Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Lukewarm Water

I don’t always agree with Joan Walsh but I think she is on to something important in today’s Salon Column.

I wrote last fall that I thought the Senate resolution giving the president carte blanche to invade at will was a serious, perhaps fatal, error on the part of the Democratic Presidential Wannabe Club.

The moral reason was obvious. Dick Cheney made it quite clear, two months before the vote, that the administration planned to attack Iraq, no matter what. It was immoral to give Bush a blank check to do that for their own craven political purposes. This was a vote on a matter of life and death, not “bring your daughter to work day.”

The political reason was that the base of the party was going to be slow to forgive. This was clear from the enormous outpouring of e-mails, letters and phone calls coming into Senators’ offices; record numbers by all accounts. As my own Senator, Diane Feinstein said on the floor of the Senate:

People have weighed in by the tens of thousands. If I were just to cast a representative vote based on those who have voiced their opinions with my office – and with no other factors – I would have to vote against this resolution.

Naturally, she voted for the resolution, ostensibly because of the supposed grave imminent threat Saddam presented to the US that we in the peacenik hoi polloi just didn’t seem to grasp.

…the same hoi polloi who knew very well that invading Iraq was a long held wet dream of radical neocons who were opportunistically using 9/11 as an excuse to advance their agenda… the same hoi polloi who could see with our very own eyes that the Bush Doctrine, published and distributed for every American to read, advocates muscular unilateralism and the emasculation of international institutions and the rule of law. You didn’t have to be an insider to know that the administration’s late blooming “commitment” to getting UN approval and international support was nothing but window dressing to buy time.

As Walsh says in her article:

Frankly, I found it equally incomprehensible how someone could support the war as Gephardt did, and now pretend that he didn’t know the president had no plan and no international cooperation to get it done. I knew that, sitting behind my desk in San Francisco, raising my teenaged daughter. Why didn’t anyone tell Gephardt, the savvy House minority leader?

Walsh doesn’t say it, but here in Santa Monica I knew our Senator Diane was voting for it because she was afraid that she’d be labeled a coward by the Mighty Wurlitzer if she didn’t. Continuing to live in the past, and making political calculations based upon the closed, insular advice of political consultants who have outlived their usefulness, the Democratic leadership believed that the conditions of 1991 were again at play and they would not let themselves be caught out this time. Always fighting the last war, as usual.

Walsh says it is “unseemly” for the contenders who voted for the resolution to now pile on the Bush administration. I don’t think it’s unseemly, it’s just not credible. It showed a remarkable political obtuseness not to recognize that when the base of the party is worked up enough to call and write in record numbers, something is in the air besides the smell of patchouli oil. These were Democrats, not anarchists or Naderites. That kind of political tone deafness is a disqualification in my book. At a time when the electorate is closely divided, you’d better pay attention to your base.

The vaunted Carville-Greenberg-Shrum operation further confused the issue by advising Democratic candidates to go around the country saying “I’m for the war, but with reservations” because that’s what their polls told them that many people felt.

Apparently, they didn’t realize that the people who felt this way were looking for leadership on the issue not equivocation. By saying they were for the war but with reservations, voters were simply saying that they supported the president by default in a time of war (and media cheerleading), but they knew in their gut that something wasn’t quite right.

It was the candidates job to identify and articulate where that feeling came from. When the Democrats appeared to be just as uncomfortable and confused as they were, swing voters went with the guys who seemed sure of themselves. You can’t blame them.

But, most importantly, the consultants failed to realize that by taking this position the democratic leadership was telling the energized base to go fuck themselves. The results were predictable:

Here’s what the Carville-Greenberg-Shrum operation said in their post-mortem of the election:

On Election Day, Republicans won by 4 points in voting for the House of Representatives (51 to 47 percent). That produced a gain of just 4 seats in the House. In the Senate, Democrats went from a one-seat majority to being in the minority. That represents a swing of 4 points away from Democratic performance in 2000 (even), actually the switch of around 2 percent of the voters, not a seismic change.

[…]

This imbalance of energy and direction produced a unique electorate, which would have been noted election night, had the traditional exit polls been available. The 2002 electorate was more Republican and much more conservative than those that showed up in the Presidential election of 2000 and the off-year election of 1998. Republicans were greatly energized by their campaigns, while Democrats were not.

If the Democrats had had the balls to say what they knew very well was the truth, we may have won the mid-terms and kept George W. Bush from hurtling forward with the Iraq war when the rest of the world balked at his bullying ways. At the very least they would have had a principled and coherent position from which to run. It was a huge failure of nerve and it explains the predicament the Wannabe Club finds itself in today.

Hence, grassroots support for Howard Dean and Wesley Clark.* The others look like presidential pretzels trying to explain themselves, now that things have gone wrong. Many of us predicted it would be so.

*I don’t mean to ignore Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun. They also objected to the war and I admire them for it. Their voices are worthy of respect and all three of them have followings that should be valued in the Party. But, they have little chance of gaining the nomination for reasons unrelated to the Iraq war.

Two More Straws

There are so many political and policy atrocities associated with the modern GOP and this administration that it becomes hard to feel anything more than a sort of resigned acceptance and hope that the historians will place them in their proper place in history beside other failed radical experiments.

But, every once in a while something comes to light that begets an emotional charge of such white hot anger and outrage that I find I’m shocked and awed once again at the sheer lack of decency and any claim to honor these people have, particularly after having to listen to their phony pretensions of patriotism and virtue.

Two such cases came up just recently and I wondered once again how low they can possibly go. Pretty low, apparently.

First, I simply cannot wrap my arms around the fact that the White House “sexed down” the EPA assessment of the air quality around ground zero. That they would knowingly place the people involved in the rescue and clean-up operation in long term health danger is simply so disgusting that I find it hard to imagine that any public safety worker in this country could ever vote for the Republicans again.

Remember, the people most likely to be affected by the bad air quality around the WTC after the attacks were cops, firefighters, municipal workers, rescue units and military personnel. The heroes of 9/11, the ones Bush so shamelessly exploited day after day after day — the ones that Peggy Noonan and K-Lo and Coulter got all misty and moist over.

Thanks guys. And by the way, Fuck You.

Would it have been too much trouble for the party of personal responsibility to give unspun information to citizens of the site of the most deadly terrorist attack in the nation’s history so they could decide for themselves how to mitigate the risk of serious long term consequences? The workers would have gone to work anyway, guaranteed, but they might have used more sophisticated equipment and might have discouraged people with respiratory problems from going into the area until it was completely cleared. Gosh, maybe they would have had themselves medically monitored more closely. That would have been terrible.

The only people who likely would have held back are those who work in the Stock Exchange, and there we find the real reason for the lie. Because a bunch of rich traders might have stayed home rather than expose themselves to long term lung damage, Bush and his cronies decided to throw them to the wolves, too.

Good thing you got those tax cuts boys. You’re going to need them to pay for your health costs.

Vote Republican. They care.

The other story that made me erupt with righteous indignation is the story this morning in the NY Times affirming that the White House authorized the bin Laden family “evacuation” from the US during the time that flights were suspended after 9/11.

This story has been out there from early days and those who placed any credence in the story were derided as dupes and 5th columnists.

With all that honor and dignity swirling around the oval office, you would have thought that somebody would have been concerned about whether it was right to spirit a bunch of Saudis out of the country rather than “protect” them from the supposed howling mob by putting them in protective custody until matters became clearer.

Meanwhile, the FBI was rounding up thousands of Middle Eastern men all over the country, many held for months on end with no legal representation, even eventually trumping up charges of thought crimes against a handful of dumbshits who failed to be born into rich Saudi “friends of Bandar” families.

This seems like a big story to me — one that should rightly have the entire beltway awash in gossipy speculation.

Let’s be clear. One of the more fanciful conspiracy theories to emerge immediately after 9/11, the one charging the Bush administration of protecting the Saudi royal family and the family of Osama-bin-fucking-Laden turns out to be TRUE!

Ok. It isn’t as big of a deal as fundraising at a Buddhist temple or a DNA stained dress. I understand that. But, you would think that Tweety and the rest might find it just a little bit intriguing that our president authorized the escape of intimates and family members of the mastermind of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Wait…

Look! Over There! Arnold’s shaking hands at a fair!

Britney Luvs Bush!

never mind…

Last Refuge

Anyone who thinks that the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror should tell it to the Marines of the 1st Marine Division who comprised the eastern flank of the force that fought its way to Baghdad last April.

[…]

America’s troops and our coalition partners are determined to win–and they will win, if we continue to give them the moral and material support they need to do the job. As the president said recently, our forces are on the offensive. And as Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane said in congressional testimony, “They bring the values of the American people to this conflict. They understand firmness, they understand determination. But they also understand compassion. Those values are on display every day as they switch from dealing with an enemy to taking care of a family.”

I saw the troops in Iraq, and Gen. Keane is absolutely right. I can tell you that they, above all, understand the war they are fighting. They understand the stakes involved. And they will not be deterred from their mission by desperate acts of a dying regime or ideology.

[…]

Young men and women from across America rushed to the trio, eager to touch them and talk to them. One soldier, a mother of two, told Christy she’d enlisted because of Sept. 11. Another soldier displayed the metal bracelet he wore, engraved with the name of a victim of 9/11. Others came forward with memorabilia from the World Trade Center they carried with them into Baghdad. And when it was Christy’s turn to present Gen. Tommy Franks with a piece of steel recovered from the Trade Towers, she saw this great soldier’s eyes well up with tears. Then, she watched as they streamed down his face on center stage before 4,000 troops.

To those who think the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the global war against terrorism . . . tell that to our troops.

Cue the plaintive wail of a lone trumpeter playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” as through my patriotic tears I grab blindly for a barf bag and my passport.

I’ve read enough gushy patriotic drivel in the last 2 years to tide me over until Armageddon and I thoroughly expect the Mighty Wurlitzer to play Sousa and Lee Greenwood on a loop during the presidential campaign. However, the above piece of manipulative treacle wasn’t written by a delusional codpiece worshiper like Peggy Noonan. It was written by one of the foremost intellectuals of the neocon movement and the premiere architect of the hallowed Bush Doctrine.

It’s none other than Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz himself, expelling a steaming pile of saccharine pap in order to avoid explaining how his every prediction about the postwar occupation was wrong. Read the whole thing. You’ll find not even one word of substance in the entire embarrassing sermon.

I’m sure the AEI Ladies Auxiliary and “Bush Is A Hottie” groupies get all teary eyed at the mere mention of 9/11 widows and brave fighting men on the “front,” but thinking people are supposed to demand a little bit more from the leading designers of our foreign policy. He’s writing in the Wall Street Journal, after all, not the Toby Keith fanzine.

And, please spare me any more adoring profiles of Wolfowitz, extolling his virtue and good intentions, much less his intellectual integrity. This pathetic appeal to emotion exposes him as either dangerously naïve and childlike in his thinking or so ideologically driven that he is willing to say and do anything in service of his goals.

Remember, these guys have always been wrong about everything. It is their special talent. They thought Kissinger was a dangerous appeaser with his weak kneed wussy détente. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall they were agitating for a stronger military presence in Europe to check an inevitable resurgence of communism. If they’d had their way we would have invaded Russia, for Gawd’s sake.

Typically, now that they have been proved to be both baldly dishonest and dramatically incompetent, they are falling back on their old favorite — rank sentimentality and gooey patriotic tributes to the troops.

The scoundrels are scurrying to their last refuge much sooner than I would have thought possible. Get out your trowels and shovels because we are about to be buried in patriotic clichés. It’s all they’ve got.

Ahmad’s Ugly Secret

Josh Marshall hints about a dark episode from the mid-90’s featuring our favorite Iraqi cocktail party guest. I’m guessing this is it.

Keeping Track

The fabulous Mary over at the Left Coaster (and also Pacific Views) alerts me to a Truth Squad compilation of Administration lies leading up to the war. Bookmark this baby for future reference.

I honestly think that one of the keys to the Bushies’ “success” is the sheer volume and magnitude of outrages they perpetrate. It’s exhausting keeping up with them and the resultant static makes even a hard core news junkie like me want to pick up a cheap novel or mindlessly watch TVLand just to keep my head from exploding.

I salute those who have taken on the immense project of keeping track of the truth. It’s going to be important in the coming months.

Oldie Goldie

Andrew Northrup at The Poor Man, does an excellent job of deconstructing this Weekly Standard hit job on Clark (regarding his comments on Meet The Press about the effort to connect 9/11 with Saddam Hussein immediately after the attack on the WTC.)

However, it is important, I think, that we remember that this kind of parsing of extemporaneous speech to make it appear that someone is “slick,” rather than just humanly imprecise is a Wurlitzer tactic that goes back to 1992. They take a comment and spread the idea throughout the media that it was deliberately misleading and further that it represents a character flaw on the part of the person who uttered it. Tucker and Sean and their ilk snidely hammer the accusation to a Dem talking head who then spends his entire time (when he isn’t being interrupted) explaining the statement to prove that the intent was not what these guys are saying it was.

We look defensive, they sound confident and the public is confused. Eventually they believe that there must be something to the charges because the endless parsing of it sounds lawyerly, desperate and boring. The charge gets dropped and another, similar, charge is leveled and the process begins again.

It is the death of reputation and credibility by a thousand small smears.

Therefore, I think we have to respond in two different ways to such charges. In print (and on blogs and elsewhere) we should analyze the charges in detail and keep an accurate, truthful record of the entire episode.

But, on television and for quotes in the print media, Democrats should never allow ourselves to get mired in such detail. We need to get past our need (as rational people) to defend with the facts and, instead, attack with the truth.

For instance, when a Democrat is confronted by Tweety or Scarborough about Clark’s “lie” on Meet the Press, he should not allow himself to get involved in the minutiae of the charge and instead should simply point out that it is well documented that the administration set out to tie Saddam to the WTC attack, without evidence, from the earliest hours of the event. Talk about the “unassailable” Bob Woodward’s account in Bush At War and Rumsfeld’s directive to “pull it all together” just 5 hours after the Pentagon was hit.

Of course, big shot Republicans put out the word all over the media about Saddam being behind 9/11. Everybody knows that. The TRUTH is that:

… Perle, Woolsey, Gaffney, and Kristol were using the same language in their media appearances on 9/11 and over the following weeks.

”This could not have been done without help of one or more governments,” Perle told The Washington Post on Sep. 11. ”Someone taught these suicide bombers how to fly large airplanes. I don’t think that can be done without the assistance of large governments.”

Woolsey was more direct. ”(I)t’s not impossible that terrorist groups could work together with the government…the Iraqi government has been quite closely involved with a number of Sunni terrorist groups and — on some matters — has had direct contact with (Osama) bin Laden,” he told one anchorman in a series of at least half a dozen national television appearances on Sep. 11 and 12.

That same evening, Kristol echoed Woolsey on National Public Radio. ”I think Iraq is, actually, the big, unspoken sort of elephant in the room today. There’s a fair amount of evidence that Iraq has had very close associations with Osama bin Laden in the past, a lot of evidence that it had associations with the previous effort to destroy the World Trade Center (in 1993)”.

The “facts” in this matter are that Clark made an extemporaneous statement on television that has been widely interpreted incorrectly. He corrected it on the record. All of the Democratic candidates are going to do that from time to time; it is part of public speaking. But, using this minor bit of confusion to imply that he was untruthful or misleading is just another example of the Wurlitzer’s coordinated “dazzle ‘em with bullshit” attack strategy.

It is what killed Al Gore in the press last time and we simply have to stop letting them dictate the terms of the debate that way. One way to do that is to stop being defensive and stop miring ourselves in detail before the public. It makes us look geeky and weak next to the bellowing neanderthals. We must ignore their taunts and remind ourselves that going after our guy is calculated misdirection. We need to keep the audience looking at what we want them to see, and not let the other side direct the show.

The New York Times Is Fair and Balanced, Too!

Atrios makes note of the factual but incomplete graf in today’s New York Times article about Bush’s speech today. It says that Bush never directly tied Saddam to 9/11; he merely claimed that Saddam and al Qaeda are of the same ilk. Atrios replies:

While Bush did never directly claim that Saddam had a direct role in the attacks of Sept. 11, he has said far more than that they “are of the same ilk.” He has claimed several times that they are active partners.

And he has made manipulative associations about Saddam and 9/11 over and over again.

“Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people and to all free people.

If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks.

The attacks of September the 11th, 2001, show what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.

We are determined to confront threats wherever they arise. I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons.”

Please. His speechwriters put those images together for a reason. They wanted people to associate 9/11 with Saddam Hussein.

And how about our good friend Condi? Notice the artful turn of phrase she uses here:

No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on Sept. 11, so we don’t want to push this too far, but this is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clearer, and we’re learning more,” Rice said.

That was in September of 2002.

How about Bill Kristol on September 12, 2001 from NPR:

I think Iraq is, actually, the big, unspoken sort of elephant in the room today. There’s a fair amount of evidence that Iraq has had very close associations with Osama bin Laden in the past, a lot of evidence that it had associations with the previous effort to destroy the World Trade Center (in 1993)”.

And then, there’s the

mother of all pieces of evidence, the smoking gun, the proof that the administration sought to directly tie Saddam with 9/11:

According to an account by veteran CBS newsman David Martin last September, Rumsfeld was ”telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks” five hours after an American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon.

Martin attributed his account in part to notes that had been taken at the time by a Rumsfeld aide. They quote the defense chief asking for the ”best info fast” to ”judge whether good enough to hit SH (Saddam Hussein) at the same time, not only UBL (Usama bin Laden). The administration should ”go massive…sweep it all up, things related and not”, the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying.

Wolfowitz shared those views, according to an account of the meeting Sep. 15-16 of the administration’s war council at Camp David provided by the Washington Post’s Bill Woodward and Dan Balz. In the ”I-was-there” style for which Woodward, whose access to powerful officials since his investigative role in the Watergate scandal almost 30 years ago is unmatched, is famous:

”Wolfowitz argued (at the meeting) that the real source of all the trouble and terrorism was probably Hussein. The terrorist attacks of Sept 11 created an opportunity to strike. Now, Rumsfeld asked again: ‘Is this the time to attack Iraq’”?

Powell objected”, the Woodward and Balz account continued, citing Secretary of State Colin Powell’s argument that U.S. allies would not support a strike on Iraq. ”If you get something pinning Sept 11 on Iraq, great”, Powell is quoted as saying. But let’s get Afghanistan now. If we do that, we will have increased our ability to go after Iraq — if we can prove Iraq had a role”.

Upon their return to Washington, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz convened a secret, two-day meeting of the DPB chaired by Perle. Instead of focusing on the first steps in carrying out a ”war on terrorism”, however, the discussions centered on how Washington could use 9/11 to strike at Iraq, according to an account in the Wall Street Journal.

Is this stuff just bullshit then? Not worth mentioning? If they’re going to point out that Junior never “directly” tied Saddam into 9/11, the least they can do is also point out that some in the administration were determined from the very beginning to use 9/11 to justify an invasion of Iraq.

I’m sure I remember the New York Times always pointed out in its later articles about the Lewinsky scandal that Clinton did not “directly” lie when he said he’d never had “sexual relations with that woman.” The dictionary meaning of “sexual relations” is sexual intercourse and he actually had oral sex with her. They were always very, very conscientious about making that clear even though everybody on the planet knew that he was implying that he hadn’t had any kind of sex with her. I’m pretty sure they did that, didn’t they?

Taunting the Bull

“Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York or Saint Louis or Los Angeles,”

Wow. I thought that the wingnuts playing the Wurlitzer might say something like this, but it’s pretty damned provocative coming from the President.

If he meant that we were fighting terrorism abroad so that someday Americans will no longer have to fear terrorism at home, then his speech writers worded it very badly. Because this could easily be read as another version of “Bring ‘Em On,” only instead of daring Iraqis to kill American soldiers in Iraq; he’s daring terrorists to kill American citizens in America.

That isn’t flypaper. He’s not saying that we’ve drawn the terrorists all to the same place so we can kill them more efficiently. It’s taunting the bull.

Imagine you are bin Laden or some other terrorist nutball and the President of the United States says that by attacking Afghanistan and Iraq he’s keeping you from attacking the US. You’re a loser. You are so weak that as long as we “confront” you abroad you can’t commit violence in New York, St. Louis or Los Angeles.

It’s very disconcerting to have to rely on Osama bin Laden and a bunch of fundamentalist holy warriors to be restrained and sophisticated enough to recognize that the President of the United States is just trash talking. It would be extremely unfortunate if terrorists took his statement as a dare to prove him wrong.

Correction:

I wrote in my post below Waiting For Wesley, that the Esquire article from which I excerpted a long passage had not made the rounds of Blogovia. I was wrong. It appears that the article had been discussed at some length by several bloggers, one of whom — the great Nitpicker — even excerpted the same passage that I claimed hadn’t been blogged!

ooops.

I’d read the article at the time but didn’t blog it for a number of extremely complicated reasons (Actually, I just didn’t get around to it.) I ran a technorati search for links before I wrote the post and only found a small handful of blogs that mentioned the article so I was under the mistaken impression that it hadn’t been discussed in any depth. I’m thinking now that maybe the article wasn’t yet on-line at the time it was being talked up.

That’s what I get for not Googling…

Apologies to anyone else who posted on the story much earlier than I.

Still …. it’s a good time to bring it up again, no? Clark’s about to announce.

Update: Here’s another fine post by Antidotal from weeks ago excerpting the passage in the Esquire article.

Great minds think alike — but some are a little more on the ball than others. Mea culpa.

They should have gone for Tom Selleck

Everyone seems to be confused by the fact that Ahnuld isn’t doing better in the polls but the reason is completely obvious.

They cast the wrong guy.

This is another example of Republicans failing to understand popular culture. Sure, people are stupid enough to vote for an inexperienced movie star. And, this recall election was a perfect opportunity to slide one in because of the very short campaign.

But, didn’t it occur to anybody that the only reason it would work would be because the star’s established image fit the role already?

I would imagine that if you polled every casting director and studio executive in Hollywood, you couldn’t find one who would have (willingly) ever cast him as governor in a serious film. His best role is a monosyllabic robot, for God’s sake, and they kept his lines to a minimum for a reason. He can’t act.

If the state voters had wanted a robot for governor why would they have bothered to recall Gray Davis?