Show me the terrorists

By Libby Spencer

Both USAG Gonzales and the head of the FBI admit the FBI broke the law in order to conduct secret surveillance on Americans. However, the auditor alleges that "[a]bout three-fourths of the letters issued between 2003 and 2005 involved counterterror cases, with the rest for espionage investigations." One has to question that allegation since it turns out I understated the number of letters issued in yesterday's post. In fact since the Patriot Act, the requests have reached unprecendented levels.

In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 requests. That number peaked in 2004 with 56,000. Overall, the FBI reported issuing 143,074 requests in national security letters between 2003 and 2005.

But that did not include an additional 8,850 requests that were never recorded in the FBI's database, the audit found. A sample review of 77 case files at four FBI field offices showed that agents had underreported the number of national security letter requests by about 22 percent.

"Both Gonzales and Mueller called the national security letters vital tools in pursuing terrorists and spies in the United States" and The Counterterrorism Blog agrees, calling it simple bad bookkeeping which should be of no concern to Americans.

Before rushing to judgment and calling for the restriction or elimination of the NSL program, critics should remember that the problem is administrative, not operational. As such, civil liberties are not at risk. The only true risk is to national security if this issue escalates as a platform to diminish or eliminate an important investigative tool.

Well, I have to ask where are the indictments? We have all these hundreds of thousands of "requests" collecting this information but we don't have thousands of terrorists on trial. We don't even have ten terrorists on trial. They can spin this any they want but the fact remains that the Patriot Act has been used as an end run around due process to convict garden variety criminals that don't present a danger to national security.

Until the government can show us evidence that this information is really being used for terrorism investigations and not as an excuse for law enforcement to avoid conducting ordinary investigations under the rule of law, I don't see why Americans shouldn't demand an immediate end to the use of NSLs.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Angelina with Chunky Noodle

By Creature

The Soup makes a biting funny:

Moving on to celebrity parenting news, a top Vietnamese official said that Angelina Jolie has filed papers to adopt a child from the southeast Asian country. Jolie says she plans to adopt a child from Iraq thirty years from now and repeat any mistakes she makes with the Vietnamese kid.

Sigh.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day. H/T: my DVR.)

The awkwardest hug

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The one on the left you know. The one on the right is Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. And here they are hugging, or something, in Guarulhos, Brazil. (From the G&M.)

As the LAT is reporting, Bush and Lula today "announced a new partnership to promote the use of alternative fuels to reduce the Western Hemisphere's dependence on fossil fuels".

Return of the Newt

By Capt. Fogg

Now let's make it clear -- Newt Gingrich is not a hypocrite for having flung excrement at Bill Clinton: whooping and hopping like a zoo chimpanzee whose cage had been rattled, even though he was himself having an illicit sexual affair at the time. Not a hypocrite at all, said he to Focus on the Family, a self-congratulatory Christianist radical group. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards." Pandering to the Godbothers is of course not just a way to render one's sins nugatory, but a signal that Newt intends to run for President.

Whatever the relative standards of morality and decency demanded by Newt or by God, both seem to be entirely situational and subject to constant reinterpretation as befits the sales goals of the moment, but by my standards Newt is a hypocrite whose hypocrisy is rather too indelible to be washed away as easily as he would wish. "Clinton was punished for perjury," claims Newton, although he was neither punished nor a perjurer. "[Y]ou cannot accept... perjury in your highest officials," but you can apparently accept tax evasion and you can accept sinners throwing stones at sinners and bearing false witness against the innocent as long as you clear it through God's own laundry, Focus on the Family.

Irrespective of his honesty in denying a sexual relationship, the question was irrelevant to the charges against President Clinton and of course not only were the charges not proved, they were heavily dependent upon fiction, bought and paid for by those who are lecturing us about ethics, morals and family values.

Gingrich apparently retains a good deal of popularity amongst the Republicans, at least the segment of that party that has become used to running things, and I believe we're seeing the launch of his trial balloon. Whether there is enough hot air available to float it, laden as it is with ego and freighted with enough ethical baggage to weigh down the Hindenburg, remains to be seen.

(Cross-posted at Human Voices.)

Tucker's chaotic dance

By Creature

I've been trying figure out what exactly it is about Tucker Carlson that drives me absolutely ape-shit (beyond the "hurting America" obvious, of course). After last night's Tucker show I finally think I've got an example, if not an answer. Watch, well, read how Tucker frames the reasoning behind the new Democratic proposal out of the House of Representatives today for withdrawing American troops from Iraq.

TUCKER: Here's what Nancy Pelosi says is part of the reasoning beyond this new plan. She said, we need to get the troops out of Iraq by next year, quote "only then can we refocus our military efforts on Afghanistan to the extent we must." In other words, we're not pulling out the troops from Iraq because we don't care about the region,we care about the region so much, we're so worried about chaos in Afghanistan, we need those troops. I don't know if this makes sense, I mean if you're worried about chaos in the region aren't our strategic interests in Iraq rather than Afghanistan.

[guest speaks, Tucker ignores]

TUCKER: But if your worried, I mean their argument is, Afghanistan's in trouble, it's in chaos, it's falling apart, we need more troops in there to keep the place together. Well if you're worried about chaos in the region I mean the real problem right now, and I believe it's Bush's fault, but still, is Iraq. [the bold is my emphasis, the italic is Tucker's]

Tucker determines, to put it mildly, the reason Democrats want to focus on Afghanistan is "chaos." And, well, if stopping chaos is their goal then look how misguided the confused Democrat is. He frames the argument for the Democrats then he pounds it, and pounds it, as if he hadn't just twisted it to the point of lying. Democrats want to focus on Afghanistan because that's where the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 are. The Democrats want to focus on Afghanistan because the Taliban are regrouping and they are the ones who harbored al-Qaeda. The Democrats want to focus on Afghanistan because that's where the real central front of the so-called terror war is. In fairness, Tucker's guest did try to make this point, but in the meantime Tucker was able to make the Democrats look like chaotic, illogical fools.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

Evoking Burke: Conservatism and the pursuit of (im)perfection

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Originally posted at The Carpetbagger Report.)

For all of you serious GOP-watchers out there, and for all of you who find interesting the internecine struggles of the conservative movement, or for all of you with nothing better to do than to delve into the world of conservative navel-gazing, I recommend George Will's column in yesterday’s WaPo.

Here's the gist of it: The three leading GOP presidential contenders — Giuliani, McCain, and Romney — are generally disliked (or at least not trusted) by conservatives, the base of the party. From what he saw at CPAC, Will says conservatives are "depressed" (boo-hoo, cry me a you-know-what). But such negativity is misguided. Consider this "thought experiment":

Suppose someone seeking the presidential nomination had, as a governor, signed the largest tax increase in his state's history and the nation's most permissive abortion law. And by signing a law institutionalizing no-fault divorce, he had unwittingly but substantially advanced an idea central to the campaign for same-sex marriages — the minimalist understanding of marriage as merely a contract between consenting adults to be entered into or dissolved as it suits their happiness.

Question: Is it not likely that such a presidential aspirant would be derided by some of today's fastidious conservatives? A sobering thought, that, because the attributes just described were those of Ronald Reagan.

Well then. With this thought experiment, the Burkean Will — realistic, pragmatic, self-important — backs his fellow conservatives into a corner: If you don’t like (or trust) the three leading presidential contenders, all of whom "should be satisfactory to most conservatives," then you probably wouldn't have liked Reagan. But since not liking Reagan is conservative heterodoxy (even though he was but a conservative in speech — and a radical in action), and since nothing is perfect, you need to reevaluate your dislike (or mistrust) of the three leading presidential contenders. So there. Deal with what you've got and get on with trying to win the election. Anyone on the right's better than Obama or Clinton.

For Matthew Yglesias, Will's "preternatural optimis[m]" is reminiscent of the pre-2000 case for Bush. He "seemed plainly not up to the job of running the United States of America," but whatever. Conservatives went with him anyway.

I see some of that here (although I think the three leading contenders are vastly superior to Bush), but I'm generally sympathic to Will's pragmatism. This is politics, after all, not a Socratic dialogue, and what elections generally produce is not the rule of the best but the rule of the least bad. Besides, as genuine conservatives know — as anyone who is realistic about human nature, the limits thereof, and the ebb and flow of human history should know — the pursuit of perfection is bound to fail. Hence the axiom: "The perfect is the enemy of the good," approvingly quoted by Will (and seconded by Andrew Sullivan, who longs for American conservatism to return to a more Burkean identity, as well as by James Joyner, who nonetheless argues that such pragmatism "doesn’t mean [conservatives] can't pine for the perfect candidate...").

I would turn this around on those of us on the other side. There is no perfection to be found in Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, Clark, and the rest of our presidential contenders. (No, even Gore isn’t perfect — alas.) And yet, as we embark on a campaign that is bound to get nasty, or even nastier than it already is, that is bound to expose divisions within the Democratic Party and among liberals and progressives, we ought to keep in mind that any one of our contenders is better than what the other side has to offer. This sounds like blind and thoughtless partisanship, I know, but what is party politics without partisanship? In the end, you have to take sides. In the end, victory at the polls is more important than ideology — at least when the differences among the leading candidates are ideologically acceptable.

But if Will seems to understand human nature in positing the good in opposition to the perfect, he doesn't seem to understand the nature of the Republican Party and the post-Burkean conservative movement that put it into power and sustains it. The conservatives who attended CPAC are intoxicated with success. Will may remember the pragmatic conservatism of days gone by, but these younger conservatives came of age during the Reaganite ascendancy of the '80s and the Gingrich-led populist revolution of the '90s. They are hardly the sort to seek out compromise.

Furthermore, the Republican base — the evangelical right, or whatever you want to call it — developed its political power during the Culture Wars of the '90s. These conservatives, not the George Wills, have put the GOP in power, and they are theological extremists, not pragmatists, political radicals, not Burkean conservatives. (They have Bibles in their hands, not Reflections on the Revolution in France on their shelves.) They are hardly the sort to seek out compromise either. Indeed, many eschew compromise altogether. (Will should watch Jesus Camp to get a sense of the theological engine that's currently propelling his beloved party.)

However much sense it makes, Will's fastidious pragmatism, his willingness to compromise, is just plain old-fashioned. Quaint even. In the end, if a more orthodox conservative like Brownback doesn't emerge as a leading contender, Republicans may end up having to choose imperfection, the least bad of an apparently uninspiring bunch. And that could very well be Giuliani or McCain, or even Romney. But if that's the case, conservatives, refusing to strive for anything short of perfection, won't go quietly.

Screwing the vets

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Of course it isn't just Walter Reed. The problem is a pervasive one throughout the military. As Fred Kaplan put it at Slate yesterday, President Bush is screwing the vets in more ways than one:

The scandals and shortfalls in the military's health-care system stem from the same sensibility that produced the scandals and shortfalls in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It is the Bush administration's sensibility of denial -- its willful disinclination to face war's true cost (in all senses of the word) and its readiness to use bookkeeping tricks to perpetuate the deception.

"I am concerned that our soldiers and their families are not getting the treatment that they deserve," President George W. Bush said yesterday, in announcing the creation of yet another blue-ribbon commission, this one "on the care of returning wounded warriors."

No doubt he is concerned. The real scandal is that he's felt no reason to be concerned until the recent spate of news stories revealed plenty of reasons that he should be. The bureaucracies in charge of the returning wounded have been shuffling through the motions as if nothing extraordinary was happening -- and the politicians who are ultimately responsible have made it clear, by not telling anybody otherwise, that they prefer things that way. They are all acting as if there isn't a war going on.

Exactly. The so-called war on terror (and the ongoing Iraq War which is allegedly a key part of it) seems to be an endless military operation that is both the epochal struggle for our very survival and nothing worth worrying too much about. Our way of life is being threatened by some nebulous Other, but there's nothing that a heavy dose of shopping won't fix. And so American men and women are being sent into unconventional war zones around the world, but when they come home no one gives a shit about them. Well, some do -- their friends and families, no doubt -- but not those who sent them off to risk their lives for The Cause, whatever that happens to be at any given time, not those who have all the courage in the world to risk nothing of their own.

The pain and suffering of the returning vets is America's shame. The news reports of the atrocious conditions at Walter Reed have focused the spotlight on the wider problem, but much remains to be done.

Bush, as usual, avoided responsibility, but he can't now. The truth has sucked his head out of his ass, compelling him to deal with the inevitable human costs of war, to confront war as war rather than war as a game played in the comfort of righteous self-delusion. Over six years into his presidency, over six years as commander-in-chief, he still doesn't get it.

The age of the terminators

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Originally posted at The Carpetbagger Report.)

Do you ever despair for the future of humanity? Would you like yet another good reason to do so?

According to Reuters, an Israeli defence firm, Elbit Systems Ltd., has "unveiled a portable robot billed as being capable of entering most combat zones alone and engaging enemies with an onboard armory that includes a machine-pistol and grenades".

It’s called the VIPeR.

Will it (or an army of it) reduce human casualties in war? Maybe. Will it make it easier for us loathsome, wretched creatures to wage war against one another? Absolutely.

Will the outsourcing of war to robots — the supreme technologization of war — come back to bite us in the ass? I wouldn’t bet against it.

Barack Obama, ex-scofflaw

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Originally posted at The Carpetbagger Report.)

The Boston Globe (tip: The Plank) is reporting today that the political demigod known to mortals as Barack Obama "received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991" while a student at Harvard Law. This according to the city's Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department:

Of those tickets, he paid only two while he was a student and paid them late, said Susan Clippinger, the office's director.

In January, about when the Globe began asking local officials about Obama's time at Harvard, including any violations of local laws, someone representing the senator called the parking office to inquire about the decades-old tickets.

On Jan. 26, the remaining $375 in fines and fees were paid by credit card using the city's website, Clippinger said. She said she didn't know who paid them.

SCANDAL!

In related news, Obama is half-black, or something, may or may not be Muslim, may or may not belong to a pseudo-Christian cult that promotes racial segregation, has the suspicious middle name "Hussein," and is only one consonent of separation away from Osama. Oh, and when he was younger he attended an Indonesian school that's really a terrorist training camp, something called a "madrassa," you know, highly dubious and foreign-sounding. And there were those shady real estate deals in Chicago. So, really, there's no way he can be president. He's totally unqualified and he's probably a traitor. For God's sake, he doesn't even pay his parking tickets on time!

Oh... sorry. My brain was temporarily overrun by the right-wing smear machine.

How long before Fox News and its ilk pick up on this? Or have they already?

**********

Personal note: I attended Tufts Univ. from 1991-95. It's just a few minutes away by car from Cambridge and I spent many, many hours, wasted hours, circling around Harvard Square trying to find parking, night after night. It's like driving around Boston in concentrated microcosm. In other words: a nightmare. Sure, Obama should have paid his fines, but it's hard for me to hold his parking violations against him.

Let's move on, shall we?

Easter under attack (again)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

No, not really. It's just that Fox News is at it yet again with more paranoid fearmongering about how secularists are going after major Christian holidays like Easter. Year after year it's the War on Christmas, and then, when that dies down, the War on Easter. I'm curious to know when the War on Lent will begin. Perhaps next year. I intend to bring it up at the next meeting of the Greater Toronto Area chapter of Militant Secularists Against Christianity (MSAC), an international pro-Enlightenment organization to which I belong.

Okay, that's not entirely true. But what is true is the paranoid (and increasingly desperate) fearmongering at Fox News, a manifestation of the self-defining victims-R-us mentality that characterizes so much of the conservative movement.

Bill O'Reilly is sure to join the folk-flaunting fearmongering soon enough, but for now the chief fearmongerer is asshole extraordinaire John Gibson, the Fox host who played up the Obama-went-to-a-madrassa-and-may-be-a-terrorist non-story that had the right-wing bobbleheads drooling a while back. As Think Progress is reporting -- and, as usual, it has the video to back it up -- Gibson has been making a big deal out of certain (five-year-old) goings-on in Walnut Creek, California, where the Easter Bunny has been rebranded as the Spring Bunny.

Ooh. Aah. Will Christianity survive?

Gibson apparently has little faith that it will. "The question is why does the word Easter have to be expunged? Is this political correctness gone too far?"

I don't feel like getting into the whole Church-and-State thing here, but it seems, if I am to follow whatever fuzzy logic there may be here, that any attempt to divide Church and State is a politically correct assault on religion, er, Christianity. (Hey, how about a War on Ramadan, or a War on Passover, or a War on Diwali? Here's an idea: Fox News should abandon its "fair" and "balanced" coverage of the news and become the defender of religious holidays generally. All of them. That'd keep it far too busy to inflict any more partisan damage on the American people. Or is it rather that Fox News cares only about perceived wars on Christianity?)

Good times.

Where's the polonium?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Amusing photo of the day (from The Globe and Mail): "Russian President Vladimir Putin’s family dog, Koni, joins a meeting between the President and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman cosmonaut in space."

There's so much room for humour here. Make up your own.

The Khmer Rouge on trial... or not

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A couple of months ago I wrote about the tribunal that has been set up in Cambodia to examine the genocidal crimes committed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge three decades ago -- and to judge the perpetrators. There was criticism of the process, but the government seemed committed to it.

Well, commitment or no, "procedural differences" now threaten to sink the trials entirely, as the BBC is reporting: "Foreign judges want full international legal standards, while the Cambodians say local law must take precedence." Indeed, "there is a real possibility that the trials will collapse before they have even started," and "[t]he international judges have made it clear that they see this week's meeting [with the Cambodian judges] as the final chance to make sure the trials meet international standards". If no agreement is reached, the trials would likely be halted even before they'd begun.

There has been precious little justice for the Khmer Rouge despite the heinous crimes it committed both while in power and while in opposition both to the Vietnam-backed puppet government that was installed in 1979 and to the more legitimate governments that came to power after the Vietnamese occupation ended in 1989. Now, with many of its former leaders already dead, including Pol Pot and Ta Mok, there may be no more justice at all.

The loyalty and legacy of the Bushies

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Creature -- the assistant editor of this here blog -- has been posting my words today, but allow me now to post some of his:

I say the pardon will come sooner rather than later. Libby will never spend a day in jail. The only thing that could stop a pardon is if Congress chooses to investigate what Patrick Fitzgerald called "a cloud" around the Vice President and the White House. If that happens then I would not be surprised if the president throws Cheney under a bus--and a Libby pardon under it with him. The president may have a reputation for loyalty, but I'm betting his legacy and his need to scapegoat someone will prove to be more important than loyalty. He's spoiled like that.

I agree that Libby won't go to jail -- if Nixon didn't, how can Libby? It's only a matter of when Bush will issue a pardon, not if. But what I find interesting here is that Creature has highlighted the tension at the core of George W. Bush (and indeed of the Bush Family generally):

Loyalty vs. Legacy

The Bushies obviously prize loyalty -- those who are loyal are rewarded handsomely -- but above all they seem to prize self-preservation, or selfish reputation. Given Libby's ties to Cheney, it seems quite unlikely that Bush would throw him under a bus, and he likely would rather have Cheney resign (citing health reasons as the excuse) than expose a rift at the top (the Bushies also prize secrecy and control), but a congressional investigation could force Bush's hand and postpone a seemingly inevitable pardon -- in which case the scapegoating of Libby would continue in earnest.

Anyway, here's how Dickerson puts it at Slate today: "Libby is the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s. Will he get a pardon, as Caspar Weinberger did in that case? Who knows? If he gets a pardon, it will suggest the president is rewarding him for taking a fall for the White House and the vice president. If he doesn't, it will suggest that President Bush, who said he was sad for the Libby family, isn't sad enough."

Or, if he doesn't, that Bush only gives a shit about himself.

All I can say is: Let there be more investigation. Do not let Libby's guilt be the end of it. The cover-up was serious, but the crime was worse -- and that's where the focus needs to be.

[Creature's Note: You know the drill. Ignore all references to me below. And thanks, Michael, for making me sound smart above.]

Divorce on steroids

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Quoted at The Plank, here's Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (and hence one of the leaders of the religious right), on Giuliani:

I mean, this is divorce on steroids. To publicly humiliate your wife in that way, and your children. That's rough. I think that's going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren't pro-choice and pro-gun control.

There, in a nutshell of nuttiness, is why Giuliani won't win the GOP nomination (even with current polls putting him well ahead of the competition). There's no way he can overcome... himself.

(Unless there's nother major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, of course -- given that his entire candidacy is built around 9/11 and his supposed leadership skills.)

[Creature's Note: Again, Michael's words, my cut-and-paste. Ignore all references to me below (even though I am hard to ignore). Thanks.]

Kinky Phoenix

By Michael J.W. Stickings

True story: "The man who was tied up, stabbed several times during sex, and watched as the woman he was with drank his blood is speaking only to ABC15."

Poor guy.

Money quote: "You wouldn't expect this type of thing is going to happen during sex, but that's exactly what happened, she tied me up and just began the assault."

Lesson: Don't allow yourself to be tied up on the first date.

(Tip: The Plank.)

[Creature's Note: Michael's words, my cut-and-paste. Ignore all references to me below. Thanks.]

Kudos to John Edwards

By Creature

Kos (yes, the almighty himself) is reporting that he received an email from the Edwards camp declaring their intention not to participate in the Nevada Democratic debate which is being hosted and aired by FOX News. Now let's see if the rest of the Democratic hopefuls follow suit. Now let's see how long it is before more Edwards name calling ensues.

For a rundown as to why FOX News really sucks as a Democratic debate platform MyDD has the details, along with a petition to sign encouraging the Democrats to "freeze out FOX news." And again, goodonya, Mr. Edwards.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

A tale of two headlines

By Creature

Following in Michael's footsteps let's call this: Just another day in the life and death of Iraq XLV: The GWB Edition

He is clueless.





It's the pictures that really kill me.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

The lessons of Maher Arar

By Michael J.W. Stickings

At least the Democrats get it. At least they want to put an end to the horrible practice of extraordinary rendition:

U.S. Democrats singled out the "gross violation" of Maher Arar's rights as they renewed a push Tuesday to ban U.S. officials from shipping people to third countries that engage in torture.

Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts, supported by 44 other Democrats, reintroduced a bill to halt the practice of extraordinary rendition, saying the power swing on Capitol Hill has renewed hope it will pass.

"Outsourcing torture is a hideous and illegal practice that has no place in the policy tool kit of these United States," Mr. Markey said.

"Extraordinary rendition undermines our international standing because our own gross hypocrisy prevents us from advocating for improved human rights policies around the globe."

The bill would prohibit officials from transferring anyone to countries on a list of those that use torture, regardless of citizenship or where they are seized.

Rep. Markey, who is leading the fight to put an end to extraordinary rendition, deserves our admiration and our support. For those of us who still think America stands for something positive -- the warmongering and fearmongering policies of George W. Bush notwithstanding -- the practice is deeply un-American. If winning hearts and minds is the key to victory (and peace) in a world of terror, terror that threatens our very way of life, it must be eliminated.

Gilmour's birthday

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's Gabriel García Márquez's birthday today, and it's also David Gilmour's. I am, as some of you may know, a huge Pink Floyd fan -- and a huge David Gilmour fan. I saw him with Pink Floyd (but not, alas, Roger Waters) in Foxboro, Massachusetts back in 1994, and I saw him (with Richard Wright and his amazing band) here in Toronto last April. It doesn't get much better than Gilmour doing "Echoes," "Wish You Were Here," and "Comfortably Numb".

Happy Birthday, David!

Magic realism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Much of our attention has been directed elsewhere today -- towards the guilt of Scooter "scapegoat" Libby, of course -- but allow me to wish happy birthday to one of the true literary giants of our time and any time, Gabriel García Márquez, who turned 80 today.

To single out any one of his works above the others makes no sense at all, but allow me to do so anyway. Although One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold are justifiably renowned masterpieces of fiction, and although I love them, as I love so much of his work, I would have to say that my favourite of all is the short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," in Collected Stories.

Happy Birthday, Mr. García Márquez.

Scooter takes the fall

By Libby Spencer


Don't let Fox News fool you. They apparently fell victim to yet another one of those curious typos that keep cropping up when bad news for the White House hits the news cycle. Scooter Libby has indeed been found guilty on four out of the five counts.

I have to say I'm kind of glad that it's over. Since we share a name, the headlines have often startled me. So when I opened up my email and found a message saying "Libby found guilty," my first reaction was to wonder if I had been convicted of something in absentia. My second reaction was actually disappointment that it was just Libby and not Cheney and Rove who were in the headlines.

I'll have more to say on this later when I have time to read through the press but for now let me point you to Media Matters, where they're doing a little pre-emptive debunking of the anticipated right-wing spin. I think their first point is the most important. The White House supporters will surely spin this as a vindication of the administration and offer it as some kind of proof that no underlying crime was committed, but as Media Matters points out:

Since a federal grand jury indicted Libby in October 2005, numerous media figures have stated that the nature of the charges against him prove that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation of the CIA leak case found that no underlying crime had been committed. But this assertion ignores Fitzgerald's explanation that Libby's obstructions prevented him -- and the grand jury -- from determining whether the alleged leak violated federal law.

Scooter did his job and took the fall. The first question that comes to mind is how long will it take for Bush to issue a presidential pardon? Anybody taking bets?

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Stop making sense

By Creature

Sully on Scooter:

Something is rotten in the heart of Washington; and it lies in the vice-president's office. The salience of this case is obvious. What it is really about - what it has always been about - is whether this administration deliberately misled the American people about WMD intelligence before the war. The risks Cheney took to attack Wilson, the insane over-reaction that otherwise very smart men in this administration engaged in to rebut a relatively trivial issue: all this strongly implies the fact they were terrified that the full details of their pre-war WMD knowledge would come out. Fitzgerald could smell this. He was right to pursue it, and to prove that a brilliant, intelligent, sane man like Libby would risk jail to protect his bosses. What was he really trying to hide? We now need a Congressional investigation to find out more, to subpoena Cheney and, if he won't cooperate, consider impeaching him.

Except for the whole "very smart men" and "brilliant, intelligent, sane man" stuff, Sully sums it up just right. Impeach the bastard.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

Less filling

By Capt. Fogg

What's a Happy Meal without a toy? Scooter went on trial and all we had for lunch was Scooter.

Regardless of the sentence Libby receives for obstruction of justice and perjury, I don't seem to have the sense of fullness I usually feel from leaving the table after justice is done. It's as though we were served cold scrapple when we expected the whole roasted pig, or perhaps two, with an apple in its mouth.

Americone Dream

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Colbert mentioned this last night, and then introduced Ben & Jerry themselves.

Ben & Jerry's is, according to my taste buds, the best ice cream in the world.

And we have it in Canada -- just not all the flavours available in the U.S. So -- an appeal:

To Ben & Jerry: Please, please, please make more flavours, including this one, available in Canada.

To my American friends: Please, please, please find a way to send me this one. Can you send ice cream across the border? Hmmm.

Other flavours that I require: Cinnamon Buns, Magic Brownies, Oatmeal Cookie Chunk, Black & Tan, American Pie, Mint Chocolate Chunk, and Chubby Hubby (maybe the best flavour ever).

For more, see here.

Re-hunting Osama

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In a move that I'm sure is entirely unrelated to Bush's sagging approval rating and rising opposition to the Iraq War -- see here -- "the CIA is moving additional man power and equipment into Pakistan in the effort to find Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al Zawahri," according to ABC News.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good thing. It's just that it should have been the focus all along. Instead of the ongoing and rather disastrous misadventure in Mesopotamia.

But who knows what's really going on? Who knows what's truth and what's just more spin?

The numbers

By Michael J.W. Stickings

USA Today/Gallup:

-- Will the U.S. win the Iraq War? (28%)

-- Has the war been a mistake? (59%)

Zogby:

-- Bush's approval rating (30%)

I'm not one to take polls numbers too seriously, but these look pretty clear to me.

Just another day in the life and death of Iraq XLIV

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yeah, about that surge:

BAGHDAD -- Even as the U.S. was touting a successful initial push into a hostile Shiite neighborhood here, chaotic violence gripped other parts of the city and beyond today as a suicide bombing at a long-standing downtown book market killed 28 people and insurgent gunfire killed at least six Shiite pilgrims elsewhere in Iraq observing a religious holiday.

The incidents underscored the difficulty faced by U.S. and Iraqi forces as they try to stop sectarian violence and raised questions about how long certain factions would continue to comply with the latest security crackdown before taking revenge.

In its initial weeks, the joint crackdown has seen some limited early success, largely through securing the cooperation of Shiite leaders and the reduction of death squad murders undertaken by Shiite militias. But mass bomb attacks, which the U.S. views as largely the work of Sunni insurgents, continue to occur almost every day, and thus far the enhanced forces have been largely powerless to stop them.

The BBC is reporting that 30 people were killed and at least 65 were wounded.

To be sure, "the increase in checkpoints and troop numbers on the streets appear to have reduced death squad killings," but there are obviously limitations as to just how successful the surge can be.

And bombings like this one -- and deadly attacks generally -- will continue regardless. Both in Baghdad, where pacification is impossible, and elsewhere in Iraq.

Margaret Postgate: "The Veteran" (1918)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The ongoing scandal at Walter Reed brought this poem to mind. It's by Margaret Postgate (later Dame Margaret Isabel Cole), a prominent Fabian socialist, writer, and public servant who lived from 1893 to 1980. It was first published in Margaret Postgate's Poems (1918). For more on her life and work, see here.

**********

We came upon him sitting in the sun,
Blinded by war, and left. And past the fence
There came young soldiers from the Hand and Flower,
Asking advice of his experience.

And he said this, and that, and told them tales,
And all the nightmares of each empty head
Blew into air; then, hearing us beside,
'Poor chaps, how'd they know what it's like?' he said.

And we stood there, and watched him as he sat,
Turning his sockets where they went away,
Until it came to one of us to ask
'And you're -- how old?'
'Nineteen, the third of May.'

What matters to Fox News

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, yes, I know most of you know perfectly well what matters to Fox News: the success of the Republican Party and the failure of the Democratic Party, the celebration of conservatism and the condemnation of liberalism, low-brow American nationalism at the expense of the rest of the world.

And ratings. Of course. Ratings at the expense of the news, the elevation of the trivial over the serious.

Not that the point needs to be proven, but here's Think Progress on the latest example of "fairness" and "balance":

Our national media embarrassment was again on full display on Friday. Both MSNBC and Fox News devoted more coverage to Anna Nicole Smith — three weeks after her death on Feb. 8 — than they did to the multiple developments involving the neglect and deplorable conditions at Walter Reed military hospital.

The most lop-sided coverage by far was aired by Fox News, which featured only 10 references to Walter Reed compared to 121 of Anna Nicole — roughly 12 times the coverage. MSNBC featured 84 references to Walter Reed and 96 to Anna Nicole.

Fox is not alone -- MSNBC can be pretty awful, too, if not nearly as overtly biased, and this problem afflicts cable news generally -- but it clearly has an interest, a partisan interest, in downplaying the military scandal that is proving to be yet another atrocious embarrassment for the Bush Administration.

Make sure to watch the video at Think Progress, a greatest hits of the "coverage".

**********

For more on this and the scandal, see The Carpetbagger Report, The Mahablog, and, on the right, Outside the Beltway.

You can find WaPo's excellent coverage of the scandal here, including photos of Walter Reed here.

America's new military scandal

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The mistreatment of America's veterans and wounded troops extends well beyond Walter Reed. Make sure to read this piece in today's Washington Post.

Needless to say, this is an enormous scandal.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates responded swiftly to the Walter Reed story, but the military seems to want to keep it all quiet, either condoning the mistreatment or finding nothing wrong with it.

So much for supporting the troops.

**********

And consider this: "Nearly 64,000 of the more than 184,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who have sought VA health care have been diagnosed with potential symptoms of post-traumatic stress, drug abuse or other mental disorders as of the end of June, according to the latest report by the Veterans Health Administration. Of those, nearly 30,000 have possible post-traumatic stress disorder, the report said."

The Phantom Minister

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here's a bizarre story out of the Congo:

A party leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo who proposed an apparently fictitious person for a post in the new cabinet has been sacked.

The so-called case of the "phantom" government minister, Andre Kasongo Ilunga, has puzzled politicians in the war-torn African nation in recent days.

The case came to light when Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga began to appoint ministers to his new cabinet.

The elusive Mr Ilunga got the post of trade but resigned before taking it up.

The party's leader, Honorius Kisimba Ngoy, leader of Unafec, a party allied to President Joseph Kabila, allegedly invented Mr Ilunga in the hope that submitting the name of an unknown along with his own would ensure he was appointed to the cabinet.

The stunt apparently backfired when the prime minister appointed Mr Ilunga.

Hilarious.

Wingnuts on film

By Heraclitus

Via Andrew Sullivan, here's a video of some of the highlights of the CPAC by Max Blumenthal, reporter at The Nation and son of Sidney Blumenthal. It's hard to decide which part is best, or shines the brightest -- Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz or Tom Tancredo. It's all pretty amazing. Enjoy.

It's the end of the world as Graham knows it

By Creature

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) from today's Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: How much time do you give General Petraeus?

SEN. GRAHAM: Whatever resources he needs and whatever time he needs, he’s going to get. How much time did we have to win World War II? Did we ever think about just fighting the Germans and not engaging the Japanese? This to me is World War III.

Fine, Senator, then why don't you put your money where your rhetorical mouth is and introduce legislation reinstating the draft to help fight it, raising taxes to help pay for it, and restricting corporate profits to stop the corporate criminals from profiting off it. See, Senator, when you're ready to act like it's World War III then the American people will react in kind, until then please keep your patronizing talk off the TV.

Bonus Meet the Press Graham:

SEN. GRAHAM: The biggest mistake we made early on was underselling how hard it would be. I think people have lost sight due to frustration, that it’s part of the overall war on terror.

SEN. GRAHAM: The biggest mistake we made early on is not having enough troops, letting the situation get out of hand.

No comment here beyond the obvious question: Which "biggest mistake" early on was it? Failed propaganda or failed planning? I lean toward the planning. The propaganda of an easy war went exactly according to neocon plan.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

Scenes from behind the TimesSelect wall

By Creature

Frank Rich asks the right questions:

The issue is not that Mrs. Clinton voted for the war authorization in 2002 or that she refuses to call it a mistake in 2007. Those are footnotes. The larger issue is judgment, then and now. Take her most persistent current formulation on Iraq: “Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn’t have been a vote and I certainly wouldn’t have voted that way.” It’s fair to ask: Knew what then? Not everyone was so easily misled by the White House’s manipulated intelligence and propaganda campaign. Some of her fellow leaders in Washington — not just Mr. Obama out in Illinois, not just Al Gore out of power — knew plenty in the fall of 2002. Why didn’t she? [...]

Another fair question is what Mrs. Clinton learned once the war began. Even in the summer of 2003 — after the insurgency had started, after the W.M.D. had failed to materialize, after the White House had retracted the president’s 16 words about “uranium from Africa,” more than two months after “Mission Accomplished” had failed to end major combat operations — she phoned a reporter at The Daily News, James Gordon Meek, to reiterate that she still had no second thoughts about the war. (Mr. Meek first wrote about this July 14, 2003, conversation in December 2005.) Was that what this smart woman really believed then, or political calculation?

Either way, she made a judgment, and she will not be able to spend month after month explaining it away to voters with glib, lawyerly statements. The politics of personal destruction, should they actually visit the Clintons once more, will not take America’s mind off the politics of mass destruction in Iraq.

Until Gore gets in the race, Obama is the only candidate* who took a clear stand against the war before the war. And, yes, this is my litmus test.

*The NYT a few weeks back published an Iraq war for/against list that is helpful here. While Richardson is opposed to the war now (using the horrible if-I knew-then-what-I-know-now line), it's unclear exactly where he was before the war. Kucinich was always against the war (and generally right about everything else), but the media (and the money) have labeled him as irrelevant and there is no way to fight this. Sorry, Dennis. Then there is Mike Gravel. He was opposed from day one, but the question begs to be asked: Who the hell is Mike Gravel?

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

The state of Russian democracy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In Putin's Russia -- which very much resembles the Russia of the past, no matter the regime -- there isn't much room for dissent and opposition:

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Police violently broke up an unauthorized opposition rally in Russia's second-largest city Saturday, clubbing dozens of activists before dragging them into waiting buses.

Several thousand members of liberal and leftist groups chanted “Shame!” as they marched down St. Petersburg's main avenue to protest what they said was Russia's rollback from democracy. The demonstration, called the March of Those Who Disagree, was a rare gathering of the country's beleaguered and often fractious opposition.

City authorities had banned the march, only granting permission for a rally far from the city centre, but the activists defied the ban and marched down Nevsky Prospekt, the city's main street, blocking traffic.

Riot police beat dozens of protesters with truncheons, but thousands broke through police cordons. They marched toward the city centre and rallied for about 40 minutes until police moved in again, detaining people and dragging them into buses.

The protest was organized by, among others, former chess champion Garry Kasparov, now one of Putin's more prominent critics.

The opposition is indeed "fractious". And it includes some rather unsavoury elements -- one of those detained is the leader of the far-right National Bolshevik Party. Nonetheless, fringe elements notwithstanding, democracy requires opposition, and this incident in St. Petersburg gives a good indication of what Putin thinks of those who oppose him and of democracy generally.

Thankfully, a mainstream liberal movement has emerged to oppose Putin's encroaching authoritarianism, and Kasparov -- who has formed both Committee 2008 and United Civil Front -- is a genuine ally of liberal democracy in Russia.

One just wonders if Russia is ready for it. Or if its current leaders will ever allow it.

Is Romney a serious contender?

By Heraclitus

Although I expressed my annoyance with Andrew Sullivan in some comments to one of Michael's posts below, he has some good observations about Mitt Romney, particularly on his speech at CPAC. Sullivan notes that he talks the "theocon" talk, but will not be able to do a great deal about actual policy, especially at the state level, as president.

Still, his rhetoric on the judicial branch was vulgar: the usual boilerplate about men "in black robes" thwarting the will of the people. Has it occurred to Romney that the entire point of an independent judiciary is to thwart the will of the people sometimes? I get the feeling that large parts of the Republican party would rather the judiciary didn't exist. That's a strange position for true conservatives to take. But, as you know, I think true conservatives are increasingly rare in the GOP...

I know what the national polls say. I know he makes John Kerry look like a stopped clock on, well, anything. But he'll have an understanding with the religious base: I'll do whatever you want, give you the judges you want, and you'll forgive me for being a Mormon. He has no core principles, and they understand that. What matters to Dobson et al is results. They've had enough of men like Bush who are sincere evangelicals but useless in actually implementing the theocon agenda. Romney's their tool - and a very competent, effective one. And they are his tool. It's a solid basis for a political marriage. I think he's the most formidable long-term candidate on the right. Up against Clinton, he'd probably win.

What exactly Sullivan's evidence is for that last claim, I don't know. As governor Romney presided over one of the most massively wasteful public expenditures in Massachusetts history, the so-called Big Dig in Boston. The Big Dig went from being a joke and an embarassment to an episode of criminal incompetence reminiscent of our current President when the ceiling of a tunnel collapsed a killed a woman. I don't see Romney getting past this in a national election, though it is indeed unlikely that the wingut base would care. He's been travelling so much, even a year or more before this, that he was rarely in Massachusetts to govern. At one point, he was out of town and his lieutenant governor was at a conference for lieutenant governors somewhere in the Caribbean, so the state comptroller of someone like that was actually in charge of the state. Again, I just don't see this mixture of naked grasping and political amateurism flying in a national election. He left his home state in the hands of a bureaucrat, but we're supposed to trust him as president? So if Romney does win the nomination, I'm not so sure he'll sail as easily as Sullivan seems to think in a national election, even against Sullivan's bête noire, HRC.