Empathy
Touching (from WaPo) ...
Bush has appeared energized by the events of the past few weeks. Meeting with tribal leaders in Anbar province last Monday, the president even showed empathy when the sheiks complained about a lack of money from Baghdad, officials said. As governor of Texas, Bush said, he had asked for more federal funds from Washington -- and often did not get them, either.
--Josh Marshall
Arkansas Project
Ted Olson a likely nominee to replace disgraced outgoing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
--Josh Marshall
Two Bangor Daily News editors recuse themselves from coverage of the Maine senate race over charges of conflicts of interest.
--Josh Marshall
After reporting to the White House and Congress last year, members of the Iraq Study Group, like all great super-groups, went their separate ways. After the president largely ignored its recommendations, the ISG pondered a reunion tour, but the White House reportedly intervened, imploring former Secretary of State James Baker not to reconvene the panel.
So, the U.S. Institute of Peace did the next best thing -- it convened the experts who advised the ISG, which led to a summer-long discussion among some two dozen former U.S. officials and ambassadors, former CIA analysts, and Iraq specialists from think tanks and universities. Their recommendations are poised to be released tomorrow.
In a report to be released Sunday, a panel of experts assembled by the U.S. Institute of Peace calls for a 50 percent reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq within three years and a total withdrawal and handover of security to the Iraqi military in five years.
"The United States faces too many challenges around the world to continue its current level of effort in Iraq, or even the deployment that was in place before the surge," the report says. " . . . It is time to chart a clearer path forward."
Given that Petraeus reportedly believes stability can be achieved in 10 years, and the Council on Foreign Relations' Stephen Biddle is talking about 20 years, I suppose the USIP plan for a mere five years might look appealing by comparison.
That is, if we had any reason to think conditions would be any better in 2012 than they are now.
--Steve Benen
A Rovian strategy gone awry
Yesterday, after the latest Osama bin Laden video was released, David Kurtz noted that both sides of the political divide "may be tempted to use bin Laden's words to some perverse advantage," but suggested everyone show some restraint. David explained, "Bin Laden is a crazy, evil man. No one should take any pleasure in trying to exploit his rantings for their own partisan purposes." Arguing the same point, I suggested, "Might we be better off not trying to make use of the rambling tirade of a monster who killed 3,000 Americans?"
Last night on PBS' The NewsHour, New York Times columnist David Brooks compared 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden's latest video message to "lefty blogs," saying the al Qaeda head is like "one of these childish people posting rants at the bottom of the page."
Brooks, supposedly one of the media's favorite "serious" grown-ups, is playing the same offensive game far-right activists have been playing for years: tying the 9/11 architect to the left. It's insulting and ridiculous, but Brooks' sentiment was echoed, aggressively, by the usual suspects.
I suppose this is all fairly predictable, and not worth getting too worked up over. Things haven't gone too well for the right when it comes to the military (stretched to the breaking point), counter-terrorism (increased terrorist attacks around the globe every year since 9/11), combating al Qaeda (which has used Iraq as a successful recruiting and fundraising tool), or U.S. foreign policy (our international standing has reached its lowest ebb in a generation), so I guess it makes them feel better to argue that fundamentalist terrorists and secular liberals share some kind of ideology. Whatever.
Having said that, it's probably worth noting, from time to time, that if Osama bin Laden were to sit down and write a gameplan for what he'd like to see the United States do since 2001, it would look eerily similar to the approach taken by the Bush administration over the last six years.
In this sense, Brooks' comments, and those from other far-right voices, are part of a classic Rovian strategy -- identify your rival's strength, and go after it vociferously. Indeed, the strident rhetoric and the nonsensical finger-pointing reeks of desperation, as if the president's political supporters hope that if they scream "OBL (hearts) Democrats" loud enough, no one will notice that Bush's presidency has been everything al Qaeda could have hoped for, and more.
It's kind of sad, when you think about it.
--Steve Benen
The easy way to silence critics
In light of the controversy surrounding the Pentagon's Iraq numbers, hilzoy explained the larger dynamic nicely:
Here are some of the things we know about these statistics: they don't include Sunni-on-Sunni violence, or Shi'a-on-Shi'a violence. They don't include car bombings. There are unexplained changes in the figures from one report to the next. They don't seem to take seasonality into account. [...]
[T]here is an easy way to resolve these issues. If the government were to release its figures, and explain the methodology behind them, then it would be clear whether they had been cherry-picked or not.... Explaining the methodology behind their numbers is obviously the best way for the administration either to put these sorts of doubts to rest once and for all, or else to prove that they are well-founded.
It's an idea that's making the rounds.
Members of Congress urged the Pentagon yesterday to declassify its data on sectarian killings, just days before General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, is expected to report a dramatic decrease in the level of violence between the Sunni and Shi'ite sects.
Does anyone seriously believe that if the internal data pointed to legitimate progress in Iraq, the administration wouldn't release it?
--Steve Benen
'Gutting our military'
Of all of Bush's misstatements from the 2000 presidential election, one of the most obviously-false attacks was on military readiness. Indeed, then-Gov. Bush blamed Clinton and Gore directly for "hollowing out" the military. "If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, 'Not ready for duty, sir.'" BC00 campaign aides later acknowledged it was a bogus charge, but that didn't stop Bush from repeating it. A lot.
And now, seven years later, the next batch of Republican presidential hopefuls are doing the same thing.
"So much time was spent on other stuff in Clinton's years, good and bad, that the biggest mistake he ever made doesn't get the focus it deserves - and that is gutting our military," [Rudy Giuliani] said, not mentioning that the post-Cold War reduction in military spending started under the first President George Bush and continued under Clinton with bipartisan congressional support.
Fred Thompson made the same argument a couple of weeks ago, arguing that the U.S. must rebuild its military to fight global terrorism because leaders "took a holiday" in the 1990s.
I realize the GOP is in a bind. Bush has stretched the military to the breaking point, and Republican presidential candidates want to emphasize rebuilding the Armed Forces as part of their platforms. But to acknowledge the incredible strains on the current military is to implicitly hold the president to account for his irresponsible policies.
What to do? Blame Clinton, of course.
Nonsensical rhetoric notwithstanding, Giuliani and Thompson have identified the correct problem, but they're blaming the wrong president.
Four years after the invasion of Iraq, the high and growing demand for U.S. troops there and in Afghanistan has left ground forces in the United States short of the training, personnel and equipment that would be vital to fight a major ground conflict elsewhere, senior U.S. military and government officials acknowledge.
More troubling, the officials say, is that it will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a "death spiral," in which the ever more rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand.
The risk to the nation is serious and deepening, senior officers warn, because the U.S. military now lacks a large strategic reserve of ground troops ready to respond quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises.... An immediate concern is that critical Army overseas equipment stocks for use in another conflict have been depleted by the recent troop increases in Iraq, they said.
I'd just add that Clinton fought two wars -- and won them both. What's more, when Bush sent troops into Afghanistan to rout the Taliban, he did so with the military Clinton left for him.
--Steve Benen
When football and politics collide
Oddly enough, this was one of the more talked-about news items of the day yesterday among conservative bloggers.
Are you still fans of Matt Hasselbeck and Mack Strong after they visited President Bush last week in Bellevue? Or have their political leanings turned you against them?
The [Seattle] Seahawks quarterback and fullback gave the 43rd president a No. 43 jersey with his name on it at a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser for Rep. Dave Reichert [R] at the Hyatt.
At the time, Hasselbeck called it a thrill and said it was a win-win, this opportunity to meet the president and get out of a team meeting. But as soon as he saw the picture of the two players with Bush, Gary Wright, the team's vice president of administration, said he was concerned about negative reaction.
Maybe in really red Republican states, it would not have been a big deal. But Washington is a blue state, and deep, deep Democratic blue in King County. So objections were raised, and Hasselbeck heard them and read them. He got nasty voice mails, e-mails and text messages.
Now, sports teams routinely meet with presidents at the White House after a championship, but this was a little different. Two Seahawks players attended a GOP fundraiser, where they decided, on their own, to honor the president.
Apparently, Bush isn't particularly popular in Seattle, where fans told Hasselbeck and Strong how offended they were with the gesture towards Bush. Then, conservative bloggers argued yesterday how offended they were by Seahawks' fans.
Apparently, the right's argument seems to be that entertainers like football players should be able to express political preferences without hearing vitriolic reactions from fans. It's a free country; going to a GOP fundraiser and applauding the president isn't a crime. Sounds reasonable enough to me.
But I am curious about those making the argument. If football players should be able to express their support for Bush, should the Dixie Chicks be able to express criticism of Bush? If Democrats in Seattle who are bothered by Hasselbeck and Strong are crazy, are conservatives who crushed the Dixie Chicks' CDs with steamrollers expressing mature political opposition?
Just asking.
--Steve Benen
Hagel to call it quits
In March, in one of the year's strangest political moments, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) called a "major" press conference to discuss his future political plans. The event, which most assumed would be a presidential announcement, drew much of the political press corps and live television coverage. "I'm here today to announce that my family and I will make a decision on my political future later this year," Hagel said, effectively making an announcement to let people know he'll make an announcement some other time.
"Later this year" has apparently arrived and Hagel's decided to call it quits. Election Central has all the details.
I'd just add, however, that this is not at all what the Republican leadership wanted to hear. Sure, Hagel has been a thorn in the party's side by breaking ranks on Iraq policy, but 2008 was poised to be a difficult cycle anyway for the party -- the GOP has 22 seats to defend next year, the Dems have 12. With an unpopular war, an unpopular incumbent president, and an unpopular party in general, Republicans need to keep retirements to a minimum in order to conserve campaign resources.
And yet, they're exiting stage right. Hagel joins Warner (Va.) and Craig (Idaho) among the GOP incumbents who've already announced their retirement plans.
--Steve Benen
An 'ass-kicking' talking point
I guess war supporters have settled on their new assessment of conditions in Iraq. Upon arriving in Australia a few days ago, the president insisted that "we're kicking ass" in Iraq.
In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was apparently on the same page.
"My last visit convinced me more than anything else that the biggest benefit of the surge is to take the men and women on the front lines and change their attitude about their mission. They've gone from going around, waiting to be shot, to feeling like they're kicking their ass."
Kicking whose ass? Graham didn't say.
This need not be complicated. This week, the GAO documented the fact that Iraq has successfully completed three of the administration's 18 benchmarks. This hardly qualifies as "kicking ass."
Both Graham and Bush have been struggling with reality for quite a while, but it seems as if they've decided the cautious optimism no longer works, at least as far as public relations goes. Dems keep pointing to reality, and highlighting the fact that the policy isn't working. If Bush, Graham, and other war supporters concede publicly that the strategy is struggling, it would be perceived as a sign of weakness.
So, they swing for the fences. Don't believe your lying eyes -- the Iraq policy isn't just working; it's actually "kicking ass."
The AEI audience seemed to appreciate Graham's comments, and I don't doubt the GOP base and congressional Republicans got to pump their fists in the air a bit after hearing the president's remarks. There may even be some Americans who hear about this and think, "Well, if things were really going poorly, the president and his allies wouldn't seem so confident."
But that doesn't make it so.
--Steve Benen
"It's not a crime"
I think it's safe to assume the right will be less than pleased with Rudy Giuliani's interview with Glenn Beck yesterday:
GLENN: [I]sn't illegal immigration a crime in and of itself?
GIULIANI: No.
GLENN: Aren't you saying --
GIULIANI: Glenn --
GLENN: You're protecting criminals by saying that being treated as a criminal is unfair.
GIULIANI: Glenn, it's not a crime. I know that's very hard for people to understand, but it's not a federal crime.
GLENN: It's a misdemeanor but if you've been nailed, it is a crime. If you've been nailed, ship back and come back, it is a crime.
GIULIANI: Glenn, being an illegal immigrant, the 400,000 were not prosecuted for crimes by the federal government, nor could they be.... In fact, when you throw an immigrant out of the country, it's not a criminal proceeding. It's a civil proceeding.
Beck followed up by asking if illegal immigration should be a crime, prompting Giuliani to argue, "No, it shouldn't be because the government wouldn't be able to prosecute it."
Now, Giuliani isn't wrong. Illegal immigrants aren't imprisoned for being in the country; they're deported. There's simply no practical way to incarcerate every single person who enters the U.S. illegally.
But as far as the Republican base is concerned, the former NYC mayor, whose record on immigration was far too liberal for GOP tastes anyway, has given far-right activists just another reason to question his conservative bona fides.
--Steve Benen
Journalism 101
Here's an exercise for the day. Compare Karen DeYoung's September 6th Post article on the Iraq numbers with today's by Michael Gordon in the Times.
We've already discussed DeYoung's article here. While Gordon discusses conflicting opinions about what the military's numbers mean, he really never questions the numbers themselves.
One mild exception comes in this graf ...
Critics of the White House have pointed to the Government Accountability Office report released on Tuesday, which asserted that it was unclear whether sectarian violence had decreased. The report cited data on daily, nationwide attacks that had been assembled by Gen. David H. Petraeus’s command. But American military officials note that the G.A.O. assessment did not take account of August, when the most significant gains in reducing violence materialized not only in Baghdad, but also across Iraq.
Gordon himself might have noted that the statistics compiled by the Associated Press showed, on the contrary, a marked increase in civilian deaths in August.
I'd recommend reading both articles and making your own comparison. I think it's hard to come to any other judgment but that Gordon's is a remarkably credulous account. And while it notes some points of disagreement it treats them in the manner one would expect of a relatively evenhanded advocate on behalf of the numbers coming out of the Baghdad command. I cannot see any rationale or excuse for why the problems raised in DeYoung's report find no place in Gordon's.
This is another example of how the Post, as big a train wreck as it's been on the editorial side, has consistently been the superior paper on intelligence, military and foreign reporting (at least in the Middle East) during the Bush presidency.
--Josh Marshall
Not ready for prime time
Earlier this week, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said it's not too late for Fred Thompson to compete for the GOP nomination, but to make up for lost time, the former senator must demonstrate "a command over policy issues." Fleischer added, "He's got to knock the policy questions out of the park."
Freshly minted GOP White House hopeful Fred Thompson puzzled Iowans yesterday by insisting an Al Qaeda smoking ban was one reason freedom-loving Iraqis bolted to the U.S. side.
"They said, 'You gotta quit smoking,'" Thompson explained to a questioner asking about progress in Iraq during a town hall-style meeting. [...]
Thompson's tale of a smokers' revolt baffled some in the audience of about 150 who came to decide whether the former Tennessee senator is ready for prime time.
"I don't know what that was about," said Jim Moran, 72, who had driven from nearby McCook Lake, S.D.
Thompson's been getting a lot of that lately.
In just the last couple of days, Thompson has had trouble explaining his position on Social Security; dismissed the significance of Osama bin Laden, describing him as "more symbolism than anything else"; said he believes "we better figure out a way" to combat al Qaeda (not that he necessarily knows how), and proposed a bizarre constitutional amendment on gay marriage, arguing that "zero" state legislatures "have affirmatively approved gay marriage," a claim that happens to be wrong.
No wonder this guy is ducking debates; he's nowhere near ready for prime time.
--Steve Benen
Who Disbanded the Iraqi Army?
Fred Kaplan raises an fascinating point in his new article about the disbanding of the Saddam-era Iraqi Army. We know Paul Bremer didn't come up with the idea. But who did? I'm not sure I realized this. But I guess we actually don't know. And with the near universal belief that it was the biggest blunder of the occupation, it does not seem likely that anyone will be coming forward any time soon.
Since the idea read so much from the pre-war AEI-Iraq Regime Change playbook, I think I'd just been assuming it had come out of the crew around Wolfowitz at the Pentagon. But Kaplan makes an admittedly circumstantial and speculative but in the end I think rather convincing argument that the idea came from Dick Cheney. And Cheney probably got the idea from Ahmed Chalabi -- one of the great charlatans and hucksters in the annals of American foreign policy history.
We're told that it's wrong too dwell too long on what's in the past when it comes to Iraq. And this is good advice in as much as the hard work of figuring out, conceptually and politically, how to end the nightmare in Iraq shouldn't be shunted aside for the comparative ease of cataloguing and knocking out of park all the lame-brained ideas and catastrophic screw ups going back to 2002.
That said, though, there's so much left to talk about. There is such a long list of misdeeds and crimes for which we have neither answers nor accountability. This is just one among many, though it is no doubt one of the most consequential.
--Josh Marshall
Over the Top, Even for the White House
Maybe there is a limit as to how far the White House will--or can--go to spin the situation on the ground in Iraq as positive.
On his way to the APEC conference in Australia this week, President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq. Actually, the visit was limited to the confines of a U.S. base there. Iraq is too dangerous for the President to visit anywhere where Iraqis actually live. The very fact that the visit has to be a "surprise" for security reasons evidences the violence and instability within the country. But that wasn't going to stop a gung-ho White House speechwriter from touting the President's visit itself as proof that things are getting better in Iraq.
Here is a portion of the speech President Bush was to give today at the APEC conference. This is from the "as prepared for delivery" version of the speech which is released in advance to media organizations that cover the White House (emphasis mine):
On my way to this week’s summit, I stopped in Iraq’s Anbar Province. Last year, Anbar was an al Qaida stronghold and one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. Al Qaida terrorized the province, using torture and murder to keep the local population in line. Then, Sunnis who had fought with al Qaida against Coalition troops turned on the terrorists, and began fighting with Coalition troops against al Qaida. Together, Americans and Iraqis drove al Qaida from strongholds in the region. And today, because of their sacrifice, Anbar is one of the safest places in Iraq – so safe that the President of the United States can drop in to thank the troops for their courage in the fight to protect us all.
Someone must have spotted the sheer inanity of that line and rewrote it because in the speech the President actually delivered that section is gone, replaced with a more benign account of the President's visit:
You may have heard, on my way down here I stopped in Iraq--stopped in Anbar Province. Anbar was an al Qaeda stronghold. Their leaders of al Qaeda had announced that they were going to establish a safe haven from which to launch further attacks on my nation--for starters. It was a part of Iraq that was dangerous and, the truth of the matter is, the a lot of the experts in my country had said was lost to al Qaeda.I went there because al Qaeda has lost Anbar. The opposite happened. Anbar is a Sunni province that once had people joining al Qaeda -- they're now turning against al Qaeda. . . . And I was proud to go there.
Citing the President's brief stop in a heavily guarded U.S. encampment as proof of peace and stability in the country at large was too over the top, even for the White House.
--David Kurtz
Lewis's Charmed (Legal) Life
I'll have more on this over the weekend. But take a look at this new post on the Jerry Lewis (R-CA) investigation. First, 'budget shortfalls' led to the very unfortunate decision to slow down the investigation. Then a senior prosecutor was put in place by the acting US Attorney in LA to jumpstart the investigation. Now Main Justice has forced him into retirement.
Give this one a read. The DOJ shenanigans may not be over.
--Josh Marshall
Edwards
As we noted below, we interviewed Sen. Edwards today about terrorism and Iraq. We'll be bringing you those episodes of TPMtv on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. For now, we wanted bring you a quick preview, Sen. Edwards on the Petraeus Report and 'the surge' ...
--Josh Marshall
George Packer on Preparing for Defeat
In the upcoming issue of The New Yorker, George Packer surveys the failure of the surge:
The Petraeus-Crocker testimony is the kind of short-lived event on which the Administration has relied to shore up support for the war: the “Mission Accomplished” declaration, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s capture, the transfer of sovereignty, the three rounds of voting, the Plan for Victory, the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Every new milestone, however illusory, allows the Administration to avoid thinking ahead, to the years when the mistakes of Iraq will continue to haunt the U.S.The media have largely followed the Administration’s myopic approach to the war, and there is likely to be intense coverage of the congressional testimony. But the inadequacy of the surge is already clear, if one honestly assesses the daily lives of Iraqis. . . .
The balance of the piece looks at the road ahead and the very difficult decisions that the U.S. is avoiding making and has been avoiding for many months. If our options before ranged from bad to worse, they now range from worse to horrible.
--David Kurtz
OBL
As I skimmed the transcript of the new bin Laden tape with its discussion of global warming, subprime credit woes, Noam Chomsky, Richard Perle, the low tax nirvana of Islam and a bunch of other stuff, I could not help feeling sad again about how we gave this joker a new lease on life by invading Iraq. Hannah Arendt spoke of the 'banality of evil'. This may only rise to the level of the ridiculousness of evil. And perhaps not even that.
I don't gainsay the danger or destructive power of the man. I still remember Rick Hertzberg's quote just after 9/11 that the attacks were as brilliant as they were evil. (This is from memory: so I may have the precise words wrong. But he well captured the way in which the horror and evil of the attacks were matched by their diabolical ingeniusness.) But as an articulator of a vision, an expounder of "Islamofascism," or whatever the new trademarked word is now, he's about as coherent and comprehensible as a 9th tier blogger or one of those whacks sitting on a stoop in Union Square talking about fascism and Texas oil barons before they get overcome by the shakes or decide to start collecting more aluminum cans.
If my predictive powers are still working right, I'm sure I'll catch flack for taking such a mocking attitude toward this man who has so much American blood on his hands. But this, I think, is only the flip side of the vaunted perch we insist on giving him, a insistence that is a paradoxical part of Bushism. They are tacit partners in creating the world in which we now live.
--Josh Marshall
The Big Question
How will we determine the whereabouts of the new bin Laden puppet who has taken over al Qaeda?
--Josh Marshall
Osama Bin Laden: Terrorist and Political Pundit
In his latest public statement, Osama bin Laden (or someone purporting to be him) wades pretty deep into U.S. domestic politics, according to a transcript of his remarks obtained by ABC News:
He says to the American people, "you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, [former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld…""You permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you -- with your full knowledge and consent -- to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then you claim to be innocent! The innocence of yours is like my innocence of the blood of your sons on the 11th -- were I to claim such a thing."
Bin Laden says President Bush's words echo "neoconservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle."
"People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there."
Now, here's the thing. Both sides of Iraq debate may be tempted to use bin Laden's words to some perverse advantage. Bush Administration supporters (and, in fairness, no one has exploited bin Laden's statements quite like the Bush Administration) will try to extract some measure of satisfaction that if bin Laden is against us, we must be doing the right thing. Iraq War opponents might be tempted to note that bin Laden is calling out the Democrats for not stopping the war. Whatever. Bin Laden is a crazy, evil man. No one should take any pleasure in trying to exploit his rantings for their own partisan purposes. The only legitimate political point to be made is why is this guy still free to spout such noxious rhetoric six years after the September 11 attacks.
--David Kurtz
John Edwards: The TPM Interview
John Edwards was at NYC's Pace University today for what his campaign billed as a major policy speech on counter-terrorism. Josh got a chance to sit down with Edwards for an interview following the speech. They discussed the "War on Terror" and the road ahead in Iraq. We'll have video of some of the interview shortly.
--David Kurtz
The Dog Ate It
Alas, there won't be a report from General Petraeus, at least not a written report.
Late Update: Over at The Horse's Mouth, Greg has more on the report and the rhetorical jostling over who exactly is responsible for it, the White House or Gen. Petraeus.
--David Kurtz
Edwards Takes Hard Line on Pakistan
Following on Sen. Barack Obama's lead, former Sen. John Edwards suggested in a speech today that as President he would not hesitate to conduct U.S. counter-terrorism operations on Pakistan soil if the Pakistani government refused to take action itself.
--David Kurtz
Advice and Consent: The Bush Way
Yesterday, the White House announced it would nominate E. Duncan Getchell, Jr., to a seat on the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. But as the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports today, Getchell was not on a list of five possible nominees submitted to the White House by Virginia Sens. John Warner (R) and Jim Webb (D). Instead, Getchell had appeared on an earlier list submitted to the White House by Warner and then-Sen. George Allen (R), who Webb defeated last year:
"Today, despite our good faith, bipartisan effort to accommodate the president, the recommendations that Senator Warner and I made have been ignored," Webb said last night."The White House talks about the spirit of bipartisanship. . . . The White House cannot expect to complain about the confirmation of federal judges when they proceed to act in this manner," Webb added.
Webb said he and Warner jointly interviewed more than a dozen attorneys, received ratings of candidates from bar groups and submitted five "outstanding" names.
Warner is not happy either, the paper reports:
Warner said in a terse statement, "I steadfastly remain committed to the recommendations stated in my joint letter with Senator Webb to the president, dated June 12, 2007, and I have so advised in a respectful, consistent manner in my consultations with the White House senior staff."
The White House and the Senate leadership worked out a deal before the summer recess that the President would not make any recess appointments provided that the Senate moved on some of the President's nominations. It's not clear whether this is one such nomination, but the irony would be rich if it were.
One other point to be made. As the Times-Dispatch notes, a third of the 4th Circuit seats are open at the moment, which has left the reliably conservative appeals court evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. So the appointment of a Federalist Society member like Getchell, if confirmed, would help sway the idealogical bent of the court back to where the GOP base would like it to be--staunchly conservative.
--David Kurtz
The Making of a President 2008
Fred Thompson: "we better figure out a way" to combat al Qaeda.
Perhaps before "we" run for President?
Late Update: The video, from ABC's "Good Morning America":
--David Kurtz
We Need Your Help (Iraq/Surge Edition)
There's quite a lot to be said analyzing, interpreting, even advocating about the 'surge' and what we should be doing or not doing in Iraq. But in the last few days my main attention has gone to trying to pick apart the bamboozling statistics we're getting on the one hand and to find some reliable ones on the other. And like one of the intel analysts quoted yesterday in the Post, I find that once you pull away the first level of transparently bamboozling numbers you find that there simply aren't any reliable statistics at all.
The whole debate is a mix of apples and oranges comparisons, numbers tossed around whose provenance is never clearly explained and so forth. And the folks with guns on the ground in Iraq -- the US military, the Iraqi 'government', etc. -- who are best placed to compile numbers are actively taking steps to conceal them.
The one set of numbers we've found that appears to go back some way (a couple years) and have a consistent methodology are those compiled by the Associated Press from police reports about deaths in Iraq. To further the confusion, though, the AP seems unwilling to assemble these numbers together in one place, so you need to go back and piece together the separate monthly numbers from individual stories.
So far, with some sleuthing yesterday by myself and Spencer Ackerman, we've got these numbers.
Jan 07: 1,604
Feb 07: 1,552
March 07: 1,572*
April 07:
May 07: 2155
June 07: 1640
July 07: 1760
August 07: 1809
To be clear, we don't think there's something magical about the AP's methodology. I can imagine various problems with measuring civilian death rates from police reports. The key is that appears to be a reasonable methodology and they appear to have used the same methodology going back to mid-2005. So these numbers give us at least some starting basis to measure change over time.
Here's where we need your help. There's a real needle in a haystack quality to finding these AP statistics. You can see the ones we have above. If you'd like to help, we're trying to track down the numbers for 2006. If you can find them, send us an email with the subject "Iraq Numbers". In the email include the month, the number, the citation of the article where you found the number and the sentence -- word for word -- in which the number appears. If you have a link to an article online, all the better. If it looks like we've got one of the numbers for 07 wrong, by all means let us know that too.
We're also working on investigating a couple other sets of numbers, so if you know of some, we'd like help on that front too. Again, we're looking for sets of numbers that give some view into what's happening in Iraq. We're looking for ones that go back for some period of time into the past and use a consistent methodology.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
Gen. David Petraeus gives a subtly defiant interview to the Boston Globe in a preview to his highly anticipated testimony before Congress next week.
--David Kurtz
Romney: Good Help Is Hard to Find
First Craig, now this. From the Salt Lake Tribune ...
A top Utah fund-raiser for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign - who has links to an organization facing a civil lawsuit alleging child abuse - is no longer part of Romney's state finance team.Robert Lichfield of La Verkin, who founded the umbrella group called the Worldwide Association of Specialty Schools, brought in some $300,000 earlier this year for Romney during a single Utah event and has donated tens of thousands to the former Massachusetts governor and other Republicans in recent years.
Lichfield is named in a federal lawsuit charging that students of the "behavior modification" schools with ties to WWASPS were subjected to "physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse." The suit had 140 defendants at last count.
...
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Utah, alleges brazen acts of child abuse, including that students of the various programs had been forced to eat their own vomit, clean toilets with a toothbrush and brush their teeth afterward, were chained or locked in dog cages, kicked, beaten, thrown and slammed to the ground and forced into sexual acts.
--Josh Marshall
Shrine
Blogger makes pilgrimage to Larry Craig bathroom. With camera phone.
Late Update: Hard-hearted TPM Reader B notes that the 2008 Republican convention is being held in Minneapolis. So everyone should get a chance for their own pilgrimage of grace.
--Josh Marshall
Go Read It
Don't miss this. I'm just starting to read it now. "The Myth of AQI: Fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is the last big argument for keeping U.S. troops in the country. But the military's estimation of the threat is alarmingly wrong." It's in the Washington Monthly. And it's by Andrew Tilghman who was an Iraq correspondent for Stars and Stripes in 2005 and 2006.
Go read it.
--Josh Marshall
Yes, We're That Stupid
It's sometimes fun to wonder whether, knowing all we know today, we'd fall for another version of the Iraq/WMD bamboozle if another came down the pike. I'm afraid the answer has to be: absolutely.
Look no further than the present debate about the success of the 'surge'. I think Karen DeYoung's piece in today's Post -- regrettably on A16 -- settles once and for all that the numbers we're hearing are basically a scam.
It's worth beginning by noting what appears to be the universal consensus that the strategic aim of the surge -- political reconciliation -- has been a complete flop. No progress and things have gotten much worse. That leaves a debate about tactical successes, which for better or worse, we're judging by various body counts. As I've struggled to get my head around this discussion I've looked -- mainly in vain -- for numbers going back some period of time with a consistent methodology since an apples to apples comparison over some period of time is the only way to make any sort of reliable judgments about change, improvement or decline.
What comes up again and again though is one basic disconnect -- the military command in Baghdad says civilian casualties have dropped dramatically. Independent press tabulations say the numbers are high and getting higher.
DeYoung's article gives us a couple bits of information that help us start to unravel the mystery. First, the military command in Baghdad is in a spat with the GAO, which the generals accuse of using a flawed methodology. (GAO's analysis basically disagreed with them on all particulars.) DeYoung's piece includes the very telling detail that the GAO is using the same methodology that the CIA and the DIA favor. So it would seem that it's not only a question of the government versus outside observers. The military command in Baghdad sounds like it's completely isolated even within the US government on how to compute the numbers.
That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.
We also learn from DeYoung's article that as a basic matter of categorization, the Petraeus/White House numbers don't include the deaths of people killed by our friends (new Sunni allies in al Anbar). They don't include deaths of people killed by members of their own sect (Sunni-on-Sunni, Shia-on-Shia, etc.). They count or don't count based on things like where a person has been shot in the head.
One intelligence analyst told DeYoung, "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian. If it went through the front, it's criminal."
It's a little difficult to tell from the immediate context of the quote whether there's a little embellishment or whether that's literally true in every case about the methodology being used. But taken together what we can glean about the methodology -- which I take it is itself classified -- is that it is a classic case of presupposing the result in the methodology itself. DeYoung actually has a good quote in her piece from the Iraq Study Group that concisely explains the problem: "Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."
Indeed.
You decide that the 'problem' is 'sectarian violence' -- not an improbable analysis in itself. Then you systematically devise a manner of counting that cuts away all sorts of carnage and mayhem that doesn't fit within an extremely narrow interpretation of the 'problem.' And voila, things are improving.
Frankly, it reminds me, painfully, of the rush of polling analyses prior to the 2004 election which showed, quite convincingly, that the numbers actually showed Kerry winning. You just had to properly weight them for Party ID!
The truth is that once you take a screwdriver and saw to the numbers smart people can come up with a lot of ways to fool others and themselves, in many ways all the more so if the people doing the counting have a highly articulated theory behind their reasoning.
Whether this is deception or self-deception is a minor subtheme to the story. The headline is that these numbers appear to be a joke.
--Josh Marshall
Who Needs Fred Thompson?
Even without Fred Thompson (who was unfortunately tied up with a previous engagement (Leno)), there was still plenty of fun-filled phoniness and flummery to go around in last night's FOX News-sponsored Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire. In case you missed it, we bring you the highlights in today's episode of TPMtv ...
--Ben Craw
Faith v. Facts
We learned this week from Robert Draper's new book that the Decider remained convinced until as late as 2006 that Iraq had had WMD right up until the U.S. invasion:
Though it was not the sort of thing one could say publicly anymore, the president still believed that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction. He repeated this conviction to Andy Card all the way up until Card’s departure in April 2006, almost exactly three years after the Coalition had begun its fruitless search for WMDs.
Compare and contrast that point of view (article of faith) with what we learned today from Sidney Blumenthal about what President Bush had been told about Iraqi WMD by then-CIA Director George Tenet in the fall of 2002:
On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.
Blumenthal talked to "two former senior CIA officers" who provided accounts of what Tenent briefed to Bush:
"Tenet told me he briefed the president personally," said one of the former CIA officers. According to Tenet, Bush's response was to call the information "the same old thing." Bush insisted it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. "The president had no interest in the intelligence," said the CIA officer. The other officer said, "Bush didn't give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."
It's no surprise that this President is not one to test his beliefs and conclusions against the facts, neither the old facts nor the newly emerging facts. In the strange twilight of the Bush Presidency, the new revelation about what the President was briefed on and when about WMD falls into that category of things we thought we knew but for which we lacked all of the hard evidence.
--David Kurtz
Fingers Were Wagged
CNN has some background on that meeting the senate Republicans had yesterday on Sen. Craig (R-ID) ...
Republican senators held what one participant called a "passionate" and "spirited" closed-door discussion Wednesday afternoon about how their leaders responded to the sex scandal involving their colleague Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, CNN has learned.At least three senators complained their leaders "rushed to judgment" while others defended the leaders for quickly pulling their support from the disgraced senator, according to one Republican senator in the room and two GOP aides familiar with the meeting.
"We had to discuss it," the senator said.
Sen. Ted. Stevens of Alaska, whose home was recently raided as part of a federal corruption probe, stood up to say it's wrong to prejudge these matters.
He was joined by Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky and Sen. Michael Enzi of Wyoming, who also "wagged their finger" at the leadership, in the words of one of the aides. (Related: Craig may not resign)
But many more senators stood to defend the leaders, even greeting Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky with applause when he was introduced to discuss the topic at the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon in the Capitol.
I'll give Stevens some credit for a certain odd consistency on this one. He does seem to be an odd exception to the GOP's new 'zero tolerance' policy on wrongdoing.
--Josh Marshall
What Happened to Chertoff?
The rumored short list of potential attorney general nominees doesn't include DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff any longer.
--David Kurtz
The In-Again, Out-Again Mr. Craig
I could not care less if Larry Craig is gay or bisexual. And there is a real tragedy in the fact that his career is ending -- when you really cut to the chase -- because he's gay. The fact of his public hypocrisy doesn't diminish the tragic dimension of this. It just shoots it through with a lot of irony when you consider that he is probably as committed as anyone to rejecting this defense on his own behalf. As Matt Yglesias suggested a couple days ago, by continuing to deny his sexuality at this stage he moves from the tragic to the ridiculous, though those two states are much more often mixed than we probably realize or want to believe.
All that said, I can only imagine the veritable muck nirvana that must have gone on behind the scenes into the last 48 hours of turnabouts. What did Craig need to put on the table to get his colleagues and his Minority Leader to acquiesce in his return? And what did they put on the table to make him pack it in again?
And to paraphrase the horror movie genre, is Craig really gone even now or has he merely entered the shadowy ranks of the unresigned, destined to walk the earth for eternity tormenting his party?
--Josh Marshall
Question for Craig
Is he resigning with full and adequate advice of counsel?
--Josh Marshall
A Long Shot
Apparently the push-back from the Senate GOP leadership has convinced Larry Craig to soften his stance about staying in the Senate--but he hasn't completely given up retaining his seat. It would take a confluence of unlikely events--successful withdrawal of his guilty plea and a quick dismissal of the case--for Craig to be able to resolve (or would that be re-resolve?) his legal case by September 30, a reality that Craig's spokesman is now acknowledging.
--David Kurtz
Switching Sides
TPM Reader JB gets it ...
I'm surprised there hasn't been more commentary in the press and blogosphere regarding the fact that, in simplest terms, whatever "progress" we are making in Iraq is a function of the fact that we have switched sides. I don't think the U.S. public, or even the media, are really grasping the fact that we are fighting for Saddam's people now, and the Shia are rapidly becoming the primary target (along with the mystical "Al Queda"). The silence on the topic is a little eerie.
--Josh Marshall
EC Debate Roundup
Mitt Romney says the surge is "apparently working," and then John McCain out-hawks him: "The surge is working." That and more highlights from last night in today's Election Central Debate Roundup.
--Eric Kleefeld
Today's Must Read
The Hill explores the relationship between Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Alaska businessman Bob Penney. An earmark here. A sweetheart land deal there. Pretty soon you're talking real muck.
--David Kurtz
Airport Boycott
Passed on without comment:
Supporters of Sen. Larry Craig with the American Land Rights Association are calling for a boycott of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport.The Battle Ground (Washington) based association says airport police who arrested the senator in a men's room sex sting are responsible for weakening private property rights in the West. Craig is a Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Late Update: More on the boycott from the website of the American Land Rights Association (.pdf):
By ambushing Senator Larry Craig, the Minneapolis St Paul Airport Police have effectively declared war on the West. They are primarily responsible for greatly weakening private property rights and Federal land use advocates in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and in Congress. We are urging you to make all your flight arrangements avoiding the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport for at least the next year and probably longer. We’ll keep you posted as the boycott develops. Urge your friends, neighbors and fellow workers to try to avoid any flights that take them through Minneapolis St Paul Airport. We must inflict economic pain on the airport authorities to get them to change their behavior. -----And they must apologize to Senator Larry Craig.
--David Kurtz
Thompson Officially Announces Candidacy
Former Sen. Fred Thompson went on Leno to make the official announcement, which will air tonight.
--David Kurtz
Follow Up on Loose (American) Nukes
I've heard from two sources who I believe to be knowledgeable on the issue. And they feel confident that this mishap, in which the Air Force briefly lost track of several nuclear warheads which were inadvertently flown over the United States, really was just an accident.
But a pretty damn serious accident.
We'll bring you more as we hear it.
--Josh Marshall
Approaching Parody
They say you can judge how a candidate might run the country by how well he's able to run his presidential campaign.
What if he can't even manage an exploratory committee?
Two more high level staffers have just bailed on Fred Thompson's campaign.
--Josh Marshall
Remember Who We're Dealing With
Does that story of those five nukes on that B-52 have something to do with Iran? Larry Johnson thinks it might.
--Josh Marshall
Gotta Say It
Okay, Sen. McConnell has now sanctioned Sen. Craig's bizarre decision to recant his guilty plea and his resignation.
What's Sen. Craig got on Mitch McConnell?
--Josh Marshall
History's First Resignation Flip-flop
We thought it was all over when Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) announced his resignation Saturday following the eruption of his airport bathroom sex scandal. But stop right there - was it a resignation, or just the statement of an intent to resign? Now Senator Craig is saying he might not resign after all. What's really going on here behind the scenes? It just so happens that thanks to a couple bizarre twists (in case this story hasn't given you enough), we're privy to the backroom details, in today's episode of TPMtv ...
--Ben Craw
Ted Stevens: Worst of Global Warming Over
Ted Stevens, Republican Senator from Alaska and noted climate specialist:
Stevens, while acknowledging the impact of global climate change, said he believes the worst may be over."We're at the end of a long, long term of warming. 700 to 900 years of increased temperature, a very slow increase. We think we're close to the end of that. If we're close to the end of that, that means that we'll starting getting cooler gradually, not very rapidly, but cooler once again and stability might come to this region for a period of another 900 years," Stevens said.
In explaining to KTUU why he had softened his previous hard-line stance on global warming, Stevens said:
"Evolved to the point, I think there is a contribution of mankind to the warming cycle. But I've also been convinced now by our scientists that that the basic cycle itself is a natural one that been going on as I said for 700 to 900 years and we have to learn to live with that," Stevens said.
Thanks to Uncle Ted, Alaskans who feared bearing the brunt of some of the most dramatic climate changes can rest easy now. (Thanks to TPM Reader TM for the link).
--David Kurtz
Booted Over a Speeding Ticket?
Stan Brand, famed DC ethics investigation attorney, went on the Today Show this morning to defend Sen. Craig (R-ID), who has retained him to handle his senate Ethics Committee investigation. And he made what seems at least on first blush to be a pretty good point: at no time in the senate's 200+ year history has the senate disciplined one of its members for a misdemeanor/petty offense not connected to his official duties. In other words, according to Brand, the whole idea of an ethics investigation should be ruled on its face.
First, I'm interested to know whether Brand's history is accurate, but because of his expertise in this area and the central place he's giving it in Craig's defense, I strongly suspect that it is, at least narrowly speaking. Second, there's a possible rejoinder to Brand's argument. Separate from his guilty plea, Craig did apparently flash his senate business card to the arresting officer in an apparent effort to abuse his position to get special treatment. That probably does violate senate rules, and rightfully so. But if we substitute the sex sting arrest for a 100+ mph speeding ticket (to which it might be a legal equivalent), it's hard to imagine that flashing the card would get more than a feather-slap from Craig's senate colleagues. Third, perhaps Craig's senate colleagues will argue that he pled down to a lesser offense. So it's not really the disorderly conduct charge that's relevant. To which I would say, maybe, but that's a stretch.
So why is there an ethics investigation exactly? The answer seems clear, if on two levels. First, Craig's senate colleagues want to engineer a soft expulsion from the senate. That's obvious enough. And second, he was trolling for gay sex in a public restroom. And in the GOP catechism that's not just a felony but a capital offense.
Of course, we know all this. But it is worth putting it there in black ink.
--Josh Marshall