Did Bush try to get bin Laden before 9/11? Olberman proves he didn't.

"Countdown" on MSNBC at 8:00PM Eastern every weeknight has become the show to watch. Unfortunately many of us find that getting cable just to watch MSNBC is too expensive. Sometimes, though, the best of what Keith Olberman presents is given in transcript form. This is one of those times.

Last Friday (September 22, 2006) President Bill Clinton was asked by a Fox News right-winger whether he was responsible for allowing bin Laden to conduct the attack against America on 9/11. Bill Clinton was clearly repressing his anger at the insulting accusation when is stated that "He tried. He failed, but at least he tried. The current administration [Bush] had eight months and didn't even try." Was it true that Bush didn't even try? This is Countdown's report according to MSNBC:

Thus, tonight a special investigation. Mr. Clinton is not in office, Mr. Bush is. His policies determine how the U.S. fights al Qaeda, so it is important that we understand how he has done so in the past. Comparing the two presidents is valid, necessary, to illuminate the capacities of the office. Mr. Clinton said it plainly, he failed to get bin Laden. Mr. Bush has acknowledged no such failure.

But while it has become conventional wisdom, although debunked by the 9/11 report, that Mr. Clinton dropped an offer from Sudan to hand over bin Laden, it is rare to hear anyone discuss whether similar but real feelers were ever extended to Mr. Bush. And it is, we suspect, even more rare to see this tape of the Bush White House addressing reports of such feelers in February 2001, after the government knew al Qaeda had attacked the U.S.S. Cole.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, February 27, 2001)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Taliban in Afghanistan, they have offered that they are ready to hand over Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia if the United States drops its sanctions, and the—they have a kind of deal that they want to make with the United States. Do you have any comments (INAUDIBLE)?

ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Let me take that and get back to you on that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: There is no record of any subsequent discussion on that matter.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, of course, responded to President Clinton by defending the Bush record. “We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda,” she said.

Our goal in this report is to rise to Mr. Clinton’s challenge and assess the record of Mr. Bush‘s efforts against al Qaeda in his first eight months in office.

We begin with Rice’s claim that Clinton left no strategy to fight al Qaeda.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, January 20, 2001)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So help me God.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN (voice-over): On January 25, 2001, five days after Mr. Bush took office, counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke sent Rice a memo, attaching to it a document entitled “Strategy for Eliminating the Threat of al Qaeda.” It was, Clarke, wrote, “developed by the last administration to give to you, incorporating diplomatic, economic, military, public diplomacy, and intelligence tools.”

Clarke’s memo requested a follow-up cabinet-level meeting to address time-sensitive questions about al Qaeda. But President Bush had downgraded counterterrorism from a cabinet-level job, so Clarke now dealt instead with deputy secretaries.

RICHARD CLARKE, FORMER COUNTERTERRORISM CZAR: It slowed it down enormously, by months. First of all, the deputies’ committee didn’t meet urgently in January or February.

OLBERMANN: Why the delay? Rice later tried to explain.

RICE: America’s al Qaeda policy wasn’t working because our Afghanistan policy wasn’t working, and our Afghanistan policy wasn’t working because our Pakistan policy wasn’t working. We recognized that America’s counterterrorism policy had to be connected to our regional strategies, and to our overall foreign policy.

OLBERMANN: That, although Clarke’s January 25 memo specifically warned, “Al Qaeda is not some narrow little terrorist issue that needs to be included in broader regional policy. By proceeding with separate policy reviews on Central Asia, etc., we would deal inadequately with the need for a comprehensive multiregional policy on al Qaeda.”

Clarke’s deputies’ meeting came in April, when, he says, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz insisted the real terrorism threat was not al Qaeda, but Iraq.

By July 16, the deputies had a proposal for dealing with al Qaeda, a proposal, Clarke says, was essentially the same plan he gave Rice five months earlier, and it still had to go to the principals, the cabinet secretaries.

CLARKE: But the principals’ calendar was full, and then they went on vacation, many of them, in August, so we couldn’t meet in August. And therefore the principals met in September.

OLBERMANN: Although the principals had already met on other issues, their first meeting on al Qaeda was not until after Labor Day, on September 4, 2001.

But what were Mr. Bush and his top advisers doing during this time? Mr. Bush was personally briefed about al Qaeda even before the election, in November 2000. During the transition, President Clinton and his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, say they told Bush and his team of the urgency of getting al Qaeda.

Three days before President Bush took office Berger spoke at a passing-the-baton event, which Rice attended.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, January 17, 2001)

SANDY BERGER, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: With survivors of the U.S.S. Cole reinforced the reality that America is in a deadly struggle with a new breed of anti-Western jihadists. Nothing less than a war, I think, is fair to describe this.

OLBERMANN: Eight days later, Clarke sent Rice the strategy Clinton had developed for retaliating in the event that al Qaeda was found to have been behind the previous October’s attack on the U.S.S. Cole. The next day, the FBI conclusively pinned the Cole attack on al Qaeda.

Mr. Bush ordered no military strike, no escalation of existing Clinton measures. Instead, he repeated Clinton’s previous diplomatic efforts, writing a letter to Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf in February and another on August 4.

Until September 11, even when Mr. Bush was asked about the Cole, an attack carried out on water by men in a boat, he offered a consistent prescription for keeping America safe, one he reiterated upon taking office.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: To protect our own people, our allies and friends, we must develop and we must deploy effective missile defenses.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Democrats, who controlled the Senate, warned that his focus was misplaced.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CARL LEVIN (D): I’m also concerned that we may not be putting enough emphasis on countering the most likely threats to our national security and to the security of our forces deployed around the world, those asymmetric threats, like terrorist attacks on the U.S.S. Cole on our barracks and our embassies around the world, on the World Trade Center.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: He was not alone. The executive director of the Hart-Rudmann Commission’s request to brief Bush and Cheney on the terror threats they had studied was denied.

On February 26, 2001, Paul Bremer said of the administration, quote, “What they will do is stagger along until there’s a major incident, and then suddenly say, Oh, my God, shouldn’t we be organized to deal with this?”

According to the 9/11 Commission report, even bin Laden expected Bush to respond militarily to the Cole bombing. Quote, “In February 2001, according to a source, bin Laden wanted the United States to attack, and if it did not, he would launch something bigger.”

The most famous warning came in the August 6 presidential daily briefing, reporting “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”

According to the 9/11 report, “Bush did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the attorney general, or whether Rice had done so. We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the president and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. Tenet does not recall any discussions with the president of the domestic threat during this period. Domestic agencies did not know what to do, and no one gave them direction. The borders were not hardened, transportation systems were not fortified, electronic surveillance was not targeted against the domestic threat, state and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI‘s efforts. The public was not warned.”

Explanations after the fact suggested a lack of familiarity with the recent history of terrorism.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

RICE: I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There wasn’t any way then we could have anticipated what was about to happen, of course, in—on 9/11.

(Subtitle: 1995, Philippines uncovers plot to fly planes into Pentagon and World Trade Center.)

(Subtitle: September 1999, U.S. study: Al Qaeda might crash planes into Pentagon.)

(Subtitle: Spring 2001, New York City trial testimony: Bin Laden sending agents to acquire planes.)

BUSH: These terrorists had burrowed in our country for over two years. They were well organized. They were well planned. They struck in a way that was unimaginable.

(Subtitle: July 2001, FBI told of Zacarias Moussaoui‘s interest in flying jumbo jets.)

(Subtitle: September 2001, FBI memo: Moussaoui could fly something into the World Trade Center.)

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

OLBERMANN: On September 10, 2001, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California requested a meeting with Vice President Cheney to press the case for aggressive counterterrorism measures. She is told Mr. Cheney will need some time to prepare first, six months.

That same day, the NSA intercepted a communique from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia, stating, “Tomorrow is zero hour.” That communique was only translated into English on September 12.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OLBERMANN: It appears now that the operative word in the phrase “We could not have anticipated” was the word “we.”

Summary

• Bush is currently President and responsible. Clinton is not.
• According to Clinton's National Security Advisor, Sandy Burger, President-to-be Bush was briefed on the urgency of getting al Qadea in November 2000, even before he was innaugerated as President.
  
• Allegations that Sudan tried to turn bin Laden over to the U.S. unde3r Clinton have been convincingly disproven.
  
• The Taliban offered to turn bin Laden over to the U.S. in Febuaryb 2001. There is no record of subsequent discussion of this. [Note: The Bush administration considers negotiating with their enemies to be "rewarding them." Because of this they refuse to negotiate with those they consider enemies. Current examples are North Korea, Iran and Syria.] After being asked about this at a Press conference, the Press Secretary promised to get back to the questioner later. He never did.
  
• Condi Rice claims that the Clinton administration never left a comprehensive strategy to deal with al Qaeda. [The Clinton administration left their Counterterrorism Czar, Richard Clarke, in office. Clarke sent a memo to Condi Rice five days after the change-over which included an attachment entitled "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat of al Queda" which incorporated diplomatic, economic, military, public diplomacy, and intelligence tools. If that was not sufficient, Richard Clarke was available in his office in the White House to fill in any gaps if asked.]
• Condi Rice makes the point that, in her opinion, the proposed policy against al Qaeda was unworkable because it was not part of an overall policy that included solutions to the regional problems with Afghanistand, Pakistan and the entire region. [Richard Clarke's memo pointed out that regional solutions would not address the specific problems of al Qaeda. There is no record that he was asked about this.]
• Richard Clarke was lowered in rank upon the innaugeration of Bush. Instead of reporting to "The Principles" he was reduced to reporting to their deputies who did not have decision authority beyond recommending a report to the Principles. As a result, the deputies meeting was held in July and agreed with his proposals, but needed to present it to the Principles. This finally ocurred September 4, 2001 since the principles were on vaction through all of August. During the vacation in August Bush was briefed by the CIA with a Presidential Daily Briefing that was entiteld "Al Qaeda plans to attack the U.S. in the near future." The August 6 , 2001 presidential daily briefing (PDB) reported directly to Bush "patterns of suspicions activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or toher types of attacks, including recentsurveillance of federal buildings in New York." In addition, signal traffic among terrorists increased sharply during this period. This was when Bush told his briefer "OK. You have covered your ass." and dismissed him. Bush is not known to have discussed the August 6th report with anyone before September 11. He did not discuss it with the Director of the CIA, George Tenet. He did not ask any subordinates how to respond. No one gave him any direction how to respond. No action by Bush or the Executive Department was taken to identify or prepare for any attacks on America.
  
• Sen.Carl Levin (representing Senate Democrats) was publically concerned that that the administration was not putting enough emphasis on terrorist attacks before 9/11. The Executive Director of the Hart-Rudmann Commission asked to brief Bush and Cheney before 9/11 about the terrorist threats they had studied, but was refused. [Note - it appears that the primary foreign security threat Bush and Cheney recognized before 9/11 was their imaginary threat of state-based missiles and the resulting need for a missile defense system.]
• Clinton did not receive word that al Qaeda had conducted the attack on the Cole until right before the innaugeration of Bush, so he handed the problem off to the new administration [much as Bush 41 sent U.S. troops into Somalia just before leaving office and passed off that problem to Clinton.] Bush and Cheney did nothing about the response to the Cole bombing. ["According to the 9/11 Commission report, even bin Laden expected Bush to respond militarily to the Cole Bombing. Quote, 'In February 2001, according to a source, bin Laden wandet the United States to attack, and if it did not, he would launch something bigger.' "]
• The Bush administration and specifically Condi Rice have repeated claimed "No one could have anticipated that someone would hijack airliners and fly them into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon." [1995 - Philippines uncovers plot to fly planes into Pentgon and World Trade Center. --- U.S. study, 1999: al Qaeda might crash planes into Pentagon. --- Spring 2001, New York City trial testimony: bin Laden sending agents to acquire planes. --- July 2001, FBI was told of Zacarias Moussaoui's interest in flying jumbo jets. --- Septembewr 2001, FBI memo: Moussaoui could fly something into the World Trade Center. --- September 10: NSA intercepted a communique from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia stating "Tomorrow is zero hour." The communique was only translated into English on September 12. ]
• On September 10, 2001, Senator Dianne Feinstein fo California requested a meeting with Vice President Cheney to press the case for aggressive counterterrorism measures. She is told Mr. Cheney will need six months to prepare first. [In other words, Cheney had no preparation for the real threat against America on September 10, 2001. He already knew what the threats against America were, and they did NOT include terrorism from a non-state supported organization. Terrorism was not on his radar, in spite of the warnings from the Clinton administration and from others with good Intelligence sources. ]

The members of the Bush administration bought their own propaganda. They considered anything that Clinton touched to be wrong and to be ignored. They assumed that they were correct, and that anyone who disagreed with them had to be wrong. As a result, the refused to accept new information until it came in the form of nearly 3,000 dead on September 11, 2001.

Since anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration has to be wrong, then the only explanation for what they present is that they are the enemies of the administration. As enemies, they act from enmity towards Bush et al, and everything they present must be ignored.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the NeoCons know they are correct. Their only possible conclusion is that anyone who opposes them (or even presents information showing that their conclusions or decisions are wrong) do so merely because they want the power that the Bush administration currently holds.

They also know that their base expects them to be perfect and to be always correct. So they explain all problems as being the result of enemies who are working to defeat them. They are never wrong, it is always enemies who undercut them.

When you look at this logic, it requires that those who undercut them be traitors. The external enemies cannot have the information and insight to defeat them unbless traitors give it to them. All defeats have to be the result of internal enemies and traitors. Al Qaeda is not as dangerous as the internal Liberals who want the power the Bush/Cheney currently hold. If they are perfect and without error, this is the only possible explanation for failures to succeed in what they attempt.

All of this is the perfect logic that results from understanding that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld cannot be wrong. And they cannot be wrong because they are implementing the perfect ideology of "Conservatism."

As long as they are successful, Conservatism remains perfect. When they fail, it must be the result of traitors. But when it becomes clear that they were simply wrong, and their efforts failed, then the next conclusion is that they are not Conservatives. Since Conservatism is perfect, then any failure of conservatism has to be a result of flawed people who are not conservative.

The result of this is the recent statements that Bush is not a conservative. But he is. The problem is just that he failed. He tried to apply the conservative ideology rather than getting people who were fact-oriented to work with him.

Anyone who wonders what Bush has done wrong should look at the concept of Bounded Rationality by Herbert Simon. No human can make rational decisions that involve more that roughly seven major variables. (Most are limited to about five or fewer variables.)

Beyond that they are guessing. In any situation requiring more that that, individuals will choose part of the problem and work with just that. It can only be done by ignoring elements of the overall problem.

Being perfect is impossible. It is beyond human capability. But it is also not something that can be sold as a politician. Effective politicians have to understand that, and recognize that what is sold to the political base isn't what they are really getting.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld simply haven't figured that out. Instead they imagine that using military power, they can change reality to match their limited intellectual visions of the overall problems.

Bush has become the worst President in the history of America.

It's almost too late for America

I thought earlier that the Bill on how to treat detainees would not get through the House and Senate before the end of this week. Looks like I was wrong. This bill gives Bush his unilateral Presidency.

Bush will be able to declare anyone he wishes to as an illegal detainee, and habeus corpus does not apply. He will be able to hold such a person as long as he wishes, and the only court possible will be a military commission in which the Bill of Rights does not apply.

No due process.
No habeas corpus. which means no review by real courts.
No right to know the evidence against you.
No right to face your accuser.
You can be declared a terrorist detainee whether you are a citizen or not.

This will last until all terrorism is ended in defeat. Yet it will cause an increase in terrorism as well as all other forms of warfare.

Go see Tristero at Hullabaloo if you don't beleive me. Here's the thing. As Americans we have become fat, dumb and happy, and we have been diddly-bopping through a dangerous world in which most people must fear their own government more than any outside force. But we had the Constitution which was the basis of our free Republican democracy. That ended when the Supreme Court Five elected George W. Bush as President over the rightfully elected Al Gore. But it was reverable until September 11 - which could possibly have been permitted by the Bush administration as a causus belli which was needed to destroy the Constitution. And it worked.

But until now it was reversable. When this bill passes the Republican-dominated House and Senate, the Totalitarian America will no longer be easily reversable, if at all. Until now it could have been prevented. After that bill passes and is signed, the Totalitarian America will have to be lived through or fought in the streets, and the USSR showed that fighting in the streets does not reverse a Totalatarianism. It will have to collapse of its own weight.

But it will not collapse of its own weight as long as there are Islamist terrorists who can be suckered into committing suicide as murder-suicideers to maintain the American Totalitarianism.

Think I'm getting too extreme here?

Wait. Give it ten more years, and you will accuse me of a failure of imagination. That's if this article is allowed to last and anyone reads it. Freedom of speech is on a very short tether, as well as the rest of the freedoms the founding fathers thought they had given us and we have squandered.

Declassified Key judgments on April NIE

Never let it be said that when President Bush says "De-classify and publish a document" that they can't move quickly. Here they are in a .pdf file.

Now that part of it is out, the questions are what was left out? Doubtless all the politically damaging stuff.

Now there's another NIE just on Iraq

Give TPM under Josh Marshall the credit they deserve. There is another National Intelligence Estimate, specifically on the war in Iraq, that the White House has been sitting on so that it is not released before the November 7th election.

It's clear the Bush people have been sitting on it. It is a completely processes NIE in everyway, except that it is not titled "National Intelligence Estimate" because anything with that title has to be released to certian members of Congress by law.

Dr. Lawrence Korb, a former senior Defense Department official now with the liberal-progressive Center for American Progress, hasn't seen the report but has discussed it with those who have. "It's a very bleak picture of what's going on in Iraq," he said. (from TPM Muckraker.)

"[A] very bleak picture..." No surprise that the Bush administration doesn't want it out before the election.

TPM Muckraker has the transcript of comments on the second NIE by ranking House Intel Committee Member Rep. Jane Harmon [D-CA].

---

Here are the earlier reports on this NIE from TPM. here, here, here, and here.

Katherine Harris may take other Repubs down with her

As we known the strange election campaign of Katherin Harris for the Florida Senate is not likely to go anywhere. But TPM Muckraker reports that not only will she fail to win her election, but also her effort is likely to cost the Republicans the House seat she is leaving to make the run for Senate.

Also, if her run for the Senate discourages moderate Republicans from voting, this could mean trouble for the Republican candidate for Governor...

... Charlie Crist, who's been unable to top 49 percent in polls for the gubernatorial race. Meanwhile, support for the Democratic challenger, Jim Davis -- still unknown to two in every five Floridians -- continues to rise, polling recently at 43 percent.

Finally, if Republican voters don't show up at the polls, Repbulcan Clay Shaw of Florida's 22d district has been able to maintain only a 4 point lead over his Democratis rival.

---

Prior articles on Katherine Harris

• What is it with Republican Senate candidates the republicans don't want?
  09-06-2006
• Katherine Harris ignored FL Republican leaders when they withdrew support
  08-01-2006
• Katherine Harris loses another aide.
  07-21-2006
• Some Katherine Harris snark.
  06-19-2006
• Katherine Harris loses fourth Chief of Staff.
  06-10-2006
• Katherine Harris' problems in the Florida Senate race.
  06-06-2006
• Update of Katherine Harris of Florida.
  05-22-2006
• Nelson crushing Harris in latest poll.
  04-14-2006

AP reports wiretap bill unlikely to pass before Congress leaves

The billls currently in House and Senate to approve giving Bush's warrantless wiretapping programs is not likely to pass before the congress goes home after this week. House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio said the House will vote on their version this week, but the differences between the Senate and the House version are too great to make any reconciliation likely before the end of the week. Associated Press.

Congress has to break so that members can go home and campaign before the November 7th elections. The White House had expected the Bill to pass quickly, but the unexpected delay caused by the objections of so-called moderate Senators led by Sen. McCain [R - AZ]set the timetable back several weeks.

The Congress already has a backlog of unprecedented size that must be acted on in the lame-duck session after the election. In addition, the Army Chief of Staff has refused to even submit the budget bill for the Army until it is increased from about $90 billion to about $130 billion dollars.

I guess that's what happens when you let a radical White House administration operate a war with no Congressional oversight for four years. Can you say "Do Nothing Congress?"

Bush announces plans to declassify the NIE

According to Reuters Bush has just announced that he will declassify the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which has been all the talk since the NY Times reported leaks from it this weekend.

"I think it's a bad habit for our government to declassify every time there's a leak," Bush said.

"But once again there's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign, in order to create confusion in the minds of the American people, in my judgment is why they leaked it," he said. [Snip]

The analysis by the 16 U.S. spy agencies concluded the Iraq war had spread Islamic radicalism and made the overall terrorism problem worse, according to current and former intelligence officials familiar with the document.

See my earlier report Iraq war has made terrorism worse, not better.

Apparently Karl Rove believes that there will be less damage to Republican candidates if what the report says is out there rather than just the incomplete leaks which fuel even greater suspicion of the Republican handling of the war.

That, or the version of the NIE to be released will be severely bowdlerized.

Or both.

Retired flag officers speak out on torture

The LA Times reports what is being said by military combat veterans about both the use of torture and about command responsibility in the military.

The Bush administration understands neither. Go read the article - it's short, but very informative.

Iraq war has made terrorism worse, not better

Sure is good that Bush and the Republicans decided to attack Iraq. That really made America safer from terrorism. Not!

Here is the NY Times story on the new National Intelligence Estimate on the state of terrorism in the world. This is the first NIE on world wide terrorism since Iraq was invaded.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, ... represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

This would have been the case whether the war was fought effectively, or as it has been, totally stupidly and with too few soldiers and Marines. The invasion of Iraq was certian to inflame Muslims around the world in large part because it was so flagrently unprovoked, unnecessary and for the benefit of the attackers.

There is no possibility of success in Iraq, if there ever was. What is left is to end it in a way that causes the least possible further damage. There are two ways to do that. The U.S. can either ramp up the effort, send in a significantly larger force and conduct an effective counterinsurgency operation, or the U.S. can open discussions with Iran, Syria and Turkey to get Iran and Syria to prevent fighters from being supported through their nations and to get all three to work with the Iraqis to reduce the civil war that is already occurring there.

Either way, the Iraqi govenment must be strengthened and given the monopoly of force within Iraq. That means Muqtada al Sadr's troops must be disarmed and brought under control. Either of those options have some chance to save what can be saved in Iraq with a minimum of further damage to that country, and permit the U.S. to withdraw.

So what is the Bush administration doing? They are continuing as before. There are no more troops to send, and they aren't going to try. So that's out. But they still refuse to "reward" Iran and Syria by talking to them. So the Bush administration is going to muddle along with no significant change for the next two years until a new President comes in and faces even greater problems because of the Bush administration's paralysis and inaction.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were utterly incompetent when they attacked Iraq and created this mess which will require people with high levels of comptence to end and recover from. Unfortunately, the trio which was incompetent starting the war is worse than incompetent at ending it. They are paralyzed and waiting for a savior from somewhere.

Digby weighs in on torture

This is from an execellent post by Digby on torture:

People and societies don't just wake up one morning to find they no longer recognize themselves. It's a process. And we are in the process in this country of "defining deviancy down" in ways I never thought possible. We are legitimizing torture and indefinite detention --- saying that we will only do this to the people who really deserve it. One cannot help but wonder what "really deserves it" will mean in the years to come as we fight our endless war against terror.

People have asked since WW II how it was possible for the richest, most intellectually advanced nation in Europe to descend into the horrors of the Nazi era.

As Digby says, it was a process. A process which the Bush administration, horribly frightened by the unanticipated (by them) shock of 9-11, has led America into. Their shock, horror and unthinking fear has now taken America well on the way towards the lowest of realms of human moral degradation.

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Addendum
Billmon provides even more clarity on what this discussion of torture means for America.

Until now, we could blame Abu Ghraib and the various reports of torture around the world on a few crazy individuals. The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld have tried or courts-martialed a few low-level military people for it, but the wide-spread nature has made it clear that it was either established policy approved by Rumsfeld from the Pentagon, or it was a complete failure of the chain of command. If it were the latter, however, the Secretary of Defense and the Pentagon would have taken action to create the chain of command as an effective preventative.

They haven't done that. That makes it absolutely clear that torture is the established policy of the Pentagon.

Now we know how much higher it goes. Bush is defending the policy himself. Torture is the policy of the Bush administration.

McCain and his faction of the Senate objected, but collapsed on Thursday. Torture is now the accepted policy of the Federal government including Congress. The Republican Party is the party of torture.

Everyone who votes for a Republican this November is complicit in the decision to use torture as an instrument of state policy in America.

Bin Laden Dead?

Josh Marshall describes unconfirmed reports from a leaked French Intelligence document which says that Saudi Arabian Intelligence believes that bin Laden died August 23d in Pakistan of typhoid. The leaked report is presented in regional French newspaper.

I say again, this is at this time unconfirmed. Josh has links to the sources.

---

OK. Here are more rumors and analysis of the rumors.
UPI has pretty good sources, and some really good anylists. Doesn't make them right, but it is better than what I have at present.

UPI Analysis: Is bin Laden truly dead?

[H/T to Josh Marshall TPM. Or actually to the midwestern lawyer TPM Reader DK who is sitting in on weekends. (We don't know who he is because he is a corporate lawyer whose position would not allow this kind of public exposure. But he is approved by Josh, and does a damned good job on weekends.]

Here is the key statement from UPI:

Making the report all the more credible was the choice by those in French counter-intelligence of where to leak the Saudi report, the regional L'Est Republicain, rather than one of the larger Paris-based dailies.

"There is a history with that paper," the Saudi source told UPI. The newspaper is known to have had intelligence reports leaked to it in the past. "They are very reliable," said the Saudi official.

The information purporting the death of the world's most sought after terrorist is based on what the newspaper calls "a usually reliable source," stating that Saudi intelligence sources "are convinced" of bin Laden's death.

The French intelligence report goes on to say, still according to the French daily, that bin Laden died in Pakistan on August 23 after suffering "from a severe bout of typhoid fever," and a bacterial infection provoked a paralysis of his lower body.

The Saudi intelligence report states that bin Laden's geographic isolation "rendered all medical assistance impossible. Indeed, U.S. intelligence sources have long believed bin Laden was hiding in remote parts of Pakistan, close to the border with Afghanistan, areas where sophisticated medical help would be difficult to obtain.

The news of bin Laden's death reached the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Sept. 4. If confirmed, that, in part, might explain the complete absence of Osama bin Laden from making any appearances on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon just outside Washington, DC.

Instead, a videotape by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was released to television news networks.

The French daily reports that the internal and confidential memo from the DGSE reporting the death of "the enemy number one" of the United States and of the West, was handed over to the Presidency of the French republic on Sept. 21.

This is reasonably convincing, and there seems to be no value to al Queda to present this as propaganda. Nor, in fact, do I see any reason for French Intelligence to lie about this. (But what do I know about French Intelligence? Don't ask. It's classified. (Joke))

All in all, I find this somewhat convincing. That is, I think the people reporting it believe it. I will be looking for more evidence, however.

TPM reader BC nails it on torture

TPM Reader BC has this follow up ...

Besides prosecutorial discretion and jury nullification, there is always the presidential pardon option. To me, this demonstrates that Bush doesn'tÂ’t have in mind rare cases of torture- which, if proved vital, or event useful, could be pardoned. He wants it to be a regular procedure, for which pardons would be unwieldy given the number of people needing them.

This is from TPM

The real danger is if torture can be routinely used by individuals who know they will face no review of their judgment and actions.

If torture is really the only choice possible, the torturer and the decision-maker who decides to use it must be subject to effective review and know they will face severe penalties if they are wrong.

If they use torture and it really was necessary, then the prosecutor can judge that it comes under his discretion not to prosecute. If he decides otherwise, that is what we have juries for. Finally, if both of these fail when torture was truly necessary, there is always the possibility of a Presidential Pardon.

That's three opportunities to justify the use of torture. The victim of torture has only a single opportunity to get a favorable decision. The person making the decision to apply torture must know that his decision will be reviewed, that his decision must be judged as the best of a set of very bad choices, and that the penalty for being wrong is very high.

Using torture is not a decision we want anyone to make as a matter of routine. But that is what Bush wants to approve.

More on torture from an expert.

One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. "But, Comrade Stalin," stammered Beria, "five suspects have already confessed to stealing it."

This, according to Vladimir Bukovsky, is a joke passed about in the USSR in Moscow when Bukovsky was a child there in the 50's.

Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security apparatus. They understood that torture is the professional disease of any investigative machinery.

Apart from sheer frustration and other adrenaline-related emotions, investigators and detectives in hot pursuit have enormous temptation to use force to break the will of their prey because they believe that, metaphorically speaking, they have a "ticking bomb" case on their hands. But, much as a good hunter trains his hounds to bring the game to him rather than eating it, a good ruler has to restrain his henchmen from devouring the prey lest he be left empty-handed. Investigation is a subtle process, requiring patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman, Nikolai Yezhov (Beria's predecessor), to be arrested together with his closest aides.

So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it? Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance? [Snip]

I do know that if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already. [Snip]

I know from my own experience that interrogation is an intensely personal confrontation, a duel of wills. It is not about revealing some secrets or making confessions, it is about self-respect and human dignity. If I break, I will not be able to look into a mirror. But if I don't, my interrogator will suffer equally. Just try to control your emotions in the heat of that battle. This is precisely why torture occurs even when it is explicitly forbidden. Now, who is going to guarantee that even the most exact definition of CID is observed under such circumstances? [Snip]

Today, when the White House lawyers seem preoccupied with contriving a way to stem the flow of possible lawsuits from former detainees, I strongly recommend that they think about another flood of suits, from the men and women in your armed services or the CIA agents who have been or will be engaged in CID practices. Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers.

If America's leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes CID, has historically been an instrument of oppression -- not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering. No country needs to invent how to "legalize" torture; the problem is rather how to stop it from happening. If it isn't stopped, torture will destroy your nation's important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East. And if you cynically outsource torture to contractors and foreign agents, how can you possibly be surprised if an 18-year-old in the Middle East casts a jaundiced eye toward your reform efforts there?

This is just part of the article. Go read it.

Authorizing torture will do more to destroy everything that makes America great than any terrorist ever will.

Two views on the torture debate that just finished

Two Washington Post columnists have written about the agreement between Bush and the McCain faction to compromise on the Bush-directed effort to redefine the Geneva treaty's directives on torture.

First is a David Broder column, published Thursday. Broder calls the argument between the Republican Senators and Bush as the revolt of the "Moderates", led by McCain.

David describes it as signaling "...a new movement in this country -- what you could rightly call the independence party. Its unifying theme can be found in the Declaration of Independence's language when Jefferson Invoked 'a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.'"

This movement is mobilizing to confront "...not only Bush but also the extremist elements in American society -- the vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left and the doctrinaire religious extremists on the right who would convert their faith into a whipping post for their opponents."

David then goes on to say that Sen. Joe Lieberman's election, along with that of Republican Sen. Lincoln Chaffee in Rhode Island and Sen. Mike DeWine (R, OH) are really importan, because those would signal that independence is a virtue to be rewarded. They are all members of the moderate middle.

---

That's my summary of the important points he made. Now for my opinion.

Moderation is the best way for a legislature or parliament to function. David is quite correct there. But for moderation to work, there must be trust and an effective equality of power between the people on both sides of each disagreement.

Moderation without trust and power equality doesn't work. In the current case, the leadership of one side is made up of extremists, and they have a molopoly of poer in the House, Senate and the White House. Those Republicans will negotiate with the moderates, come to an agreement, then roll over the moderates, sometimes using the very elements of that agreement as weapons.

This is what I was going to publish yesterday, before I learned of the agreement between the McCain-led moderates and the people pushing for the legalizing of torture methods.

---

Now to today's view of the McCain moderates vs. Bush on torture. This is an editorial by Fred Hiatt, also in the Washington Post.

Hiatt points out that the agreement says that the Senate will not rewrite American legislation to reinterpret U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions to allow torture and that the "Trials of accused terrorists will be fairer that the commission system outlawed in June by the Supreme Court."

But of course, Bush made clear yesterday that he will issue an Executive Order "...relying on questionable Justice department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation.

"Under the compromise agreed to yesterday Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to the U.S. Courts. The Bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes."

In short, Bush announced that he was going to embrace torture as the formal policy of the U.S. and Congress agreed to let him do it, immunizing HIM from appeals to the court system. Congress just wasn't going to write it into law.

---

Again, the following is my view. In fairness I should point out that David Broder wrote his column before the agreement was finalized yesterday, and Fred Hiatt wrote his editorial afterwards. But the result was ...

The moderates got rolled. Bush won, America and anyone Bush accuses as being a terrorist lost.

McCain surrendered in exchange for a fig-leaf because he wants to run for President, and he will need the votes of the right-wing extremists if he expects to win. Without McCain to head up the "moderates", the rest fell into line.

This is what happens when so-called "moderates" attempt to compromise with extremists. The extremists, in this case Bush, win. Hand McCain an umbrella, he just gave Chezkslovakia away.

The U.S. is going to practice torture on people accused of terrorism until the end of the Bush administration. The only thing the Senate really did was refuse to put their names on law that approved it. It will be done by Bush and is totally his responsibility.

Can you say "War Crimes Trials?"

Just a historical side-note. Anyone who remembers the anti-Communist wars in the 40's, 50's and 60's will recall that many times small countries undergoing a Communist insurrection would attempt to settle it by bringing the Communists into the government and working with them. The usual result was that within a short time, the Communists took over and the moderates were in prisons and prison camps.

What David Broder sniffs at disparagingly as "...the vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left" (and yes, I take that personally) are really the people who are looking for a Winston Churchill to lead the battle against the dark enemy instead of surrendering everything that matters to them. Nothing else is going to work.

Bush - no more troops to Iraq

Kevin Drum reports on the need for and refusal by Bush to send more troops to Iraq.

...they don't want to withdraw, but they don't want to send enough troops to have any chance of succeeding either. Both options are too politically risky. Instead, they will continue following the one path guaranteed to fail.

The key to remember is that the Bush administration does not care what happens in Iraq, nor do they care what happens to the U.S. military. We are still in Iraq because they would lose an election by leaving. We aren't going to increase tbe size of the military so that it is large enough to deal with combat in Iraq because such an expansion would cause them to lose an election.

Success in Iraq is irrelevant -- except as how it impacts the Republican control of the U.S. federal government. This comes from the top - Cheney, Bush, Rove and Rumsfeld.

Are you a liberal? Ever been a TA? Have a sense of humor?

Chris Clarke at A Creek Running North offers a translation of What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts" by Michael Berube. Now this is not a translation between languages.

Chris is concerned that recent studies show that a full third of the American population is so illiterate that they cannot understand the great truths of which Berube writes, so he has translated it into a graphics novel. Here it is, in all its glory.

You may want to read Chris' intro to the GN first. Without his build-up it may lose some of its impact. Whatever - this is too damned good not to share!

How did the Pope insult Islam? Jon Stewart tells all.

If you are confused by the brohaha over the Pope's statenent in Regensburg and the Ilamic reaction to it, wonder no more. Just let Jon Stewart explain.

This is fun learning. Enjoy!

[H/T to Kevin Drum.]

WaPo anticipates major problems recording and counting votes in the general election

The Washinton Post reported Sunday that they expect a lot of problems with recording and counting the votes when the general election occurs this November.

Gore's NYU speech

Mother Jones offers a transcript of Al Gore's speech on global warming.

This is where he offers a solution. It was delivered September 18, 2006.

Military action against Iran is very close

Col. Sam Gardiner gave Wolf Blitzer his view on the nearness of a military attack on Iran. See Think Progress.

A key item of data is that U.S. naval vessles have been directed to move towards Iran.

The most extreme view I have read is by tristero at Hullabaloo. Since Bush has ruled as an extremist with trust in the military and nothing else, there is no reason to assume that he will be reasonable with Iran. My best bet is that after the November election, Bush and Cheney will see no downside to attacking Iran. They will not be running for election again, and the make-up of the Congress will then be established until 2008.

Rumsfeld forbade planning for after the invasion of Iraq

This single decision by Don Rumsfeld is more than enough to require his immediate resignation. From the Daily Press of Hampton Roads, VA:

"Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan. [Snip]

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

Like everything else this Bush/Cheney administration has done, the primary consideration has always been domestic American politics rather than accomplishing the necessary work of government.

But what can you expect from people who have shown utter disdain for government throughout their political careers? Conservatism has been proven to be an utter failure.

Kevin Drum adds his thoughts to this story.

This is fun.

I have a house cat (gray tabby of about 6 pounds) along with two dogs. One dog is a white west Highland Terrier (a Westie) of about 22 pounds and the other is a mixed breed dog which seems to be mostly sheltie of about 32 pounds. Now mind you, I have no prior experience with owning such animals. (Or in the case of the cat, being owned by a cat.)

All are primarily indoor animals. The dogs go out to do their business, but the cat is entirely an indoor cat.

I also have a kitchen with mice. They come through the kitchen cabinets. Their work is obvious. They eat what they find in the cabinets. I put mouse traps in there, and occasionally get the more stupid of them.

What is fun is to come out and find the cat sitting beside the refrigerator waiting for a mouse to come out of the cabinets. She sits there for hours, with her eyes on the single opening that a mouse can find its way through. The Westie will also watch that same openimg. He will get up and go away sometimes, but will come back and watch for prey. Terriers do not forget where such prey can be found.

The similarity between the behavior of the cat amd the terrier is interesting. Patience, thy name is "Humter."

There are a number of ways I could control the mice that invade my kitchen, but if I do, what happens to my household humters? Their hunting entertains them greatly, and their hunding enterains ME greatly.

Thanks, mice. You provide a lot of household entertainment. The cat and the terrier are really involved. What also intrigues me is that the sheltie is NOT similarly involved in the household hunt.

Me? I watch the watchers.

Steve Clemons: Bush's speech was major defeat for Cheney

Steve Clemons reports that Bush's speech in which he announced that the U.S. was no longer going to operate the secret foreigh Gulags for rendered prisoners was a major defeat for the group of Cheney, Addingington, John Bolton and others.

I'll not try to summarize his post, partly because I am very suspicious that any action by Bush cannot be good (at best it will be irrelevant but more likely just misleading and over-simplified), and partly because I don't think I can do justice for Steve's depth of sources and understanding of the whole issue.

Let me recommend his posting, however. Go read it.

Al Wynn - dirty machine politician?

Matt Stoller at MyDD has been investigating the financing practices of Congressman Al Wynn (D. MD - 4) and it is not a pretty sight. He appears to be getting illegal corporate contributions, which he conceals by not reporting, reporting late, or by failing to report the employers of his large contributors so that it is impossible to isolate which corporations are giving money to their employees and instructing them to give it to Wynn.

Through delaying tactics, he prevents the voters from knowing who is funding his campaign. The result is that after the Primary (which is the effective election in his district) the FEC gets the corrected records and fines him. As a sitting Congressman, he can make up the fines easily.

The political machine he is at the top of appears to prevent competition through a number of methods, many illegal and including violence.

Al Wynn looks like someone who needs to be taken down. I say that as a committed Democrat.

What is it with Republican Senate candidates the republicans don't want?

In Connecticut the Republicans have cut the Republican candidate for Senate loose and are supporting Joe Lieberman's candidacy against the Democratic nominee. In Florida, the entire republican Party leadership tried to get Katherine Harris not to run for the Senate, but yesterdays she handily defeated three other Republican candidates in the primary for the right to be defeated by run against the incumbent Democratic Senator, Ben Nelson. From Reuters we get the problems which Katherine Harris faces in the general election.

"She trails Nelson by more than 30 points in voter opinion polls, lags far behind him in fund-raising and came under scrutiny after receiving illegal campaign contributions from a defense contractor who admitted bribing another congressional representative.

Harris, 49, has seen a steady exodus of disgruntled campaign staffers, who described her as obsessed with unimportant details and prone to screaming tantrums."

Ms. Harris is probably the best opponent any Democratic Senator faces during the 2006 election season. "Best" is, of course, a synonym for "Most Beatable."

---

Prior articles on Katherine Harris

• Katherine Harris ignored FL Republican leaders when they withdrew support
  08-01-2006
• Katherine Harris loses another aide.
  07-21-2006
• Some Katherine Harris snark.
  06-19-2006
• Katherine Harris loses fourth Chief of Staff.
  06-10-2006
• Katherine Harris' problems in the Florida Senate race.
  06-06-2006
• Update of Katherine Harris of Florida.
  05-22-2006
• Nelson crushing Harris in latest poll.
  04-14-2006

White House, Republicans are Lieberman's main supporters

The Washington Times Magazine, Insight, reports that the White House has funnelled millions of dollars from Republican contributors to Joe Lieberman's failed primary race. In addition, most of Lieberman's other funds have come from outside the state of Connecticut.

"A senior GOP source said the money was part of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove's strategy to maintain a Republican majority in the Senate in November. The source said Mr. Rove, together with Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, directed leading pro-Bush contributors to donate millions of dollars to Mr. Lieberman's campaign for re-election in Connecticut in an attempt that he would be a "Republican-leaning" senator.

"Joe [Lieberman] took the money but said he would not play ball," the source said. "That doesn't mean that this was a wasted investment." [Snip]

The source said that under Mr. Rove's direction, the GOP has abandoned its Senate candidate in Connecticut, Alan Schlesinger, who has dropped to about five percent in the polls. Mr. Schlesinger has failed to win the support of any national Republican and has virtually no contact with the White House.

In contrast, Mr. Lieberman, who has called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was deemed a major component of the GOP strategy in November. Mr. Lieberman is expected to win the general election after losing the Democratic primary to anti-war challenger Ned Lamont. However, the race with Mr. Lamont has been tightening considerably.

"The more he [Lieberman] spits, the more that he [Bush] kisses," Mr. Schlesinger said. "I don't understand that. I guess a kiss is not just a kiss." [Snip]

The source said that under Mr. Rove's plan, Mr. Lieberman would vote with the GOP on national security issues and help provide the party with a 50-50 split on major legislation. The deciding vote would then be cast by Vice President Dick Cheney.

So the Republicans consider Joe a Republican, Joe's rhetoric for reelection has been the same as that of Dick Cheney and is Karl Rove approved, and the Republicans have effectively financed Lieberman's race while abandoning the official Republican candidate in Connecticut.

What's the old saying? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and get nervous during duck season, it must be a duck. We Democrats must really hope that the Democrats and Independents in Connecticut recognize Joe for who he has become and vote against him.

What was damaged by "outing" Valerie (Plame) Wilson?

Once again, Digby nails it. So Valerie (Plame) Wilson was exposed as an officer at the CIA? Who gained?

Digby describes her career in the five years before she was actively outed by "at least two senior White House officials who called a number of reporters before they got Novak to expose her." Novak, as we now know, already knew she worked at the CIA, something he learned from Richard Armitrage in an idiotic release of classified information as mere gossip. But it was operatives from the White House who pushed as many reporters as they could find to expose her in print. Why?

From The Nation via Digby:

"In the spring of 2002 Dick Cheney made one of his periodic trips to CIA headquarters. Officers and analysts were summoned to brief him on Iraq. Paramilitary specialists updated the Vice President on an extensive covert action program in motion that was designed to pave the way to a US invasion. Cheney questioned analysts about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. How could they be used against US troops? Which Iraqi units had chemical and biological weapons? He was not seeking information on whether Saddam posed a threat because he possessed such weapons. His queries, according to a CIA officer at the briefing, were pegged to the assumptions that Iraq had these weapons and would be invaded--as if a decision had been made.

Though Cheney was already looking toward war, the officers of the agency's Joint Task Force on Iraq--part of the Counterproliferation Division of the agency's clandestine Directorate of Operations--were frantically toiling away in the basement, mounting espionage operations to gather information on the WMD programs Iraq might have. The JTFI was trying to find evidence that would back up the White House's assertion that Iraq was a WMD danger. Its chief of operations was a career undercover officer named Valerie Wilson. [Snip]

In July 2003--four months after the invasion of Iraq--Wilson would be outed as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction" in a column by conservative journalist Robert Novak, who would cite two "senior administration officials" as his sources. (As Hubris discloses, one was Richard Armitage, the number-two at the State Department; Karl Rove, Bush's chief strategist, was the other. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, also talked to two reporters about her.) Novak revealed her CIA identity--using her maiden name, Valerie Plame--in the midst of the controversy ignited by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, her husband, who had written a New York Times op-ed accusing the Bush Administration of having "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."[Snip]Valerie Wilson was no analyst or paper-pusher. She was an operations officer working on a top priority of the Bush Administration. Armitage, Rove and Libby had revealed information about a CIA officer who had searched for proof of the President's case. In doing so, they harmed her career and put at risk operations she had worked on and foreign agents and sources she had handled.[Snip]}

Valerie Plame was recruited into the CIA in 1985, straight out of Pennsylvania State University. ... In the early 1990s, she became what's known as a nonofficial cover officer. NOCs are the most clandestine of the CIA's frontline officers. They do not pretend to work for the US government; they do not have the protection of diplomatic immunity. They might claim to be a businessperson. She told people she was with an energy firm. Her main mission remained the same: to gather agents for the CIA.

In 1997 she returned to CIA headquarters and joined the Counterproliferation Division. (About this time, she moved in with Joseph Wilson; they later married.) She was eventually given a choice: North Korea or Iraq. She selected the latter. Come the spring of 2001, she was in the CPD's modest Iraq branch. But that summer--before 9/11--word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq. Her unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees. Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group.

There was great pressure on the JTFI to deliver. Its primary target was Iraqi scientists. JTFI officers, under Wilson's supervision, tracked down relatives, students and associates of Iraqi scientists--in America and abroad--looking for potential sources. They encouraged Iraqi émigrés to visit Iraq and put questions to relatives of interest to the CIA. The JTFI was also handling walk-ins around the world. Increasingly, Iraqi defectors were showing up at Western embassies claiming they had information on Saddam's WMDs. JTFI officers traveled throughout the world to debrief them. Often it would take a JTFI officer only a few minutes to conclude someone was pulling a con. Yet every lead had to be checked.

The JTFI found nothing. The few scientists it managed to reach insisted Saddam had no WMD programs. Task force officers sent reports detailing the denials into the CIA bureaucracy. The defectors were duds--fabricators and embellishers. (JTFI officials came to suspect that some had been sent their way by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, an exile group that desired a US invasion of Iraq.) The results were frustrating for the officers.

When the Novak column ran, Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator--to rise up a notch or two--and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again. Moreover, she would now be pulled into the partisan warfare of Washington. As a CIA employee still sworn to secrecy, she wasn't able to explain publicly that she had spent nearly two years searching for evidence to support the Administration's justification for war and had come up empty."

EmptyWheel at the Next Hurrah adds a great deal to the story.

It is well known that Dich Cheney and Don Rumsfeld immensely dislike the CIA. Why is that? It's because the CIA reports what they actually find, not what the rabid rightwingers need to be reported to support their fevered fear of enemy threat. The Right-wingers knew that the CIA was underreporting the military buildup in the USSR, and they failed to report that the USSR was likely to collapse. After that, the facts were that even the CIA was overreporting the Soviet capabilities.

Cheney knew that Saddam had WMD, but the CIA kept saying they couldn't find them. Guess what? The CIA was right, Cheney was wrong, and the guy proven wrong never likes the people who disagreed with him.

As a speculation, think about when the White House Senior Operatives began shopping the story that Valarie Wilson was a CIA agent to the reporters. Earlier reports say that at least six other reporters were told, but they did not publish it. Why did Novak?

Here's my speculation. Novak already knew who Valerie Wilson was, while he had not been told by Armitrage that she was covert. (He knew, though, or should have known.) So when the White House started pushing the story he felt that it was safe to report it, since he was backed by Cheney.

But the White House operatives were operating on emotion, not reason and analysis. What they did was treason. They may give it a figleaf, but it was still treason.

---

Hubris: The inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War

What are blogs good for, anyway?

Chris Bowers over at MyDD takes on critics of MyDD as a blog, and in the process makes some really good points about what blogs are good for, what the mass media is good for, and what to expect each to do. There is a great deal of good food for thought there.

This is particularly true if you are attempting to use the internet for specific commercial, political or other purposes. Blogs appear to be a method of providing information to a niche market. After that they will sell something or influence people to do something. To do that they need to provide regularly changing material of interest to the market they are focused on, so that they build repeat viewership.

Go read Chris' article and see what you think.

Was the Miami group of "terrorists" of any real significance?

Walter Pincus at the Washington post questions whether the so-called terrorist group in Miami was really a bunch of terrorists, or if the FBI "informant" was pumping them to make incriminating statements.

"On June 23, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales held a news conference to announce the destruction of a terrorist cell inside the United States, hailing "our commitment to preventing terrorism through energetic law enforcement efforts aimed at detecting and thwarting terrorist acts."

But court records released since then suggest that what Gonzales described as a "deadly plot" was virtually the pipe dream of a few men with almost no ability to pull it off on their own. The suspects have raised questions in court about the FBI informants' role in keeping the plan alive.

The plot featured self-proclaimed militant religious leaders who referred to themselves as kings, talked of establishing their own nation inside the United States, called their headquarters an embassy and discussed plans to train their recruits to use bows and arrows. One of their quixotic notions was to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower.

Batiste's father, a Christian preacher and former contractor who lives in Louisiana, told the news media after the indictment that his son was "not in his right mind" and needed psychiatric treatment."

Really, if this is the best the FBI under Bush can do to find terrorists in America, then we do not have a problem - or they have no clue regarding what real terrorists are.

My bet is that they simply can't find any really effective terrorists, so they have to go after crazies. But that doesn't mean there aren't any real terrorists in the U.S. It just means the Bush administration is continuing its Katrina-level competence.

Got my August electric bill today

I live in North Texas - Fort Worth, the interesting city next to the rather dull Dallas. My electric bill arrived today.

No, no, I have recovered from the shock. Honest, the local medical people were warned and ready to handle the anticipated reactions. But there was a really interesting little fact included.

According to TXU, the average high temperature here during August was 101 degrees. In 2005 the average high temperature was 97 degrees. And 2005 was the hottest year on record.

Anyone in Canada, Wisconsin or Minnesota have an idea where I can find a home for about $70,000 that has room for dogs to run? With global warming attacking me, I am considering beating the rush of temperature refugees and finding a cooler place to live. Has to have reliable broad-band connections and a decent library or University, though.

Are you middle class? You are being ripped off!

Kevin Drum presents the following statistics:

• In 1970, the median income for workers age 35-44 was $29,000 (in today's dollars).
• Today, the median income for the same worker is $32,000.
• During that time, total income (adjusted for population) has increased by about 80%. If that growth had been spread evenly instead of going predominantly to the already rich, the median income of a middle-aged worker today would be $52,000. That's a difference of 20 grand. (And no, counting healthcare benefits doesn't change this calculation very much.)

Why is it that as total income per person has gone up 80% during that period that the worker has seen his income go up only 10.3%?

It's not like someone isn't getting that money. It's not going to the poor. It is going to the wealthy and extremely wealthy.

That's because they have taken control of the Republican Party, then gotten control of the federal government and many state governments using that Republican Party, and shifted the income increases to themselves.

Did you ever notice that most of the wealthy and super-wealthy don't work hard? Why should they? They are collecting most of the wealth created by those who actually work for a living. And why do they collect this excess wealth? Just because they are wealthy. No other reason. Most of the wealthy and super-wealthy inherited their wealth like Paris Hilton did.

So if you are middle class, you are being ripped off. Big time!

Salman Rushdie on Terrorism

Salman Rusdie give "Der Spiegel" an interview. From the interview:

"SPIEGEL:What makes apparently normal young men decide to blow themselves up?

Rushdie: There are many reasons, and many different reasons, for the worldwide phenomenon of terrorism. In Kashmir, some people are joining the so-called resistance movements because they give them warm clothes and a meal. In London, last year's attacks were still carried out by young Muslim men whose integration into society appeared to have failed. But now we are dealing with would-be terrorists from the middle of society. Young Muslims who have even enjoyed many aspects of the freedom that Western society offers them. It seems as though social discrimination no longer plays any role -- it's as though anyone could turn into a terrorist. [Snip]

...there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people. If the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, for example, were to be miraculously solved from one day to the next, I believe we wouldn't see any fewer attacks. [Snip]

Lenin once described terrorism as bourgeois adventurism. I think there, for once, he got things right: That's exactly it. One must not negate the basic tenet of all morality -- that individuals are themselves responsible for their actions. And the triggers seem to be individual too. Upbringing certainly plays a major role there, imparting a misconceived sense of mission which pushes people towards "actions." Added to that there is a herd mentality once you have become integrated in a group and everyone continues to drive everyone else on and on into a forced situation. There's the type of person who believes his action will make mankind listen to him and turn him into a historic figure. Then there's the type who simply feels attracted to violence. And yes, I think glamour plays a role too. [Snip]

Terror is glamour -- not only, but also. I am firmly convinced that there's something like a fascination with death among suicide bombers. Many are influenced by the misdirected image of a kind of magic that is inherent in these insane acts. The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other peoples lives. There's one thing you mustn't forget here: the victims terrorized by radical Muslims are mostly other Muslims.

SPIEGEL: Of course there can be no justification for terrorism. But nevertheless there are various different starting points. There is the violence of groups who are pursuing nationalist, one might say comprehensible, goals using every means at their disposal ...

Rushdie: ... and there are others like al-Qaida which have taken up the cause of destroying the West and our entire way of life. This form of terrorism wraps itself up in the wrongs of this world in order to conceal its true motives -- an attack on everything that ought to be sacred to us. It is not possible to discuss things with Osama bin Laden and his successors. You cannot conclude a peace treaty with them. They have to be fought with every available means.

SPIEGEL: And with the other ones, the "nationalist terrorists," should we engage in dialogue with them?

Rushdie: That depends on whether they are prepared to renounce their terrorist struggle under a certain set of conditions. That appears to be showing at least initial signs of working with the Basques of ETA. I think we have Bin Laden to thank for that to no small extent -- the Basque leaders didn't want to be like him. And with the IRA it was the loss of credibility among their own people, who no longer saw any point in fighting violently in the underground. Remolding former terrorist organisations into political parties in the long term is at least not hopeless. It might work with those groups that are not primarily characterized by religious fanaticism -- the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, for example, a group which virtually invented suicide bombings, have no religious background at all. They have clear objectives: an independent state."

Although Rushdie claims he is no expert on terrorism, as a novelist of first rank he clearly has an insight into the reasons individuals become terrorists. This Der Spiegel interview has brought out Rushdie's insights.

Hey! You thought the Katrina/Rita stuff was incompetence - but it was planned.

Frank Rich describes what happened in New Orleans with the benefit of hindsight, and Digby expands it.

This from Frank Rich:

"The ineptitude bared by the storm - no planning for a widely predicted catastrophe, no attempt to secure a city besieged by looting, no strategy for anything except spin - is indelible. [Snip]

What’s amazing on Katrina’s first anniversary is how little Mr. Bush seems aware of this change in the political weather. He’s still in a bubble. At last week’s White House press conference, he sounded as petulant as Tom Cruise on the ‘Today’ show when Matt Lauer challenged him about his boorish criticism of Brooke Shields. Asked what Iraq had to do with the attack on the World Trade Center, Mr. Bush testily responded, “Nothing,” adding that “nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks.” Like the emasculated movie star, the president is still so infatuated with his own myth that he believes the public will buy such nonsense. [Snip]

[This is the next] White House P.R. offensive, ... next week’s Katrina show. It has its work cut out for it. A year after the storm, the reconstruction of New Orleans echoes our reconstruction of Baghdad. A “truth squad” of House Democrats has cataloged the “waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement” in $8.75 billion worth of contracts, most of which were awarded noncompetitively. Only 60 percent of the city has electricity. Half of the hospitals and three-quarters of the child-care centers remain closed. Violent crime is on the rise. Less than half of the population has returned."

Then from Digby:

"We all talked about the African American NOLA diaspora sort of abstractly last year but it really has come to pass. A large part of the city and environs aren't coming back and as long as the rebuilding is so "slow" they won't. Eventually they will put down roots elsewhere. The result is that the Democratic base of Louisiana has been disappeared. I have no doubt that is no accident."

This was - first - incompetence in governance by Bush and the Republican Congress who refuse to provide oversight. The failure of FEMA was not intentional. It was a failure to plan and prepare.

But that failure was then taken advantage of for political gain. How do the Republicans get rid of the pesky Democrat Kathleen Blanco who is governor of Louisiana, or the Democratic Senators John B. Breaux and Mary Landrieu?

Well, when a widely anticipated hurricane causes the poor mostly Black and largely Democratic voting people of New Orleans to seek refuge in other states, the federal government simply closes down the low cost housing projects of New Orleans rather than rebuild them, fails to provide resources to rebuild the Democratic parts of New Orleans, and then after the hullabaloo dies down, finances Republican developers to gentrify what is left of New Orleans.

The result? A solidly Republican state of Louisiana.

How simple can it get?

What is your (philosophical) world view?

If you read and study a lot, you may wonder how your world view would be described by others. My daughter found this test which we both have taken and which - upon reflection - we both generally agree gets it right.

I rank highest as a Post-Modernist and slightly less as an Existentialist. I rank lowest as a Fundamentalist. As I say, this is totally what both my daughter and I think I should rank as. I won't give the scores to the public, however.

Comedy and satire - the appropriate response to Conservatives

Jessica Clark at "In These Times" explains why there has been such an explosion of comedy and satire in the last few years. She attributes it to being a reponse to the havy-handed ridicule of conservatives like Limbaugh. It performs a function in rallying the Progressives much as O'Reily and Limbaugh rally conservatives.

Go read it as see if you don't agree with her.

A review of "Veronica Mars"

I really like the TV show Veronica Mars. Kristen Bell is an excellent actress and the show is extremely well written. But if you want to see an outstanding essay on the show, go read the review by Chrstopher Hays Bio at "In These Times."

The review is less than perfect from my point of review, but very interesting for all that. Hayes emphasizes what he sees in the show, and I think he is correct in his discussion of the view of class the show exposes. But overall the show is a lot more than that. It is above all a highly entertaining mystery show which is well written, populated with interesting characters and well acted. A person watching the show will not be bored, and almost every show is worth seeing more than once. There are very few shows I will say that about.

Thanks to Matthew Yglesias for the link to the Hayes review.

Economic inequality, power and the discipline of economics.

Paul Krugman writes another of his outstanding editorials.

"Recently, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, acknowledged that economic inequality is rising in America. In a break with previous administration pronouncements, he also conceded that this might be cause for concern.

But he quickly reverted to form, falsely implying that rising inequality is mainly a story about rising wages for the highly educated. And he argued that nothing can be done about this trend, that "it is simply an economic reality, and it is neither fair nor useful to blame any political party."

History suggests otherwise."

The real issue is which society - through the government - values more, Wealth or Labor. Whichever is valued more will be what public policy will work to reward more.

So which has the greater power to increase the economy, wealth or labor? This is not an absolute. It is a balancing act. Both are required. The one in greater shortage is the one which society should work to reward more. So which matters more right now?

More from Krugman:

"I've been studying the long-term history of inequality in the United States. And it's hard to avoid the sense that it matters a lot which political party, or more accurately, which political ideology rules Washington.

Since the 1920's there have been four eras of American inequality:

The Great Compression, 1929-1947: The birth of middle-class America. The real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans actually fell 17 percent.

• The Postwar Boom, 1947-1973: An era of widely shared growth. Real wages rose 81 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent rose 38 percent.

• Stagflation, 1973-1980: Everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent fell 4 percent.

• The New Gilded Age, 1980: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent — people with incomes of more than $277,000 in 2004 — rose 135 percent.

What's noticeable is that except during stagflation, when virtually all Americans were hurt by a tenfold increase in oil prices, what happened in each era was what the dominant political tendency of that era wanted to happen."

Krugman makes the point that this is merely an association, not proof of cause and effect. But it is a strong association.

What are the social differences between wealth and labor?

Wealth allows its owner to buy power. The amount of power bought is related to the size of the wealth available to the individual decision-maker.

Labor actually creates things and makes society and the economy operate, but does not by itself gain great power in society to the extent pure wealth does. Individual workers rarely gain sufficient wealth from their work to buy significant amounts of social power. The number of workers is too large compared to the total power of Labor. It is much more difficult for wealthy workers to gain enough power to actually have their individual decisions effect society. Workers can only have power by working together. Unions are the social organizations which allow workers to work together to use their power.

The totally free-market libertarian (and wealthy Republican) view is that labor needs capital to be most productive. The Libertarians then state that this means we need to add to wealth so that the wealthy can invest in capital and make society more productive. They gloss over the fact that American financial markets have gotten so efficient that anyone who can convince a lender or investor to provide the funds can get whatever is needed for capital. The real shortage in modern economies is highly effective labor, not capital.

Want to know how we can tell that there is no capital shortage? The S&P 500 companies are right now sitting on the largest amount of cash they have ever had as a percentage of their value. They literally have no place to invest that cash. The decision makers with the power to decide how to invest that capital cannot find investments that offer a return sufficiently greater than the return on cash to be worth the risk involved in investing it in productive investments.

The tax cuts of the Bush administration suggest that giving them more money will increase the productivity of the economy? How? The investors who have money and have the decision power to actually create jobs can’t find anyplace to invest the funds they already have?

So what value is there in giving tax cuts to wealthy people and at the same time increasing the price of tuition of education for those who actually produce the goods and services?

Financial people will try to convince everyone that the best way to increase Gross Domestic Product is to increase the reward to invested capital. But what happens when no one needs more capital? When there ARE no recognizable opportunities to invest cash? Companies begin to build up cash, that's what.

That's because capital, by itself, does nothing for the economy. If no one is producing anything to buy, it really doesn't matter if you walk into the market with $5, $500, or $50,000. There is still nothing to buy until someone decides to provide the goods or services. The people who do that are labor. And if no one knows how to provide what you want to buy, you are SOL.

The cash incentives are important, but they are secondary to the trained labor required to produce the goods and services you want to buy. The training of labor is a cost on the economy which does not provide a foreseeable return. Investors will not pay for it. The training of labor in the responsibility of the individuals themselves, and for extended training government has to pay for it. Refusal to pay taxes for such training is self-defeating, but the individual taxpayer who wants to pay less taxes is clearly acting in his own interest. This is the Free Rider problem. If the taxpayer doesn’t pay for training labor, then someone else will or the economy will be less productive. But at no time does the taxpayer who refuses to pay the taxes ever seen that his income drops as a direct result of his failure to pay for the training of labor.

Labor as a whole may become wealthy, but unless the rules of society favor labor over wealth, they will not become powerful. Because the source of power of labor is diffused over all productive workers and not concentrated in any small group or individual, labor will never become as powerful as the owners of wealth can. Because of this, a truly productive society must protect the power of labor from the power of wealth.

This is worth it, because it creates a larger total supply of wealth to distribute. The wealthy don't like it, because they see all the wealth escaping them and going to labor. As soon as the wealthy can gain enough power over the government and the propaganda outlets, they will gather the power and wealth to themselves and share as little as possible. The result is two-fold.

First, there is less total wealth in society, and second there is greater inqualityb of income.

Go read the Krugman Editorial we are now in a period in which inequality of income is growing. People have greater difficulty getting trained to be more productive, and even if they do they have less income. Why? Go read Perfectly Legal: The Secret Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston.

Then try to separate in your mind the economic and the power effects of various groups of people. There are fewer wealthy people, so they have more power to cause their decisions to become real. Every dollar is worth one thing only. It causes someone else to do something for the posseser of that dollar. That's not economics. That's power.

The economists will consider such power elements to be what they call “exogenous causes.” Those are defined as things that effect an economic transaction, but are not explained by economics.

Economists work with economics since economic exchanges can be clearly explained by mathematics. Power does not easily find itself described in mathematical terms. That is why the study of economics and government are two different academic departments in Universities. An Economist is an applied mathematician, but a student of government and power is only a Social Scientist with a knowlege of statistics.

The problem is that power cannot be easily defined. Don't get me wrong. If you ask individuals in an organization who has power, almost everyone agrees. But ask them why, and it simply isn't clear. Whereas if you ask what is important economically, everyone goes to an accountant and asks for “the numbers.” The definition of economic transactions is quite clear and easily quantified (comparatively.) Power is not. How do you quantify who has more power and who has less? It depends on who they are and how they use it, in comparison with others around them. Each decision also has different distributions of power. There is no clear "power transaction" which throws off an easily quantifiable number.

Unfortunately, the most obvious and quantifiable item is used to explain what is happening. It is hard to argue against the total of quantified economic transactions in an organization, but it is easy to argue that the outcome of a decision by a powerful individual has a lot of non-quantifiable causes. This is the real source of the argument between economists and Marxists. Economists consider only the clear quantifiable transactions, and Marxists consider how those economic decisions affect human beings.

The result in American politics (the discipline of political power) has been that the economists dominate and ignore the effects of the political power they demand on real human beings. This is the reason for "Trickle-down Economics." Trickle-down economics is the direct result of the dominance of the economic discipline based on clear numbers over the much more vague disciplines of government and sociology.

In the end this free-market bias it will be self-defeating. The overall economy is the resultant of all of the academic disciplines of economics, sociology and government. The strongest and wealthiest international economy will be the one which gets the balance correct.

How long does it take to realize the salesman is lying?

Robert Ellman at Intrepid Liberal provides a great discussion of lies and the marketplace. He then demonstrates how it applies to the Bush/Cheney administration, conservatism and the voters. Conservatism is nothing more than a set of easy-to-accept lies.

When conservatism fails and the incumbents who were elected as conservatives by conseratives, the failure of the ideology is then used to prove that the incumbents are NOT conservatives. They can't be. Conservatism as an ideology is perfect. The only failures are caused by indivuduals who fake being conservatives by are proven by their failures that they are NOT conservatives.

See? Conservatism (like Communism) is a perfect ideology. All failures are those of individuals to properly apply it, or to be less than totally resolute in applying it. As conservative prescriptions fail, the solution is to apply more energy to adopt those conservative prescriptions, because conservatism is perfect and cannot fail.

It's gone! Pluto is only an errant iceball, not a planet.

Suzanne Nossel at Political Animal (Kevin Drum is vacationing at the Science Fiction Convention at Anaheim) spreads the bad news.

"...the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun -- "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites."[Underlining by RB]

According to CNN the new rule was accepted to general applause by the the International Astronomical Union.

Cooking the books for a war on Iran

Over at Talking Points Memo Matthew Yglesias points out that the Republicans are now openly attempting to influence the Intelligence Agencies to offer "analysis" of their collected data that is biased towards justifying another war in the Middle East rather than simply stating what the available evidence actually proves. The similarity with what the same Republicans attempted with Intelligence prior to the so-called "preemptive war" (actually an unnecessary attack on Iraq) is quite blatant.

Yesterday, Matthew also blogged about the strange new term being pushed by the war-hawks of the right-wing Republicans, and recently picked up by George W. Bush. That term is "IslamoFascism" or "Islamic Fascism." This, I think, shows the mind set of the American right-wingers and NeoCons.

The implication of the word "fascism" is of an authoritarian and militaristic nation-state. The implication of the word "Islamic" (or Islamo-") is very clearly anyone who is Muslim. So the use of the term IslamoFascism incorproates all nations which are predominently Muslim and all the violent extremists which those nations contain -- and also, by implication, which those nations protect and support.

Now think about the Bush/Cheney reaction to 9/11. America was attacked by 19 airplane highjackers trained and supported by a small, rabid group of non-state and non-state supported religious extremists. Al Qaeda used the failed state of Afghanistan for a training ground, but was not supported by any government. Al Qaeda has been supported to some extent in Afghanistan by the Pakistani military intelligence agency (ISI).

The first move Bush/Cheney actually took in response to 9/11 was to turn the operation over to the CIA as lead agency and to go in to take control of Afghanistan and remove the Taliban and al Qaeda from what control they had in that failed state. But bin Laden was allowed to escape at Tora Bora because of too few American troops being provided. Almost simultaneously with the CIA directed attack on Afghanistan, Bush/Cheney redirected the American efforts and most resources to the attack on the nation state of Iraq under the direction of the Department of Defense and Rumsfeld.

The reason for the attack on Iraq was that Cheney in particular considers terrorism to be something that must be state-sponsored, and that to get at the terrorists the easiest way is to go after the state that supports and directs their terrorist actions.

This is Cold War thinking. Claire Sterling wrote at least two books rather convincing which purported to describe the terrorist activities in the 1970's and 1980's as being directed by the USSR. Terrorism was considered as a tool of assymetric warfare used by weaker states against much stronger states. But even during that period the Palestine Liberation Organization under Arrafat was becoming an organization independent of state control. The PLO took resources and money from various states and individuals, but after the Israeli Army kicked them out of Lebanon they were financed from numerous sources independent from each other, and were self-directed.

Al Qaeda has taken this model. They are an independent non-state supported organization. They operate in areas of various nation states that are outside the control of the central government such as the borderland between Afghanistan and Pakistan, or some of the less controlled areas of Indonesia such as Aceh was before the Tsumani hit it. These are areas nominally under the control of central governments, so that for an outside nation to cross the national border and performing police work against these bandits would be considered an act of war against the central government, but the central government cannot go in and do the needed police work themselves.

In the area of Pakistan next to Afghanistan (North and South Wiziristan and other Pushtan areas) is such an area. When the Pakistanis government was finally convinced to try to go get control, they lost over 600 troops. At the moment there is a truce. The U.S. does not want to go in there either, because the American troop losses would be high and the blow to prestige of the national government would of permitting American operations there could well cause Musharrif to be overthrown.

There is also a strong possibility that a resurgent Taliban may take over the Southern provinces of Afghanistan. Since this is the main poppy growing area with a lot of revenue from heroin, they could well become an independent state within a state much like the FARC.

The Bush/Cheney admininstration reveal their "state-sponserships is required for a terrorist organization" mentality when they make the unfounded claim that Hezbollah was "directed" by Iran (or Syria) to attack the Israeli troops in Northern Israel. This same idea is behind their hectoring of Intelligence analysts for "cautious assesments" - that is for not offering Intelligence analysis of known facts which supports their bias.

The problem is that control of these relatively independent terrorist organizations is much more difficult than using our military against some rogue state which can be identified and attacked. The difficulty was demonstrated right after 9/11 when the invasion of Afghanistan was controlled by the DIA as the central government agency rather than by the DoD.

Cheney and Rumsfeld both have low regard for the CIA and for most of the Intelligence community because those agencies report the more complex and messy reality. Such messiness does not make it easy to simply send in ground troops with air support.

So when you hear someone use the term "Islamofascism", this is an over-simplification of large orders of magnitude that will be used to direct military forces againstvarious targets. Unfortunatley, those will usually be the wrong targets.

The result of such ignorance will be to create more terrorists, not fewer, just as America's preemptive invasion of Iraq has created a failed state and turned it over to various terrorist groups and militias.

But not all terrorism is by independent terrorist groups. Some are in fact state-sponsored. But they are state-sponsored only as long as they want to be, until the terrorist group decides it has different goals from the state they are associated with. The availablity of funding, weapons, and training locations in a globalized world makes it relatively easy for such groups to become independent from a sponsoring state. Carlos the Jackel and Abu Nidal both started out as Communist-sponsored terrorists, but ended up as independent terrorists.

Back to the term "IslamoFascism." Language is a model of reality. It is only a model, not reality itself. As S. I. Hiakawa pointed out, "The map is not the territory." Another truism is that any model that is designed to control something which is real must be at least as complicated at the reality it is intended to control. That's why complex situations cannot be adequately controlled by simple solutions. Simplicity offers easy answers to problems, but does so by ignoring most of the causes and potential outcomes of those problems. Such simplicity is very dangerous and usually wrong.

Conservatism holds as a truism that there are simple solutions to everything they find troubling. The result is that Conservatives are by definition wrong. Essentially the term "IslamoFascism", besides being offensive to Muslims, is misleading and wrong.

How do you describe "Centrists?" Try corporate political whores.

Ralph Nadar famously said that there's not a dimes bit of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. George Bush, Dick Cheney and the NeoCons have spent nearly six years proving him wrong, but there is a large area in which his statement was and remains completely correct. Over at Alternet Russ Baker describes the way that people who go to Washington as idealists become bought and paid for members of the corporatocracy, and he names the top Ten corporate Democrats-for-Hire.

He does make the point that the corporatists are still more likely to be Republican than to be Democratic. But the article is well worth reading.

[Hat Tip to TPM Muckraker.]

1800 Days and counting

Steve Clemons at his Washington Note points out that it has been 1800 days since George W. Bush told the world that he would get Osama bin Laden. So what has kept bin Laden out of the clutches of Bush?

"Two things -- Dick Cheney and Iraq.

Had Bush stayed on track, shut down bin Laden and gotten to work on redressing some of the bubbling grievances in the Middle East, the world might look substantially different today."

Actually that is one other thing keeping bin Laden free. George W. Bush is not capable of organizing a dog fight with angry dogs. The man who supervised the botched Iraq invasion and the botched rescue of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is simply incapable of organizing a complec international manhunt. He doesn't know how, and he doesn't know who does know how. So bin Laden is still free.

1800 days now. Soon it will be 2000. Then 2500.

Paul Hackett and Chris Matthews tear a Repub idiot (Van Taylor) a new one.

Daily Kos has a great story up. Chris Matthews had both Van Taylor Republican running in Texas CD 17 to defeat Chet Edwards) and Paul Hackett from Ohio on his "Hardball." Apparently it was Iraq war veteran day for Matthews, because both Hackett (the Democrat) and Van Taylor are veterans of the Iraq war. Taylor is the ONLY Republican veteran of the Iraq War running anywhere in the United States.

Chris Matthews started by asking why the U.S. was in Iraq, and Taylor dodged the question. But he emphasized that we are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq so that we didn't have to fight them over here. Matthews asked why the al Qaeda was in Iraq, and Taylor said that they went there in Summer of 2003 to fight the Americans. Matthews jumped him with a statement that al Qaeda would not have been there if we had not previously invaded Iraq. It went down hill for Taylor after that, and Paul Hadket was great.

Daily Kos has a good transcript, but if you really want to see it, go to Crooks and Liars for the video. It is a great 8 minutes 30 seconds, and if Chet Edwards doesn't use clips from it in his reelection campaign he isn't the experienced Texas Democratic Pol that I happen to know he is.

Go watch the video. Republicans will be too sick to click through, and Democrats will love it.

Paul Hackett has a real future in the new Democratic Party. We just don't yet know what it is. He seems to love the political combat, and he is really good at it. Digby offered an interesting idea a few days ago, and named Paul Hacket by name. His performance on "Hardball" certainly demonstrates he has the chops for it.

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The Christian Science Monitor had a good article on how many veterans against the way the war in Iraq is being run are standing for election this year. It was published inthe February 22, 2006 issue, so it is a little more pessimistic that we will be today. There were then 11 Iraq War veterans, and Van Taylor is the only Republican veteran running, and he is a total apologist for the war, doing nothing but quoting RNC soundbytes.

Jason Leopold and Truthout still defend story on Rove indictment

OK. I don't know that I believe Truthout and Jason Leopold any more, but I wish I could. They still claim that Fitzgerald has a sealed indictement on Karl Rove and is still working on it. Truthout has teamed Leopold up with Truthout Executive Director, Marc Ash. So it seems clear that both Ash and Leopold are staking their reputations on the accuracy of this reporting. Leopold's reported previous problems as a reporter should be given less weight, and Ash's reputation more weight in the evaluation of the reporting. Go see the Previous Posts which are listed below.

Here is the story dated August 21, 2006.

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Previous posts on this story:

• Backstory on Leopold's now discredited scoop
  June 18, 2006
• Truthout stands down on the 'Rove Indicted' story
  June 16, 2006
• Leopold holds firm - Rove was indicted
  June 12, 2006
• Rove - indicted or not? Truthout defends Leopold's reporting
  May 21, 2006
• Karl's fate is subject for informed speculation
  May 7, 2006

OK. OK. Jon Benet Ramsey. Karr's crazy, but not her killer

WTOL-Toledo has posted a interview with a retired forensic psychologist regarding the so-called confession by John Karr that he "...was with Jon Benet Ramsey when she died." The psychologist considers it very unlikely, but he also thinks that this arrest will end any realistic investigation of her death.

Read it. He makes a lot of sense. That's unlike anything else I have read or seen recently on the subject.

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God! How low can I sink? A Jon Benet Ramsey post!

Sorry.

I love it. I REALLY love it. DeLay's CD likely to go Democratic

Tom DeLay tried hard to choose his own successor in the Congressional seat he has held for two decades. That was why he tried to drop out and let the Republicans choose his replacement, but the Democrats scotched that effort.

Finally, "The Hammer" had no choice but to ask that his name be removed from the ballot in November and Texas law does not permit the Republican Party to replace his name on the ballot after he won the Primary. Nick Lampson, the Democrat, is now set to take the seat. From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Free reg required)

"No question it's possible," said Thode, GOP chairman in DeLay's home county until a few months ago. "I would hope that any logical thinking Republican will realize where the blame lies. The blame lies with Tom DeLay."

DeLay's voluntary withdrawal from the ballot Tuesday, the product of an attempt to have the party handpick his successor, has left Republicans with no choice but to try a long-shot write-in campaign. Yet they are in such disarray now that the hope of backing a single write-in candidate has essentially vanished. There are three declared write-ins, and one top state Republican, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, is urging Republicans to consider voting for the Libertarian candidate, who does have a spot on the ballot.

Citing the divisions and the $3 million that Democratic nominee Nick Lampson has raised, two leading political analysts -- Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato -- changed their ratings of the seat this week to "leans Democrat."

It had been "leans Republican" only a few days ago.

"This is extremely strange," said Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "No one could have predicted this. No one did predict it. It's a comedy of errors, but the joke is on the Republicans."

Even many Republicans now acknowledge the race is all but lost."

Mother was right. There IS real justice in the world! I love this.

[Granted, I am looking at eggs and counting chickens, and there are two-and-a-half months to go. If I were Nick Lampson I wouldn't take any plane rides until I was sworn into Congress next January.]

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See Previous posts:

• Tom DeLay to take name off ballot for Nov.
  August 9, 2006
• Tom DeLay must stay on ballot for Nov.
  August 3, 2006