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Video: Alternative
Views
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Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
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Video: Alternative
Views
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Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
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Doug's New Books & Related
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TV/Radio
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Friday, March 31, 2006
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Evelyn Pringle: 'Cheney and Halliburton hold title — top earners in Iraq'
good summary of Cheney-Halliburton crimes
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=25488
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Dennis Fox: 'Impeaching Bush is just the start'
beginning a movement to impeach Bush on local levels is a good idea-- making it Impeach Bush and Cheney; this idea could catch on as did scores of local efforts to condemn Iraq war
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=25492
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Sunday, March 26, 2006
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
rightwing ranter hired by WashPost as blogger is taken down by blogosphere through demos of his plagiarism-- unbelievable that corporate media would hire such a loser... From Salon:
"Domenech apologizes for plagiarism -- and for "obfuscation" in defense
Even as he resigned from his job as a right-wing blogger for Washingtonpost.com, Ben Domenech tried to downplay -- and, in some instances, deny entirely -- charges of serial plagiarism. He continued to blame a college newspaper editor for inserting others' words into his work. He claimed that an article he wrote for the New York Press -- one that tracked a Washington Post story almost word-for-word for the better of seven paragraphs -- was actually based on his own original reporting. He said that P.J. O'Rourke had given him permission to write an ever-so-slightly customized-for-college version of one O'Rourke's pieces -- a claim O'Rourke denies.
At the very worst, Domenech suggested, he'd been a "sloppy teenager" who hadn't done enough while a student at William and Mary to prevent others from soiling his efforts with stolen words. "The idea that the attack machine has gotten to the level where they dig back to your freshman year of college, when you’re 17, and say, 'Hey, this guy should have been thinking about the authority of what he was writing the same way that people do at the New York Times,' then, I mean, it’s idiotic," Domenech said Friday in an interview with Human Events Online. "In a lot of this stuff, it’s based on who you believe . . . if you believe the lefties are right or if you believe someone who you know and who you've worked with is right. . . . And if you look at the overwhelming bulk of everything I’ve written, you’ll find there is no question about it. The questions are about small things, a lot of them easily explainable, especially the things that come after college.”
The defense wasn't particularly persuasive, and it didn't cover all the ground Domenech needed to cover: A "sloppy teenager" is one thing, but who was that guy stealing part of a Cox News movie review and calling it his own in the National Review in 2001? That may have been the one that put the editors at Washingtonpost.com over the edge; it wasn't from Domenech's college newspaper, it couldn't have been the work of that dastardly newspaper editor -- who may well not have existed in the first place-- and it wasn't all that long ago.
It is also, apparently, the bit of evidence that has forced Domenech to admit that he was wrong. In a post late Friday night at RedState, the conservative blog he helped start before moving on to three days in Red America, Domenech is all apologies, and he starts with the National Review. The post is called "Contrition," and here's what it says: "I want to apologize to National Review Online, my friends and colleagues here at RedState, and to any others that have been affected over the past few days. I also want to apologize to my previous editors and writers whose work I used inappropriately and without attribution. There is no excuse for this - nor is there an excuse for any obfuscation in my earlier statement.
"I hope that nothing I've done as a teenager or in my professional life will reflect badly on the movement and principles I believe in.
"I'm deeply grateful for the love and encouragement of all those around me. And although I may not deserve such support, it makes it that much more humbling at a time like this. I'm a young man, and I hope that in time that I can earn a measure of the respect that you have given me."
It's hard not to feel Domenech's pain, at least for this brief moment. But before anybody goes singing "Kumbaya," check out how Domenech's RedState co-founder Mike Krempasky responds in an "On Behalf of RedState"post put up alongside Domenech's apology. Krempasky says Domenech will take a leave of absence to "wander in the wilderness" for a while, and he expresses high hopes for his ultimate redemption. Then he goes on a rampage against Domenech's accusers and the left more generally:
"Putting aside the charge for which Ben has been pilloried and [what] you're left with is a particular group of critics. Unlike Ben, there is far less hope for their redemption. You see -- before they settled on the attacks on his writing -- they spent three days proving that they are the lowest of the low. Charges of racism were born of poor reading comprehension. Threats of violence. Obscene commentary about his mother, his sister, his father. Loathesome, vile, and disgusting - their contempt for civil behavior surpassed only by the emptiness of their own souls. These are a people that see a man who gives up drinking in the middle of his life for the sake of his family, and respond by creating rumors of cocaine addiction. These are ignoramuses that think portraying an African-American politician as Sambo is appropriate, as long as the critics are liberal and the target is a Republican.
"Our critics can raise their glasses and toast to what they think is success -- tearing down a flawed conservative. But therein lies their greatest weakness: destroying a conservative is not to destroy conservatism. And while they put all their energy and venom into this campaign, it is worth remembering that for all the noise -- they have yet to present a real alternative to an America that rests on the foundation of freedom, free markets and family. Against that, the only answer they have is yet another personal attack."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [08:56 EST, March 25, 2006]
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Domenech resigns
Well, that didn't take long.
Jim Brady, the executive editor of WashingtonPost.com, has just announced that Ben Domenech has resigned amid allegations that he repeatedly plagiarized the work of other writers.
In a statement, Brady said that he and his colleagues weren't aware of "any allegations" of plagiarism when they contracted with Domenech to write a right-wing blog for the Post's Web site. Brady said editors learned of the allegations within the past day, and that an investigation had already begun when Domenech decided to resign effective immediately.
"In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity," Brady wrote. "Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times."
Brady said that he appreciates "the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations," and that the entire episode "testifies to the positive and powerful role that the Internet can play in the practice of journalism. "
No word yet on whether Red America will continue in cleaner hands, but Brady said that WashingtonPost.com remains "committed to representing a broad spectrum of ideas and ideologies in our Opinions area."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [13:57 EST, March 24, 2006]
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The right's response to Ben Domenech
When it's all said and done -- and really, how much longer can it take? -- Ben Domenech may turn out to be the uniter that George W. Bush only promised to be. The left has been calling on the WashingtonPost.com blogger to step down or be fired for a day or so; now some voices from the right are joining in the chorus.
Michelle Malkin, the right-wing blogger and pundit whose recent book Domenech edited, says she applauded Domenech's appointment at WashingtonPost.com and wrote off the attacks on him as a liberal smear campaign -- until she saw the evidence of plagiarism that the bloggers began to unearth. "I certainly understand the impulse on the right to rally around Domenech," Malkin writes. But she says that she "can't ignore the plain evidence," and that the allegations of plagiarism "can't be dismissed as 'lies' or 'jealousy' attributed to Ben's age." When it comes to plagiarism, Malkin says, "I know it when I see it. And, painfully, Domenech's detractors are right. He should own up to it and step down."
Conservative blogger Rick Moran, writing in the American Thinker, is also calling for Domenech to step down, saying that he "is not the kind of writer we want representing the conservative viewpoint at the Washington Post or anywhere else."
But the view on the right isn't entirely unanimous. One partisan poster, responding to Moran's argument, wonders if the whole Domenech debacle isn't "a set-up job by the WaPo to smear conservative bloggers on behalf of an outraged MSM."
Things are awfully quiet over at the National Review, where some of Domenech's seemingly plagiarized work appeared. And while Domenech's old college newspaper has begun posting this-might-have-been-lifted disclaimers on his work, Domenech's colleagues at Red State are still offering up a full-throated defense. One Red State poster argues that Domenech's articles look "suspicious" only because "permissions obtained and judgments made offline were not reflected online by an out dated and out of business campus newspaper" -- a claim that seems to be discredited, just a little, by the publication today of an editorial by that same "out of business campus newspaper." Another Red Stater rants about the lack of "decency" among liberal bloggers who have unleashed "an unremitting torrent of smears and lies and invective" against Domenech as they set out on a "fishing expedition" to sink Domenech's blog.
While it's probably true that bloggers on the left went looking for evidence to use against Domenech -- it has been known to happen -- it's a little late in the game for anyone to complain about the lack of civility in the debate, at least where Domenech is concerned. It was Domenech, after all, who, in his first post for Red America, dismissed liberals as "shrieking denizens" of the Democrats' "increasingly extreme base."
Update: The National Review's media blogger has weighed in, saying that Domenech's blame-the-college-newspaper editor approach isn't going to work. "Sorry -- it's not just the college paper," Stephen Spruiell writes. "There are other examples, including one from NRO. This is bad. Perhaps it is not fatal, but we need explanations not just from Domenech, but also from the Washington Post on how it plans to handle this."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [12:36 EST, March 24, 2006]
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WashingtonPost.com blogger: Maybe it's my editor's fault
Ben Domenech, the new right-wing blogger for WashingtonPost.com, has now addressed charges that he has engaged in repeated acts of plagiarism -- at least sort of, and not in his Red America blog, which hasn't seen a new post since yesterday, when he was last heard explaining away why he called Coretta Scott King a "communist" on the day after her funeral.
In a Howard Kurtz piece in this morning's Washington Post -- not to confuse anybody, but it also appears in the separately owned WashingtonPost.com -- Domenech says he has never used anyone else's material without attribution and suggests that an editor at his college newspaper may have been responsible for adding plagiarized copy to some of the articles he wrote.
That defense might work if plagiarized text showed up only once in Domenech's work at the College of William and Mary. If, in fact, an editor is guilty of that kind of transgression -- we've never seen it happen, but anything is possible -- you call him on it, probably get him fired, and it never happens again. But Domenech's work contains the words of other writers on more than one occasion. Why would Domenech let an editor do that to him again and again? As Atrios asks, How does young Ben explain the fact that a piece he "wrote" about "real parties" seems to have been lifted, pretty much in its entirety, from a P.J. O'Rourke chapter on the same subject? Are we to believe that Domenech supplied his editor with a few words specific to the time and context in which he was "writing" -- the name of a William and Mary sorority, the names of a couple of college officials -- and that the editor filled in the rest with 700 words or so from O'Rourke's book? Are we to believe that Domenech didn't notice the editing job until now?
And if this is really all the fault of Domenech's college newspaper editor, how does that explain questions about the blogger's way with words since then? A Daily Kos poster has discovered a movie review Domenech wrote for the National Review in 2001 that bears a striking resemblance to a review someone else wrote for the Cox News Service. A blogger at Your Logo Here has found a piece Domenech wrote for the New York Press in 2001 that contains a big chunk of words from the Washington Post. (Domenech attributes a single quote to the Post, with no hint of acknowledgment that he lifted most of the seven prior paragraphs from the paper as well.) And in Salon today, Joe Conason outlines the questions surrounding Domenech's use of what seems to be a fabricated quote from Tim Russert.
Domenech may be too young to remember the Washington Post's Janet Cooke debacle -- we know, we know, WashingtonPost.com is an entirely different company -- but he was an adult when the Jayson Blair saga hit the news. Domenech wrote then -- well, at least we think he wrote it -- that Blair's "vile lies" should be given "no quarter." We would have agreed with him then, and we'd expect him to hold himself to the same standard now.
-- Tim Grieve"
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
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Thursday, March 23, 2006
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TSidney Blumenthal: 'Apocalyptic president'
Apocalyptic Bush, a dangerous dude indeed
The Smirking Chimp
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Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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Abu Ghraib Files - Salon.com News
the full horror of Abu Ghraib revealed for first time; Rumsfeld and Cheney should resign for these crimes, as should Alberto Gonzales who signed off on the policies that produced them
Abu Ghraib Files - Salon.com News
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A Senate Maverick Acts to Force an Issue
an Honorable Man, Russ Feingold, advances Censure motion against the Man Who Deserves Impeachment and is savaged by Repugs, supported by few of his party, and ignored by mainstream corporate media
A Senate Maverick Acts to Force an Issue
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Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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Admission Attributed To Bush's Ex-Aide
Bushite petty criminal was obviously impressed by Big Time crime of Bush, Rove and Cheney so decided to try it out for himself....
Admission Attributed To Bush's Ex-Aide
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Monday, March 13, 2006
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Saturday, March 11, 2006
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Former Top Bush Aide Accused of Md. Thefts
a petty thief employed by Bush-Cheney gang is caught swindling, the big swindlers and crooks are still at it until the cunning eyes of Rove and Cheney and with Bush nodding on
Former Top Bush Aide Accused of Md. Thefts
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Thursday, March 09, 2006
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Wednesday, March 08, 2006
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
Latest buzz from Salon: Will Abramhoff sing? How bad can Iraq get?
"
The "very, very well" report, continued
We've received the latest update from the al-Qaida media committee assigned to War Room -- it goes by the code name Yahoo News -- and here's what we've got to report:
Bodies: Iraqi and U.S. military officials say that they've discovered 29 bodies -- many of them hanged -- in and around Baghdad over the course of the last day. U.S. troops found 18 of them stuffed into a minibus in the Sunni district of Amariya. Most of the others were found dumped around Baghad, the victims of gunshot wounds. One had been beheaded.
Hostages: Gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms stormed into the offices of a private security company in eastern Baghdad this morning, then left with as many as 50 employees as hostages.
Bombings: Explosions killed at least four people in Baghdad Wednesday. A bomb hidden under a parked car killed two Iraq police officers. Another bomb, apparently meant for a U.S. convoy in northern Baghdad, killed two boys selling gasoline instead.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [12:23 EST, March 8, 2006]
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Abramoff speaks, and Republicans have some explaining to do
Matt Drudge is up with what he says are excerpts from an upcoming Vanity Fair piece on Jack Abramoff. If Drudge has it right, the Republicans who have been trying to put some distance between themselves and the disgraced lobbyist may have some more explaining to do.
Tom DeLay said last month that he and Abramoff were "not close personal friends." According to Drudge, Abramoff tells Vanity Fair that he spent a lot of time with the ousted House majority leader. "We would sit and talk about the Bible. We would sit and talk about opera. We would sit and talk about golf," Abramoff says. "I mean, we talked about philosophy and politics."
Newt Gingrich has said that Republicans must clean house in the wake of the Abramoff scandal, and a spokesman tells Vanity Fair that Gingrich hasn't seen Abramoff for so long that he wouldn't recognize him on the street. According to Drudge, Abramoff says: "I have more pictures of [Newt] than I have of my wife. Here's Newt. Newt. Newt. Newt. More Newt. Newt with Grover [Norquist] this time. But Newt never met me. Ollie North. Newt. Can't be Newt ... he never met me. Oh, Newt! What's he doing there? Must be a Newt look-alike ... Newt again! It's sick! I thought he never met me!"
Montana Sen. Conrad Burns says that Abramoff "never influenced me." But according to Drudge, Abramoff tells Vanity Fair: "Every appropriation we wanted [from Burns' committee], we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used [Abramoff's restaurant] Signatures as their cafeteria. I mean, it's a little difficult for him to run from that record."
A spokesman for John McCain says that the Arizona senator "never laid eyes on" Abramoff until he appeared before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. According to Drudge, Abramoff tells Vanity Fair: "As best I can remember, when I met with him, he didn't have his eyes shut. I'm surprised that Senator McCain has joined the chorus of amnesiacs."
George W. Bush has insisted that he didn't know Abramoff well, if at all. Abramoff has said that he has met with Bush almost a dozen times, and Drudge says that he tells Vanity Fair that Bush once joked with him about his weight-lifting routine: "What are you benching, buff guy?"
As bad as the Vanity Fair piece seems to be for some naysayers, it may be only the guilt-by-association start of things. Abramoff is to be sentenced in the fraud case against him later this month; at that time, his lawyer says, he'll be "naming names" and "providing evidence of what's going on out there."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [11:27 EST, March 8, 2006]
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From Republican senators, an "accommodation" on spying
When it comes to a Senate investigation into George W. Bush's warrantless spying program, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe was for it before she was against it before she was for it before she was against it again.
For the White House, the fourth time was a charm. Catching Snowe on a good day, the Bush administration managed to dodge a Senate investigation of its warrantless spying program Tuesday in exchange for agreeing to give regular briefings to a few more lawmakers and maybe supporting legislation that would provide express congressional approval for spying without the warrants that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act now requires.
If that doesn't sound like much of a deal, it isn't. In a moment of unintentional candor, Pat Roberts -- the White House water carrier who serves as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- said, "I prefer accommodation over confrontation whenever possible."
As a result of Tuesday's party-line vote, the Senate Intelligence Committee won't investigate whether the president and his aides broke the law or violated the Constitution when they began spying on Americans without warrants. Instead, the committee will form a seven-member subcommittee to receive additional briefings on the program. Translation: The White House once provided semiregular briefings to the chairman and the ranking member of the committee; now it will have to provide briefings to seven members instead.
That doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice, so there must be more, right? Not much. Four members of the committee have proposed legislation that would provide specific congressional authorization for the warrantless spying, at least for a 45-day period, and the Republicans who backed the "accommodation" Tuesday would like you to think that they've forced the White House to sign off on that legislation as part of their deal. But it's clear that the White House hasn't committed to anything just yet. As Republican Sen. Mike DeWine tells Reuters, the White House has agreed to support such legislation only in "broad concept." White House Scott McClellan was heard to say Tuesday that the legislation was an "interesting" idea.
And even if the White House eventually commits to the legislation, it still would fall far short of the existing legal protections with which the president was pretending to comply. While the legislation would limit future warrantless spying to 45-day periods, there's an exception if the attorney general tells the subcommittee that there's good reason to keep spying without getting a warrant.
At least for now, that would be the same attorney general who has been less than candid about the National Security Agency program. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter said this week that Alberto Gonzales' answers to his committee's questions have been so equivocal that he may need to come back to testify a second time on the program. In the meantime, Specter's committee may provide the last remaining hope for some kind of meaningful investigation into the warrantless spying program. Specter said Tuesday that he may offer legislation cutting off funding for the program if he can't get more answers from the administration otherwise.
For the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, that sort of "confrontation" must seem both unnecessary and unseemly in the wake of the deal they've struck. "We are reasserting congressional responsibility and oversight with respect to this program," Snowe said Tuesday."
-- Tim GrieveSalon.com Politics War Room Politics
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Monday, March 06, 2006
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Saturday, March 04, 2006
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Friday, March 03, 2006
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Thursday, March 02, 2006
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Video Shows Bush Being Warned on Katrina
shocking evidence that Bush himself was fully warned on coming Katrina disaster and did nothing; did he want black and poor regions of New Orleans to be destroyed so his buddies could rebuild? or is he totally incompetent and uncaring and just didn't give a damn?
Video Shows Bush Being Warned on Katrina
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Wednesday, March 01, 2006
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TBob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman: 'Did 308,000 cancelled Ohio voter registrations put Bush back in the White House?'
the Bush-Cheney-Rove Gang use multiple strategies to steal votes and elections, here some Ohio mischief
The Smirking Chimp
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The Smirking Chimp - Sheila Samples: 'The world that Dick built'
evidently, information is circulating that people present during the Cheney Shooting claim Shooter Dick was drunk! not a surprise given how long he waited to make himself available for interview, that he admitted having a beer the day of the hunt and a cocktail afterwards....
The Smirking Chimp - Sheila Samples: 'The world that Dick built'
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Salon on Bush, Iraq, etc
latest political scuttlebut from Salon=
Bush: Osama bin Laden helped me get reelected
As we were saying:
In an interview for Bill Sammon's new book, "Strategery," George W. Bush says that that last-minute videotape from Osama bin Laden may have helped get him reelected in 2004. Bush tells Sammon that there was a lot of talk within his campaign when the video of bin Laden surfaced just days before voters went to the polls.
"What does it mean? Is it going to help? Is it going to hurt?'' Bush says. ''Anything that drops in at the end of a campaign that is not already decided creates all kinds of anxieties, because you're not sure of the effect."
Bush? He was pretty sure. "I thought it was going to help,'' he says. ''I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.''
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:15 EST, March 1, 2006]
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For Bush, a panic play -- in Afghanistan
Is it just us, or does George W. Bush's surprise side trip to Afghanistan today suggest a certain degree of panic at the White House? The president stopped in Afghanistan en route to India for lunch with President Hamid Karzai, a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new U.S. Embassy and a pep talk for U.S. troops. At a brief news press availability with Karzai, Bush wasn't asked about Iraq or Dubai but rather Osama bin Laden -- a topic he seemed more than happy to address. More than four years after vowing to capture him "dead or alive," Bush said he's still "confident" that the al-Qaida leader will be brought to justice.
We suppose the president was just trying to bolster the Karzai government and U.S. troops faced with a sharp increase in attacks from the Taliban and others. But the trip sure reminds us of one of those Southwest Airlines commercials -- the ones in which some poor soul experiences some small humiliation at work, and an announcer asks, "Want to get away?"
Only for Bush, the humiliations aren't so small. The president's approval rating hit 34 percent in a CBS News poll this week -- a number that's the lowest of his presidency, equal to his father's lowest low and worse than anything Bill Clinton ever suffered. Americans disapprove of their president on virtually every front: They don't like the war in Iraq, they're divided on the economy, his State of the Union initiatives haven't excited much of anyone -- don't even mention the failed Social Security push from the last time around -- and the Dubai Ports World deal has caused even the president's supporters to question his national security credibility.
The Washington Post reports today that Republican politicians "who once marched in lock step behind their president on national security are increasingly willing to challenge him in an area considered his political strength." Maybe that's because they disagree with how he's handling national security -- it's Iraq, the Dubai Ports World deal, again, plus qualms, even if they don't lead to much, about the Patriot Act, warrantless spying and the like -- or maybe it's just that national security isn't such a strong suit for Bush anymore. Even when polls showed that Americans disapproved of everything else he was doing, the president carried majority support on the way he was handling the war on terrorism. (Americans seemed to separate that war from the war in Iraq, even if the president says they're the same thing.) But that's not the case anymore. For the first time ever, the CBS News poll handed Bush a sub-50 number on the way he's handling the war on terrorism. Only 43 percent of the poll's respondents said they approve of the president's performance now, down nine percentage points since January.
The Post quotes one Republican campaign consultant who says the CBS poll results are "pretty shattering." The paper talks of gallows humor among White House aides, of complaints about the "Murphy's Law" quality of events of late. In the old days, a few Bush and Cheney speeches about the terrorists who want to hit us might have set things straight again. They'll surely stick with that show -- Dick Cheney was doing it again Tuesday -- but the White House needs a flashier stage set to get the message across now. With Iraq in flames and Ground Zero a little too obvious, an afternoon in Afghanistan will have to do.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:01 EST, March 1, 2006]
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Bush on civil war: It's an Iraqi thing
So much for Colin Powell's Pottery Barn Rule.
As new waves of sectarian violence seem to push Iraq closer and closer to civil war, George W. Bush delivered a message to Iraqi citizens today: You're on your own.
In an interview with ABC News, the president was asked if U.S. troops will "step in more actively to stop" sectarian violence in Iraq. "No," Bush said. "The troops are chasing down terrorists. They're protecting themselves and protecting the people, and -- but a major function is to train the Iraqis so they can do the work. I mean the ultimate success in Iraq -- and I believe we're going to be successful -- is for the Iraqi citizens to continue to demand unity."
As the president spoke, Dick Cheney was demanding unity at home. In a speech before the annual American Legion conference, the vice president tried to call out anyone who disagrees with the administration's stay-the-course plan for Iraq. "Here in Washington, if any believe America should suddenly withdraw from Iraq and stop fighting al-Qaida in the very place they have gathered, let them say so clearly," Cheney said. "If any believe that America should break our word and abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison, let them make it known. If any believe that America should be safer -- or would be safer with men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of Iraq, let them try to make that case."
Cheney may or may not able to out any Legionnaires who think that "America should suddenly withdraw from Iraq." But as we noted earlier today, he could probably find plenty of U.S. soldiers and Marines who believe just that. According to a new Zogby Poll, nearly one-third of the U.S. troops now serving in Iraq think the United States ought to get out of that country now, and more than 70 percent think the United States should be gone by the end of the year.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [16:05 EST, Feb. 28, 2006]
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For Scooter Libby, a judge's "middle ground" may be a defeat
If Scooter Libby's lawyers were trying to provoke some kind of stalemate between the need for national security secrecy and his right to a fair trial, it seems that U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton has some bad news for them. In an order issued Monday, Walton said Libby doesn't need access to a year's worth of presidential daily briefings just to prove that he was a busy guy with a lot on his mind.
Libby's lawyers argued that they needed access to the PDBs in order to prove to a jury that Libby was so consumed with pressing national security matters that it's no wonder he may have forgotten or "misremembered" details of his involvement in the outing of Valerie Plame. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald countered that the request amounted to "graymail" -- an effort to force the dismissal of criminal charges by demanding access to classified documents that the government can't or won't produce.
Walton hasn't ruled on Libby's request yet. But in his order yesterday, the judge made it clear that he isn't impressed. Walton said that Libby doesn't need the PDBs themselves in order to show that he was dealing with national security issues; a description of the "general subject matters" of the PDBs should suffice. Moreover, Walton said, Libby doesn't need information about every PDB from May 2003 to March 2004, as his lawyers have requested. Instead, Walton said, it may be enough for prosecutors to provide descriptions of PDBs from the weeks during 2003 in which Libby was leaking to reporters and from the few days around each of the times Libby met with investigators or testified before Fitzgerald's grand jury.
Walton has asked Fitzgerald to tell him whether the government could provide Libby's lawyers with such information and how much of a burden would be involved in doing so. As the Associated Press says, it's a "middle ground" approach -- which is to say, nothing like the constitutional conflict Libby's lawyers were probably hoping to provoke.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [14:02 EST, Feb. 28, 2006]
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Violence in Iraq, despair back home
Well, that didn't last long.
After a day of relative calm Monday, Baghdad has exploded in violence again today. According to the Associated Press, five attacks -- including a suicide bombing at a gas station -- have killed 41 and wounded scores more.
Today's attacks appear to be a continuation or resumption of the sectarian violence that erupted last week after the destruction of the Askariya shrine. How deadly has that fighting been? Reports diverge, dramatically. The New York Times, relying on numbers from Iraq's Council of Ministers, says that 379 Iraqis had been killed before today's attacks. The Washington Post says that the Statistics Department of the Iraqi police puts the death toll at 1,020 -- and that morgue officials say they have logged 1,300 deaths since last Wednesday.
Numbers like that are staggering in human terms. The United States -- a country with a population more than 10 times as large as Iraq's -- has lost nearly 2,300 soldiers since the war started three years ago; imagine the outcry if the U.S. lost 1,300 -- or 13,000 -- more in less than a week. The numbers, if correct, also carry serious political significance. As the Post says, statistics showing 1,300 deaths in less than a week would undercut attempts by U.S. and Iraqi officials to minimize the violence that has taken Iraq to the brink of civil war.
Not that those attempts were working anyway. As we noted earlier today, the latest CBS News poll shows that Americans are in a state of despair about Iraq. CBS says that "Americans' perceptions of the U.S. effort in Iraq are at an all-time low." Sixty-two percent of the public thinks things are going "badly" in Iraq; only 29 percent of the public believes the results of the war have been worth the cost; and 54 percent of the public says the president should never have started the war in the first place.
The president's supporters will surely say that the latest poll numbers are the product of media fixation on bad news from Iraq. Here's a reality check: As the Times' Nicholas Kristof reports, the first-ever poll of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq shows that 72 percent of them think the United States should get out of Iraq within the year; 29 percent say the U.S. should leave Iraq immediately.
What are the troops doing in Iraq? Fifty-eight percent say their mission is clear, but 42 percent say the U.S role is hazy. There's one thing on which they agree, however: According to Zogby, which conducted the poll with New York's Le Moyne College, 85 percent of the troops say a major reason for the U.S. mission is "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks."
Did we mention "despair"?
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [11:05 EST, Feb. 28, 2006]
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Former CIA official has questions for the president -- and for the press
Paul Pillar, the former CIA official who made headlines earlier this month when he said that the White House went to war without regard for any "strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq," is taking aim now at reporters who haven't asked enough questions themselves.
In a short piece for the Nieman Watchdog, the man who coordinated intelligence on the Middle East until last year says the press should press more on both the run-up to the war in Iraq and the narrow focus of the 9/11 Commission. Among the questions Pillar would like to see reporters ask:
Why was more not done before 9/11 to counter the terrorist threat from al-Qaida in response to the intelligence community's highlighting of that threat -- as reflected in DCI George Tenet's public statements?
When was the decision to go to war in Iraq made, what beliefs and analysis led to that decision (as distinct from arguments used to muster support for the decision), and where did those beliefs and analysis come from?
When an intelligence assessment becomes a matter of public knowledge: Who asked for the assessment, why was it requested, and what determined how the questions were framed?
Pillar is particularly critical of the 9/11 Commission and the way in which the press has treated its report as a "holy writ." By choosing to push for a reorganization of the intelligence community, Pillar says, the commission missed an opportunity to examine the ways in which the Bush administration ignored or shaped intelligence. Pillar asks: "What effect, if any, does the reorganization have on the problem of insufficient or improper use of intelligence by the policymaker?"
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:30 EST, Feb. 28, 2006]
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If Bush dumped Cheney, would anyone want the job?
"Senior GOP sources" expect Dick Cheney to step down as vice president after the 2006 congressional elections. Or so says Insight, the conservative Internet newsmagazine published by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.
We're never sure how much stock to put in Insight's reports, especially ones that rely, like this one does, on anonymous sources. So while the Insight prediction follows the story line set out a couple of weeks ago by Bush I speechwriter Peggy Noonan -- Cheney, persuaded that he's a liability to the president and to the stay-the-course strategy in Iraq, chooses to step aside to give a leg up to some other Republican with White House aspirations in 2008 -- maybe it's best to take the report with the proverbial grain of salt.
And then there's this question to ponder: Would any Republican who's thinking about 2008 really want to be affiliated more closely with George W. Bush just now? A new CBS poll puts Bush's approval rating at 34 percent, the lowest of his presidency. Fifty-one percent of Americans say that Bush doesn't care about people like them; just 30 percent say they approve of the way he's handling the war in Iraq; only 43 percent approve of his handling of terrorism, his supposed strong suit; and 70 percent -- including a solid majority of Republicans -- oppose the plan to turn over control of six U.S. ports to Dubai Ports World.
It could be worse: Richard Nixon's overall approval rating hit 24 percent the month before he resigned; Jimmy Carter dropped to 26 percent the month he delivered his "malaise" speech; the president's father fell to 34 percent a few months before Bill Clinton sent him packing in 1992; and Clinton bottomed out at 36 percent two months before the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994.
While Bush may not be comforted much by such comparisons, he can take some solace in this: His 34 percent is a whole lot better than the 18 percent approval rating Americans now give Cheney.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:04 EST, Feb. 28, 2006]
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The National Quail Convention already had its speaker
We are not making this up.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who famously sputtered out the words "quack quack" when asked about a hunting trip he took with Vice President Dick Cheney, traveled to Tennessee over the weekend to speak at the annual convention of the National Wild Turkey Federation.
We don't know whether Scalia said anything about his hunting trip with Cheney or the vice president's recent troubles, but we do know --- because the Associated Press tells us so -- that the justice reminisced about his youth as a gun-toting member of a high school rifle team. "I used to travel on the subway from Queens to Manhattan with a rifle," Scalia said. "Could you imagine doing that today in New York City?"
One might say that things have changed since the days of Scalia's youth. There's gang violence. There's the threat of international terrorism. But Scalia suggested that the problem of guns today is really just one of perception: "The attitude of people associating guns with nothing but crime, that is what has to be changed."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [15:33 EST, Feb. 27, 2006]
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A civil war? At the National Review, maybe
We mentioned earlier today that some of the voices of Fox News have begun distancing themselves from George W. Bush on the war in Iraq. They're not alone. William F. Buckley, often ambivalent about the war, said last week that it's time for the Bush administration to "cope with failure" -- particularly with the failed assumption that the U.S. military "would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymakers to cope with insurgents bent on violence."
"Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements," Buckley wrote. "His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy. He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies. Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat."
We can only imagine how Buckley's words are sitting with a president who was, just a few months ago, helping to celebrate Buckley's birthday. But we don't have to guess how Buckley's conclusions are playing at the National Review itself.
In an editorial today, the National Review's current editors fire back at their founder: "If Iraq ever descends into a real civil war, we won't have to debate whether it has happened. It will be clear for all to see. The military will dissolve into ethnic factions, and the government will collapse. That hasn't happened, and so declarations of defeat in Iraq -- of the sort our founder and editor-at-large William F. Buckley Jr. made last week -- are pre-mature. That view could ultimately be proven right, but there is no way to know with certainty at this point ... The outcome depends, as is always the case, on the choices made by the players, including ourselves. Even if our influence in Iraq is waning, our commitment -- and the specific forms it takes -- still matters very much. Defeatism will be self-fulfilling."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [13:07 EST, Feb. 27, 2006]
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Couldn't happen to a nicer person
As we noted Friday, defense contractor Mitchell Wade has pleaded guilty not just to bribing former Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham but also to trying to influence two other members of Congress through illegal campaign contributions. The two representatives weren't identified in court papers filed last week, but it didn't take long for reporters to figure out who's who: The first is Republican Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia, and the second is Republican Rep. Katherine Harris of Florida.
That would be former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, of course, the woman who served as co-chairwoman of George W. Bush's campaign in Florida before doing everything she could to make sure he prevailed in the disputed election there in 2000. But long before any of us had heard of "butterfly ballots" or "hanging chads," Harris was known for something else: accepting illegal campaign contributions. As a candidate for the state Senate in 1994, Harris received more than $20,000 in illegal campaign contributions from an insurance company she subsequently helped by introducing legislation that would have hurt one of its competitors. Harris said back then that she had no idea that the contributions she was getting were illegal, and her office seems to be making a similar suggestion this time around.
University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato tells the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that it's hard to make that argument a second time around. "Even Republicans would say she had her warning and apparently didn't learn anything from it," Sabato says. "It's one thing to be fooled once, but to be fooled twice says more about you than the foolers."
For now, at least, it seems that Florida voters won't be fooled again. Even before the latest news about Harris came to light, a Quinnipiac University poll put her 22 points behind in her bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [12:15 EST, Feb. 27, 2006]
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The case for impeachment, again
Most of the president's critics have already fixed their gaze on the 2006 congressional elections, but there are still a hardy few talking of a more dramatic remedy for what ails the country: impeachment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights announced today the publication of "Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush." It's a book, not an enactment of the House of Representatives, but the CCR says it's serious nonetheless. "President Bush has forced America into a grave constitutional crisis by breaking the law and violating the constitutional principles of separation of powers," CCR legal director Bill Goodman says in a statement. "This book is not a policy debate, but a legal case for impeachment based on the president's repeated illegal actions."
The CCR says Bush has committed impeachable offenses by authorizing warrantless wiretaps in violation of the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; by ordering the indefinite detention, rendition, torture and abuse of terrorism suspects; by lying to Congress about the reasons for the Iraq war; and by generally violating the constitutional separation of powers "by arrogating excessive power to the executive branch."
The CCR book comes on the heels of an essay in Harper's in which Lewis Lapham starts skeptically, then finds himself asking why Americans should run the risk of not impeaching the president. "We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies," Lapham writes. There's a word for such a man, he says: criminal.
Lapham's take, in turn, spins out of Michigan Rep. John Conyers' resolution calling for the creation of a select committee to investigate possible grounds for impeachment. Conyers' resolution hasn't gone anywhere but the House Rules Committee, where it will ultimately die a slow death. But it isn't for lack of intense interest, at least among a minority of the minority: Twenty-six other members of Congress have signed on as cosponsors so far.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [10:01 EST, Feb. 27, 2006]
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Grading on a curve in Iraq
Pentagon auditors have declared potentially excessive or unjustified more than $250 million in charges Halliburton has made under a no-bid contract in Iraq. As the New York Times reports today, the Army is going to pay almost all of those charges anyway. A spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers explains: "The contractor is not required to perform perfectly to be entitled to reimbursement."
It's a standard the Bush administration might like to apply to itself. Conditions improved in Iraq over the weekend as the country seemed to pull back from the brink of civil war. Sunnis are expressing a greater interest in returning to talks over the formation of a government, and the Associated Press says that -- except for the small matter of a mortar attack that killed four and wounded 16 -- Baghdad was "generally peaceful" Monday after four days of widespread violence.
But all this means is that Iraqis and the U.S. troops among them may be starting to get back to where they were before the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra last week -- which is to say, a long way from where the administration predicted they'd be. Nearly 2,300 U.S. soldiers and maybe 10 times as many Iraqis have died in the war so far; insurgents appear free to attack almost at will; and basic services remain below preinvasion standards. The president says that U.S. troops will come home as Iraqi security forces stand up, but there seems to be reverse progress on that front. The administration used to boast that one Iraqi battalion was able to function without U.S. support; last week, it downgraded the ranking of even that battalion, meaning that there is currently not a single Iraqi battalion that the Pentagon deems capable of fighting on its own.
Fifty-five percent of the American public now believes that it was a mistake to go to war, and even some of the folks at Fox News have become openly critical of the president's stay-the-course strategy. Bill O'Reilly, who used to call advocates of a troop withdrawal "pinheads," said last week that it's time to get U.S. troops out of Iraq "as fast as humanly possible." And Fox News commentator and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said over the weekend that the United States has "not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in Iraq as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out."
Maybe "good enough for government work" works for Halliburton. But as the 2006 elections approach, the president and his party may be discovering that even Americans inclined to support them expect something more when lives are at stake.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:20 EST, Feb. 27, 2006]
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Who's the most liberal of them all?
During the 2004 presidential race, Dick Cheney claimed that the National Journal had taken a look at John Kerry's two decades of service in the U.S. Senate and declared him to be the country's "most liberal" senator. Like much of what Cheney has said over the years, it wasn't true. Among sitting senators, Kerry's lifetime voting record put him at 11th on the National Journal's list of sitting senators -- liberal, but not the "most liberal," as Cheney had insisted.
We're sure that the vice president -- who claims to put such a premium on accuracy -- wouldn't want to make the same mistake again. So to help him out, here's the National Journal's new "top 10" list of "most liberal senators" for the year 2005: 1. Ted Kennedy; 2. Jack Reed; 3. Barbara Boxer; 4. Paul Sarbanes; 5. Frank Lautenberg; 6. Tom Harkin; 7. Dick Durbin; 8. John Kerry; 9. Debbie Stabenow; and 10. Barbara Mikulski.
"Eighth most liberal" doesn't have quite the same stinging ring as "most liberal" does, and the rankings of other would-be Democratic presidential contenders are even clankier: Russ Feingold checks in at 14, Joe Biden at 19, Hillary Clinton at 20 and Evan Bayh at 33.
At the other end of the list? The National Journal says the most conservative senators in 2005 were: 1. Tom Coburn; 2. Wayne Allard; 3. Jeff Sessions; 4. Jim Bunning; 5. Trent Lott; 6. Johnny Isakson; 7. Saxby Chambliss; 8. George Allen; 9. Robert Bennett; and 10. Orrin Hatch.
Ranking trivia bonus round: The National Journal says Rhode Island Republican Lincoln Chafee is slightly more liberal than Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu -- and that five Republicans are more liberal than Nebraska Democrat and early Sam Alito supporter Ben Nelson.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [15:38 EST, Feb. 24, 2006]
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A corruption scandal grows wider
Defense contractor Mitchell Wade pleaded guilty today to paying more than $1 million in bribes to former Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. That part wasn't a surprise -- Cunningham has already pleaded guilty to being on the receiving end of Wade's bribes -- but the rest of Wade's plea agreement is: In addition to admitting that he bribed Cunningham, Wade says he bestowed favors on Defense Department employees and made illegal campaign contributions to two other members of Congress in order to win business for his firm, MZM.
The TPM Cafe has excerpts from the press release issued today by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. Among other things, Wade admits to circumventing campaign finance laws that limit individual contributions to $2,000 by handing wads of cash to his employees and their spouses and then immediately asking them to make "contributions" to certain U.S. representatives. In one instance, the U.S. Attorney's Office says, Wade handed a pile of checks from his employees and their spouses directly to a member of Congress. After making such contributions, prosecutors say, Wade asked for -- and received -- assurances that millions of dollars in appropriations would be set aside for an MZM facility.
Prosecutors say that Wade didn't tell the members of Congress that the checks he gave them represented illegal "straw contributions" -- wouldn't it have been obvious? -- and they haven't identified the officials who are said to have received the checks.
As for the Defense Department, prosecutors say Wade also admits to guaranteeing the success of MZM by, among other things, arranging for a Department of Defense employee to be hired by MZM (with the government ultimately reimbursing MZM for the expense) and hiring a Defense Department employee who was supposed to be overseeing MZM's work.
Wade could be sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [14:54 EST, Feb. 24, 2006]
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Could the port flap bring a sea change on national security views?
It's a given that Republicans enjoy an edge over Democrats when it comes to national security -- a given that Karl Rove and the GOP exploited in 2004 and intend to exploit again in the congressional elections later this year. But does it have to be that way?
It's only a snapshot and the margin is very small, but a new Rasmussen Reports poll suggests that the national security gap may be disappearing. For the first time ever, Rasmussen says, more Americans -- 43 to 41 percent -- trust the Democrats in Congress than the president on national security issues.
"The preference for the opposition party is small, but the fact that Democrats are even competitive on the national security front is startling," Rasmussen says. A big contributing factor: With only 17 percent of the public saying that Dubai Ports World should be allowed to control six U.S. ports, Bush's initial insistence on letting the deal go through has "tarnished" his reputation on national security matters.
-- Tim Grieve
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/print.html
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Veterans Report Mental Distress
Iraq war has taken tremendous toll on troops, record numbers are mentally distressed and seeking help
Veterans Report Mental Distress
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Iraq on the Brink - New York Times
Iraq is obviously in deep crisis and on the way to collapse; the national unity government fantasized by Bush administration and here the NYT probably won't happen and serious talks will have to begin concerning splitting the country into a Kurdish north, a Shia south and Sunni center with US troops withdrawing and no permant US bases
Iraq on the Brink - New York Times
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