person runs for president having to do with ego and accident. After observing him for a while, I think John Kerry is responding to the call in the 30 year political civil war with the Republicans. He understands that they have become dangerously radical and that it’s time to break their hold on power. He knows this territory.

In that sense, I confess I’m surprised that liberals aren’t taking more heart in the fact that John Kerry is a card carrying fighting Massachusetts liberal. We should be thrilled that somebody as liberal as Kerry has got a chance to be president. Because let’s not kid ourselves, anybody more liberal than John Kerry is unelectable. The last non-southerner was JFK (with the younger JFK sitting on the left):

He’s not a crook, he’s not lazy, he’s not stupid. He’s very accomplished, he’s highly experienced and he’s got good instincts. But, I’m convinced that the most important character traits in a successful President at this point in history are resiliance and cunning; even if we win the election, politics are going to remain a bloodsport. The Republicans aren’t going to fade away. This battle is ongoing and we must have someone who can withstand a punch and come back. It is going to be very, very difficult to govern. I think Kerry is running not because he’s “electable,” but because he’s one of the few Democrats of his generation who has spent his life preparing to govern in the face of a radical political opposition. The job is not for the fainthearted.

But, even if you don’t believe that any of that is tue, I think it is safe to say that the Democratic nominee for president is always going to be running to one degree or another:

To protect and defend the citizens of the United States.

To preserve the separation of church and state

To safeguard the right to choose.

To provide a decent safety net

To encourage progressive taxation

To protect the environment

To advance civil liberties and civil rights

To govern transparently

To provide opportunity

To promote equality

To advance progress

To preserve the American way of Life

These are good reasons to feel ok about voting for John Kerry. The other side has very different ideas.

Update:

Upon reflection I think I failed to make clear the fact that I believe that right now the Democrats are essentially the conservative party, which means as great an emphasis on preservation as progress. This comes as a result of the two party system that places us in contrast to the radical Republican paarty which seeks to overturn the New Deal and dissolve the international order of the last 50 years. By necessity, our candidates are not going to be able to run on as progressive a platform as many of us might wish. One has to take into consideration the nature of the opposition and the character of the body politic when framing a case.

Kerry is not a reformer as Dean was perceived to be, nor is he a champion of a particular constituency as Gephardt was. But, perhaps at a time like this it is more helpful to judge the candidate by the quality of his enemies than his friends. His career has been about fighting bad guys, from Vietnam to Dick Nixon to BCCI.

In light of that, I believe Kerry is running for the simple reason that this time and place requires somebody who has the experience and character to keep the country secure while fighting back a rabid political opposition at home and a series of difficult threats overseas. His life has uniquely prepared him for this political moment.

For a similar perspective read Soldier For Peace in todays Salon.

Sr. Comedy Correspondent

Gawd, how I hate pretentious, boring people telling me what’s funny and what isn’t:

To be honest, I was never a huge fan of Stewart’s humor, which he custom-crafts for a mostly college-age audience. “The Daily Show”‘s intention of showing clips from the news in order to mock the conventional coverage of the news and get to the bottom of what’s really going on in the world always seemed to me too dependent on the thing it derided–the comic equivalent of covering an old song. Stewart’s deflate-the-talking-heads shtick consists too much of sarcastic jibes at the Pompous or Deceitful Public Figure, at the Underlying Reality of Self-Interest; it’s more like throwing fruit than making jokes.

[…]

Stewart can be funny when he’s not playing his new role as comique engage, though it’s strange that he can’t mimic or do accents–he’s the only American comic I’ve ever heard who can’t do a British accent. My Korean grocer can do a British accent. Most peculiar is that he keeps using the identical outrageous-silly voice Johnny Carson patented decades ago. Maybe someone should give him a nudge. But the really discouraging thing is that nowadays, Stewart seems to consider it more important to be a good citizen than a funny fellow. According to the newspapers, a substantial number of younger viewers actually get their news from “The Daily Show.” So for some time now, Stewart doesn’t just want to skewer the conventional news and the mendacious politicians. He wants to clarify the news, and to educate his audience.

Yeah, well, it’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.

The result is that Stewart weighs down his jokes with a kind of Government 101 knowingness. He’s not just funny about politics, you see, he’s savvy about the way the system works, and he’s going to help us through the maze. In Washington, “you have to cut through the partisan gridlock just to get to the bureaucratic logjam.” Stop, you’re killing me.

Methinks that journalist, TV critic and all around pompous ass Lee Siegel just doesn’t get the joke. But that’s not surprising. He is, after all, the punch line.

Damn Right

I said it before and I’ll say it again, Howard Dean is the guy to make the case against Nader. He understands that you can’t take anything for granted. He’s got my gratitude.

Brain Damage

Q Mr. President, could you tell us, did you see the presidential — the President’s Daily Brief from August of ’01 as a warning —

THE PRESIDENT: Did I see it? Of course I saw it; I asked for it.

Q No, no, I’m sorry — did you see it as a warning of hijackers? And how did you respond to that?

THE PRESIDENT: My response was exactly like then as it is today, that I asked for the Central Intelligence Agency to give me an update on any terrorist threats. And the PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat. There was not a time and place of an attack. It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to?

As you might recall, there was some specific threats for overseas that we reacted to. And as the President, I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence. And I looked at the August 6th briefing, I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into. But that PDB said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America — well, we knew that.

Yes, Dave.

Q Just to follow up on that, Mr. President. There was, in that PDB, specific information about activity that may speak to a larger battle plan, even if it wasn’t specific. So I wonder if you could say what specifically was done, and do you think your administration should have done anything more?

THE PRESIDENT: David, look, let me just say it again: Had I known there was going to be an attack on America, I would have moved mountains to stop the attack. I would have done everything I can. My job is to protect the American people. And I asked the intelligence agency to analyze the data to tell me whether or not we faced a threat internally, like they thought we had faced a threat in other parts of the world. That’s what the PDB request was. And had there been actionable intelligence, we would have moved on it.

I’m not exactly sure what you’re referring to in the PDB, but if you’re referring to the fact that the FBI was investigating things, that’s great, that’s what we expect the FBI to do.

Q Wasn’t that current threat information? That wasn’t historical, that was ongoing.

THE PRESIDENT: Right, and had they found something, they would have reported it to me. That’s — we were doing precisely what the American people expects us to do: run down every lead, look at every scintilla of intelligence, and follow up on it. But there was — again, I can’t say it as plainly as this: Had I known, we would have acted. Of course we would have acted. Any administration would have acted. The previous administration would have acted. That’s our job.

Q Are you satisfied, though, that each agency was doing everything it should have been doing?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, that’s what the 9/11 Commission should look into, and I hope it does. It’s an important part of the assignment of the 9/11 Commission. And I look forward to their recommendations, a full analysis of what took place. I am satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America — at a time and a place, an attack. Of course we knew that America was hated by Osama bin Laden. That was obvious. The question was, who was going to attack us, when and where, and with what. And you might recall the hijacking that was referred to in the PDB. It was not a hijacking of an airplane to fly into a building, it was hijacking of airplanes in order to free somebody that was being held as a prisoner in the United States.

“I am very aware of the cameras,” [Bush] recalled later. “I’m trying to absorb that knowledge. I have nobody to talk to. I’m sitting in the midst of a classroom with little kids, listening to a children’s story and I realise I’m the Commander in Chief and the country has just come under attack.”

Update: Skippy has some questions for the Teacher’s Aid In Chief.

What, Charles Manson Turned Them Down?

Tim at The Road To Surfdom notes that the good news is they don’t seem likely to appoint Paul Wolfowitz as Ambassador to Iraq. The bad news is that the new name being floated is a war criminal:

In Washington, two U.S. officials said John Negroponte, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is expected to be the first U.S. ambassador to post-Saddam Iraq.

One of the officials said Negroponte, a favorite of Secretary of State Colin Powell, (wtf?) has been asked whether he would take the job. But no imminent announcement is expected from the White House, because President Bush and his aides do not want to turn U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer into a lame duck.

If nominated and confirmed, Negroponte would oversee what is expected to be one of the largest U.S. embassies in the world. He has held numerous top posts before, including ambassador to Honduras during the Reagan administration’s covert war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

That’s certainly true. He has tons of experience with the kinds of “harsh measures” that the hawks now believe are going to be called for. What this article fails to mention is that:

…Negroponte — ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 — was doing his best to make sure that news of torture, disappearances and killings by the U.S.-trained Honduran military didn’t make it back to Congress or the American people, where it might discourage funding for the covert wars.

More than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer money flowed to the Honduran military during the 1980s. The country served as the primary U.S. base for waging its clandestine wars against communism — specifically in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The CIA trained and financed a Honduran army unit known as Battalion 316, which kidnapped and tortured hundreds of people. Negroponte denied knowing of the human rights violations though the abuses were widely publicized in the Honduran press. A CIA document declassified in 1998 and made available by the nonprofit National Security Archive, acknowledged that the Honduran military had committed abuses which were politically motivated and officially sanctioned.

“The focus of my efforts were in shoring up Honduras’s own defenses,” Negroponte said in a 1999 CNN interview. “So we worked on building up their military, and building their self-confidence. … We served as a sort of rear area, if you will, on a modest scale for the efforts in El Salvador.” Some 75,000 Salvadorans died in the civil war in that country.

Just a cursory look at the record shows that Negropont is being much too “modest.”

Negroponte supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnaped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. But in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Negroponte’s predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive.

In early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two with a contact in the Honduran armed forces The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any US involvement, despite Negroponte’s participation in the scheme. Other documents uncovered a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.

During his tenure as US ambassador to Honduras, Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military and he claimed he fully briefed Negroponte on the situation before leaving the post. When the Reagan administration came to power, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has consistently denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.

Speaking of Negroponte and other senior US officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which in 1995 published an extensive investigation of US activities in Honduras:

Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.

The Suns’s investigation found that the CIA and US embassy knew of numerous abuses but continued to support Battalion 3-16 and ensured that the embassy’s annual human rights report did not contain the full story.

Is this the right man for the job, or what? Saddam would be proud to know that we were considering sending in a man who understands the unpleasant “necessities” required to lead Iraq — torture, kidnapping and mass graves. If John Negropont becomes the ambassador, we will be making sure that Saddam’s legacy lives on. And, I think we can safely put to bed any more protestations about freedom, democracy and “liberation.”

Sending A Message

Several American and Iraqi officials now regard Bremer’s move to close the newspaper as a profound miscalculation based on poor intelligence and inaccurate assumptions. Foremost among the errors, the officials said, was the lack of a military strategy to deal with Sadr if he chose to fight back, as he did.

[…]

as with the campaign against Sadr, the military plan to quell Fallujah appears to have been based on faulty assumptions. Instead of disgorging the insurgents, many residents rallied to support them by joining the fight against the Marines. People in other cities, including Shiites who used to regard Fallujah’s residents as the hillbillies of Iraq, rushed to donate blood and money. Sunnis in Fallujah and elsewhere in central Iraq who had deemed Sadr a troublemaker began to laud him as a hero.

All of a sudden, Bremer had not just a two-front war on his hands, but one in which each side was drawing strength from the other.

Does anyone in this administration ever make a decision based upon sound intelligence and accurate assumptions? Do they even try to obtain them? And, they have never planned anything beyond the next morning or developed a fall back strategy in case something goes wrong.

The military began to assemble plans to go after Sadr, an initiative that was blessed by Bremer and the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz also favored taking action against Sadr, a senior military officer at the Pentagon said.

But the overall commander for the Middle East at the U.S. Central Command, Gen. John P. Abizaid, was hesitant to move on Sadr out of concern that arresting or killing him would simply elevate his stature, the officer said. Moderate Shiite clerics also advised the occupation authority against an arrest.

Well, Abazaid is the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, speaks fluent Arabic and has an understanding of the people and the region. Thank goodness nobody listens to him. Wolfowitz is the guy with the great track record, after all:

When Bremer ordered the shutdown of al-Hawza, there was no intention to use force to apprehend Sadr or leaders of his militia, according to occupation authority officials familiar with the decision.

One U.S. official said there was not even a fully developed backup plan for military action in case Sadr opted to react violently. The official noted that when the decision was made, there were very few U.S. troops in Sadr’s strongholds south of Baghdad. That area has been under the jurisdiction of multinational military divisions that had failed to move aggressively against the cleric’s militia.

The newspaper closure was intended “to send another signal to Sadr, just like telling him about the arrest warrant,” the official said. “In hindsight, it was a huge mistake. The best-case scenario was that he would ignore it, like the earlier threat, or that he would capitulate. The worst case was that he would lash back. But we weren’t ready for that.

[…]

At the time, occupation authority officials figured that Sadr had between 3,000 and 6,000 militiamen, only 2,000 of whom were armed fighters — a figure that turned out to be a vast underestimate. “We were relying on the most optimistic predictions possible,” the official said.

Officials in Washington familiar with the deliberations of both the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff said they knew of no high-level meetings before the closure of Sadr’s paper in which either group reviewed military plans girding for a possible violent backlash.

But the officials said that the decision to move against Sadr was fully supported by senior Bush administration officials. And while top officials may not have been familiar with military details, one senior administration official said that Washington had repeatedly advised Bremer and U.S. commanders in Iraq to ensure they were prepared for trouble if they went after Sadr.

“Every time we talked with Baghdad about taking any action against Sadr, we always talked about the need to have proper preparations in place to deal with a violent reaction,” the official said.

Looks like Bremer’s being cut loose. No wonder he looked like he’d ben hit between the eyes with a 2×4 this morning on Press the Meat.

Senor said the decision to move against Sadr in late March was prompted by “a real trend in the ramping-up of very inciteful, highly provocative rhetoric” from Sadr “that was directed at promoting violence against Americans during a very emotional time.”

“We believe we had a responsibility to address it head-on,” he said. “We had a concern that if he was left unchecked, Americans could wind up getting killed.”

That certainly worked out well.

I think Americans have to give some serious thought to this entire concept of “sending a message.” From abstinence education to “shock and awe” this method of governance almost seems designed to invoke the law of unintended consequences. Perhaps it’s time to think about real policies based upon sound information and contingency plans.

The messages we are sending — hubris, incompetence and ignorance — are toxic. And it’s going to get increasingly dangerous to you and me personally. Anti-Americanism isn’t necessarily directed at “the American people” at this point. However, if we give this administration another term that is going to change. Right now, most people understand that the majority of Americans did not vote for this man. But, the rest of the world will hold us responsible if we elect him legitimately in spite of what we now know about him. That, after all, is the message that Democracy sends.