“I do believe invading Iraq has become theological to certain people”
The buck stops…uh..somewhere. We’re not sure. It just happened. Somehow. Glenn Kessler continues with his inside look at the decision making process in the White House:
[…]
The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.
Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials — and the public — about how or even when the policy was decided.
Zizka says fight Gingrichian propaganda with Gingrichian propaganda:
How to Write Effectively About Our Bold President
Bob Somerby has collected evidence that “bold” is the RNC buzzword-de-jour. In case you want to avoid monotony and put a little variety into your crank-outs, here are some useful synonyms:shameless, blatant, bald-faced, brazen, brassy, impudent, nervy, audacious, and cheeky. In the proper context the phrases “unimitigated gall” and “brazen effrontery” can also be used to good effect.
To those I would add presumptuous, imperious, overweening and authoritarian.
When a U.S. plane or cruise missile is used to bring destruction to a foreign people, this nation rewards the bombers with applause and praise. What a convenient way to absolve these killers of any responsibility for the destruction they leave in their wake.
Unfortunately, the morality of killing is not so superficial. The truth is, the use of a truck, a plane, or a missile for the delivery of a weapon of mass destruction does not alter the nature of the act itself.
These are weapons of mass destruction — and the method of delivery matters little to those on the receiving end of such weapons.
Whether you wish to admit it or not, when you approve, morally, of the bombing of foreign tartgets by the U.S. military, you are approving of acts morally equivilent to the bombing in Oklahoma City. The only difference is that this nation is not going to see any foreign casualties appear on the cover of Newsweek magazine.
It seems ironic and hypocritical that an act viciously condemned in Oklahoma City is now a “justified” response to a problem in a foreign land. Then again, the history of United States policy over the last century, when examined fully, tends to exemplify hypocrisy
When considering the use of weapons of mass destruction against Iraq as a means to an end, it would be wise to reflect on the words of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. His words are as true in the context of Olmstead as they are when they stand alone:
“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.”
During Campaign 2000 we heard endless paeons to the vaunted CEO style of Governor Dubya. He wouldn’t “micro-manage” the way the feckless Clinton did. He would delegate to his trusted lieutenants and then leave them alone to do their jobs. There would be no all night brainstorming, no bull sessions, no long policy meetings to hash out differences and (Gawd forbid) no blue jeans. This would be an administration run like a successful business — visionary, focused and organized.
The Grown-ups were back in charge.
Having some experience in organizations, I was always struck by the Randian romanticism implicit in this view. I long ago realized that John Galt is seven parts Rhett Butler and 3 parts Ludwig von Mises and is, therefore, a tad unrealistic as a measure of human behavior. But even if one held fast to that gushing ideal, it was clear the George W. Bush was exceedingly short of leadership qualities, Galtian or otherwise.
So, the value of having these strong “division” chiefs to whom the president would delegate and “hold accountable” was set forth to answer the criticism that George W. Bush was too inexperienced and intellectually shallow to run the most powerful country in the world. We were to be simultaneously impressed with his humility in choosing far more qualified people than himself to advise him and comforted that these uber-advisors would give him the best guidance the country could provide. These broad-shouldered, square-jawed corporate superheroes would work in their separate spheres with singleminded ambition, motivated by their shared vision of a strong, wealthy compassionate nation, where empowered individuals would singlehandedly replace an ossified bureaucracy through sheer talent and hard work.
Needless to say, this is childish nonsense, whether as a fantasy of corporate ethos and practice or a reading of human nature in general. It is clear that the single most basic function of the U.S. President is choosing amongst the competing power centers of various advisors, competitors, ideologues and special interests whose egos, agendas, commitments and beliefs often conflict. It helps if the president is expansively intelligent, engaged in the issues, astute about people and therefore able to find his own vision and goals through the filter of the advice and pressure he receives from all quarters. But, even if the president is not a policy wonk or a politician with superior insight into power and human nature, he would at least need to have the superior executive instincts that surely would have manifested themselves long before a run for the Presidency — through long experience in business, the military or some other large organization.
Because, in the final analysis, the President is the one who has to decide when his square-jawed, broad-shouldered superheroes disagree. The proverbial buck actually does stop there.
Throughout the campaign, as George W. Bush assured us that George W. Bush was “a leader because he could lead,” (while others were quietly winking about the “grown-ups” keeping the frat boy out of trouble) I kept wondering,” What will George W. Bush do when his grown-ups disagree?” How does a man like this make such a decision? How will someone with so little experience with responsibility — someone who doesn’t have even have an interest in understanding the complexities of making life and death decisions — how does someone like this weigh competing interests, particularly since he doesn’t appear to have developed even a Reaganesque set of basic principles to which he can always refer for simple guidance?
That these questions were asked, much less so difficult to answer, proved unequivocally to me that this man was unqualified to be President. Nonetheless, he sits in the Oval Office and the answers to those questions are beginning to emerge.
He makes decisions based upon the most primitive, unrefined aspects of human nature, most often deciding instinctively in favor of the most combative, aggressive course of action until reality and necessity intrudes and he reverses course and follows the advice of his more sophisticated and rational advisors. It is not just that he takes a simple instinctive gut check after listening to competing views, it’s that his gut seems to always favor a show down over a negotiation even when it is obviously counter productive and dangerous. Unsurprisingly, his instincts are that of an insecure rich boy surrounded by “friends” who manipulate him with sycophantic ego strokes to his manliness — a troubled child whose father is constantly having to bail him out of trouble.
Of course, looking back we can see that when he snickered and callously mocked Karla Faye Tucker’s plea for clemency that we were dealing with an extremely immature and emotionally stunted individual. It was a spontaneous illustration of the man’s juvenile cruel streak and his instinctive rejection of compassion and complexity. It told us everything we needed to know. We were constantly asked to judge him on his great “heart” if not his intellect, to evaluate him on the basis of his “dignity” and “honor” and that is exactly what this country ought to have done.
Now, we must hope and pray (if we do that) that Colin Powell, the only responsible grown-up in the entire administration, continues to be able to extricate our President from his court of radical ideologues and his own dwarfed instincts in foreign affairs. On domestic policy, we must support the “grown-up” GOP moderates in the Senate (and keep the pressure on the Democrats) to mitigate the worst of the “bold” ideological Bush agenda.
Because, as shocking as it may be, if this cruel boy-man makes a decision it is almost always the worst possible one.
North Korea’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was greeted yesterday as a regrettable but expected development by a Bush administration deeply split over how to respond to the escalating crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
Some senior officials are counseling careful engagement, and others are urging complete isolation that would lead to the crumbling of the North Korean regime. The “very dramatic tensions” within the government have led to near paralysis in policymaking, one official said.
oh boy. Keep Junior away from Ken Adelman and the rest of the Korea Krips.
“The White House is saying this is the second 100 days the president will have because of the strength of the 2002 election,” said Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist who is close to Bush aides. “It is as if the president has been reelected.”
They’re after him: Prof. Eugene Volokh (not me!) on whether Paul Krugman’s latest distillation of complaints against the Bush administration’s creation of a cult of personality, its obsessive secretiveness, its propensity for mass arrests, and its evident fondness for Big-Brotherish schemes of public surveillance is a sign of formerly “reasoned criticism” turning into “blind hatred.” Volokh particularly derides the “cult of personality” charge (“Oh, yes, outside my office window I see the sign on the street corner — ‘Long live Bush, hero of all times and nations!'”).
Ask V.I. Norquist about his plans for a George W. Bush legacy project, Mickey. Haven’t you heard? Ronnie Raygun may have single handedly smote the Commies, but Junior is ridding the world of evil for all time. And then he will rise bodily into heaven.
Oops they did it again
But Bush doesn’t like caution. Besides which, he got a look at Pickering’s soul this past year and seems to have liked what he saw. Given his success at soul-reading Putin, Bush has reason to think he’s pretty good at it.
Sometimes you have to wonder if the people you read on the web intersect with reality at any point. So often they discuss matters of life and death as if they were After-School Special scripts.
A case in point is the popular Instapundit, who makes this bizarre observation on the current Korean crisis:
“LAST NIGHT there was a Cosby show rerun on Nickelodeon. Theo defies his parents, and they leave him with nowhere to live in order to teach him that actions have consequences, and forgiveness isn’t to be taken for granted…I wonder if there’s a parallel to be drawn here?…long-term, there’s a lot to be gained by reminding our triangulating allies that American love, and American forgiveness, are not to be taken for granted either. That’s a lesson we keep ramming home to the Germans. And the Koreans need to learn it too. We live in a world where most of our allies are Theo Huxtables…”
Maybe this guy should be writing for Bush. “Good and Evil” has been getting a little old as an metaphor, but “Cliff and Theo Huxtable” might have some juice in it. Plus, they’re black! Take that, Trent Lott!
The funny thing is that the serious part of Insty’s post is just as strangely otherwordly as the “Cliff and Theo” thing:
I haven’t written much on Korea, because I don’t know enough about what’s going on to have a very strong opinion about what ought to be done. On the one hand, North Korea is probably the worst place on the planet now. I suspect that the reason why some South Korean politicians want to prop it up is that when it comes out just how bad things have been there, which looks to be Pol-Pot-bad — and that they’ve known a lot more than they’ve let on while cozying up to and propping up the North — they’ll be seen as collaborators in horror. (And some, quite possibly, may turn out to be real collaborators, on the take from the North, and might be worried that that will come out).
On the other hand, North Korea is mostly inward-looking, and I don’t think it’s a big, direct threat. And, long-term, there’s a lot to be gained by reminding our triangulating allies that American love, and American forgiveness, are not to be taken for granted either. That’s a lesson we keep ramming home to the Germans. And the Koreans need to learn it too.
Wow. If he isn’t indulging in some very opaque irony, that is a testament to the wisdom of holding back an opinion when you are ill informed on the subject. Tell the North Koreans to go fuck themselves. They’re not a big, direct threat (like Iraq, I suppose). And tell those collaborationist South Korean bastards to shove it too, for that matter. Nothing bad’ll happen. Not a problem.
Cuz they’ll come crawling back, jes’ beggin for American love and forgiveness, you wait and see. Ram that lesson home again and again —- just like we keep doing to the Germans????
The sad thing is that I heard Ken Adelman make a very similar argument on NPR yesterday. And, unfortunately, he is on the Defense Policy Board and has the infuence to put the “Cliff and Theo Doctrine” into practice.
I think we are delving into psychological issues here rather than ideological ones. This puerile compulsion to demonstrate who’s boss is certifiably cuckoo.
Here is an excellent analysis of the geopolitical strategies of the 4 big players in the Korean crisis (North and South Korea, Japan and the US.) It’s more complicated than I realized — by centuries of cultural animosity, economic frustrations and military ambitions, and a spectacularly ill-timed bellicose American foreign policy. From the New Left Review
[…]
Yet the thickening mesh of relationships between the two Koreas—a few of the many separated families had also been united—was taking place within an increasingly fraught international context: a deteriorating world economy, heightened competition between China and Japan, and an incoming American administration already seeking a more direct assertion of Washington’s primacy in the region. With the sharpening of US policy after 9.11 North Korea was declared one of the three members of the Axis of Evil in Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union address; and, with Iraq, was one of the two named ‘rogue states’ in the September 2002 National Security Strategy document. Meanwhile in Seoul, Kim Dae Jung’s five-year presidency staggs to its end in the December 2002 elections through a mire of corruption. Of the candidates looking set to replace him, the conservative Lee Hoi Chang of the Grand National Party, in particular, espouses a much harder rhetoric on North Korea.
Within this hostile forcefield, the Pyongyang leadership seems to have concluded that normalizing its relations with Tokyo and Washington—its former occupier, on the one hand, and the devastator of its civilian infrastructure, on the other—was now an essential goal. In October 2001, tentative feelers were sent out to Japan, seeking negotiations. Quiet diplomatic exchanges, involving at least thirty meetings between North Korean and Japanese diplomats over the following year, explored the outstanding issues: for Pyongyang, apologies and reparation for the atrocities committed during Japan’s four-decade occupation of the peninsula, from 1905 to 1945; for Tokyo, the encroachment of North Korean spy ships into Japanese waters, and the suspicions that a dozen or so of its nationals had been abducted by the DPRK. Broad principles were agreed over the summer of 2002 and the stage set for Koizumi’s 17 September visit to Pyongyang.
Are they so hard up for cops in Tennessee that they are handing out shotguns and badges to trigger happy paranoid morons?
The Smoak family was pulled over the evening of January 1 on Interstate 40 in eastern Tennessee by officers who mistakenly suspected them of a carjacking. An investigation showed James Smoak had simply left his wallet on the roof of his car at a gas station, and motorists who saw his money fly off the car as he drove away called police.
The family was driving through eastern Tennessee on their way home from a New Year trip to Nashville. They told CNN they are in the process of retaining a lawyer and considering legal action against the Cookeville, Tennessee, Police Department and the Tennessee Highway Patrol for what happened to them and their dog
“What did I do?” James Smoak asks the officers.
“Sir, inside information is that you was involved in some type of robbery in Davidson County,” the unidentified officer says.
Smoak and his wife protest incredulously, telling the officers that they are from South Carolina and that their mother and father-in-law are traveling in another car near them.
The Smoaks told CNN that as they knelt, handcuffed, they pleaded with officers to close the doors of their car so their two dogs would not escape, but the officers did not heed them.
Pamela Smoak is seen on the tape looking up at an officer, telling him slowly, “That dog is not mean. He won’t hurt you.”
Her husband says, “I got a dog in the car. I don’t want him to jump out.”
The tape then shows the Smoaks’ medium-size brown dog romping on the shoulder of the Interstate, its tail wagging. As the family yells, the dog, named Patton, first heads away from the road, then quickly circles back toward the family.
An officer in a blue uniform aims his shotgun at the dog and fires at its head, killing it immediately.
For several moments, all that is audible are shrieks as the family reacts to the shooting. James Smoak even stands up, but officers pull him back down.
“Y’all shot my dog! Y’all shot my dog!” James Smoak cries. “Oh my God! God Almighty!”
“You shot my dog!” screams his wife, distraught and still handcuffed. “Why’d you kill our dog?”
“Jesus, tell me, why did y’all shoot my dog?” James Smoak says.
The officers bring him to the patrol car, and the family calms down, but still they ask the officers for an explanation. One of them says Patton was “going after” the officer.
“No he wasn’t, man,” James Smoak says. “Y’all didn’t have to kill the dog like that.”
Brandon told CNN that Patton, was playful and gentle — “like Scooby-Doo” — and may have simply gone after the beam of the flashlight as he often did at home, when Brandon and the dog would play.
The Tennessee Department of Safety, which oversees the Highway Patrol, has said an investigation is underway.
Cookeville Police Chief Robert Terry released a statement on the department’s Web site Wednesday night describing the department’s regret over the incident. The Cookeville Police Department site was not responding Thursday morning.
Cookeville Police Chief Robert Terry released a statement on the department’s Web site Wednesday night describing the department’s regret over the incident. The Cookeville Police Department site was not responding Thursday morning.
“I know the officer wishes that circumstances could have been different so he could have prevented shooting the dog,” Terry wrote. “It is never gratifying to have to put an animal down, especially a family pet, and the officer assures me that he never displayed any satisfaction in doing so.”
Terry said he and the vice-mayor of Cookeville met with the family before they left “to convey our deepest sympathies” for the loss of their dog.
“No one wants to experience this kind of thing, and it’s very unfortunate that it occurred,” he wrote. “If we had the benefit of hindsight, I’m sure some — if not all of this — could have been avoided. I believe the Tennessee Highway Patrol feels the same way.”
Sure, some trained police officers would have immediately become skeptical of the carjacking claim when they realized that all the people in the car were together and nobody was being held against their will — because that would have meant that A MIDDLE AGED MAN, A MIDDLE AGED WOMAN, A TEEN-AGER AND 2 DOGS CARJACKED A LITTLE SUV FOR A PLEASURE RIDE around Tennessee.But that would have required them to have IQ’s above 26 and that presents a serious recruiting problem in certain parts of our country, evidently.
I sure hope nobody gets it in his head that this cop shouldn’t be carrying a lethal weapon because he’s so damned stupid, badly trained and trigger happy that he’s a danger to society. That would undermine our freedom.
Here come their drastic cuts in domestic spending to pay for their drastic tax cuts for cronies.LA Times
With budgets for most federal agencies still in limbo, congressional Republicans are drafting a spending bill for the 3-month-old fiscal year that would slash billions of dollars for domestic programs the Senate approved when it was under Democratic control last year.
The bill will hew to the tight constraint of $385 billion that President Bush set for domestic spending after the Republicans gained full control of Congress in the midterm elections. As a result, lawmakers from both parties face battles over how to divvy up scarce dollars among their favorite programs.
Among the potential trade-offs: Should the National Institutes of Health get a big boost at the expense of education programs? Should the U.S. Customs Service sacrifice to make room for reforms in election procedures? And should the government scale back parks and public land programs to bolster homeland security?
Thankfully, however, they will not be skimping on the salaries of the new accounting oversight board members. NY Times
Six months after it was created by Congress, the new board overseeing the accounting profession — the centerpiece of reform legislation after a year of corporate scandal — held its first formal meeting today without a permanent chairman, a senior staff or a final budget.
During the meeting, the new board members voted themselves annual salaries of $452,000, or $52,000 more than the pay of the president. (Once it has a chairman, the board said, it plans to pay that official $560,000.) They also ratified a lease to put their Washington headquarters in the K Street space that was vacated by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen after it collapsed last year.
Now, the SEC will probably have to wait for a while before it gets all the money it needs to more thoroughly oversee the US financial markets because, gosh darn it, we just don’t have the money.
President Bush signed with great fanfare the legislation calling for the $776 million budget last July. Less than three months later, his administration said it supported an appropriation of $568 million for the agency. After the administration was criticized for supporting the scaled-back budget, officials said they would be willing to seek more but never said how much.
In announcing his selection of Mr. Donaldson to succeed Mr. Pitt, President Bush vowed last month to seek a substantial increase in the S.E.C.’s budget for the 2004 fiscal year. Critics say that proposal, while helpful, would defer necessary increases in the agency’s staff and improvements in its outdated technology for more than a year after the passage of the law that both identified the shortfall in the agency’s resources and increased its mission.
But, not to worry. Tough new rules are being pushed through as quickly as humanly possible so that investors can once again have faith in the accounting of American businesses. And, thankfully, there is someone in charge who we know we can trust.
The board was formally introduced today by Harvey L. Pitt, who remains the chairman of the S.E.C. despite resigning two months ago because of criticism over the selection of the new oversight agency. He continues to serve during one of the commission’s busiest rule-making periods in history and plans to remain until the confirmation of William H. Donaldson, who has been selected to succeed him. That process could take months
Harvey Pitt is still on the job, overseeing the biggest retrenchment of the SEC since its inception.
Even though he was forced to resign because of his bad judgment with the Webster appointment.
WTF?
They get away with this crap because they have no fear of repercussions and no consciences. Their grand ambition, with it’s tentacles relentlessly slithering through all areas of government, is so overwhelming that you feel a creeping sense of paralysis when you consider their awesome singlemindedness. Casual hypocrisy, blatent corruption and outright mendacity are so pervasive in this administration that it’s exhausting trying to keep track of it all.
It’s a very effective strategy because after a while you can’t help but begin to think that Resistence Is Futile.