Moyer interviews Bacevich on the American security complex and its' failed Iraq war

Tonight at 9:00 pm Bill Moyers will air an interview with Col. Bacevich about the nature of the Imperial Presidency, the nature of the security state which has grown up since WW II, Congress' abdication of control and its new job as a perpetual job machine for Congress persons, and the way our security state has failed to stop 9/11 and failed to properly plan and organize the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Here is a short excerpt from that hour-long interview:



If this doesn't leave you thinking, then give it up. You have nothing to think with.


[H/T to Talking Points Memo.]

---

Addendum 8/16/2008 1:11 pm CDT
Here is a link to the full transcript of the show "The Imperial Presidency" which aired last night.

Here is a video of the entire show shown last night.

This is Bacevich's newest book "The Limits of Power" which is scheduled for release next Tuesday, August 19, 2008.

This is Barnes & Noble's synopsis of the book:

The Limits of Power identifies a profound triple crisis facing America:

• the economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad;
• the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only;
• U.S. involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic.

These pressing problems threaten all of us, Republicans and Democrats. If the nation is to solve its predicament, it will need the revival of a distinctly American approach: the neglected tradition of realism.

Andrew J. Bacevich, uniquely respected across the political spectrum, offers a historical perspective on the illusions that have governed American policy since 1945. The realism he proposes includes respect for power and its limits; sensitivity to unintended consequences; aversion to claims of exceptionalism; skepticism of easy solutions, especially those involving force; and a conviction that the books will have to balance. Only a return to such principles, Bacevich argues, can provide common ground for fixing America’s urgent problems before the damage becomes irreparable.
[I have added the emphasis and the bullet points. Editor WTF-o]

Remember the PUMA's? So-called disaffected Hillary Democrats?

It seems that the PUMA's promised to hold a big convention in a downtown Washington hotel, with registration to be cut off after 250 registrants had paid $250 apiece to attend.

For some odd reason they cut registration off early, then moved the conference to a undisclosed location. One of Cheney's discards, perhaps? Rumproast has an excellent story on the conference.

Their two best known attendees were the notorious Vexatious litigant Andy Martin and Lyndon LaRouche devotee and 9/11 Truther Webster Tarpley. They seem to have joined the Republican shill Darragh Murphy who created PUMA to garner media attention after Obama won the Democratic primaries.

Go read the Rumproast story on the PUMA convention. The comments are priceless. And by the way, I counted either 30 or 31 name tags not picked up on the registration table in the second photo. They would be out of the 60 they alleged they had, after trying to get 250 and failing.

If I were a comedy writer, this story could be a great premise for something like "The Producers." Think of the characters! A Republican shill pretending to be a disaffected Hillary Democrat claiming to support McCain because of how badly Hillary was treated in the Primary. A conference attended by an antisemitic perpetual political candidate with a law degree who was not allowed by the Bar to practice law because of prior activities that did not reflect well on lawyers (a very low bar - pun intended) and another guy who is a well-known disciple of Lyndon LaRouche and is famous as a critic of US foreign policy who "...maintains that the events of 9/11 were engineered by a rogue network of the military industrial complex." according to his Wikipedia entry.

Throw in a shadowy Republican "handler" who offers suggestions, together with another shadowy money supplier who encourages new PR stunts and funds them. Add an in-house organizer who handles administrative details, and two or there dumb-as-post followers who take the whole thing seriously even as the Murphy and the organizer are rapidly and obviously skimming as much as possible off the top of any revenue that comes in. Track the events from the initial organization of the 527 and the first interviews with suckered-in reporters and TV producers through the RBC meeting to the DC convention. Then take it out to Denver.

The key that made the Producers work was that the plan was designed to fail. That way the investors could never expect any return on their investment. The disaster was that suddenly the play started actually making money. Since the producers had sold well more than 100% of the stock,there was no chance that they could ever pay the investors what was promised.

That premise wouldn't work here, but if Murphy and her helpers were living in paranoid fear that Democratic operators were trying to shut them down some similar dynamic could be built through the story. Say perhaps, they got a running gig on a FOX Bill O'Reilly clone and had to duck what they believed were Democratic operatives (actually process servers trying to get them into court for skimming the money) to get their interviews. This last part needs work, but should be workable. Just have everyone in the whole thing out to scam everyone else, and the cops and or process servers closing in on all of them.

I think something very funny could be done with that premise.

Gee. Who could have known ....?

Condi's stock phrase could make an excellent title for the history of the idiotic conservative policies of the Bush administration and their almost universally disastrous results.

Bush admin makes promise it it too disorganized to keep; What? Again?

Remember the man pretending to by President - you know, the bike rider? He promised that the US was going to send humanitarian aid to Georgia. Only - he never bothered to check first to see if the Turks would permit US naval vessels to go through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles that connect the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.

I'm sure that Condi Rice is happy to once again use her stock phrase "Gee? Who could have known ...?"

Why did Obama win the Democratic nomination intead of Hillary? Here's Joe Trippi.

Joe Trippi presents his list of the things that went wrong for the Hillary Clinton nomination campaign.

In politics the number of things you can wonder “if only” about are legion in a losing campaign, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign has hundreds of them.

If only they had actually contested the caucus states, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

If only they had known the campaign was going to last past February 5th, and planned accordingly, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

If only they hadn’t spent all that money prior to Iowa, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

If only they had figured out just a little earlier that change was more important than experience, Hillary Clinton would have been the Democratic nominee.

If only they had run a more bottom-up campaign that empowered people, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

If only they had let Hillary be authentic, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee.

And of course, if only Barack Obama had not run for President, Hillary Clinton would be the nominee.

I think Trippi's list can be summarized.

• If Hillary has not voted to let Bush invade Iraq or had adequately dealt with her mistaken vote early in the campaign she might have won.
• If Hillary had campaigned as an agent of change against Bush early on, she might have won. And
• If Obama had not run such a really well-managed campaign, taking every possible advantage and offering few weaknesses, Hillary might have won.

But it is clear that none of those things happened, and Obama won the campaign for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008.

A lot of Hillary's weaknesses came from trying to run on the strengths her husband had displayed in the late 90's together with her early fund raising advantage. But conditions had changed, and Obama was the new kid on the block, aware of the newer conditions early on. He also had to work harder to find Hillary's weaknesses, and he found them when they ran a campaign based on winning states and Obama ran a campaign based on winning delegates.

Trippi is right. John Edwards did not cause Hillary to lose the Democratic nomination. Her own weaknesses as a candidate and Obama's ability to take advantage of those weaknesses allowed Obama to win the nomination.

What is Russia's reasion for continuing to attack into Georgia?

In spite of an apparent ceasefire, Russian troops continue to engage with Georgian military. Why? Tom Lasseter and Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy Newspapers provides the answer.

GORI, Georgia — Russian troops, in seeming violation of a cease-fire agreement set only on Tuesday, embarked Wednesday on what Georgian officials called a deliberate and systematic attempt to demolish what remains of the Georgian military. [Snip]

The state news service Interfax quoted an analyst saying that, "Moscow will now be listened to and treated seriously. The West has … not listened to Russia over the past 15 years."

The Russians have been working hard to induce the Georgians to attack South Ossetia so that they could justify counterattacking the Georgians. The Russians also know there will be a lot of international repercussions, so once committed, they want the greatest possible benefit.

The essential purpose of this effort is for Russia to show those countries next to them, the "Near Abroad," that Russia is back with a vengeance. The talk among those "Near Abroad" countries that they were going to join NATO to protect themselves from "The Bear" angered "The Bear" and so the nearby countries that thought they could act without considering what Russian wants/demands had better think twice.

The purpose of the attack into Georgia was to greatly damage and embarrass Georgia, and to the extent possible, to eliminate the Georgian military as a credible force. The Russian military will stop attacking the Georgian military when there is no significant Georgian military left to attack.

The rest of the near abroad nations, particularly Ukraine, will be carefully absorbing this lesson, as well at the helplessness of the US and the passivity of European nations. The Bear is back, and the western nations that were talking such a great fight have faded when a real fight was necessary. Talk is cheap, and the Russians are not.

That's the lesson. And unlike the US in Iraq, the Russians have sent enough troops to make sure the lesson is learned.

This is a great Obama ad

This advertisement is a short, sharp, very accurate description of John McCain. He won't find it flattering, but it is absolutely true.

It's a perfect example of that old Harry Truman story. His audience was telling him "Give'm Hell, Harry!" and he responded “I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”

Does America really need a technologically illiterate President?

John McCain not only doesn't know how to email, he seems proud of his ignorance. Amanda Terkel looks at the issue:

Most of the tech talk surrounding McCain has so far focused on his self-admitted computer ignorance. "I'm an illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that I can get," McCain said in an interview with Yahoo/Politico earlier this year. Last month, McCain admitted that he has "never felt the particular need to e-mail."

Tech has put the McCain campaign on the defensive about whether a president needs to be actively engaged in the Internet to lead an increasingly wired country. At the tech-savvy Personal Democracy Forum conference in June, Mark Soohoo, McCain's deputy e-campaign director, drew snickers when he desperately insisted, "You don't necessarily have to use a computer to understand how it shapes the country ... John McCain is aware of the Internet." [Snip]

The United States currently sticks out globally for having no national broadband policy -- a plan to give every American access to affordable high-speed Internet connections. Roughly half of the country's households still lack broadband connections, and the United States continues to fall behind. "Broadband will soon be an indispensable communication technology affecting the way we learn, the way we work, and the way we communicate," Charles Benton, chairman and CEO of the Benton Foundation, wrote in June. "However, at the dawn of this Digital Age, those who could benefit the most from this economically empowering technology are also those most likely to be left without access because of where they live or how much money they make."

Science and technology certainly haven't been priorities under the Bush administration. A 2005 report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded, "The scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength." McCain has given little indication that he intends to be much different, and that has some tech experts worried.

"What concerns me is that [McCain] will do as George Bush did, which is to make technology an issue related to how he raises money to run the government or to fund campaigns, and not as an independent issue that is important to grow America," said Stanford University professor and Internet expert Lawrence Lessig. "Technology for the Bush administration is a total non-issue, even though that was the thing that drove most growth in 1992 to 2003. And the reason I think he'd be led to that is because [he's] a guy who doesn't understand anything about technology in the first place." [Snip]

McCain has a long record of blocking progress on tech issues. He has served as a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation since coming to the Senate in 1987, and as chairman from 1997 to 2001, and again from 2003 to 2005. He oversaw the committee at a crucial point in history: the explosion of the Internet economy.

During McCain's tenure, the committee oversaw the implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the first major overhaul of U.S. telecom law in nearly 62 years. McCain had to choose whether to be pro-competition or pro-big business. In most instances, he chose the latter route, by opposing increased Internet access for schools and libraries, backing large mergers to benefit the telecom industry and supporting a virtual system of haves and have-nots. [Snip]

McCain's long history in the Senate has one main theme: Government can do no good in telecom policy. "McCain is a pure free-market ideologue," said Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America. "Their [Bush and McCain] belief is that government should just get out of the way and let the private sector do it. Clearly, in the financial markets, the private sector has done a horrible job."

Other media experts have characterized McCain's Commerce Committee tenure as a lost opportunity to make progress on telecommunications policy. "The thing that stands out for his entire tenure is that he has never had a priority, and has never had, to my knowledge, any accomplishment of any kind at all," said [Reed] Hundt. [Snip]

McCain was one of the most vocal opponents of Education Rate (E-Rate), a program designed to provide discounts to schools and libraries to connect to the Internet. [Snip]

Americans don't expect the next president to be Twitterer-in-chief, but he will need to lead an increasingly technologically savvy nation and ensure that the benefits of advanced telecommunications reach as many people as possible. "Government doesn't need to manage the technological developments," Hundt said at the June Federalist Society debate. "But it ought to establish a rule of law where entrepreneurs can raise money and enter these markets."

Closing the digital divide and developing an equitable broadband strategy will be a significant challenge. Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America said McCain won't be up to the task. "Nobody believes if McCain gets into office he's going to fix federal communications policy," he said. "He doesn't have any credibility when it comes to [initiating] a government act. Obviously, he's trading on the capital he built up when he was the straight-talk express. But that capital is dissipating very quickly."

Can a man who is proud to be a technological troglodyte actually create and implement a technological policy that will lead America into a successful 21st Century?

It's extremely doubtful. He considers technology to be the exclusive province of private enterprise, to be designed to meet the demands of a competitive market. Yet at the same time he invariably fights for mergers and corporate consolidations that limit or eliminate competition.

If he sees no need to make technology a priority in his work life where it would make him more productive, how can he set such technological policy priorities for the nation? He can't. It's that simple. Under a McCain Presidency, America will continue its rapid march into a technological backwater.

Cyberwar against Georgia; It started in June

The pressure against Georgia has been in cyberspace, too. From the New York Times:

Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace. [Snip]

Researchers at Shadowserver, a volunteer group that tracks malicious network activity, reported that the Web site of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had been rendered inoperable for 24 hours by multiple D.D.O.S. attacks. They said the command and control server that directed the attack was based in the United States and had come online several weeks before it began the assault.

As it turns out, the July attack may have been a dress rehearsal for an all-out cyberwar once the shooting started between Georgia and Russia. According to Internet technical experts, it was the first time a known cyberattack had coincided with a shooting war. [Snip]

According to Internet technical experts, it was the first time a known cyberattack had coincided with a shooting war.

But it will likely not be the last, said Bill Woodcock, the research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit organization that tracks Internet traffic. He said cyberattacks are so inexpensive and easy to mount, with few fingerprints, they will almost certainly remain a feature of modern warfare.

“It costs about 4 cents per machine,” Mr. Woodcock said. “You could fund an entire cyberwarfare campaign for the cost of replacing a tank tread, so you would be foolish not to.”

Exactly who was behind the cyberattack is not known. The Georgian government blamed Russia for the attacks, but the Russian government said it was not involved. [Snip]

In Georgia, media, communications and transportation companies were also attacked, according to security researchers. Shadowserver saw the attack against Georgia spread to computers throughout the government after Russian troops entered the Georgian province of South Ossetia. The National Bank of Georgia’s Web site was defaced at one point. Images of 20th-century dictators as well as an image of Georgia’s president, Mr. Saakashvili, were placed on the site. “Could this somehow be indirect Russian action? Yes, but considering Russia is past playing nice and uses real bombs, they could have attacked more strategic targets or eliminated the infrastructure kinetically,” said Gadi Evron, an Israeli network security expert. “The nature of what’s going on isn’t clear,” he said.

In addition to D.D.O.S. attacks that crippled Georgia’s limited Internet infrastructure, researchers said there was evidence of redirection of Internet traffic through Russian telecommunications firms beginning last weekend. The attacks continued on Tuesday, controlled by software programs that were located in hosting centers controlled by a Russian telecommunications firms. A Russian-language Web site, stopgeorgia.ru, also continued to operate and offer software for download used for D.D.O.S. attacks.

Since Georgia has so little Internet structure, this was probably just more harassment to rattle the Georgian high command. It may also have been a test of cyberwar capabilities, too. Such a test could determine effectiveness, the best manner of coordinating cyberwar with bullet-war and how to conceal the sources of cyber attacks.

In any case, this is an interesting new highlight of the Georgia - Russia war.

Some notes on the military terrain and situation in South Ossetia

I've been looking for a good description of the military terrain and related geographical situation in South Ossetia. Here is some information from a New York times Article from Aug 9, 2008.

The Ossetians, who number about 60,000, are part of the patchwork of ethnic groups that inhabit the mountains of the Caucasus. They have long yearned for separation from Georgia, appealing to Russia, their northern neighbor, for support.

Over the years, ethnic tension became a way of life in Tskhinvali, the provincial capital of South Ossetia, a city ringed by highlands where concrete street barriers were sometimes erected to keep the groups apart. During flare-ups, gangs of young men would ambush convoys on mountain roads. [Snip]

Although Abkhazia has far more strategic importance to both sides, the city of Tskhinvali is in a valley ringed by Georgian-held villages, on terrain easily navigable by tanks.

Mountains seal off the region to the north, toward Russia, so separatists rely on a single key route — the Roki Tunnel, which cuts deep through the mountains — for commerce, military aid and evacuation to the north.

Georgian leaders have long felt they could take the enclave swiftly, pushing north in one or two days to the Russian border. [Snip]

Hostilities routinely flare in the region late in the summer, when scarce water supplies pit neighbors against one another, said Sabine Freizer, the director of International Crisis Group’s Europe program.
[Emphasis added by Editor]

It appears that the Georgian military thought that they could quickly conquer South Ossetia from its more open South side, while the Russian military would be delayed by negotiating the tunnel and single road in from the North. That would have permitted the Georgians to present a fait accompli to the world before the Russians could get into combat.

Obviously that strategy failed. If the Russians had already moved their armor into South Ossetia, it was hopeless. Had the Georgians been able to tell where the Russians were forming up, or had the Americans had satellite surveillance of the area, perhaps the Georgians would not have attacked South Ossetia.

Since the Russians have been pushing the Georgians for months to make that attack, it is probable that they were completely prepared for it. What is really surprising is that the Americans weren't watching Russian troop movements, or if they were, didn't inform the Georgians.

Map of Georgia with A at Tskhinvali Pull back out and look at all of Georgia in the Terrain mode. I notice that google does not provide a road map of Georgia, probably so that the map can't be used for military reasons.

A view of American fecklessness from Turkey

Soli Ozel, who teaches at Istanbul Bilgi University's Department of International Relations and Political Science comments on the situation in Georgia.

Even if the Russians wanted to have an empire again, they would not wish to run it directly. They will of course have influence on their neighbors, just as the United States does in the Western hemisphere. The brutality of the Russian response is a function not just of their own regained self-confidence thanks to oil and gas money, or of their propensity for dominance, but also of misguided Western -- particularly American -- policies. If the United States cannot control a two-bit client such as Saakashvili (who turned out to be no better than the person he replaced, Eduard Shevardnadze) and keep him from taking this utterly destructive step, then what good is American policy? Would any self-respecting power tolerate the kind of 'in your face' attitude the Russians were expected to digest? When the United States supported Kosovo's independence and recognized the government in Prishtina, did it not think what would follow next or listen to what Putin had to say?

I support the independence of Kosovo. I find the Russian assault against Georgia illegal and disproportionate and I think the Kremlin's regime is brutal. But then again, would anyone take seriously Paris, whose complicity in the Rwandan genocide was recently reiterated, or Washington, which invaded a country (illegally and illegitimately by the judgment of most of the world) and made torture legal, when they accuse Russia of anything? [Snip]

Arguably the American moment in the Caucasus is gone. It is time to go back to the drawing board; to come up with a new policy that will speak to the Russians' better natures and bring them closer to Western policies, even if they are unlikely to become model democrats in the immediate future.

By the way, I am sure that in Tehran everyone has an irrepressible smile on their face, too.
[Bolding added to text by Editor]

The situation is the Caucus is not the cause of America's international helplessness. It merely demonstrates it. The Cheney/Bush/NeoCon strategy of meeting every international situation with extreme bluster and frequent (and often illegal) military force is the cause.

The situation in the Caucasus has merely demonstrated the severe weakness demonstrated by the Bush "bluster and bomb" effort to control other nations.

[H/T to Laura Rozen at War & Piece.]

Bush admin knew Russia was going to attack; Did nothing

So Russia attacks America's ~ally~ in the Causcusas, Georgia. Is that a problem for the Bush administration?

Apparently They don't think so. Bush attended the Olympics and Rice stayed on vacation. No quick gatherings to determine how to deal with the new and deadly situation. No top level diplomat sent to Moscow to try to stop the carnage. No real expression of concern, even. French President Sarkozy quickly visited Moscow to negotiate a ceasefire, but there was no real reaction from the Bush administration.

It's almost as if -- no, that's not possible -- almost as if the Bush people knew the attack was coming and had approved it in advance.

From Jonaton Landay of McKlatchy News:

Bush administration officials, worried by what they saw as a series of provocative Russian actions, repeatedly warned Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin an excuse to intervene in his country militarily, U.S. officials said Monday.

But in the end, the warnings failed to stop the Georgian president — a Bush favorite — from launching an attack last week that on Monday seemed likely to end not only in his country’s military humiliation but complete occupation by Russian forces.

The Pentagon claims they had no advance knowledge of the Georgian attack on South Ossetia that set the Russian invasion into motion.

Russia has been angry over Georgia's close links with Washington, and has been determined to stop the admission to NATO of its former vassal, which is located on strategic energy and transportation routes to Central Asia.

The Russian actions against Georgia "seemed designed to provoke a Georgian over-reaction," said a senior U.S. official. "We have always counseled restraint to the Georgians."

Some experts, however, wondered whether the administration might have inadvertently sent Saakashvili mixed messages that would have led him to believe he could count on U.S. support if he got into trouble.

Bush lavished praise on the U.S.-educated Georgian leader as a "beacon of democracy." He gave military training and equipment to Georgia, which supplied the third-largest contingent to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, and had promised NATO membership, they said. He visited the country in 2005 and addressed a huge crowd from the same podium as Saakashvili.

"The Russians have clearly overreacted but President Saakashvili . . . for some reason seems to think he has a hall pass from this administration," said former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. [Snip]

A "parade" of U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visited Tbilisi to urge Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin to act, a State Department officials said.

At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

"We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this," the State Department official said. "We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it's not."

It's also clear that the timing of the actual Russian invasion was not anticipated. That was a major Intelligence failure for the United States.

One problem in under-estimating the Russian response, another U.S. official said, was "a dearth of intelligence assets in the region."

U.S. "national technical means," the official name for spy satellites and other technology, are "pretty well consumed by Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan," the official said, and there was only limited monitoring of Russian military movements toward the Georgian border.

Additionally, the United States had lost access to vital information when Russia dropped out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in December to protest U.S. plans to build missile defense sites in Europe.

Under the treaty, Russia had been required to exchange reports on troop, armor and aircraft deployments with the United States and other members on a monthly basis. But once Russia dropped out, that information was no longer available.

"I wouldn't say we were blind," the official said. "I would say that we mostly were focused elsewhere, unlike during the Cold War, when we'd see a single Soviet armor battalion move. So, yes, the size and scope of the Russian move has come as something of a surprise."

So the U.S. has inadequate human intelligence sources in Georgia and the technical Intelligence assets (spy sattellites, etc.) were focused elsewhere, even as they were supposedly warning the Shakasvili that the Russians were trying to provoke a reason to invade! Then the Bush administration's insistence on placing missile defense sites in Eastern Europe led Russia to stop cooperating in reporting troop movements. How do you say it? Bush/Cheney failed in both the Intelligence functions and in the diplomatic functions! Then when the Russians did attack - and exceeded the understanding the Bush administration thought it had with them, the Bush administration was paralyzed. The only action they took was to weakly state:

"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people," President Bush proclaimed whined after returning from China. "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."

"These actions jeopardize Russia's relations with the United States and Europe," Bush said. "It's time for Russia to be true to its word to act to end this crisis."

While I doubt that the Bush people could have stopped the Russian take-over of South Ossetia and Abkhazskay, their ham-handed handling of the entire Eastern European vs. Russia situation clearly made things worse then they had to be. Then when the shit hit the fan, they did literally nothing to try to reduce the carnage.

Russia has now made its point. The US and NATO have very little power in the nations of the old Soviet Union, what the Russians now call the "Near Abroad." A win for the Bush administration would have been to create a situation in which the Russians would not as easily eliminated all ambiguity on that subject. Instead the Bush administration is now shown to have tacitly approved the Russian military invasion of South Ossetia and Georgia.

Between the clear military weakness that has resulted from having all the American troops tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the clear foreign policy incompetence of the White House, how many other nations will now perceive the weakness and incompetence of the American government and act on that perception? Iran? Iraq? Pakistan?

Movement conservatism and the Supreme Court appointment of the utter incompetent Bush to the Presidency in 2000 has brought America to this new low.

The great contemporary heresy

Foreign policy "realists" and neocons share an important characteristic: they both subscribe to what C.S. Lewis called the great contemporary heresy: that evil is more powerful than good, and that good cannot survive without an admixture of evil to give it strength. Orwell identified the same basic psychological kink as "power worship," and thought it was linked to cowardice.

So when Vladimir Putin shows that a willingness to use violence and break civilized norms sometimes succeeds, people on the right who hate and fear him as much as I do jump to the conclusion that what America needs is leaders like Vladimir Putin, willing to "take risks" with other people's lives.

Feh.

Well-stated by Mark Kleiman at "The Reality-Based Community."

More on South Ossetia and the Russia - Georgia crisis

Mark Kleiman relays some information from his co-blogger, Jonathon Kulik, currently in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia.

South Ossetia is an analyst's or commentator's minefield. About 10 people in the world outside of Georgia or Russia really understand it. Abkhazia is sexy — S.O. was the ugly stepsister.

The South Ossetian forces (under Russian command) hit Georgian villages in So. Ossetia, and the Georgian army responded. It had been going on for a few days/weeks/years, depending on how you look at it.

Administratively (at least until last week), South Ossetia was a patchwork quilt of Tskhinvali-, Georgian-, and Georgian-backed-proxy-Ossetian-controlled villages. The peacekeepers are a four-party (Georgia, Russia, South O, North O) operation, under an OSCE mandate. It's hard to tell the difference between Russian "peacekeepers," Russian Army, and So. Ossetian army. The Tskhinvali security forces are largely regular Russian Army (not mercenaries), wearing S.O. uniforms.

And it only gets more complicated. Many yakkers refer to the S. Ossetians as "ethnic Russians." They're not; they are Ossetians (an Iranic ethnos), Georgians, and mixed families. The residents of Tskhinvali-controlled S.O. have been given Russian passports, and most call Putin "our president." Russia has de facto annexed S.O., while Tskhinvali maintains that it's independent.

This is the second time I have heard about the Russians providing Russian passports to residents of South Ossetia. (I can't find the first one.)But it appears that Russia was annexing South Ossetia anyway, even as the South Ossetian government claimed to be an independent government.

The map of Georgia shows South Ossetia (in green) as almost at the center of Georgia. For Russia to control South Ossetia would mean that Geographically Georgia has indefensible borders. It would (will?)severely limit Georgia as an independent nation. This has to be at least part of the calculation going on the the minds of the leadership of both Georgia and of Russia.

Veteran's Administration refuses to allow veterans to vote

Why won't the Secretary of the Veteran's Administration allow veteran's in his care to register to vote? From the New York Times

On May 5, the department led by James B. Peake issued a directive that bans nonpartisan voter registration drives at federally financed nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and shelters for homeless veterans. As a result, too many of our most patriotic American citizens — our injured and ill military veterans — may not be able to vote this November.

These are the guys who fought for our right to vote, and now the VA won't allow them to register to vote unless they are physically capable of escaping control of the Veteran's Administration.

This is more Republican voter suppression, but I thought that veterans were a Republican-oriented voter block? What are Karl Rove's disciples afraid of? Poor veterans?

Why Obama won't push the Bush/conservative catastrophe of Katrina in this election

Digby explains it.

I'm seeing Katrina become the Abu Ghraib of 2008, and there's undeniably a racial component to that. We have a disaster that completely discredits conservative theories of governance, but because it disproportionately affected poor black people in New Orleans, our African-American nominee, who has to play by the Jackie Robinson Rules, would be presumed by a clueless media to be stirring up racial warfare, or "playing the race card," or whatever.
[Highligting added - Editor]

And so what? Go read Digby.

The conservative-created Predator State described

Jay K. Galbraith, author of The Predator State explains why the American economy is currently collapsing.

As I got to know the free-market, supply-side crowd, the hard money, low-tax, Wall Street Journal deregulate-and-privatize team, I came rather to like them. I never thought they were right. Far from it: on matters of economic policy they were in my view mostly nuts. But I did think - and do think - that they held their views in good faith. They were, by and large, willing to argue the merits of their ideas. And they had behind them the authority of a vast academic establishment, ranging from Friedrich von Hayek to Milton Friedman to such contemporaries as Gary Becker and Robert Mundell - all just as nutty in my view. (For those who would be amused by it, my 1990 debate with Friedman on his TV show, "Free to Choose" can be found here. )

The academic economics of the 1970s lined up behind the right-wing politics of the 1980s for a reason. Reaganomics had a logic. Each policy would aim at one problem. Tight money would cure inflation. Low taxes would stimulate saving and work effort. Small government and balanced budgets would 'crowd in' investment; free trade would make us efficient. Corporate executive pay should be tied to the stock market, as this would cure the "agency" problem and make the firm work for its owners; "market discipline" would instill a new competitiveness in the enterprise. Deregulation, above all, would substitute the invisible hand of the "efficient market" for the dead hand of bureaucracy.

This was a modern version of the economics of David Ricardo, of which Keynes wrote long ago:

That it reached conclusions quite different from what the ordinary uninstructed person would expect, added, I suppose, to its intellectual prestige. That its teaching, translated into practice, was austere and often unpalatable, lent it virtue. That it was adapted to carry a vast and consistent logical superstructure, gave it beauty. That it could explain much social injustice and apparent cruelty as an inevitable incident in the scheme of progress, and the attempt to change such things as likely... to do more harm than good, commended it to authority.

It was very interesting to me that some of the first to sense this loss of public purpose were the very conservatives who had swept in with Reagan. The nemeses of my youth, people like Bruce Bartlett, Paul Craig Roberts, the late Jude Wanniski, went over into hard opposition. This was compounded by their opposition to Bush's assaults on civil liberties and the war in Iraq, but at the core they felt that Bush had no conservative convictions. And so, at least as far as broad politics go, we were suddenly on the same side. As I put in on Marketplace on Thursday: "Had I gone crazy? Or had they gone sane?" Either way, there seemed to be a book in it and The Predator State is the result.

Reality soon barged in. Following the steep recession of 1981-82 and the victory of the congressional Democrats that year, economic policy became much more pragmatic. Monetarism was abandoned. Social Security was not privatized. The income tax cuts kicked in, and while they never stimulated saving or work effort, they did increase purchasing power in the usual Keynesian way. Later on, Congress took back quite a lot of the initial Reagan tax giveaways, and enacted a comprehensive tax reform. Reagan's trade policies were quite protectionist- notably on cars and steel -drawing stern protests from libertarians. And after the fiasco of the savings and loans, that industry was re-regulated while many perpetrators of financial fraud went to jail.

Still, though the free-marketeers lost many battles, their propaganda machine remained very strong. And historians have so far largely accepted their story. Global events helped: the fall of communism in Europe reinforced Milton Friedman's argument that capitalism meant freedom (something that many Chileans and Argentines in those years found hard to swallow).

But liberals and Democrats also abetted the triumph of the right. They mostly stopped arguing over theory. "The age of big government is over!" Bill Clinton declared. Liberals accepted the virtue of balanced budgets, of low tax rates, and of deregulation in many spheres, of leaving the fight against inflation solely in the hands of the Federal Reserve. In alliance with big business, Democratic presidents became aggressive advocates of what they called "free trade" - though it was really just the use of diplomacy for political payola. Democrats and liberals won some policy battles and some elections, and they presided over a prosperous moment. But they did it by selling themselves as Reagan-lite, by overselling small social advances, pilot projects and placebos, and by riding the crest of a credit boom that could not be sustained.

The judicial coup of December 2000 that installed Bush and Cheney brought back some of Reagan's men and his most extreme policies - tax cuts for the wealthy, big increases in military spending, aggressive deregulation. But it didn't bring back the ideas. Instead, it became clear that Bush and Cheney had no real ideas, no larger public justification. They cut taxes to enrich their supporters. For the same reason, they outsourced to Blackwater and Halliburton and pursued military pipe dreams like Missile Defense. They were willing to have the government spend like a drunken sailor in 2003/4 to boost the economy before the election. They placed lobbyists in charge of the regulators, representing, in every case, the most extreme anti-regulation perspective. (Not so long ago, Bush's financial regulators showed up at a press conference with a chainsaw.) Under Bush and Cheney, oil and gas, drug companies and defense contractors, insurers and usurers control the government of the United States, and it does what they want. This is the predator state.

The blurb that accompanies the Barnes & Noble offering says

The real economy is not a free-market economy. It is a complex combination of private and public institutions, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, higher education, the housing finance system, and a vast federal research establishment. The real problems and challenges -- inequality, climate change, the infrastructure deficit, the subprime crisis, and the future of the dollar -- are problems that cannot be solved by incantations about the market. They will be solved only with planning, with standards and other policies that transcend and even transform markets.
[Highlighting added by Editor]

As a student of economics and of accounting, I very much agree with this statement. Government is critical to the effective operation of an economy.

But at the same time, the only semi-reliable measure of value is what is developed in a fair market between an independent and equally powerful buyer and seller. Markets are critical to setting value in the economy, although real markets are quite rare. But markets only record the current value. They do not have any predictive power beyond the best guess of the buyers and sellers. Markets reflect what the buyers and sellers can agree is fair value right now. Plans, economic infrastructure, research in progress, financial and governmental institutions and long term developments are not accounted for in markets except on a historical basis.

Here's more from Jay K. Galbraith:

I have never accepted that the United States fits the mold of a "free market economy." If we ever did, that model collapsed in the Great Depression. What was built in its place was a remarkable mix of public and private. There was, of course, plenty of room for enterprise. But it came in a framework, of a government that was, at its best, competently concerned with research, infrastructure, national security, the workplace and the environment, that provided Social Security and a large share of education, health care and housing. Part of the accidental genius of the system was that the public-private mix in those three areas, especially, created "soft budget constraints" that caused higher education, the medical sector and the mortgage market to grow very large - far larger than they ever could have, under either the free market taken alone or under socialism. While many notorious problems remained (especially our lack of universal health insurance), this enriched the middle class and was an immense source of growth.

The Bush-Cheney years should have taught us that today's right wing understands this very well. They are not interested (if they ever were) in reducing government. On the contrary, they are perfectly willing to expand it. But the goal, in every case, is to expand government in such a way as to benefit, first and foremost, political friends and supporters at the expense, mainly, of the middle class. And while a rich country can survive a fair amount of this, it cannot withstand the complete control of government by predators. For what happens then, is a population crash of the prey. This, as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the systematic deregulation of securities and futures markets, we now confront in the financial crisis and the speculative commodities bubble. And if we do not reclaim and rebuild the capacity of our government to act, with purpose and on a large scale, we will eventually see far worse as the climate crisis unfolds.

Galbraith also explains what is going to be needed to survive the current set of crises that the Bush administration and the conservative movement have created. Suffice to say that it does not involve shrinking government, cutting taxes, or "starving the beast and drowning it in a bathtub." Neither the conservative nostrums nor the strange acquiescence by Clinton and Blue Dog Democrats will help America survive the increasingly disastrous economic problems the Reagan Revolution, conservative movement, and Bush administration have left us to suffer through.

The Predator State looks like it will be a very important book for government, politics and the economy in the near future.

South Ossetia - some background, with links

So what is happening in Georgia and South Ossetia? The (London) Times OnLine provides a brief analysis of the historical roots of the current conflict. The TimesOnLine analysis goes back to the first effort of South Ossetia to break free from Georgia in 1918 - 1920 between the end of the Russian Empire and the rise of the Soviet Union. The second time was as the Soviet Union was collapsing beginning in 1989. After the collapse of the USSR, Georgia was recognized as an independent nation by other nations, based on the borders of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in membership of the USSR. South Ossetia again asserted its Independence in 1989 and has refused to acknowledge that it is part of Georgia.

Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia in 1991 and has kept troops inside South Ossetia as part of the peacekeeping forces to prevent combat. Russia rejects Georgia's domination of South Ossetia and is acting to protect its client state. Russia had warned that if Georgia attacked South Ossetia, they would defend there client state. The Georgians, egged on by the Bush administration and an offer to join NATO, considered the Russian threat to be a bluff.

When the Georgians attacked South Ossetia, they learned it was not a bluff.

Ian Welsh offers a more recent history at Firedoglake of the immediate actions that have led to the current conflict. Ian points out that Georgia is a small state next to the much larger Russia and is dependent on Russia economically. Georgia is deep inside Russia's sphere of influence. Second, NATO is not going to send troops to fight for Georgia against Russian troops. The distance is much too great. While some might think that Russia will not fight NATO if NATO sends troops to Georgia, NATO surely will not fight Russia in Georgia. Saying anything else is merely a NATO bluff, and Russia will very probably call that bluff. NATO will not back it up.

The Guardian offers a brief history of Ossetia. Here is a key part of it:

The Ossetians are descendants of a tribe called the Alans. Like the Georgians, the Ossetians are orthodox Christians, but they have their own language. In Soviet times the Ossetians had an autonomous region within Georgia. The Georgians say the Ossetians cooperated with the Bolsheviks and tended to be more pro-Soviet. Their ethnic kin live across the border in the Russian region of North Ossetia, so they feel more drawn to Russia than to Georgia - and many have Russian passports.

Abkhazia on the Black Sea coast also had autonomy within Georgia during Soviet times. Because of its sub-tropical climate, it was the playground of Soviet leaders and is popular with Russian tourists today. It has a mixed population of Abkhazis, Mingrelians, Greeks, Armenians, Russians and Georgians, and a small but significant Muslim minority. Thousands of ethnic Georgians fled their homes in Abkhazia during the civil war at the beginning of the 1990s and now live as refugees in Tbilisi and Moscow.

Wikipedia offers an excellent discussion of South Ossetia. Go read it. The people of South Ossetia do not hold any love or respect for Georgia as a nation.

The CIA world Factbook: Georgia provides some background like population and economy, but nothing that provided any real insight to me about the current problems between Georgia and Russia. Even the map provides very little detail.

From what I have heard and read (but cannot find documentation for) Georgia itself has been a propaganda battleground between the U.S. and Russia since the collapse of the USSR, but especially since the Bush administration has begun trying to sell its commitment to spreading "democracy." I haven't found a good description of the competing moves by the US/NATO and Russia through Georgia. It is generally clear, though, that the US/NATO has been trying to push greater democracy and membership in the European Union to as many of the USSR's old client states as possible, this at the expense of Russia. Russia has been resisting those encroachments on the previous client states it still considers part of its hegemony (much as the US considers South and Latin America to be part of its hegemony.) It is similarly clear that the Russians have seen the breakaway South Ossetia as a tool to keep Georgia off balance and to interfere with Georgia's flirtation with NATO and the European Union. It is also clear that Georgia is not in any position militarily to fight with Russia.

The combat in Georgia and South Ossetia with the Russian military is ongoing. There is no sense in me trying to compete here with breaking news on that subject. This material is intended as background. According to Wikipedia,

"The current authorized strength of the GAF structures is 32,650 personnel, including 18,993 in the Land Forces, 2,091 in the Air Force, 1350 in the Navy, 9,196 in administration staff and central structures. The Georgian Parliament aims to increase the strength of the ground forces. At the end of 2010 the GAF will consist of 75.000 men;forming 5th and 6th brigades. Reserves will be total 120.000 men." [Snip]

The strength of Land Forces is 26,739 from which 2,215 are officers, 24,508 NCOs (contracting) and 16 civilians.

Wikipedia describes the military forces of Russia as

The Ground Forces included an estimated total 395,000 including est. 190,000 conscripts and 35,000 personnel of the Airborne Forces (VDV) in 2006.[42] This can be compared to an estimated 670,000, with 210,000 conscripts, in 1995–96 (also an IISS estimate). These numbers should be treated with caution, however, due to the difficulty for those outside Russia to make accurate assessments, and confusion even within the General Staff on the numbers of conscripts within the force.

The personnel difference alone makes any war between Russia and Georgia a very uneven combat, one Georgia will not win. It is clear that the government of Georgia believed that Russia would be intimidated by international public opinion and US/NATO rhetoric, so they would NOT be willing to attack Georgia. But the US/NATO were bluffing, and Russia has now called their bluff. Georgia has been caught in the backwash.

I wonder if, when Bush looked into the eyes of the ex-KGB agent Putin and saw his soul, Bush saw and recognized this part of Putin's Russian soul?

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Check my sources to see if I have properly summarized what they had to say, and if you have any corrections or additional sources, leave a reference in comments. I'm just trying to understand what is going on.

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Addendum 1 Aug 11, 2008 8:51 am CDT
Glenn Greenwald interviewed Professor Charles King of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service on the situation in Georgia yesterday, and has posted a transcript (Watch a 15 second ad to see it) of the very illuminating interview at Salon.

To summarize only a few significant points, it appears that the Georgian leadership looked back at a cased 13 years ago in which the Croatian military was given the green light by the U.S. to use it's US trained troops in a fast operation to remove a Serbian entity controlling a part of Croatian territory. The operation was completed rapidly and effectively, removing the Serbians and leading to the Dayton Agreements shortly thereafter.

With that as a template and the belief that the U.S. would step in to protect a nascent democracy if the Russians attempted to counter the military action, Georgia attempted to conduct a military action that would be over so quickly that the Russians would not be able to stop them.

The Georgian military operation did not work as expected, the difficulties the Russians were expected to face getting troops into South Ossetia were instead quickly overcome, and the Georgians grossly misunderstood how much influence the Americans and world opinion would have on the Russian leadership.

It appears now that the Russians are taking this opportunity to clean up the problem they have had in the Caucus Mountains with Georgia and to provide a demonstration to other recalcitrant ex-Soviet Union states that Russia remains in charge in that region.

There is a great deal more history and analysis in the transcript. It is well worth reading.

The four American cultures

According to Brandeis historian David Hackett Fischer, the United States is populated by the cultural descendants of four different cultures from Great Britain, and these cultures provide an explanation for much of the conflict and differing attitudes we observe in American politics.

Sara Robinson has kindly offered a summary of the four cultures which I show below:

To quickly summarize, the first of these groups were the Puritans, the bulk of whom arrived in New England between 1630 and1650. They were Reform Protestants who brought with them a notion of "ordered liberty." They believed that government authority, including the right to use force, properly belongs not to individuals, but to communities; and that individuals would necessarily need to conform their will to that of the larger whole for society to succeed. In the generations that followed, their descendants spread Puritan culture across the northern tier of the county, into the Pacific Northwest, and down the West Coast to northern California. These are, today, still the most liberal parts of the country.

They were followed, starting in 1660s, by Cavaliers -- Anglican royalists from the south of England who took refuge from the English Civil War by settling up the Chesapeake and the coastal south. They believed that liberty and authority rightly accompany tradition, wealth, and inherited social status; and that government had no right to infringe on the God-given absolute "freedom" of the highest-ranking people to order the lives of those under their authority. If you're poor, you don't deserve freedom. If you're rich, you have a sacred right to do whatever you see fit to whomever you please. The lowland South is still dominated by traditional, hierarchy-oriented Cavalier values, from tidewater Virginia all the way around to New Orleans, and remains one of the most conservative parts of the country.

In the 1670s, the Quakers began arriving from England's industrial midlands. They were working class and middle class, earnest, hardworking, and nonviolent. The most productive and successful of all the British immigrant groups, they introduced the ideas of tolerance and racial and gender equality to the American conversation. For them, people were entitled to freedom to the degree that they were willing to grant the same freedoms to others -- a perspective that gave them a very expansive view of human rights. They valued a rough-and-tumble party politics that engaged everyone in political debate to solve problems. Their ancestors (most of whom eventually converted, and became Methodists or Baptists) spread out across the Midwest, where the plain-spoken, plain-living, deeply egalitarian Quaker way still flavors the culture.

And, finally, in the early 1700s, the Borderers (more commonly known as the Scots-Irish) started arriving from the borderlands of northern England, lowland Scotland, and northern Ireland. The area they came from had been a constant war zone between English and Scottish kings for some 700 years; and the never-ending violence had made them clannish, tough, fiercely independent, contemptuous of all forms of authority, and firm believers in a vision of "natural liberty" -- including the God-given rights of man that were eventually enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Philadelphia Quakers and Charleston Cavaliers took one look at this unruly, self-sufficient warrior society, shuddered, and immediately shipped them far off to their own highland frontiers. When we speak of "pioneer stock," we're talking about the Borderers. Their wandering descendants spread out and settled up the roughest places of the south, west and southwest, and gave us cowboys and country music along the way. Wherever you find populists and libertarians, you're likely among Borderers.

Fischer argues that these four groups formed the original cultural and political matrix into which later-arriving immigrant groups adapted themselves; and their ancient differences underlie many of the regional and philosophical differences Americans still grapple with today. The migration patterns of these four groups have largely determined the geography of civil and women's rights, economic justice movements, and many other social and political trends. And it seems possible to me that these conflicting value systems may also be at the cultural root of the strikingly ineffectual way that Democratic candidates have consistently responded to GOP attacks over the past 50 years.
[Highlighting mine - Editor]

I find this explanation intuitively very appealing.

I don't think you will find a lot of people who are purely of one culture or another, though. I think that individuals come from families that tend towards one culture, then are impressed by the culture in which they live. But the attitudes can be seen in election results.

Definition of glibertarian

How do you define the term "glibertarian?"

jcricket Says:

What exactly is the definition of a glibertarian? Is Jim Henley one? Radley Balko? I have a number of libertarian tendencies- am I one?

No, do be a glibertarian you have to first be a big “L” libertarian, and then only apply your libertarianism to other peoples problems. Glibertarians replies to any situation where someone else is hurt is “fuck you I got mine”, “told you so” or “nanny nanny boo boo”.

You, on the other hand, can have a rational discussion about situations, admit there is a place for government intervention, and accept that helping others is potentially a good thing.
November 19th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

This definition is found in a comment at Ballon Juice.

Libertarian solution to Iraq economy has failed (of course)

One of the goals of the invasion of Iraq was to shrink the government and let the Iraqis create a free enterprise paradise that would be a beacon to the rest of the Middle East. It's success would cause envy in the populations of the other Middle Eastern nations so that they would replace their authoritarian governments and create thriving democracies and free enterprise utopias. Remember that? That's why Jerry Bremer was staffing his Coalition Provisional Authority with his kiddie corps recruited for their ideology rather than their expertise through the American Enterprise Institute.

To implement all this, Bremer also disbanded the Iraqi Army, led the deBathification of the civil service, and canceled payment of all government pensions to retirees and their survivors. This essentially turned what remained of the government over to the Shiite parties, which they staffed with politicians and inexperienced relatives, all advised by Bremer's kiddie corps. Bremer also removed protective tariffs and import controls to allow cheap goods from nations such as China to enter Iraq, effectively wiping out what was left of the Iraqi free market. And of course, the previously socialized government of Iraq left no significant banking industry behind it.

The result was massive unemployment, with the only legal sources of employment being the government and the U.S. military. The population generally had no income, and the Sunnis were blocked from employment in the government by the Shiites. When the Iraqis looked around to find out who was to blame for the disaster that had befallen them, the answer was obvious. The American military was occupying Iraq and was the cause of all the disaster.

Combine this awareness with the fact that the American military had not taken control of the weapons left over from the Saddam military and the result was a no-brainer. Iraqis had to conduct an insurgency to remove the source of the problem. Since the Shiites had control of the government and support from their fellow Shiites in Iran and the Kurds were protected by the Americans and were already well-along in building an independent Kurdistan, the Sunnis were the logical insurgents. They were the group facing starvation and seeing no hope.

The Libertarian "solution" to the situation in Iraq (created in the first place by the idiotic invasion of Iraq pushed by the White House, the NeoConservatives, FOX News, and conservatives such as Bill Kristol to somehow solve earlier problems with Iraq) was unrealistic to begin with and has disastrously failed. That's the story told in the article Iraq Private Sector Falters; Rolls of Government Soar in the New York Times.

BAGHDAD — Hampered by years of violence, a decimated infrastructure, a lack of foreign investors and a flood of imports that undercut local businesses, Iraq’s private sector, particularly its small non-oil economy, has so far failed to flourish as its American patrons had hoped.

In its absence, the Iraqi government has been sustaining the economy the way it always has: by putting citizens on its payroll. Since 2005, according to federal budgets, the number of government employees has nearly doubled, to 2.3 million from 1.2 million.

The impetus is not only economic: In exchange for abandoning the insurgency that plunged the nation into civil war, many of the 100,000 members of civilian patrols known broadly as the Awakening movement have been promised jobs in the security forces or in reconstruction, though many Sunni Muslim members complain it is not happening quickly enough.

Is it any wonder that the current government of Iraq is demanding that the American government set an early fixed timetable for withdrawal of the military? The first step in the cure of any illness is to eliminate the source.

The American military in Iraq, besides the many other flaws it has for Iraqis, is the vector that has carried the disease of Libertarianism to ravage their country.

Habash letter was forged - but by who?

EmptyWheel points out that it is well known that the Habash letter was forged. What isn't so clear yet is who exactly forged it.

EmptyWheel's fact-based logical dissection of the situation highlights a number of elements of the bureaucratic in-fighting that was going on then. Go read it and see if you agree with her conclusion:

At this point, I'm not sure what confluence of bureaucratic in-fighting in the Administration concocted that letter--it could be any weird combination of contributions. But one thing seems clear. That letter was a US-backed forgery.

That was Ron Suskind's main point. The Habash letter was a US-backed forgery.

And I would have to add that the substance of the letter demonstrates that it was intended to bolster the White House pro-Iraq Invasion propaganda. It cannot be any coincidence that the letter alleged to confirm both the (unlikely) confluence between al Qaeda and Saddam as well as Saddam's alleged (and soon debunked) effort to buy yellow cake uranium in Africa.

All we need to do now is pinpoint the forger himself.

McCain' s skimpy resume

Rex Nutting of MarketWatch analyzes McCain's resume for the job of President, and McCain comes up badly short. Here's Nutting's conclusion:

Successful presidents come from two molds: visionaries, or mechanics. The visionaries -- think Reagan or FDR -- see what others can't and say 'Why not?" to inspire the country. The mechanics -- think LBJ or Eisenhower -- know the ins and outs of government and are able to harness the power of millions of humans to accomplish great things, or at least keep the wheels from coming off.
McCain fits neither style. He's neither a dreamer, nor a detail guy. His major accomplishment, in Vietnam and in the Senate, has been merely to survive.

Nutting bases his conclusion on McCain's history. McCain has no significant accomplishments not given him by his family or his wealthy wife; He is intellectually quite shallow with no real expertise in anything except self-promotion; He has demonstrated no real leadership in the Senate and is unlikely to be able the get Senators, either Republican or Democratic, to work with his if he becomes President; McCain is in may ways still living in a fantasy version of the 1960's; and he has no principles on which he has not reversed himself in his effort to be elected President.

It's hard to argue with Nutting's analysis. When you take a serious look at John McCain, there is simply on "there" there.

Republicans - the party of the stupid

Paul Krugman gets it right - again.

Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

Krugman's immediate focus is on the idiotic campaign “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now!" which is widely known not to provide results anytime within the next decade and even then is not going to provide any significant lowering of fuel prices.

But as Krugman points out, this is not a new strategy for the Republicans.

Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was, “They attacked us, and we’re going to strike back” — and anyone who tried to point out that Saddam and Osama weren’t the same person was an effete snob who hated America, and probably looked French.

Let’s also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man,” declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. “He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”

It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina — when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness — that the cult began to fade.

What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

The politics of stupidity (meaning refusal to think things through logically) is easier to use on people who depend on authority to do their thinking for them. That is what Dr. Bob Altemayer shows is demonstrated in the research on Authoritarians. John Dean also wrote about it in his book Conservatives Without Conscience.

It's not that Republicans themselves are in fact stupid. It's that they rely on stupid or simplistic arguments to win political elections. There may be an advantage to this if they want a lot of people to perform the same simple act of casting a vote for a Republican candidate. Simplistic arguments cannot be argued with in a simple way. The Sophists knew that 2500 years ago. That led to the modern use of the term "sophistry" to mean "a confusing or illogical argument used for deceiving someone."

Why would intelligent people buy into simplistic arguments? Expressing the simplistic arguments become a badge of membership in the "club" rather than a way of proposing real government actions. The argument becomes a mantra of membership. It works great for getting a majority of the votes and getting elected.

Unfortunately, in a democracy it also commits the candidate to actually implement the simplistically described policy or be rejected for failure to support the "Club" mantra. So what we see in the modern conservative movement is large groups of people who have bought into simplistic statements of proposed government policy which they resist analyzing carefully because if they do, they are likely to be rejected by the group they want to belong too. Instead the conservatives defer to the conservative think tanks which work out plausible but simplistic ideas to use as membership mantras.

That gets the conservative politicians elected, and then instead of thinking through the probably results of the simplistic ideas, they implement them feeling sure they will lead to a conservative paradise. It is only when finally the long term effects of implementing poorly thought out plans leads to disaster that the flaws in the mantras become obvious.

At that time, many who committed themselves to the mantra suffer from Cognitive Dissonance, often resulting in Cognitive Dissonance. Since individuals have a basic need to reduce cognitive dissonance, they will generally either modify their beliefs or reject one of the two conflicting ideas. But modifying their beliefs means leaving "The Club" so conservatives are more likely to reject evidence that their mantra is wrong.

This leads to rejecting the clear facts that show tobacco smoking often leads to cancer or that human use of fossil fuel is leading to Global Warming. Conservatives really, really do not want to leave the group they belong to, so they will be the last to admit that the conservative mantras are wrong.

The bubble of the Presidency or of the Presidential nominee will accentuate this refusal to acknowledge the facts that show a conservative mantra is wrong. Ron Suskind describes the bubble that George Bush lives in as part of the opening of his new book.

Bush is a guy who needs to make things personal — it’s how he’s always organized a complex world — and he felt that he’d developed a bond with Putin. When CIA made its offer, [to bug Putin's hotel room] his response was that you don’t wiretap a friend. Condoleezza Rice said it was “too risky, it might be discovered.” CIA said that if it was, it would probably heighten Putin’s respect for Bush. Bush settled it — it was a gut decision. No dice.

This was an early sign of an extraordinary dilemma, one that would come to define America’s posture in the world: Bush’s powerful confidence in his instinct. It might be called a compensatory strength, making up for other areas of deficit. He’s not particularly reflective, doesn’t think in large strategic terms, and he’s never had much taste for the basic analytical rigors embraced by the modern professional class. What he does is size up people, swiftly — he trusts his eyes, his ears, his touch — and acts. While he has an affinity for stepping inside the shoes of others, his métier is often brutally transactional rather than investigatory or empathetic: he is looking for ways to get someone to do what he wants, and quickly. This headlong, impatient energy fueled his rise, as anyone knows after watching him strong-arm a big-money contributor, parse friend from foe, or toss a script and preach, heart to heart, to supporters in the Republican base. It’s how Bush — like many bullies who’ve risen to great heights — became the president. Once he landed in the Oval Office, however, he discovered that every relationship is altered, corrupted by the gravitational incongruities between the leader of the free world and everyone else. Everything you touch is velvety, deferential, and flattering. To fight this, presidents have been known to search furiously for the real, for the unfiltered, secretly eavesdropping on focus group sessions far from Washington, arranging Oval Office arguments between top aides — a Gerald Ford trick — or ordering policy advisers, as Nixon often did, to tell them something the advisers were sure they didn’t want to hear. These men, even with their overweening confidence, embraced a unique kind of humility, recognizing they were in a bubble and fearing they would make historic mistakes.

Bush, with his distaste for analysis and those who contradict him, didn’t go down those paths, and he seemed unconcerned, unlike other presidents, that isolation would prompt errors in judgment. Instead, he began taking policy advice from old cajoling friends whose relationships predated his ascendancy or from visiting pastors speaking frankly in their everyman voices of faith. A man who trusts only what he can touch placed in a realm where nothing he touches is authentic.

So here we see the interaction of simplistic ideas as serious policy proposals for government which are actually poorly thought out mantras used by conservative as badges of membership in the conservative club, together with the way using those mantras locks the conservative political leaders into having to actually implement those mantras to keep their power. Then finally, when the poorly thought out mantras inevitably fail as government policies, we see why the conservative political leaders face cognitive dissonance and have to choose to ignore the evidence of the failure of those policies if they wish to remain as conservative leaders.

It is a set of negative feedback loops which, after almost eight years of the most actively conservative President every, the failures in foreign policy, domestic policy and the economy are all becoming so obvious that they can no longer be ignored by individuals who are not strongly committed to belonging to the private club of Conservatives.

All of that does not mean that McCain will lose the race for President. But it certainly does lengthen the odds against him, especially as the economy goes deeper into the tank and as the occupation of Iraq becomes more and more difficult to maintain.

John McCain as seen by the Arizona media

We know that the Washington Press Corps loves John McCain, but that's because he has courted them for twenty years and because they have never covered him closely. There is another John McCain, one obvious to many in Arizona, and one not well liked.

Here is a report from an Arizona reporters who has covered McCain in depth for many years. It is a McCain the Republican conservatives will undoubtedly love, but not one the Washington Press Corp really wants known.

"That's the thing about covering John McCain. Someone always wants you to give him the benefit of the doubt."

Is it really the job of the Washington Political Press to always give John McCain the benefit of the doubt and refuse to investigate or report on his negative side? McCain certainly thinks so.

Here is Digby describing John McCain:

He's always been a jackass. And he still is. This idea that St John McCain really doesn't want to go negative but is being forced to by his Rovian campaign staff is ridiculous and yet I hear it all the time from the MSM. Anyone who tells the mean, cruel jokes he tells is a mean man. He likes going negative --- he just doesn't like taking responsibility for it because that tarnishes his halo and makes him just like every other nasty Republican. His massive ego can't accommodate such ordinariness.

He's very erratic and when you combine that with his temper and his love of war, you get something even scarier than Bush and Cheney. It would be a nightmare if he becomes the president.

In many ways, McCain very closely resembles the man he wants to replace as President - George W. Bush. He's lazy, egotistical, quite nasty and delegates to those he likes without checking up on how well they do. But he goes beyond Bush in having a hair-trigger temper. His foreign policy advisers are the worst of the same NeoCons who suckered Bush into invading Iraq, while his domestic advisers are primarily lobbyists for the wealthiest groups and individuals in America. But beyond Bush, McCain has never seen a war he didn't like. McCain wants to scatter American bases even further around the world, while having no idea how to pay for them (he's actually pushing even more tax cuts for a government that cannot balance the budget or act to improve the economy.)

But of course, the Washington Political Press corps just doesn't do policy reporting. At least not when the Republican candidate has no policies of any level of realism at all.

Go read the report from Arizona. McCain's not the man we want to run the American government for the next four years.

I'm not the only one suspicious of the FBI case against Bruce Ivins

The alleged case against the (fortunately for the FBI) deceased Bruce Ivins hasn't rung true to me from its first announcement. Neither the history of the FBI anthrax investigation and its earlier failed effort to pin the blame in the media on Steven Hatfill, nor the general history of the Cheney-run Bush administration where if the choice was between a lie and the truth, the lie has almost invariably won out, provide any degree of confidence of what the FBI top management has been saying recently in this high-profile clearly failed investigation.

The partial release of court documents adds to the doubts of veracity on the part of the FBI. Any good lawyer can make a case against someone if all they have to do is provide the allegations and (if any) the evidence that the party is guilty and they get to conceal the exculpatory evidence, and that is clearly what the FBI has been attempting. Add to that the clear fact that the media reporters have simply been breathlessly reporting whatever they were handed by the FBI Public Relations people, and the fact that even the selected material does not hold together to make a case that answers means - motive - opportunity makes the entire exercise as smelly as a week-old dead fish.

I am not the only individual who is suspicious of the entire set of FBI actions. Here is a set of comments received by the New York Times about the case.

Motive

Just a quick thumbnail sketch of my evaluation of the publicly reported evidence and allegations shows that the weakest part of the FBI's case is Ivins' motive. There is none. So the FBI has been throwing every allegation of mental instability they can find to the ravening wolves of the Press Corps in hopes that no one will see that the allegations are from highly suspicious sources and are strongly refuted by both his ling history at the research facility and passing of security screenings and by those who know him personally. Essentially we are supposed to take it for granted that the incomplete evidence/assertions releases by the FBI hang together and prove the case. That requires ignoring the earlier flub the FBI made with Steven Hatfill.

The fact is that the FBI has simply not presented a case for a motive for Bruce Ivins to have sent the Anthrax mailings that holds together. I have little doubt that the prosecutors have been delighted that they will not have to prove their case in court because of Ivins' very timely death.

Means

Means is problem the strongest element the FBI has made a case for. There is no reason to doubt that the anthrax spores came from a U.S. Government laboratory. No other source has been reasonably asserted (after the early failed efforts of the White House to blame al Qaeda in order to support the invasion of Iraq - a nation not connected to and in fact antagonistic to al Qaeda. But that is a different story.)

That does suggest that Bruce Ivins had the means to obtain the anthrax spores. But so did Steven Hatfill, to whom the FBI has paid $5 million and given an apology for fingering to the Press. These were not the only possible researchers, either. Nothing really pins it down to Ivins except the allegation by the FBI that a newly developed DNA test pinpoints the anthrax in the attacks to the same strain that Ivins himself worked with and controlled. The FBI claims the DNA test is valid and reliable, but that is not the same thing as showing the test is valid and reliable. I'd bet that we never see a public evaluation of that DNA test. That's one of the bullets the prosecutors dodged by not having to present their case in court.

Opportunity

There is also no evidence that Ivins had unique access to the stamped envelopes used to send the anthrax that was in any way different from everyone else in Maryland, or that he was ever at any of the very distant mailboxes the FBI has identified as being where the Anthrax was mailed. In short, Ivins simply cannot be connected to the process of mailing the anthrax based on the evidence the FBI has released.

This is not an exhaustive analysis of the FBI's case as it has been presented in the media. I am simply not sufficiently obsessive to dig into each and every piece of data that has appeared in the media. This is just an analysis of what is missing that still needs to be proven if the FBI is going to show that Bruce Ivins was actually the anthrax killer. The most difficult element is going to be motive.

But it is also very important to recognize that the FBI is not itself an organization that can be trusted to present an honest case because of their history in this case and others tried in the Press. They previously locked onto a prime suspect (Hatfill) and aggressively investigated him and now are trying him in the Press when they couldn't get him into court, and they are doing it again with Bruce Ivins. It is very important that there has been no testing evidence in court in front of a jury and now that Ivins is dead, there never will be.

It looks like the evidence that the FBI is attempting to cover up its failures in the anthrax attacks is a lot stronger than the evidence that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer.

---

Addendum Aug 10, 2008 3:17 pm CDT
Glenn Greenwald (8/10/08) points out that the timeline the FBI claims Bruce Ivins had to use to mail the anthrax envelopes from Princeton is actually an alibi for Ivins. Had Ivins used the time to mail the envelopes the FBI claims he did, they would have been postmarked Sept 17th instead of Sept 18th as they actually were. Greenwald also links to numerous other source debunking the FBI's allegations.

EmptyWheel (8/9/08) makes a similar argument to the one Glenn Greenwald did.

Bmaz (8/9/08) explains how the FBI ran an investigation which caused at least one other individual besides Bruce Ivings to commit suicide, and also how the FBI investigation broke up marriages and ruined careers for people never actually accused of anything.

Bmaz also makes the point I made earlier.

Since the government conveniently refused to perform a full autopsy, we will never know the myriad of clues and evidence on whether it really was a suicide. Having hounded and stalked Mr. Ivins to death, by whatever the means, the government seized the immediate, and I mean immediate, opportunity to dump the entire culpability for it's entire pathetic Amerithrax investigation on him. How convenient.

I guess that we can trust the FBI not to have somehow murdered Ivins, can't we?

Oh, and while we are at it, there is this great money-making bridge in the Arizona desert I can sell to you. Let's not forget Cheney's careful plans to create "plusible deniability." Plausible deniability is not something found only inside the White House. It permeates the entire government, and the FBI has practiced it for years under Hoover and since.

EmptyWheel (8/9/08) also points out that Ivins took and passed a lie detector test shortly after the anthrax attacks occurred. Strange how the FBI did not include that information in their PR campaign against a dead man so that they can close the investigation they have so royally screwed up.

So the media has finally gotten something it is competent to report

It's no surprise that the report of John Edward's affair was broken by the nonserious tabloid "The National Inquirer." With occasional very rare exceptions, that's all any of the media is any more - tabloids. Sex sells tabloids, especially if it is sex by a Democratic politician.

So it is no surprise that when the National Inquirer hassles John Edwards into confessing an affair, the media jumps all over it and distributes the story far and wide. Here, for example is ABC News carrying the story - broken by the National Inquirer, remember - as though it were real news.

What makes it real news, worthy of being carried by every mainstream "News" outlet in the U.S.? Sure, John Edwards ran for the Democratic nomination for President, but he never was a contender. So why has the news media jumped all over this story and pushed it as far as they could, delving into personal details that are of no concern to anyone outside the Edwards family?

Well, he's a prominent Democrat, that's why.

Think not? Do you remember this story? It was real news about a man who really does have a shot at becoming President - and it died with no follow-up. No delving into the reactions of the politician's family. No reportorial effort to see if it effected the candidate's policies in any way. A day or two, a fast denial by the politician's campaign, and then - (crickets.)

Why no follow up or repeated stories? Well simple. It was about a Republican politician. Another example is the stories of Arnold Schwarzenegger's history of sexual abuse of women. Not a big story because Arnold is a Republican politician. For some reason Arnold was not considered worthy of a full-court press by the National Inquirer.

The media has a narrative that stories about Democratic politician's sex lives are important and that the details matter, but stories about Republicans are one and two day stories that are never followed up on. This is not just the media narrative, though. It is also the actions of the Republican opposition researchers who dig these things up and then feed the stories into the right-wing Wurlitzer which plays the media and accentuates its reaction to the already existing media narrative.

The right-wing Wurlitzer is out in force during this Presidential election. It's not just the play of the news regarding John Edward's sexual indiscretion. It's also the stories about Obama's strange weaknesses. Really now, how can it be a weakness for Obama that he is popular and respected, very well-educated, quite physically fit (as, of course, are both George W. Bush and a potential future Republican Presidential nominee, General Petreaus) and gives great speeches that enthusiastic people WANT to attend?

In what kind of Bizarro world are those weaknesses for a Presidential candidate while the inability to remember the substance of a question long enough to answer it as McCain has repeatedly demonstrated is, together with McCain's great age and likely PTSD from his extended captivity and torture not a severe weakness?

Oh, sorry. I was thinking that the media was a potential watchdog on government as my civics teachers used to teach. But apparently the only remaining news watch dogs are the tabloids who cover Democratic political sexual peccadilloes. It is too much now to expect news judgment and competence from the media that is proud of Bill O'Reilly and the misogynist Chris Matthews and led by Matt Drudge. My bad.

The Presidential contest is between McCain and the media on one side; Obama on the other

Here is a description of the way the 2008 Presidential election is being fought. I quote from the author:

Two years ago, I wrote:

No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they're in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men's own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they'd have gotten better press coverage. That's naïve. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in.

The eagerness with which the media have spread some truly bizarre criticisms of Obama confirms this theory. Just think about some of the things Obama has seen the media portray as weaknesses. He's too popular and respected. He's too well-educated. His great speeches are attended by many enthusiastic people -- just like Hitler! He's too fit.

Those articles and the many others like them are pure idiocy. Go read the details to see how the media is working to elect McCain by repeated lies and misrepresentations.