for the record

via steve benen @ the washington monthly:

IF CANTOR REALLY WANTS TO GO THERE.... house majority leader eric cantor (r-va.), shortly after president obama's remarks on [the death of] osama bin laden, issued a related statement. it included this gem:

"i commend president obama who has followed the vigilance of president bush in bringing bin laden to justice."

there's a fair amount of this rhetoric bouncing around this morning, and it's not especially surprising — republicans aren't going to credit president obama, regardless of merit, so it stands to reason they'll try to bring george w. bush into the picture.

if this is going to be a new gop talking point, we might as well set the record straight.

in march 2002, just six months after 9/11, bush said of bin laden, "i truly am not that concerned about him.... you know, i just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you."

in july 2006, we learned that the bush administration closed its unit that had been hunting bin laden.

in september 2006, bush told fred barnes, one of his most sycophantic media allies, that an "emphasis on bin laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism."

and don't even get me started on bush's failed strategy that allowed bin laden to escape from tora bora.

i'm happy to extend plenty of credit to all kinds of officials throughout the government, but crediting bush's "vigilance" on bin laden is deeply silly.

update: donald rumsfeld added this morning that obama "wisely" followed bush's lead. he either has a very short memory, or he's lying and hopes you have a very short memory.

meanwhile, from every birther's favorite faux-wingnut talking hairpiece:

i want to personally congratulate president obama and the men and women of the armed forces for a job well done. ... i am so proud to see americans standing shoulder to shoulder, waving the american flag in celebration of this great victory.

we should spend the next several days not debating party politics, but in remembrance of those who lost their lives on 9/11 and those currently fighting for our freedom.

god bless america!

after months of flinging racist birther-poop at obama, the donald once again demonstrates, through well-timed magnanimity, that he knows how to separate himself from the crowd.

finally, flowers

then:

"think of the faces in afghanistan when the people were liberated, when they moved out in the streets and they started singing and flying kites and women went to school and people were able to function and other countries were able to start interacting with them. that's what would happen in iraq." — defense secretary donald rumsfeld, 9/13/02 "as i told the president on january 10th, i think they will be greeted with sweets and flowers in the first months and simply have very, very little doubts that that is the case." — iraqi exile kanan makiya, 3/17/03

now:

baghdad — pomp and ceremony greeted iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad on his arrival in iraq on sunday, the fanfare a stark contrast to the rushed and secretive visits of his bitter rival u.s. president george w. bush. ahmadinejad held hands with iraqi president jalal talabani as they walked down a red carpet to the tune of their countries' national anthems, his visit the first by an iranian president since the two neighbours fought a ruinous war in the 1980s. his warm reception, in which he was hugged and kissed by iraqi officials and presented with flowers by children, was iraq's first full state welcome for any leader since the u.s.-led invasion to topple saddam hussein in 2003. — reuters, 3/2/08

another one bites the dust

(art by aarrgghh)

gonzales bids hasta la vista.

what's striking to me is how little sadness there is on the right that he is leaving. a quick look over at "the corner" shows that most conservatives there view his departure with relief. michelle malkin wasn't upset to seem him go either. a quick blogosphere check shows that most on the right are okay with this decision. but i wonder why republicans and wingnuts aren't angry about gonzo's departure. gonzalez has been radioactive for months now. he became the walking symbol of the bush administration's failures — incompetence, corruption and cronyism (loyalty uber alles). for him to resign now — after the disastrous appearances on the hill, after his deceptions, after stubbornly refusing to do so months ago when it could have stemmed the tide — well, it seems like defusing a bomb after it had already gone off. it's like rumsfeld all over again. this departure brings back memories of the phrase, the mayberry machiavellis. bush and friends seem intent on going down hard and taking the gop with them.

no more slam dunks

this week's news leak that bush has secretly signed

a "nonlethal presidential finding" [?!? 1] that puts into motion a cia plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

... has the blogoshpere once again atwitter (as leaks about iran typically incite every few weeks) that all-out war with iran is just around the corner. even as the same article cautions that while

"vice president cheney helped to lead the side favoring a military strike," said former cia official riedel, "but i think they have come to the conclusion that a military strike has more downsides than upsides."

... many still see this as one more step down the road to armageddon:

"i think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the united states supporting anti-iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within iran," said vali nasr, adjunct senior fellow for mideast studies at the council on foreign relations. "and this covert action is now being escalated by the new u.s. directive, and that can very quickly lead to iranian retaliation and a cycle of escalation can follow," nasr said.

i've already touched on some of the reasons why war with iran will not be forthcoming, such as an increasingly hostile (to the neocons) political climate:

"... the trash talk in a street altercation escalates in proportion to the expanding distance between the two protagonists.... it's when the fist fight has been avoided (or tabled) and they're putting distance between each other that the taunting becomes louder and more florid.... ... they're waging rhetorical escalation because de-escalation is the unacknowledged order of the day, and there's nothing they can do about it." — james wolcott, 9/2/06

an increasingly recalcitrant military:

"with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership, i offer a challenge to those still in uniform: a leader's responsibility is to give voice to those who can't — or don't have the opportunity to — speak. enlisted members of the armed forces swear their oath to those appointed over them; an officer swears an oath not to a person but to the constitution. the distinction is important ..." — marine lieutenant general greg newbold, retired, 4/9/06

[admiral william] fallon’s refusal to support a further naval buildup in the gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it. a source who met privately with fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted fallon as saying that an attack on iran "will not happen on my watch". asked how he could be sure, the source says, fallon replied, "you know what choices i have. i’m a professional." fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, "there are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box."

and a more robust opponent:

... unlike iraq, iran boasts the capability of striking back at its attacker, both with and without warning. its long shadow across the straits of hormuz and its purported international network of sleeper cells have been thoroughly dissected in other publications, so suffice it here to say that most americans would prefer that iran's boasts remain untested.

but there is an overarching dimension to this ongoing melodrama that i haven't yet made crystal clear.

war with iran won't be a "slam dunk".

remember, when the white house and its neocon enablers first seduced america into abetting its invasion of iraq, the primary pitch they made that john q. public found so enticing was that "regime change" would be easy:

"i believe demolishing hussein's military power and liberating iraq would be a cakewalk. let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) it was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps." — reagan arms control director ken adelman, 2/13/02 "five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." — defense secretary donald rumsfeld, 11/15/02 "a slam-dunk case." — cia director george tenet, 12/12/02 "we will win this conflict. we will win it easily." — sen. john mccain, 1/22/03 "i think it will go relatively quickly, ... [in] weeks rather than months." — vice president dick cheney, 3/16/03 "major combat operations in iraq have ended." — president george bush, 5/1/03

and cheap:

"iraq, unlike afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the iraqi people. and so there are a variety of means that iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction." — white house spokesman ari fleischer, 2/18/03 "the oil revenues of iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years ... we're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." — deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz, 3/27/03 "in terms of the american taxpayers contribution, [$1.7 billion] is it for the us. the rest of the rebuilding of iraq will be done by other countries and iraqi oil revenues ... the american part of this will be 1.7 billion. we have no plans for any further-on funding for this." — usaid director andrew natsios, 4/23/03

and we'd all be heroes:

"if we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, i think we will do very well and our children will sing great songs about us years from now." — michael leeden, american enterprise institute, 10/29/01 "i think that the people of iraq would welcome the u.s. force as liberators; they would not see us as oppressors, by any means." — vice president dick cheney, 9/9/02 "think of the faces in afghanistan when the people were liberated, when they moved out in the streets and they started singing and flying kites and women went to school and people were able to function and other countries were able to start interacting with them. that's what would happen in iraq." — defense secretary donald rumsfeld, 9/13/02 "the iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. like the people of france in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. they know that america will not come as a conqueror." — deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz, 3/11/03 "as i told the president on january 10th, i think they will be greeted with sweets and flowers in the first months and simply have very, very little doubts that that is the case. this is a remarkable situation in which the population of a country that's about to have a war waged over its head positively wants the war while all kinds of other countries don't for one reason or another. that should tell us a lot about this war and about the future [inaudible] which i think is desufficiently emphasized." — iraqi exile kanan makiya, 3/17/03 "i think when the people of basra no longer feel the threat of that regime, you are going to see an explosion of joy and relief." — deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz, 3/24/03

explosions, paul? most certainly, and to this very day. joy and relief? well .. not so much.

the collapse of the occupation and the clearly-forseen civil war unleashed amid the criminal lack of contingency planning for the invasion's aftermath painfully dramatized the dangers of huffing one's own propaganda, particularly propaganda laced with dubious intel cherry-picked and stove-piped from neocon hustlers and iraqi beat artists.

while it's tempting to believe (as many do) that a group of people so horribly misguided must be certifiably insane (and therefore capable of any utter lunacy the most ill-informed paranoiac can dream up), the iraq debacle only proves them to be self-deluding, greedy and morally bankrupt, even evil — but not insane.

because only an insane person launches a war that they don't believe they can easily win, and it was as true for adolf hitler before he invaded poland as it is for george bush before he invaded iraq.

and iran will be no cakewalk.

because thanks to an imploding middle east, a newly-combative congress, a collapsing military and increasingly resistant commanders, a disgusted electorate, a bursting budget, a resurgent taliban and a hezbollah-chastized israel, the war-mongers in washington — and the too-willing public — got a cruelly-needed splash of cold and bitter reality, and right in the kisser.

and while pride childishly demands that they continue rattling their tin swords, in the maddeningly elusive hope that they'll sucker iran into a "gotcha" moment and get them to finally cry "uncle" to prove once and for all america's total pwnage before they slink off into the pages of infamy, the war-mongers know too well that their cynical dream of *cough* "spreading peace and democracy" *cough* across the middle east has just gone up in smoke:

"we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." — george orwell, 1946

---

¹ wtf ... ?!? is this supposed to be bush-speak for "no drive-bys"? are presidential "findings" ordinarily "lethal"? and just how many of these "findings" have left bush's desk anyway? there just isn't any end to this crew's thuggery ...

like writing on toilet paper

it sounds like bush is getting tired of all the carping know-it-alls-without-a-plan:

president bush on saturday challenged lawmakers skeptical of his new iraq plan to propose their own strategy for stopping the violence in baghdad. "to oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," bush said. — "bush: war skeptics 'proposing nothing'"

but if bush is genuinely interested in seeing other plans, he need only check his inbox.

it's where he'll find, among others, the murtha plan, the kerry-feingold plan, the biden plan, the edwards plan, the levin-reed plan, and not to mention the baker-hamilton plan, otherwise known as the iraq study group plan, which bush already sounds familiar with, since he was recently overheard describing it as "a flaming turd".

and then there are the seemingly daily growing roster of freely-dispensed blogger plans like the johnson plan. it's plainly apparent to none but the willfully blind and deaf that at this late date there are no lack of thoughtful alternatives.

unfortunately (and i do say this with the utmost respect to all those who have been applying the necessary brain-power and wisdom that's been heretofore lacking in this debate) all these plans represent nothing more than idle academic masturbation. they're all quite pointless. and that's why you'll find no trademarked and patented "aarrgghh plan" on this site.

because unless the first step in your grand strategy reads:

my grand strategy for iraq by carping know-it-all 1) remove george bush and dick cheney from office.

... then your plan is nothing but toilet paper.

because unless you're willing to let events continue to spiral for at least another two years, george bush will give your precious plan all the due consideration he gave to the over-anticipated iraq study group report — that is, as steve gilliard remarked, he'll "wipe his ass" with it.

which leaves us with only one plan — the only one that matters — the kagan plan, more fondly known as "the surge".

and what makes this one plan oh-so irresistible to the commander-in-chief?

frederick kagan, 36, is the author of choosing victory, a blueprint for the surge adopted by president george w bush. just as everybody had begun writing off the influence of the neocons at the white house, genial, chubby-faced frederick gave the muscular intellectuals a lease of life. it was at camp david last june that kagan, a military historian and fellow of the american enterprise institute, outlined his plans for pouring more troops into iraq to bush and his war cabinet. donald rumsfeld, the then defence secretary, was unimpressed, but kagan's views got another hearing when bush was searching for ways to ditch the seemingly defeatist recommendations of james baker's iraq study group. "wow, you mean we can still win this war?" a grateful bush reportedly said. — "... bush's final baghdad gamble"

it doesn't get any better than this

or in other words, it can only get worse.

and it will.

josh marshall: bright side for the white house: it can only get worse. [emphasis his] ... when you think about this coming election, and the stakes for the white house, you need to figure that that's all come about without any independent, let alone antagonistic or hostile, investigations into the key issues that have led to this souring view of the president. would the president look better after a new look at the iraq intel bamboozlement that wasn't controlled by sen. roberts? how about an investigation into the executive branch side of the abramoff scandal? what about a look into the plame affair? what about the folks in rumsfeld's office who knew about duke's corruption but looked the other way? [emphases mine]

the predicament faced by the white house is really quite amazing from a purely clinical aspect, though, like a cancer diagnosis, what it reveals at the same time is thoroughly horrifying.

this administration, chiefly characterized by its pathological stubbornness, has lashed itself to the wheel. bush is resolved to "stay the course", not only in iraq, but in all his policies and programs, none of which actually work for the majority of the electorate, if anyone besides halliburton and exxon. his predicament is that any attempt to change gears, in any meaningful sense, one that is not purely cosmetic and one that will benefit the country, also brings with it the greater risk of exposure of his malfeasance and maladministration, which leads to probes and trials, and we can't have any of that now, can we?

so things won't get any better than this. the country's problems will inevitably grow worse. and the worse those problems become, the worse dear leader looks. but so long as bush has his way, he will not change course. so he's screwed. and he's criminally lashed us to the wheel right with him, on his good ship titanic.

washington post: a variety of bush advisers suggested that the president is not interested in altering his major decisions or philosophy, but that he recognizes he needs to do a better job communicating in washington and beyond. "the president's message and vision are firmly in place and are not going to change," mckinnon said. "but it still helps to have a new messenger. it helps to wipe the slate clean."

the logic is inescapable: things will continue to get worse before they can possibly get better. as long as this administration remains in place, things will never get better.

i'm just askin'

christy hardin smith (aka "reddhedd") at firedoglake asks one of those little innocuous questions that get frequently lost in all the flash and thunder and smoke and mirrors:

if things in iraq are going so swimmingly, why is it that no us official ever makes an announced visit there? why did condi and rummy sneak into town like thieves in the night if it’s all flowers and candy and good news in the colonies? i mean, honestly, we are a sovereign nation supposedly sending members of our administration into the territory of another soverign nation, right? since when have we sneaked into britain or russia or even trinidad and tobago? why all the tiptoeing into iraq? perhaps because they would rather be alive — since things are not going all that swimmingly? i’m just saying.

groundhog day

yes, america, you can stop pinching yourself, this, unfortunately, is not a bad dream. as you know — to paraphrase secretary of defense donald rumsfeld — you get to relive the past you have, not the past you might want or wish to have at a later time.

april 11, 2003: rumsfeld addressing the press regarding the growing alarm over the continuing violence in iraq:

i picked up a newspaper today ... and i couldn't believe it. i read eight headlines that talked about "chaos!" "violence!" "unrest!" and it was just henny penny, "the sky is falling!" i've never seen anything like it ...

those pesky newspapers — just a bunch of noisy old ladies. chaos? violence? unrest? puh-leez!

and we all know how that so-called chaos, violence and unrest never materialized, don't we?

now fast forward three years later to the very same day ...

april 11, 2006: rumsfeld addressing the press regarding the growing alarm over a preemptive nuclear strike against iran:

you know, someone comes up with an idea ... runs it in a magazine or a paper, other papers pick it up and reprint it, editorialists then say: "oh, henny penny, the sky is falling!" and opine on this and opine on that ...

those pesky newspapers ...

i just can't wait for april 11, 2009. assuming we're all still here, of course.

hat tip to crooks and liars; video courtesy of jon stewart's the daily show.

seven days in may

(cross-posted at daily kos)

what if they had a war and nobody came?

in his recent post "does the debate over iran matter?", constitutional law litigator glenn greenwald points out that there is frankly nothing — no law, no political body — that might stand in the way should bush decide to launch the attack, whether conventional or nuclear, that he has been threatening over the past weeks.

bush's attorneys have argued that even if the president lacks the congressional authority for such an attack — a position that they do not concede — he does have the inherent constitutional authority under article ii to exercise, unilaterally, any force he deems necessary in the conduct of his global war on terror:

we conclude that the constitution vests the president with the plenary authority, as commander in chief and the sole organ of the nation in its foreign relations, to use military force abroad — especially in response to grave national emergencies created by sudden, unforeseen attacks on the people and territory of the united states. — "yoo memorandum", september 25, 2001

since congress has yet to formally challenge this assertion, and since congress has already demonstrated during the nsa hearings its fawning acquiescence to the white house's expanding exercises of power, we cannot expect any potent resistance from that quarter, certainly not while congress remains under the control of the president's party.

but even if congress were today populated entirely by jealous and power-hungry democrats hellbent on obstructing bush's tiniest move, there exists no legal or procedural mechanism it can invoke that would bar the chief executive from unilaterally dispatching any kind of military action anywhere in the world, especially when this particular chief executive is fiercely determined to demonstrate his authority and his ability to exercise it. congress may decide to punish him afterwards, in any number of ways, from defunding his operation all the way up to impeachment, but it has no means to preemptively block such an action. the world's "sole superpower" truly sits under the sword of damocles, now dangled by a man whose constituents deem an "incompetent", an "idiot" and a "liar". and no one can predict whether the threat of that sword will serve to prevent or precipitate its fall.

a curious development at this phase of what appears to be a somnambulant second act to the iraq war is the never-before-seen and growing number of senior military personnel now taking the stage — on television, the radio and in print — to voice opposition to its civilian leadership and to specifically demand the resignation of secretary of defense donald rumsfeld:

army lieutenant general john riggs, retired, former director, objective force task force:

everyone pretty much thinks rumsfeld and the bunch around him should be cleared out. [they] made fools of themselves.

army major general charles swannack, retired, former airborne commander in iraq:

i feel that he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces there to achieve our strategic objectives. i really believe that we need a new secretary of defense.

army major general john batiste, retired, former division commander in iraq:

i believe we need a fresh start in the pentagon. we need a leader who understands team work, a leader who knows how to build teams, a leader that does it without intimidation. a leader that conforms and practices the letter and the law of the goldwater-nichols act ... it speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the department of defense ... when decisions are made without taking into account sound military recommendations, sound military decision making, sound planning, then we're bound to make mistakes. when we violate the principles of war with mass and unity of command and unity of effort, we do that at our own peril.

army general george joulwan, retired, former nato supreme allied commander:

it's our responsibility as military leaders to stand up and be counted on tough issues ... i think we've got to get more officers to stand up and be counted at the table, when they're on active duty. i think you're going to see more of that because there is a degree of frustration with the way things are going ... blitzer: what are you hearing from your friends at the pentagon, the top three, four-star generals right now behind the scenes? how frustrated, how angry are they with rumsfeld? joulwan: many of them very much so, particularly the last two or three years. the issue was, they don't trust us. the team that secretary rumsfeld has surrounded himself with doesn't trust the military. blitzer: ... would the country be better off, would the u.s. military be better off right now if the president found a new defense secretary? joulwan: i'm going to leave that up to the president of the united states.

army major general paul eaton, retired, former office of security transition commander in iraq:

defense secretary donald rumsfeld is not competent to lead our armed forces. first, his failure to build coalitions with our allies from what he dismissively called “old europe” has imposed far greater demands and risks on our soldiers in iraq than necessary. second, he alienated his allies in our own military, ignoring the advice of seasoned officers and denying subordinates any chance for input. in sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in iraq. mr. rumsfeld must step down. in the five years mr. rumsfeld has presided over the pentagon, i have seen a climate of groupthink become dominant and a growing reluctance by experienced military men and civilians to challenge the notions of the senior leadership ... donald rumsfeld demands more than loyalty. he wants fealty. and he has hired men who give it ... more vital in the longer term, congress must assert itself. too much power has shifted to the executive branch, not just in terms of waging war but also in planning the military of the future. congress should remember it still has the power of the purse ...

marine lieutenant general greg newbold, retired, director of operations, joint chiefs of staff:

i think i was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. but i now regret that i did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat — al-qaeda. i retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. until now, i have resisted speaking out in public. i've been silent long enough ... with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership, i offer a challenge to those still in uniform: a leader's responsibility is to give voice to those who can't — or don't have the opportunity to — speak. enlisted members of the armed forces swear their oath to those appointed over them; an officer swears an oath not to a person but to the constitution. the distinction is important ... the bush administration and senior military officials are not alone in their culpability. members of congress — from both parties — defaulted in fulfilling their constitutional responsibility for oversight. many in the media saw the warning signs and heard cautionary tales before the invasion from wise observers like former central command chiefs joe hoar and tony zinni but gave insufficient weight to their views ... we need fresh ideas and fresh faces. that means, as a first step, replacing rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach.

newbold's avowal that "an officer swears an oath not to a person but to the constitution" and joulwan's call for officers to speak out while on active duty are almost incendiary. active duty officers are rigidly constrained in the proper channels and activities available to them for voicing opposition to an order or program or policy. participating in any overtly political activity of any kind is all but entirely verboten. express obedience is not merely the norm but the heart and spine of any military organization. deference to civilian authority is a fundamental safeguard of our republic. the implications of congress' abdication of its constitutional responsibilities have not been lost on them, who now shoulder an unfair burden. just how much longer will the fighting men dutifully follow the orders of demonstrably inept flight-suited civilians who will not listen to them and who do not trust them? will they really follow them over the cliff and into iran?

in the quiet 1964 drama seven days in may, the joint chiefs of staff, fearing soviet treachery, conspire to take command of the government before an unpopular president can succeed in passing a nuclear disarmament treaty. in that tale, of course, the joint chiefs are the bad guys, representing the same sinister forces president eisenhower warned the nation against three years earlier, in the final days of his term. he had been the first president to negotiate strategies for disarmament with the soviets:

we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. we should take nothing for granted.

what rich irony then, that the world's only hope against an insatiable corporate-industrial complex, led by a saber-rattling president, just might depend upon a mutiny by a disaffected military establishment!

as extraordinary and momentous as it might be to actually witness, do not expect this revolution to be televised. the white house would never allow the public to learn of bush's emasculation, nor would the pentagon allow itself to be brought before congress for treason. instead, a quiet agreement would be reached under the cover of an announcement, with great fanfare, of a "breakthrough in secret talks" with iran.

unfortunately, it is, of course, far more likely that bush will be able to find a boykin or a bork ¹ to wage his iranian campaign. it is a big military, after all, with plenty of room for advancement. let us hope then, for the world's sake, that there is also plenty more room for dissent.

if there is any irony left to be had in this mad lurch towards nuclear armageddon, we shall know within the next few weeks.

---

¹ a "bork" is a subordinate called to fulfill a legally or morally questionable task that his superiors refuse to perform. the term comes from robert bork, who fired watergate special prosecutor archibald cox at president nixon's insistence, when he assumed the role of acting attorney general after his superior john ruckelshaus was fired and ruckelshaus' superior elliot richardson had resigned. this series of firings and resignations became known as the "saturday night massacre".

smackdown

i have a video that i like to indulge myself with on occasion. it helps remind me not only that incidents of real television journalism are still technically possible under the present administration but also that incidents of real television journalism have in fact occurred.

too often on today's talking heads programs are guests allowed to distort, obfuscate, propagandize and outright lie without any meaningful challenge from the host. often the simplest follow-up question would suffice.

in this video, a too-rare instance of how real interviews should be conducted, secretary of defense donald rumsfeld makes an appearance on march 14, 2004 with new york times columnist thomas friedman on cbs' face the nation, hosted by bob schieffer.

the interview proceeds unremarkably until schieffer brings up the administration's claims that iraq posed an "immediate threat" to the nation — a threat that of course proved spectacularly hollow when no wmds were found.

rumsfeld then not only flatly denies that the white house had ever made any such claims but also blithely accuses his critics of spreading "folklore" and smugly invites schieffer to produce evidence of any of such statements from the white house. clearly this is a man who knows that he is not about to be challenged.

boy, was he wrong!

friedman: we have one here. it says "some have argued that the nu-" — this is you speaking — "that the nuclear threat from iraq is not imminent, that saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. i would not be so certain."

just the sight of rumsfeld's crag collapsing like cheap plaster is well worth the price of admission. but little did rummy know that friedman was just warming up.

just as rumsfeld drifts off into a catatonic ralph kramden stammer, friedman admits that the phrasing is "close" (i.e., "imminent" is not "immediate") — and rummy gladly runs with the bait. the change in his demeanor, his relief at being handed such a welcome exit, is both immediate (no pun intended) and undisguised and is just as quickly replaced with his familiar smirk as he glibly relaxes back into the interview. no harm done — all in good fun, really ...

rumsfeld: i've tried to be precise, and i've tried to be accurate ...

hold on now — i ain't done with you yet, sucka!

friedman: "no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world and the regime of saddam hussein in iraq."

smackdown!

what more priceless theater than rummy reduced to blubbering incoherence on national television, hoist high on his baldface lies like a prize halibut?

this type of "gotcha!" journalism, however, is very easy to accomplish. statements by officials like rumsfeld are a matter of public record — any research intern could do the work that these over-priced celebrity news personalities are supposed to be doing. so why aren't we seeing more of these public figures being held with their feet to the fire?

the answer, i believe, at least in part, is access. television journalists and their network sponsors (and by extension the media as a whole) know that the continued success of their venue depends on their access to the movers and the shakers. what politician, pundit or priest would risk entering the studio just to run a gauntlet of their own deceit? programs like face the nation would quickly become ghost towns populated by faceless and impotent nth-level bureaucrats.

but would that be so bad — the closing of their precious access to the liars and the spinners — if it also meant that the liars' and the spinners' access to the eyes and ears of the masses were also consequentially closed? after all, access is a two-way street — the liars need these venues for the peddling of their noxious wares as much as, if not more than, their network enablers.

the sad reality, however, is that as long as disreputable networks like fox exist to serve as a ready rostrum for the sultans of spin, other stations will remain at a competitive disadvantage if they desire to both attract powerful guests and maintain any semblance of credibility and responsibility. unfortunately, in the marketplace of ideas, fact is no more valuable than fiction.

rumsfeld: we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to lie to the world to attempt to further their case. and to the extent people lie, ultimately, they are caught lying and they lose their credibility, and one would think it wouldn't take very long for that to happen dealing with people like this. — remarks on al qaeda, the taliban and the aljazeera news network, october 28, 2001

for whom the bills toll

"in truth i tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times." — matthew 26:34

november 1967: in response to the growing demonstrations that culminated in the october peace march on the pentagon, president lyndon johnson launched a press blitz aimed at shoring up flagging support for the vietnam war. johnson relit "the light at the tunnel" and flew general william westmoreland, commander of u.s. forces in vietnam, to washington to personally assure the national press club that "we have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view." johnson received a nearly 10-point bounce in the polls for his efforts, from 40% to 48%.

however, johnson's bounce in the polls was quickly turned into a dive by the startling tet offensive, launched by the north vietnamese at the start of february 1968, which demonstrated that they were far from their last throes. during the offensive american audiences were also treated to a brutal street execution and were introduced to the now-famous phrase "we had to destroy the village in order to save it", attributed by many to the destruction of the city of ben tre.

by february's end a turning point in the war of domestic public opinion had arrived, made explicit when cbs evening news anchor walter cronkite, considered by viewers, "the most trusted man in america" — even as late as 1995 — concluded that "it seems now more certain than ever, that the bloody experience of vietnam is to end in a stalemate." in turn, johnson reportedly concluded that "if i've lost walter cronkite, i've lost middle america." the "light at the end of the tunnel" had been rudely snuffed out in homes across america.

johnson's approval sank back down to 38% and approval for his handling of the war hit 26%. comprehending the hole he was in, on the last day of march he withdrew his bid for reelection.

♠
38 years later
♥

november 2005: nearly three years into the war, with support for the occupation and the president at its lowest ebb — a familiar 38% — george w. bush launched his public relations blitz, dubbed the "national strategy for victory in iraq". while the speeches may have earned him a modest bounce of 5 points, one could argue instead that it was the december 15 iraqi elections that gave america a glimpse of hope. but bush could not escape johnson's fate and his bounce too came crashing down in late february when the golden mosque in samarra was destroyed, dashing any hope that civil war could be averted.

by that time venerable walter cronkite, long retired but still active at the ripe age of 89, had already made his case for withdrawal in january:

"it's my belief that we should get out now," cronkite said in a meeting with reporters. ... the best time to have made a similar statement about iraq came after hurricane katrina, he said. "we had an opportunity to say to the world and iraqis after the hurricane disaster that mother nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the united states," he said. "therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home."

but his pronouncement was no "cronkite moment": in fact the journalist had come out against the war at least as far back as december 2003:

kurtz: let's talk a little bit about your views. you were opposed, no question about it, to the war in iraq. why? cronkite: well, not so much the war in iraq, as the way we entered the war in iraq. without any support from our previous allies, or the united nations as a whole. it seemed to me that this was — this unilateralism is a very serious breach of diplomacy, of strategy.

having remained largely out of the public eye for twenty years, cronkite no longer holds the nation in the thrall he once enjoyed as television's preeminent newsman, despite the continued respect of the public and the absense of any clear heir. furthermore, his advanced age, his having "outed" himself as a "social liberal" and his having endorsed 2004 democratic presidential hopeful dennis "moonbeam" kucinich's proposal for a federal "department of peace" gave ruthless war boosters fodder that they could use to dismiss the news legend as a doddering "leftie" loon.

---

but there can be little doubt that america had reached a "cronkite moment", even if the man himself was unable to deliver it personally. no, today's proliferation of network and cable news options no longer affords a single voice that kind of power over the national conscience. but three noteworthy voices did chime that week in february when the golden mosque was destroyed — noteworthy because they all were vocal supporters of the invasion.

bill o'reilly, fox news host and the most watched personality on cable news, could certainly lay claim to an audience the size of cronkite's, but no one save o'reilly himself would lay claim to any of cronkite's gravitas. quite the opposite: o'reilly is a sanctimonious screeching cartoon. nevertheless, on february 21, the day before the bombing of the golden mosque, a flummoxed o'reilly proclaimed:

here is the essential problem in iraq. there are so many nuts in the country — so many crazies — that we can't control them. and i don't — we're never gonna be able to control them. so the only solution to this is to hand over everything to the iraqis as fast as humanly possible. because we just can't control these crazy people. this is all over the place. and that was the big mistake about america: they didn't — it was the crazy-people underestimation. we did not know how to deal with them — still don't. but they're just all over the place.

bill buckley, jr., called "the father of contemporary conservatism", founder of the national review, is known to the layperson as the longtime host of firing line, his public policy arena. buckley's real audience however is the washington beltway; the professional narcissists in the nation's capitol want to know what buckley thinks of them. two days after the bombing a morose buckley concluded:

one can't doubt that the american objective in iraq has failed. ... our mission has failed because iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 americans. ... different plans have to be made. and the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

bill kristol, scion of a founder of neoconservatism and the founder of the weekly standard, is familiar to viewers as a regular commentator on the fox news circuit. as a founder and chairman of the project for the new american century (whose members had included neo-apostate francis fukuyama), the think tank behind much of bush's suicidal foreign policy, kristol is the rightful father of the iraq adventure. speaking on the weekend following the bombing, as would a step-parent to a brood of half-wits, a testy kristol complained:

kristol: there would not be civil war if zarqawi had not spent the last 2 1/2 years — had ex-saddamists with him, very skillfully going on the offensive slaughtering shia in karbala, now blowing up the mosque. wallace: they’re there. there are going to be more mosques to blow up. what do you do about the terrorists? kristol: kill them. defeat them. wallace: we’ve been trying. kristol: we’ve been trying, and our soldiers are doing terrifically, but we have not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in iraq as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out. connelly: i think that really begs the question then: what have we been doing over there for three-plus years? you say there hasn’t been a serious effort to rid that region of the terrorists. i just wonder what secretary rumsfeld would say in response to that or all the u.s. soldiers who have been over there all this time. kristol: secretary rumsfeld’s plan was to draw down to 30,000 troops at the end of major activities.

in less than a week, after civil war could no longer be denied, a popular champion of the war and a respected opinion leader publicly abandoned the mission and one of its key architects publicly disparaged its execution. the bills have tolled. the cock has crowed. despite his claims to disregard polls and pundits, there can be no doubt that george bush has heard the knell and the caw. sadly for those still destined to suffer the gravest mistake of his presidency, bush has yet to exhibit any of johnson's powers of comprehension and appears intent only on abandoning any reckoning or resolution to his ill-starred successors.

changing the storyline

abc news washington correspondent jake tapper discussing charges of media bias in the persistently bleak coverage of iraq with howard kurtz, host of cnn reliable sources, march 19 2006:

kurtz: jake tapper, in this morning's washington post, donald rumsfeld, the defense secretary, has an op-ed pieces which says, in part, "history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on web sites, or the latest sensational attack. history is a bigger picture." now, since you are just back from iraq, do you believe the journalists provided a distorted picture, or did it seem different to you when you got there than you might have expected? tapper: it's a very complicated question, obviously. what journalists, when, who, what are you talking about specifically? i think that there is a lot of violence still in iraq, and i think that if you listen to commanders on the ground and if you go to iraq, you'll see that that security situation is an incredibly important one. and as much as the pentagon may not want to talk about it or may want to talk about the positive, the parliament and the elections and the things that are being achieved, which are tangible achievements, the violence makes it very difficult to get past, you know, the daily boom. let me just — one quick story. we wanted to do a story about the freedom of the press in iraq, and we went to the set of a new iraqi sitcom that they're filming, because there's been — there's all this entertainment now, and it's one of the things that the ambassador there has trumpeted. kurtz: so what happened? tapper: we got there, and the guy who had set it up with us — we shot — we shot for a little while, and the guy who had helped us arrange it was assassinated the very morning while we were there on the set. and so our cameras were rolling while the director and the producer and the cast and crew found out that the guy that had green-lit the show and the guy that had set up our being there was killed. so no matter how hard we try to cover the positive, the violence has a way of rearing its head. kurtz: talk about changing your storyline.