|
|
 |
Archive: POLITICS >please note: some links may no longer be active.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: His Life and Death Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed Wednesday in an American air strike, and while the importance of his death will be inflated wildly by the Administration, the story of his rise to prominence is quite interesting. Mary Anne Weaver has written a thorough piece which has just appeared on The Antlantic site. On a cold and blustery evening in December 1989, Huthaifa Azzam, the teenage son of the legendary Jordanian-Palestinian mujahideen leader Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, went to the airport in Peshawar, Pakistan, to welcome a group of young men. All were new recruits, largely from Jordan, and they had come to fight in a fratricidal civil war in neighboring Afghanistan—an outgrowth of the CIA-financed jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet occupation there. The men were scruffy, Huthaifa mused as he greeted them, and seemed hardly in battle-ready form. Some had just been released from prison; others were professors and sheikhs. None of them would prove worth remembering—except for a relatively short, squat man named Ahmad Fadhil Nazzal al-Khalaylah. He would later rename himself Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Read the full Atlantic piece here Read the NY Times account al-Zarqawi's death here
Art and Politics; Ireland and Iraq The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach's new film about the Irish independence war, is causing consternation in some camps. Why? Because, not surprisingly, it contains some interesting (and damning) connections to the Iraq war. George Monbiot has written a good piece on the matter in The Gaurdian (UK). Does it matter what people say about a conflict that took place 85 years ago? It does. For the same one-sided story is being told about the occupation of Iraq. The execution of 24 civilians in Haditha allegedly carried out by US marines in November is being discussed as a disgraceful anomaly: the work of a few "bad apples" or "rogue elements". Donald Rumsfeld claims "we know that 99.9% of our forces conduct themselves in an exemplary manner", and most of the press seems to agree. But if it chose to look, it would find evidence of scores of such massacres. In March Jody Casey, a US veteran of the war in Iraq, told Newsnight that when insurgents have let off a bomb, "you just zap any farmer that is close to you ... when we first got down there, you could basically kill whoever you wanted, it was that easy". On Sunday another veteran told the Observer that cold-blooded killings by US forces "are widespread. This is the norm. These are not the exceptions." There is powerful evidence to suggest that US soldiers tied up and executed 11 people - again including small children - in Ishaqi in March. Iraqi officers say that US troops executed two women and a mentally handicapped man in a house in Samarra last month. In 2004, US forces are alleged to have bombed a wedding party at Makr al-Deeb and then shot the survivors, killing 42 people. No one has any idea what happened in Falluja, as the destruction of the city and its remaining inhabitants was so thorough. Read Monbiot's full piece here
It's time to kill the "war on terror." Dave Meyer has assembled an excellent set of excerpts and links relating to the importance of purging the expression "war on terror" from our political lexicon. Here he quotes Digby: This is the problem. This elastic war, this war against warfare, this war with no specific enemy against no specific country is never going to end. It cannot end because there is no end. If the threat of "islamofascim" disappears tomorrow there will be someone else who hates us and who is willing to use individual acts of violence to get what they want. There always have been and there always will be. Which means that we will always be at war with Oceania. I am not sanguine that we can put this genie back in the bottle. The right will go crazy at the prospect that someone might question whether we are really "at war." They are so emotionally invested in the idea that they cannot give it up. Indeed, the right is defined by its relationship to the boogeyman, whether communism or terrorism or some other kind of ism (negroism? immigrantism?) They will fight very, very hard to keep this construct going in the most literal sense. And they will probably win in the short term. Read the full post at Steve Clemons' Washington Note
"The Neon is Crackling" “Power,” Harvard Professor Joseph Nye, Jr. tells us “is the ability to alter the behavior of others to get what you want. There are basically three ways to do that: coercion (sticks), payments (carrots), and attraction (soft power).” Today’s American soft power—our ability to influence others overseas through who we are and what we do—is shrinking, as poll after poll shows. This loss of soft power reduces America's ability to shape global developments in ways favorable to the national interest. What can be done about this? There are several reasons for the decline of America’s soft power. The most immediate is President George W. Bush’s aggressive foreign policy. Since our internationally condemned attack on Iraq, our country is seen as the illegitimate sheriff that shoots first and asks questions later. Contrast this to the worldwide sympathy for the U.S. immediately after 9/11, when we were considered the attacked, not the attacker. Due to our unilateralism, we have lost the respect—to be sure, never universal—that we earned as a world leader resisting the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century. Second to the aggression is the hypocrisy of Bush's rhetoric. The president proclaims the pursuit of human freedom as his foremost goal while we are becoming a parody of the Statue of Liberty, covered in prison torture garb from Abu Ghraib, obsessed with our own security but with nothing liberating (or even stabilizing) to offer to the rest of the world. Forget the “democratization” programs (also called “transformational” ) hyped by Condoleezza Rice’s State Department. For much of the world, the reality is that we prop up dictators in Libya and Kazakhstan so long as they give us what we want. And, while claiming that America cares about humanity, Bush disregards transnational issues such as the global environment and supports visa regulations that offend foreigners who wish to visit or study in the United States. A third reason for our loss of soft power is that, with over six years of Bush’s “we’re just plain folks” rule, our cultural exports increasingly fail to seduce overseas. To be sure, the best purveyors of American consciousness abroad don't necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. government. Yet, judging by the barometer of pop culture, American style is no longer as "cool" as it was, despite the international success of some Hollywood blockbusters. Culturally, we are more and more perceived as the old New World. “[T]he American brand isn't at its shiniest,” U-2’s Bono recently stated. “The neon is crackling." Read John Brown's full post at TomPaine.com
Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has authored a remarkable, well-researched story in the current Village Voice. I challenge you to read the article and come away with a reasonable level of confidence that the 2004 election was not stolen. Here's an eye-opening glimpse: As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina. Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000. "Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong," a Fox News analyst declared, "or George Bush loses." But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida. According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. "As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible," he says, "it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error." Puzzled by the discrepancies, Freeman laboriously examined the raw polling data released by Edison/Mitofsky in January 2005. "I'm not even political -- I despise the Democrats," he says. "I'm a survey expert. I got into this because I was mystified about how the exit polls could have been so wrong." In his forthcoming book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, Freeman lays out a statistical analysis of the polls that is deeply troubling. By all means, read the whole thing For further, serious commentary on the issue, try this (Harpers) and this
How admirable
But somehow I wonder whether there might have been a qualification slipped in that report somewhere. Thanks to apostropher
Conason on the disgraceful Clinton press coverage Of all possible explanations for the mainstream media’s preoccupation with the Clinton marriage, the most innocuous is nostalgia for a better time, when we were able to worry less about war, corruption, catastrophe and incompetence, and more about sex. Bad news only intensifies the urge to ignore reality and focus on triviality—a predilection seemingly shared by several of America’s most important journalists, as well as a legion of mindless tabloid hacks. [snip] Reaching for relevance, Mr. Russert tried to formulate questions that “people” might ask: “Exactly what is Bill Clinton’s role in a [Hillary Clinton] campaign and in a presidency? And people also would say, ‘If he has a lot of free time on his hands in the White House, is [sic] that become an issue?” Sorry, but the former President has been using the “free time on his hands” to achieve more benefit to the world than the combined lifetime accomplishments of the nation’s talking heads. Read the full, appropriately scathing piece, on the NY Observer site
Memorial Day Message John, at his Kung Fu Monkey blog, has written a powerful, justifiably angry, Memorial Day piece. ...the fact is that soldiers make this choice in a specific context. They are not just entering a job. They are, to pull up my Catholic high school education, entering into a covenant with us. They take an oath to sacrifice their lives, if need be. That is, in my faith anyway, the holiest thing a person can do. In return, the civilian side of the covenant is a deep responsibility, a responsibility far beyond the emotional support one gives a sports team, or the minimal responsibility one has with employees. Our oath is simple: We will make sure you have the equipment you need. We will make sure have a clearly defined mission. We will make sure that such missions are as well-planned as possible. We will take care of your families while you are gone. We will take care of you when you come home. That's not a lot to do for someone who's out there getting shot at for you. Even better, rather than the fuzzy "we will support you" standard set by many, these are actionable, definable terms. Is "supporting the troops" just waving flags, writing supportive essays, and arguing for the nobility of their mission? I say no, those actions are laudable but meaningless if they are not backed by these concrete goals. And concrete, plainly spoken responsibilites are exactly what we need: by measuring ourselves against our progress in these arenas we can, if we are honest, meaningfully judge if we are fulfilling our duty. Now how do we accomplish our side of the covenant in a representative democracy? We do so through the instrument of our will, the government. But what happens when the government screws up our side of the covenant? That's where we hit the snag. In that case, it is our job, our responsibility -- not our right, our responsibility -- to hold those civilian administrators accountable. To criticize them when their policies fail to uphold our side of the oath. If need be, to remove them and put people in place who will fulfill our very simple side of the covenant with our men and women in the armed forces. To hold these administrators accountable is literally the least we can do. Their accountability is our accountability, and with people dying in our name, WE MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE. I set forth, as first principle, that this Administration is failing to do its job in fulfilling our responsibilities to the troops. Read the full piece here
Iraq Unfiltered Nir Rosen is one of the few journalists who has been consistently accurate – and well ahead of the curve – in his reporting from Iraq. No sugar coating, no hopeful (or Administrative) spin, just the harsh reality. This is from his Op-Ed piece in Sunday's Washington Post: Every morning the streets of Baghdad are littered with dozens of bodies, bruised, torn, mutilated, executed only because they are Sunni or because they are Shiite. Power drills are an especially popular torture device. I have spent nearly two of the three years since Baghdad fell in Iraq. On my last trip, a few weeks back, I flew out of the city overcome with fatalism. Over the course of six weeks, I worked with three different drivers; at various times each had to take a day off because a neighbor or relative had been killed. One morning 14 bodies were found, all with ID cards in their front pockets, all called Omar. Omar is a Sunni name. In Baghdad these days, nobody is more insecure than men called Omar. On another day a group of bodies was found with hands folded on their abdomens, right hand over left, the way Sunnis pray. It was a message. These days many Sunnis are obtaining false papers with neutral names. Sunni militias are retaliating, stopping buses and demanding the jinsiya , or ID cards, of all passengers. Individuals belonging to Shiite tribes are executed. Under the reign of Saddam Hussein, dissidents called Iraq "the republic of fear" and hoped it would end when Hussein was toppled. But the war, it turns out, has spread the fear democratically. Now the terror is not merely from the regime, or from U.S. troops, but from everybody, everywhere. Read the full piece here
Innocent Victims of The War on terror No, I'm not referring to the countless thousands of Iraqis who have been caught up in our awful, misguided war, but rather some Muslim residents of California. Mark Arax of the LA Times has written a devastating, detailed account. Before the wins and losses are tallied up and the war on terror goes down in the books as either wisdom or folly, it might be recalled what took place this spring on the 13th floor of the federal courthouse in Sacramento. There, in a perfectly dignified room, in front of prosecutors, defense attorneys and judge, a tall, gaunt man named James Wedick Jr. was fighting for a chance to testify, to tell jurors about the 35 years he spent in the FBI and how it came to be that he was standing before them not on the side of the U.S. government but next to two Pakistani Muslims, son and father, whose books and prayers and immigrant dreams were now being picked over in the first terrorism trial in California. Wedick watched the prosecutor from Washington stand up and call him a hired gun for the defense and say that any criticisms he had about the investigation would only confuse the jury and waste the court's time. He wanted to answer back that he had been the most decorated FBI agent to ever work out of the state capital, and for years prosecutors, judges and juries had nothing but time to ponder the way he busted dirty state senators and mobsters and cracked open the biggest health scam in California history. Yet he could only sit and listen as the judge ruled that by the weight of legal precedence, he would have to be muzzled. In eight weeks of trial, 15 witnesses for the prosecution and seven witnesses for the defense took the stand, yet the one whose testimony might have changed everything never got to tell his story. He never got to trace his metamorphosis to a Sunday morning last June, when he woke up thinking he had seen all the absurdities that a life of crime fighting had to offer only to find the FBI videotape—the confession that would become the heart of the terrorism case—on his doorstep. Read the full article (may require free registration) here
Barney Frank on the Congress/FBI Dust-up The members of Congress who have behaved admirably during this recent, terrible period of U.S. political history, is distressingly small. One of the few who can hold their heads high is Barney Frank (D–MA), and here's an example of why: Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I disagree with the bipartisan House leadership criticism of the FBI's search of a Member's office. I know nothing specifically about the case, except that the uncontroverted public evidence did seem to justify the issuance of a warrant. What we now have is a Congressional leadership, the Republican part of which has said it is okay for law enforcement to engage in warrantless searches of the average citizen, now objecting when a search, pursuant to a validly issued warrant, is conducted of a Member of Congress. I understand that the speech and debate clause is in the Constitution. It is there because Queen Elizabeth I and King James I were disrespectful of Parliament. It ought to be, in my judgment, construed narrowly. It should not be in any way interpreted as meaning that we as Members of Congress have legal protections superior to those of the average citizen. So I think it was a grave error to have criticized the FBI. I think what they did, they ought to be able to do in every case where they can get a warrant from a judge. I think, in particular, for the leadership of this House, which has stood idly by while this administration has ignored the rights of citizens, to then say we have special rights as Members of Congress is wholly inappropriate. Thanks to Josh Marshall's TPM
"The defining issue of our time is the media." So argues Jamison Foser in an excellent article at Media Matters. I, and I suspect many others, would agree to a large extent. The defining issue of our time is not the Iraq war. It is not the "global war on terror." It is not our inability (or unwillingness) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Nor is it immigration, outsourcing, or growing income inequity. It is not education, it is not global warming, and it is not Social Security. The defining issue of our time is the media. The dominant political force of our time is not Karl Rove or the Christian Right or Bill Clinton. It is not the ruthlessness or the tactical and strategic superiority of the Republicans, and it is not your favorite theory about what is wrong with the Democrats. The dominant political force of our time is the media. Time after time, the news media have covered progressives and conservatives in wildly different ways -- and, time after time, they do so to the benefit of conservatives. Consider the last two presidents. Bill Clinton faced near-constant media obsession with his "scandals," while George W. Bush has gotten off comparatively easy. Even many members of the media have stopped contesting this painfully obvious point, instead offering dubious justifications. Bill Clinton's "scandals" made for better stories than George Bush's, we are told, because they were simpler and easier for readers and viewers to understand. "Sex sells," while George Bush's false claims about Iraq are much harder to explain. This excuse is simply nonsense. Read the full piece here
Reality Check Sidney Blumenthal has an important article in Salon today, in which he clearly exposes the blinding contrast between the Bush administration rhetoric and the the reality on the ground in Iraq. Bush has been proclaiming Iraq at a turning point for years. "Turning point" is a frequent and recurring talking point, often taken up by the full chorus of the president ("We've reached another great turning point," Nov. 6, 2003; "A turning point will come in less than two weeks," June 18, 2004), vice president ("I think about when we look back and get some historical perspective on this period, I'll believe that the period we were in through 2005 was, in fact, a turning point," Feb. 7, 2006), secretary of state and secretary of defense, and ringing down the echo chamber. This latest "turning point" reveals an Iraqi state without a social contract, a government without a center, a prime minister without power and an American president without a strategy. Each sectarian group maintains its own militia. Each leader's influence rests on these armed bands, separate armies of tens of thousands of men. The militias have infiltrated and taken over key units of the Iraqi army and local police, using them as death squads, protection rackets and deterrent forces against enemies. Reliable statistics are impossible, but knowledgeable reporters estimate there are about 40 assassinations a day in Iraq. Ethnic cleansing is sweeping the country. From Kirkuk in the north to Baghdad in the middle to Basra in the south, Kurds are driving out Turkmen and Arabs, Shiites are killing Sunnis, and the insurgency enjoys near unanimous support among Sunnis. Contrary to Bush's blanket rhetoric about "terrorists" and constant reference to the insurgency as "the enemy," "foreign fighters are a small component of the insurgency," according to Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Patrick Cockburn, one of the most accurate and intrepid journalists in Iraq, wrote last week in the Independent of London that "the overall security situation in Iraq is far worse than it was a year ago. Baghdad and central Iraq, where Shia, Sunni and Kurd are mixed, is in the grip of a civil war fought by assassins and death squads. As in Bosnia in 1992, each community is pulling back into enclaves where it is the overwhelming majority and able to defend itself." Read Blumenthal's full piece here
Bush's hypocrisy re: China Chris Floyd points out a particularly egregious example of hypocrisy on the part of the Administration. But sometimes a particularly choice piece of hypocrisy comes along, a wrenching juxtaposition between reality and sham righteousness so sublime in the totality of its horse-hockeyness that it cries out for special recognition. Such was the story in the New York Times today about the Pentagon's latest report on ""Military Power of the People's Republic of China." The story goes on to note that "the [Pentagon] report details trends in China's ability to deny other military forces access across the region by a combination of strike aircraft, submarines and precision missiles. In all, the report argues, these weapons 'have the potential to pose credible threats to modern militaries operating in the region.'" The report concludes with the stirring words of Pentagon honcho Donald Rumsfeld, quoting his plaintive cry against the yellow peril at an, err, Asian security conference last year: "Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust deployments?" Read the full post here
Political Nuances Steve Clemons, one of the most insightful of the inside-the-beltway observers, makes an interesting point about the Hayden nomination. Yesterday, General Michael Hayden's confirmation process to serve as Porter Goss's successor as CIA Director moved out of the Senate Intelligence Committee on a 12-3 vote. Those voting against were Ron Wyden, Russ Feingold and Evan Bayh. This is interesting as Feingold rarely votes against a presidential nominee -- though he did so on John Bolton. Feingold sees the duplicity about the warrantless wiretaps as something to really dig in about, and I admit to admiring Feingold's steadfastness. But this gambit of opposition is not designed to win. Read what brings Steve to that conclusion here
Tom Toles sums it up
Search for other Toles strips here
imprisoning journalists This past weekend, Attorney General Alberto Gonazles essentially threatened journalists responsible for stories which reveal things that the Administration wants to conceal with imprisonment. This is a very big deal, and Glenn Greenwald is all over the story. It really is hard to imagine any measures which pose a greater and more direct danger to our freedoms than the issuance of threats like this by the administration against the press. If the President has the power to keep secret any information he wants simply by classifying it -- including information regarding illegal or otherwise improper actions he has taken -- then the President, by definition, has complete control over the flow of information which Americans receive about their Government. An aggressive and adversarial press in our country was intended by the founders to be one of the most critical checks on abuses of presidential power, every bit as much as Congress and the courts were created as checks. Jefferson said: "If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter." The only reason the Founders bothered to guarantee a free press in First Amendment is because the press was intended to serve as a check against Government power. And the only reason, in turn, that the press is a check against the Government is because it searches for and then discloses information which the Government wants to keep secret. That is what investigative journalism, by definition, does. The Government always wants to conceal its wrongdoing from the public, and the principal safeguard in this country against that behavior is an adversarial press, which is devoted to uncovering such conduct and disclosing it to the country. Read Glenn's full post here
Left-wing dissent: impotent? Publius at the Law and Politics blog uses the recent (and widely reported) incident at the New School University commencement, in which a student (Jean Rohe) challenged John McCain, to explore the above topic. As I’ve written somewhere before, I was really into this stuff in college – i.e., the idea that all dissent had been neutered and co-opted. For a good summary, you can check out this collection of essays from the Baffler called Commodify Your Dissent (it includes a lot of Thomas Frank's earlier work). The basic argument is that the dissenting ideas and slogans of “the 60s” had been co-opted by the market. Thus, “revolution” and “change the rules” became slogans for companies like Nike and Burger King rather than viable dissent. Fast forwarding to 2006, the problem is that “the Left” has been so stereotyped and caricatured for so many years (often aided and abetted by people like Lieberman or even itself) that true Left-wing protests don’t undermine anything (in the Lefty sense of undermine). In fact, they usually do precisely the opposite in that they further the interests of the target of protest. Rohe’s speech and the hecklers are Exhibit A. Despite their intentions, they actually helped John McCain’s presidential chances. He wanted to be booed and heckled there so he could use that example to skeptical Iowa conservatives. See, liberals hate me. In this sense, the “dissent” is precisely what McCain needed. Oddly enough, a roaring reception would have been more “subversive” to his campaign than the heckling. George Allen: Well, I'll you one thing Wolf, they wouldn't have cheered me at the New School. Read the full post here
"The war on terror cannot be fought a la carte" That line – and a good one it is – was written by Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, the Venezuelan ambassador to the U.S., in an Op-Ed piece in today's LA Times. THIS WEEK, the State Department announced that it was banning all sales of weapons to Venezuela, alleging that the government of President Hugo Chavez was not cooperating in the worldwide war on terror. Though the sanctions are mostly symbolic — Washington sells few weapons to Caracas as it is — the extreme nature of these false allegations indicates that Washington is continuing its long campaign to delegitimize and undermine my country's democratic government. As the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, I was not surprised. In January, we received word that the Bush administration was considering designating Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism — politicizing the war on terror. Bush administration officials feebly attempted to link Chavez to terrorist groups and acts, though they have failed to provide any evidence to substantiate such claims. They also claim that Venezuela's friendly relations with Iran and Cuba constitute an "intelligence-sharing relationship" that threatens U.S. security. This is nonsense. Venezuela, like many other countries, maintains relations with Iran and Cuba based on specific interests — oil with Iran, social programs with Cuba. This poses no threat to the United States. Read the full piece here
Fairy tales During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein's Information Minister became the butt of a million jokes for proclaiming that American soldiers were being routed, even as U.S. troops were quickly closing in on Baghdad. “Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad,” Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf—aka Baghdad Bob—said as Saddam's end neared. “Be assured, Baghdad is safe.” Now, on the subject of Iraq the Bush administration has roughly the same credibility as Baghdad Bob, and for similar reasons: the administration covers its ears when it gets bad news and anyone bold enough to deliver it is sent to face the firing squad. “This administration,” Bob Graham, the former Senator and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me, “does not seek the truth as a basis for its judgments, but tries to use intelligence to validate judgments it has already made.” A number of current and former intelligence officials have told me that the administration's war on internal dissent has crippled the CIA's ability to provide realistic assessments from Iraq. “The system of reporting is shut down,” said one person familiar with the situation. “You can't write anything honest, only fairy tales.” Read the rest of Ken Silverstein's damning article in the current Harper's
Tom Friedman deja vu: "just let this play out" As powerful, high-profile, demonstrably bad pundits go, Tom Friedman's probably not the worst. But FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) lays out in embarrassing fashion just how malleable one of Tom's most important themes has become. Friedman's appeal seems to rest on his ability to discuss complex issues in the simplest possible terms. On a recent episode of MSNBC's Hardball (5/11/06), for example, Friedman boiled down the intricacies of the Iraq situation into a make-or-break deadline: "Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out." That confident prediction would seem a lot more insightful, however, if Friedman hadn't been making essentially the same forecast almost since the beginning of the Iraq War. A review of Friedman's punditry reveals a long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer. "The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time." "What I absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of—I know a lot of these guys—reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. I don't get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? Can we let this play out, please?" "What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war." "Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile." "I think we're in the end game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one." Read the rest of the remarkable litany at fair.org
NSA update: "We should be terrified..." Intelligence historian Matthew Aid is interviewed in Salon: The fact that the federal government has my phone records scares the living daylights out of me. They won't learn much from them other than I like ordering pizza on Friday night and I don't call my mother as often as I should. But it should scare the living daylights out of everybody, even if you're willing to permit the government certain leeways to conduct the war on terrorism. We should be terrified that Congress has not been doing its job and because all of the checks and balances put in place to prevent this have been deliberately obviated. In order to get this done, the NSA and White House went around all of the checks and balances. I'm convinced that 20 years from now we, as historians, will be looking back at this as one of the darkest eras in American history. And we're just beginning to sort of peel back the first layers of the onion. We're hoping against hope that it's not as bad as I suspect it will be, but reality sets in every time a new article is published and the first thing the Bush administration tries to do is quash the story. It's like the lawsuit brought by EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] against AT&T -- the government's first reaction was to try to quash the lawsuit. That ought to be a warning sign that they're on to something. I'll tell you where this story probably will go next. Notice the USA Today article doesn't mention whether the Internet service providers or cellphone providers or companies operating transatlantic cables like Global Crossing cooperated with the NSA. That's the next round of revelations. The real vulnerabilities for the NSA are the companies. Sooner or later one of these companies, fearing the inevitable lawsuit from the ACLU, is going to admit what it did, and the whole thing is going to come tumbling down. Read the full interview here
More politics? click here! •••
|
|
books
daily reads
film
favorite posts pinter on politicians' language
music
art
archives
|
| ©2005 Tony. All rights reserved. | Website
designed by JSVisuals.com |
