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Archive: POLITICS >please note: some links may no longer be active.
A 34 year veteran Police Chief argues passionately for the legalization of drugs in the LA Times. As a cop, I bore witness to the multiple lunacies of the "war on drugs." Lasting far longer than any other of our national conflicts, the drug war has been prosecuted with equal vigor by Republican and Democratic administrations, with one president after another — Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush — delivering sanctimonious sermons, squandering vast sums of taxpayer money and cheerleading law enforcers from the safety of the sidelines. It's not a stretch to conclude that our draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery. Want to cut back on prison overcrowding and save a bundle on the construction of new facilities? Open the doors, let the nonviolent drug offenders go. The huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the 1980s and '90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003) were mainly for drug convictions. In 1980, 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges. By 2003, that figure had ballooned to 1,678,200. We're making more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault combined. Feel safer? Read the full editorial here (may require registration).
The absurdity of the Miers nomination and the ridiculousness of Rush Limbaugh. Dwight Meredith cleverly ties them together. Starting at Center, number 43, from SMU, Harriet Mieeeeeeeers Conservatives are getting desperate to find a way out of the Harriet Miers fiasco. Earlier today, I noted Charles Krauthammer’s idea to gin up a dispute over the production of documents in order to find a way for the nomination to be withdrawn while allowing all Republicans to save face. Rush Limbaugh has an even crazier notion: "My idea is this: The solution to the Harriet Miers issue. The president announce that he's withdrawing her from nomination to the Supreme Court because he's decided to appoint her to succeed Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve. He trusts her. She has filled out her own income tax forms all of her life, and she has done her personal banking all of her life. She knows banks, she knows tax reform, tax policy, and the president trusts her, so she could go to the Federal Reserve." I have a better idea. The Lakers did not make the playoffs last year. Since Shaq left for Miami they have been looking for a starting center. If Laker owner Jerry Buss offered Miers a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract to start at center for the Lakers, Miers could announce that she is no longer available for duty on the court. After all, a playoff game might be scheduled at the same time as an important oral argument and she just would not be able to do both. President Bush, Harriet Miers and the GOP would all save face. Laker owner Jerry Buss would become Ambassador to whatever warm weather country he chooses. Phil Jackson would get to teach Harriet the triangle offense rather than having Arlen Specter teach her constitutional law. Kobe will get to take all the shots. Everyone will be happy. Thanks to wampum.wabanaki.net
How could the NY Times let it happen? This question is frantically being dissected throughout the media world as details of Judy Miller's questionable performance as a reporter continue to emerge. Eric Alterman, probably the best and most rigorous American media observer, provides some very interesting background (especially re: Judy's husband) which helps to answer the question. Here is the full excerpt: The big question in The New York Times cafeteria yesterday was how did it happen that Arthur Sulzberger and Bill Keller let so dishonest and slippery a character as Judy Miller hijack the institution of the New York Times for her own nefarious purposes and humiliate its entire echelon of top leadership; the publisher; the editor and the editorial page. The LA Times investigates the question, here. There’s no simple answer but it’s a question that should have been asked a long, long time ago. Close observers of Miller’s work have always known she could not be trusted and now we know that the editors ignored a “Judy Miller Must Be Stopped Now” memo from one of her colleagues years ago, before she wrought all the damage on the paper’s credibility with the lies she printed about WMDs. Again, the answer is ultimately unknowable, but I’ve always felt it was a matter of social power. Judy is married to Jason Epstein, who is one of the most widely admired and well-liked people in all of New York. Jason is a legend of an editor, and was widely referred to for decades, almost every time you heard his name as “the smartest man in New York.” He practically invented the trade paperback book, and played key roles in the founding of The New York Review of Books and the Library of America. He is also the editor to some of our greatest fiction and non-fiction writers. What’s more, he is a charming raconteur and a famous amateur chef. Maybe he’s got some bad qualities, but I’ve never heard any mentioned. Anyway, Jason and Judy are famous hosts, at their apartment in the Police Building downtown and their Sag Harbor House, and they sit at the nexus of an extremely important social network that nobody wants to be thrown out of. (I saw Jason, whom I like and admire, at a party the night before Miller’s last testimony and did not know what to say to him, given what I’ve written about his wife. I’m sure a lot of people don’t want that problem.) The fact that Judy was also close to Arthur Sulzberger made her nearly untouchable, no matter what she did inside the paper. As Keller admits in the long take-out, he could not control her. She had more power to get her reporting in the paper than he felt he did to keep her out. Second, Judy had sources inside the Bush administration in a way almost nobody in the Times did. She had been cultivating the Neocons for decades, doing their bidding in the Paper of Record, and was willing to do so in the run-up to the war. She did not believe it her job to determine, as she admits, whether what they were telling her, and she was printing, had any veracity. And the editors, particularly Howell Raines, were so desperate for scoops, they did not want to look too carefully. Raines went so far as to allow her to publish a front-page “scoop” based on an interview she was not allowed to conduct and was “edited” by the Pentagon itself. She also apparently agreed to the censorship restrictions that come with a security clearance, though Times readers were never informed of this. All of these are by themselves, firing offenses, ignoring the current contretemps where she refuses to cooperate with paper’s efforts to investigate its unjournalistic behavior. But they are also the way the world works. And so nobody at the paper is admitting anything really, and Sulzberger and Keller are just hoping it goes away. Keep in mind, however, when you read articles about the “liberal media” that Raines—who let Miller pass along lies to promote a dishonest Bush war—is supposedly exhibit A. If I were Arthur Sulzberger, the next time anyone accused the Times of being liberal, I’d say, “Hey, I’m the guy that stuck by Judy Miller …” But also, don’t forget what this is really about: it’s about a conspiracy to defraud the American public into war and destroy the reputation of a public servant who tried to warn us—even at the cost of endangering the lives of loyal CIA agents. Everyone involved is guilty of that and it’s worse than anything of which Keller and Sulzberger can be even remotely accused. I thought it interesting that the smart boys at ABC’s “The Note” mocked news stations that covered the feed of soldiers being coached to play extras in a Bush promotional video that masqueraded as news. That’s because ABC News, together with their colleagues elsewhere in the media, think nothing of portraying these phony propaganda ploys as real news and see nothing wrong with being used by the White House to deceive, rather than inform the public. Too bad the viewing public is never let in on the game, except on “The Daily Show" which is why, with the departure of Ted Koppel, Jon Stewart is genuinely a more credible news source than anyone at ABC News—or any other television network, his own protestations notwithstanding.
A very interesting–and worrisome–juxtaposition. MB Williams reminds us that the deeply unsatisfactory result of Lawrence Walsh's investigation into Iran-Contra could foreshadow the problems which Fitzgerald is likely to face. Let's hope that the latter is better prepared for the fallout than the former. The facts are that many of the actors in the current Plame Affair have strong ties to Reagan's inner circle and/or Defense Department, including I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who served as a Director of Special Projects (1982 - 1985), Donald Rumsfeld, Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East (1983 - 1984) and on Reagan's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control (1982 - 1986), and Stephen Hadley, appointed by Reagan to the very important position of Counsel to the Special Review Board, aka, the "Tower Commission". They cut their obstructionist teeth on Iran-Contra, and learned long ago that the media was a powerful tool in the undermining of a special prosecutor and his pet grand jury. Fitzgerald is a very competent guy. But so was Walsh, and he was sent packing, disgraced, for investigating a case which easily could have brought down a king, and nearly did. Walsh's targets had at their disposal a malleable Congress and self-serving press corps. But even the House of that Congress was ostensibly controlled by Democrats, and the media had yet to be fully corporatized. Thus, Fitzgerald has far more potential landmines to avoid, with much less support. A few pardons here, or Congressional investigations there, and Rove, Scooter and their bosses are sitting pretty for as long as they like. Read the full post at wampum.wabanaki.net
Poster boy for Republican arrogance and hypocrisy: Ralph Reed. Granted, it's difficult to choose from such a deep pool, but the recent revelations surrounding Reed's well-paid role in promoting gambling might just take the cake. With Iraqi elections and Forgetful Judy taking the headlines, I doubt [the] excellent story by the Post on the Abramoff-Norquist-Reed-DeLay syndicate will get the attention it deserves. There are a lot of details, but it’s worth the read and I highly recommend it. The big value of the article is that it provides a detailed account of how the Abramoff syndicate worked in practice to influence national policy. It also shows what an absolute slimeball Ralph Reed is. More specifically, it shows how willing he is to value money over religion and to manipulate social conservatives and treat them like useful idiots. Read the full post at the Law and Politics blog.
The sad Judy Miller saga continues. Well, the most recent chapter has, predictably, placed both Miller and the NY Times in an even worse light than before. Many good observations have been made, but you might want to start with Billmon's thorough summary. Miller's story, on the other hand, may be duplicitous, but it's still useful, if only because it tells us some of the questions she was asked in front of the grand jury (which is why we now know that Fitzgerald has his harpoon gun trained on Moby Dick Cheney) and gives us a glimpse inside her reporter's notebook. But it also raises more questions than it answers, particularly when it comes to Miller's puzzling tango with I. Lewis Libby. There is, of course, no way of knowing if Miller told the grand jury the whole truth, and many reasons to suspect she did not. The very structure of her story is, in a sense, deceptive, since her chronological narrative follows the sequence of her sessions with Libby, and not the order in which she testified about them. This allows Judy to glide past questions about whether she mentioned the June 2003 meeting during her first encounter with the grand jury, or had it pointed out to her by Fitzgerald. At a minimum, the amnesia dodge indicates that Miller is still trying to protect someone -- or probably more accurately, trying to protect herself by protecting someone else. It's striking that Judy's explanation for why she can't identify the source of "Valerie Flame" (i.e. a bad memory) is identical with Karl Rove's explanation for why he can't identify the reporter who supposedly told him about Plame. I never realized amensia could be contagious. Read the full post at The Whiskey Bar Also, the consistently excellent Salon.com has a fine summary. And Josh Marshall asks a very good question here. Perhaps the most troubling revelation in Miller's published story is that she was given some sort of special "security clearance" by The White House. This raises obvious questions which demand serious answers. Editor and Publisher is all over that aspect of the story.
Jonathan Schwarz points out some of the mounting Anyway, I am anxious to point out that Colin Powell is a huge liar liar fo-fire. I just had a chance to check out his ABC interview from last month, which was apparently conducted by Barbara Walters' reanimated corpse. And it is full of lies, in the same way Norway is full of Norwegians. In this particular case, according to Powell, "There was some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me." The problem here, of course, is that IT'S A COMPLETE LIE. Last year's Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq includes the notes that Powell's intelligence staff at the State Department gave him on his U.N. presentation. But Powell ignored the notes, making TEN SEPARATE CLAIMS that his staff had flagged as "weak" and/or "not credible." For instance, you may remember Powell sitting in front of the U.N. and telling the entire world: " Key files from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection." Now, here's what Powell's staff was telling him two days before: Page 4, last bullet, re key files being driven around in cars to avoid inspectors. "This claim is highly questionable and promises to be targeted by critics and possibly UN inspection officials as well." Yes, the intelligence community sure fucked that one up. Why didn't those bastards speak up? You can understand how Powell would be devastated. Read the full post at J. S.'s Tiny Revolution And this follow-up.
The Guardian (UK) prints a searing excerpt from a forthcoming book on Iraq. Author Robert Fisk recalls—in devastating fashion—one of the low points in recent U.S. history... The 5th of February 2003 was a snow-blasted day in New York, the steam whirling out of the road covers, the US secret servicemen - helpfully wearing jackets with "Secret Service" printed on them - hugging themselves outside the fustian, asbestos-packed UN headquarters on the East River. Exhausted though I was after travelling thousands of miles around the United States, the idea of watching Secretary of State Colin Powell - or General Powell, as he was now being reverently redubbed in some American newspapers - make his last pitch for war before the Security Council was an experience not to be missed. In a few days, I would be in Baghdad to watch the start of this frivolous, demented conflict. Powell's appearance at the Security Council was the essential prologue to the tragedy - or tragicomedy if one could contain one's anger - the appearance of the Attendant Lord who would explain the story of the drama, the Horatio to the increasingly unstable Hamlet in the White House. There was an almost macabre opening to the play when General Powell arrived at the Security Council, cheek-kissing the delegates and winding his great arms around them. CIA director George Tenet stood behind Powell, chunky, aggressive but obedient, just a little bit lip-biting, an Edward G Robinson who must have convinced himself that the more dubious of his information was buried beneath an adequate depth of moral fury and fear to be safely concealed. Just like Bush's appearance at the General Assembly the previous September, you needed to be in the Security Council to see what the television cameras missed. There was a wonderful moment when the little British home secretary Jack Straw entered the chamber through the far right-hand door in a massive power suit, his double-breasted jacket apparently wrapping itself twice around Britain's most famous ex-Trot. He stood for a moment with a kind of semi-benign smile on his uplifted face, his nose in the air as if sniffing for power. Then he saw Powell and his smile opened like an umbrella as his small feet, scuttling beneath him, propelled him across the stage and into the arms of Powell for his big American hug. Read the full excerpt, archived at Truthout.org
Al Gore gives a powerful and serious speech at The Media Center. On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?" The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William Odom, said, "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history." But whether you agree with his assessment or not, Senator Byrd's question is like the others that I have just posed here: he was saying, in effect, this is strange, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to have full and vigorous debates about questions as important as the choice between war and peace? Those of us who have served in the Senate and watched it change over time, could volunteer an answer to Senator Byrd's two questions: the Senate was silent on the eve of war because Senators don't feel that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much any more. And the chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere else: they were in fundraisers collecting money from special interests in order to buy 30-second TV commercials for their next re-election campaign. The full transcript—and it's well worth reading the whole thing—can be found archived at Josh Marshall's indespensable Talking Points Memo.
Setting aside the obvious questions (cronyism, lack of experience, etc.), shouldn't Bush's recent Supreme Court nominee's behavior as a "successful" lawyer in Texas give pause? One of Miers only qualifications for her nomination is that she was the head of a major corporate law firm, Locke, Liddle & Sappe, where under her leadership, the firm had to pay a $22 million settlement for aiding a client in defrauding investors. Locke Liddell & Sapp's agreement to pay $ 22 million to settle a suit alleging it aided a client in defrauding investors is expected to serve as a warning to other firms that they must take action when they learn a client's alleged wrongdoing may be harming third parties. The Dallas-based firm agreed April 14 to settle a suit stemming from its representation of Russell Erxleben, a former University of Texas star football kicker whose foreign currency trading company was allegedly a Ponzi scheme. Erxleben pleaded guilty last November to federal conspiracy and securities-fraud charges and is to be sentenced in May. "It's a very simple legal proposition a lawyer can't help people steal money," said George, of George & Donaldson. George represents investors who lost $ 34 million they placed in Erxleben's Austin Forex International. Daniel N. Matheson III, a former Locke Liddell partner who represented Erxleben, said in his deposition that he knew in March 1998 that $ 8 million in AFI's losses hadn't been reported to investors. AFI, which was founded in September 1996, shut its doors in September 1998. A few days later, Texas securities regulators seized its accounts and put the company into receivership. Harriet Miers, co-managing partner of Locke Liddell, said the firm denies liability in connection with its representation of Erxleben. "Obviously, we evaluated that this was the right time to settle and to resolve this matter and that it was in the best interest of the firm to do so," Miers said. Thanks to Nathan Newman.
Bush defends his choice of Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O'Conner by ironically pointing out that she shares one of the same profound weaknesses from which he suffers (and from which countless people around the world have suffered unfortunate consequences). "I'm interested in people who will be strict constructionists. . . . There should be no doubt in anyone's mind what I believe," Bush said. "Harriet Miers shares that philosophy." "I know her well enough to be able to say she's not going to change. . . . Twenty years from now. . . . her philosophy won't change." That, he said, "is important to me." Inflexibility of thought: an unfortunately quality even in those who don't have a profound influence on the lives of millions of Americans.
Wonder what happened to (neocon disaster) Richard Perle? When we last left our villain Richard Perle, fearless vampire hunter Patrick J. Fitzgerald took time off from Plame patrol to take aim at his black, bloodless heart as part of the Hollinger International scandal. Perle, as you'll recall, was on the board of Hollinger, one of the country's largest media empires, when big neocon chiseler Lord Conrad Black was looting it of some $540 million. According to shareholders who are desperately trying to get their money back, Perle both enabled Black's generosity to himself and was also one of the beneficiaries of Black's largesse. Well, things have gotten decidedly darker for Mr. Perle since then. When last we looked in on him, as part of the SEC investigation Perle had received a Wells notice, "a formal warning that the agency's enforcement staff has determined that evidence of wrongdoing is sufficient to bring a civil lawsuit." Read the full, delicious post at firedoglake.
An amazing Iraqi election story, ignored by the U.S. media. The nascent "Democratic" government in Iraq has, for all practical purposed, fixed the upcoming election in which the people will vote to decide whether or not to ratify the new Constitution. "[The Iraqi] parliament voted Sunday to alter the rules of the constitutional election. It decided that in order for the draft to be defeated, two-thirds of registered voters -- rather than two-thirds of those who cast ballots -- in three provinces must vote against it." The Post says that "the change effectively raises the bar to reach the two-thirds mark." I'll say. During the "purple-finger" elections in January, the turnout was 58 percent. If the turnout were identical in the upcoming election, a whopping 115 percent of all votes cast would have to be against the Constitution. Not impossible in some countries, but probably not too likely. Admittedly the 58 percent turnout was depressed by the Sunni boycott; let's raise the figure to a more reasonable 75 percent. That will still require 89 percent of those voting to vote against the Constitution. "Effectively raising the bar?" To put it mildly. Not that you would learn this without a very careful reading of the world's press. Read the full post by Eli at the lefti blog.
Recollections of Edward Said. Asad Raza recalls the impact which this remarkable man had on his life. There are interludes in which a thinker's work, no matter how enabling or revolutionizing, are liable to attack, to labels such as "dated" or "conservative," from more insecure minds. In this case, the actual presence of Said destroyed those illusions utterly. Seated on a dais at a baby-grand piano, he delivered an early version of his reading of "lateness," on the late work of master figures such as Beethoven and Adorno. In a typical stroke, Said's use of Beethoven's late work as one example, and then Adorno's late work on Beethoven as a second example, highlighted the mutual relationship between artist and critic, each dialectically enabling the other's practice. The further implication, of course, that Said himself was a master critic entering such a late period (he had recently been diagnosed with cancer) was as palpably obvious as the idea that Said would say such a thing aloud was preposterous. And on top of it all, he played the extracts from Beethoven he discussed for us, with the grace of a concert pianist (which he was). I left the auditorium enthralled. Read the full post at 3quarksdaily. For good background on Said, here is his obituary in The Guardian.
Frist, pump and dump, and the trouble with today's conservatives. Eric at Total Information Awareness News ties these topics together in an interesting post. "The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists." That quote is attributed to the late Austrian analyst Willi Schlamm, as referenced by William F. Buckley in a column bemoaning the wayward path that executive compensation has taken in America. At a time when upper level executive salaries are at unprecedented levels (and growing) proportional to the salaries of other employees in the same company, Buckley decries the "capitalists" that are spoiling "capitalism." Read the full post at tianews.blogspot.com
The declining importance of consequences. Publius, one of several intelligent contributors to the blog Legal Fiction, writes an interesting post on the above topic. Gay marriage arguments are the same. The consequentialist arguments will never go away. They just won’t require consequences any more. Social conservatives will keep on saying that marriage will be undermined and families will be threatened even if absolutely zero evidence ever materializes. And all of this, I suppose, points to a much bigger problem – and one that is probably hard-wired into our brains. Most of us (and I certainly include myself in the indictment) don’t really justify our opinions based on logic. Generally, it’s based upon childhood and community norms, and various psychological emotions and motivations that were likely the products of life in the woods. [On an aside, this is why college or travel usually alters one's views. It transplants people into new communities that have different norms and morals than the communities they come from. Even if they don't adopt those norms, they at least see the contingency of their own more clearly.] Read the full post here.
The always excellent Steve Clemons writes a very interesting post... in which he quotes Ted Widmore at length. The topic is how far the U.S. has fallen in the eyes of the world, and Widmore is a fascinating character. Well worth a read.
Alan Dershowitz makes some predictions about soon-to-be Justice Roberts. Like most, perhaps, I had a hard time reading anything substantive into Roberts' answers (and non-answers). Dershowitz, however, predictably formed some strong opinions, and makes 10 specific predictions based on his inferences. 1. He will not overrule Roe v. Wade, though he will not extend it beyond current Supreme Court holdings. 2. He will dramatically lower the wall of separation between church and state, and be a reliable vote with Justices Scalia and Thomas on this critical issue. Read the full post at Ariana's site.
Juan Cole reports on today's tremendous bloodshed in Iraq. Cole's anger is palpable, and we, the American people, really should share his anger. If you don't control your capital, you control nothing. If the events of Black Wednesday were not so very tragic (those poor Shiite laborers! and their families), the situation would be absurd in a surrealist sense. The US military off in a small desert town with nothing to do but play fight club amongst themselves, while hundreds of innocent Iraqi Shiites in Kadhimiyah are massacred at will. And the guerrillas' ability at this late date to mount such a shatteringly effective operation in the capital itself is why the pitiful and arrogant Project for a New American Century fantasy of just crushing the Sunni Arabs of Iraq is a K Street wet dream generated by intellectual adolescents, not a realistic policy. (And of course the same thing could be said of virtually everything the PNAC has ever said). Read the full post here.
David Glenn has written a fascinating profile of George Packer. Packer, a writer for The New Yorker, is the author of a very interesting sounding forthcoming book called The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. Seven years ago, when Packer was thirty-eight, almost no one would have pegged him for this role. At the time, he barely thought of himself as a reporter. (He sometimes still resists that thought.) He was living outside of Boston, writing novels, personal essays, and occasional dispatches from Africa. He was starting to assemble Blood of the Liberals, an impossible-to-categorize family history-cum-political treatise. His work was well regarded, but did not come close to paying a living; he supported himself by teaching writing courses at Harvard and Bennington. Then, in the summer of 2000, he gave up on fiction, and Boston. He moved to New York, and within two years he had become a prolific contributor to The New York Times Magazine and Mother Jones; in May 2003, The New Yorker hired him as a staff writer. With The Assassins’ Gate, Packer hopes to extend a certain tradition of long-form journalism. The book is not a compendium of magazine work; only one of its twelve chapters was lifted whole cloth from a New Yorker article. It weaves together thickly detailed stories of Americans and Iraqis — some of them hopeful, some of them desperate — in the pre- and post-Saddam landscape. Packer wanted to write a narrative in the vein of Joseph Lelyveld’s Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White or Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. He does not claim to have succeeded, but his aim was to create a narrative voice that could tell vivid human stories while simultaneously leading the reader through complex political and historical arguments and leaving room for curiosity and ambivalence. “That narrative voice doesn’t emerge by talking about yourself,” Packer says. “It emerges by — in a way, by how strong an observer you are, and by how strong a thinker you are.” Read the full profile here.
There is so much to say about the Katrina disaster that it's hard to know where to begin. It strikes me, though, that listening to first hand accounts gives crucial perspective to the mountains of commentary available. Charmaine Neville, an undoubtedly extraordinary survivor, tells her story in an eloquent and moving manner. What she reports–and its implications–are chilling. Watch the Charmaine Neville account (requires Windows Media Viewer).
Much like The Daily Show–a fake news program–has provided more accurate reporting than many so-called hard news programs in recent years, The Onion produced a startlingly prescient "parody" just after Bush's first Presidential election victory. WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over." President-elect Bush vows that "together, we can put the triumphs of the recent past behind us." "My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us." Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street. During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years. "You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?" Read the full, eerie post here.
Richard Halloran reviews a new book which sheds light on the importance of understanding "Fourth Generation Warfare" (4GW). This form of warfare, he says, “directly attacks the minds of enemy decision makers to destroy the enemy’s political will.” The author writes that 4GW has been evolving for seven decades, and the United States has already lost three times: Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. Similarly, the French lost in Vietnam and Algeria and the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and the Russians continue to bleed in Chechnya. For the United States in Iraq, Hammes argues: “Clearly, 4GW is a very different concept from the short, intense war the Administration planned for and celebrated by declaring the end of major combat on May 1, 2003.” Expanding on 4GW, Hammes says that the message is clear for any rinky-dink power or band such as al Qaeda wishing to shift the balance of power: “Only unconventional warfare works against established powers.” Therefore, Hammes emphasizes: “As the only Goliath left in the world, we should be worried that the world’s Davids have found a sling and stone that work.” He berates the Department of Defense: “Yet internal DOD debate has largely ignored this striking difference between the outcomes of conventional and unconventional conflicts. In fact, DOD has largely ignored unconventional warfare.” Link to full review.
A couple of recent stories from The Onion: Bush: Vacation Ruined By 'Stupid Dead Soldier' CRAWFORD, TX—President Bush addressed the press Monday, mourning the tragic loss of his summer vacation. Wrongly Imprisoned Man Won't Shut Up About It JOLIET, IL—George Howard Buell, wrongly convicted of rape and burglary, won’t stop yammering about his innocence.
Calvin Trillin cleverly sums up the Bolton appointment: The job's too vital, Bush has said, Thanks to The Nation.
Permanent bases in Iraq: Yes or no? Larry Diamond, a former friend and Stanford colleague of Condi Rice, has written the most honest, intelligent and important recent assessments of the U.S. predicament in Iraq found anywhere in the media landscape. The quality of his analysis not only exceeds that of those found in the main stream media by a wide margin, but also exposes the dishonesty of the Bush administration in clear fashion. One of the issues that most baffles me in a way is the question of long-term military bases in Iraq. It’s now pretty clear that the ambition to establish long-term American military bases in Iraq, in order to secure the Persian Gulf region, contain Iranian expansion, and enable us to draw down or withdraw altogether our forces in Saudi Arabia, was an important motivation for going to war. When we pressed so vigorously and relentlessly in the drafting of the interim constitution for the easiest possible means of ratifying a treaty, it became clear to me that we were looking to smooth the way for an eventual treaty with Iraq giving us long-term basing rights. Read the entire, very important post at Josh Marshall's TPM Cafe.
Thanks for the clarification.
Sometimes the White House distracts attention from the many idiots who populate the Congress. Perhaps that explains why Tancredo decided to call attention to himself.
Addressing the root causes of terrorism. After years of misguided efforts by the Bush Administration, the need to discuss, identify, and begin to seriously address the root causes of terrorism has become tremendously important. There are serious, intelligent voices to be heard on the issue, but, unfortunately, few are to be found in the mainstream media. Here is an excerpt of an excellent, concise example, written by Mark LeVine, Prof. Dept of History UC Irvine, and found on Juan Cole's indispensable website. Just over two years ago I organized a forum of leading younger Muslim activists at the Central University in Budapest. Among those present were the Swiss born scholar Tariq Ramadan and the Moroccan political and social activist Nadia Yassine. Both, in very different ways, are at the center of the Bush Administration's confusing policy of labeling certain Muslim religious leaders and organizations as "moderate" and others as "extremists" and attempting to isolate or support them based on this determination. Last year the State Department revoked a visa granted to Dr. Ramadan, preventing him from accepting a prestigious professorship at Notre Dame. Last month it offered some support for Yassine, who is under indictment in Morocco for daring to suggest at a conference at UC Berkeley we both attended that a republican form of government would better serve Morocco's citizens than its monarchy. The divergent treatment of Yassine and Ramadan demonstrate why this latest attempt to rein in growing antipathy towards the US across the Muslim world is doomed to fail: the support for moderate figures is inconsistently given, not backed up by changes in American policy, and easily subverted by the larger strategic and ideological agenda of Bush Administration officials. Read the full article here.
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