Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Midterm Election Mistakes Redux

I’ve been supportive of John Kerry’s need to find an acceptable strategy for dealing with this mess in Iraq. The fact is that until we wean ourselves from our childish dependence on gas guzzling penis-mobiles, we are probably not going to be able to simply leave Iraq now that we have totally destabilized the region with Bush’s “call” to free the Iraqi’s from their lives. I do think that with a different president we might be able to summon up some sort of legitimate multinational commmitment to pour money and manpower into the country and at least make a serious attempt to help the Iraqi people create a decent political system. I don’t know if it will work, but I do know that it hasn’t been tried and it needs to be. Like it or not — and I don’t — unless we clean up this mess, the national security and economic ramifications are much more severe than I think people are willing to admit.

But, I also think Kerry’s framing and delivery of this message is just terrible. The choice in this is not between “cutting and running” and “staying the course” or between being “thoughtful” and “thoughtless.” It is between being honest and dishonest, persuasive and bullying, succeeding and failing. Kerry needs to sharpen his words and punch up his energy. This tepid me-tooism will not work. Having said that, I do think that Kerry is substantially right on the issue of Iraq.

On the other hand, this is simply mystifying:

“I think that could be a positive step,” the Massachusetts senator said, approving of the Bush-Sharon action regarding both refugees and Israel’s borders. “What’s important obviously is the security of the state of Israel, and that’s what the prime minister and the president, I think, are trying to address.”

I guess things just aren’t hot enough in the mideast right now.

Honestly, you can’t get any more cravenly chickenshit than this. Not only is it a monumental change in American foreign policy, it is a blatant domestic political maneuver at exactly the wrong moment.

There is a possibility that the action by Bush could further aggravate the situation in Iraq, just as Israel’s killing of a prominent Palestinian militant set off rioting in Iraq several weeks ago. Independent pollster John Zogby, who has surveyed extensively in the Arab world, said: “This is pretty much the final nail in the coffin of the peace process as far as Arabs are concerned.” He said his polling indicates the Palestinian cause is among the top three issues for 90 percent of Arabs in all Arab countries he has surveyed. “It’s not even a political issue, it’s a bloodstream issue,” Zogby said

[…]

“This will make it that much harder for John Kerry to win Florida,” said a Republican aide on Capitol Hill who refused to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. Associates said Bush’s strategists believe that even small inroads into the Jewish vote could mean the difference between winning and losing Florida, and several Republicans believe the announcement could further inhibit Kerry’s fundraising in the Jewish community.

For one thing, for Kerry to agree that the Florida Jews — most of whom are retired New Yorkers — will vote for Bush because of this is to completely insult them. They aren’t drooling idiots like so many of the GOP’s blind followers. They have enough sophistication to understand the complexity of this situation, no matter how much they may yearn for Israel’s safety and security.

And they, of all people, have a mighty motivation to oust Junior from the oval office. He and his followers have been calling them idiots for the last three years for not being able to decipher Teresa LaPore’s ballot hieroglyphics. They wouldn’t vote for Bush if Kerry soul-kissed Yassar Arafat on Saturday night Live.

I suppose that it is possible Kerry genuinely believes that jettisoning any hope of getting rid of the settlements or even a symbolic right of return is a good idea. If so, then we have serious problems because he apparently believes that the best way to negotiate is to take all of your negotiating cards off the table. Regardless of where you hope the process wil eventually lead, this is not good. Bush got rolled and Kerry threw his arms around his neck and rolled with him.

I am honestly stumped by this. If Kerry plans to win the election by endorsing all of Bush’s insane foreign policy pronouncements then it’s lost before it’s begun. I don’t demand that he abandon all pretense of moderation or that he embrace some sort of isolationism. I wouldn’t support that much less do I think it would win the election. I do however expect him to at least object to the Bush administration’s crazy, fucked up neocon wetdreams that are likely to get a lot of people — including Americans — killed.

If this really is all about fundraising then I think Billmon has it right:

It strikes me that bin Laden has been going about this all wrong. If he’d just started his own PAC, and spread enough money around, he probably could have gotten Congress to vote to blow up the World Trade Center.

Faux Outrage For Dummies

The incomparable Sommerby discusses the piece of RNC propaganda posing as news on the front page of the NY Times this morning. Jim Rutenberg dutifully parrots the painfully obvious Gillespin that the Democratic 9/11 commissioners (particularly Ben-Veniste) are blind partisans who are all over the television promoting themselves at the expense of truth, God and the American Way. This talking point was ALL over GOPTV yersterday, bursting forth from the mouths of every Bush shill from Tuckie Carlson to Brit Hume. In fact, I haven’t seen a case of such perfect conformity since the Taiwanese synchronized swim team got a perfect 10.

It so happens I was listening to my local NPR station on the freeway last night when I heard none other than Thomas Kean, Republican commision chairman, saying that the commission was encouraging the commissioners to give intereviews in the interest of openness. Even in the Times article he’s quoted saying:

“We made a conscious decision, and part of it was under strong pressure from the families, to make this commission as transparent and as visible as possible.”

I guess Cheney’s stooges forgot to tell Tommy that he was supposed to keep a lid on the bad news. Let’s hope Fredo doesn’t find out.

Sommerby points out the obvious fact that Ruttenberg doesn’t name any actual Democrats complaining about this openness (although they certainly could — John Lehman is all over the place, too.) He says they are, but can’t seem to quote one on or off the record. Maybe Zell’s trying to keep a lower profile these days. But, the fact is that this is step two in the coordinated GOP effort to discredit the 9/11 committee and anyone with half a brain can spot it a mile away. (Gingerly trashing the widows was step one.)

I’m of the opinion that the single most partisan act of the commission hearings came from the Attorney General of the United States when he appeared before them and testified as if he were a political hatchet man for Dick Nixon. Now that was a little bit unseemly, in my book. (And in Gary Hart’s book too.) But, apparently Jim Rutenberg loves those red kool-aid kamikazes they’re serving up down at RNC headquarters so much that he can’t help but grab Karl Rove’s dictation and yank for all he’s worth.

The NY Times is playing its useful idiot role once again. To use one of Karen Hughes’s favorite words, I’m sure the Republicans find that “comforting.”

Liberal radio stations silenced

I wondered what the hell was going on when I turned on Franken and heard Spanish language radio. I know someone who works for Arthur Liu and he’s a certifiable nutcase.

Update: Air America responds

Yep. He’s Naked

The New York Times finally notices that the Emperor has no clothes:

…his responses to questions were distressingly rambling and unfocused.

…his rhetoric, including the repetition of the phrase “stay the course,” did not seem to indicate any fresh or clear thinking about Iraq, despite the many disturbing events of recent weeks.

…Mr. Bush seemed to entertain no doubts about the rightness of his own behavior, no questions about whether he should have done something in response to the domestic terrorism report he received on Aug. 6, 2001.

…The United States has experienced so many crises since Mr. Bush took office that it sometimes feels as if the nation has embarked on one very long and painful learning curve in which every accepted truism becomes a doubt, every expectation a question mark. Only Mr. Bush somehow seems to have avoided any doubt, any change.

He was no more incoherent and stubbornly repetitive than usual last night. All you have to do is go back and read the transcripts of his other press conferences to see that he has always been this bizarrely robotic, unresponsive and ill informed. For some reason the press in this country decided not to notice for over 3 years that our president obviously has no grasp of the the complicated issues he faces.

It’s good that they are finally beginning to say something, but an awful lot of misery could have been prevented if they had done their job and instead of regurgitating RNC lies about Al Gore had reported the fact that the Republicans had nominated an idiot to run the most powerful country in the world.

I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it. John, I’m sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could have done it better this way, or that way. You know, I just — I’m sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn’t yet…I hope I — I don’t want to sound like I’ve made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t — you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.

This is the most powerful man in the world.

Update: NT Times Link fixed.

And Will Saleton has the stomach to deconstruct Junior’s press conference. It’s not pretty.

He Must Be Defeated

The Teacher’s Aid in Chief lectures the American people as if they are just as stupid as he is. As usual, he filibusters with his puerile incoherent blather, going on and on and on not making any sense, projecting arrogance and ignorance in equal measure.

I am deeply ashamed to be American right now.

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.