Best of the Blogs

Reading Woodward Between the Lines

1. Colin Powell is Plan of Attack’s “Deep Throat.” Woodward reconstructs conversations where only Powell and Bush were present and when Bush is the source Woodward always identifies him as such.

2. Shrub’s Secretary of State was “out of the loop” while the Iraq invasion was being planned.

3. Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia was in the loop and Karen Hughes, Shrub's flack, and Karl Rove, his political adviser, were told about the invasion before Powell.

4. Cheney assured the Saudi prince that after the invasion Saddam would be “toast.” When Bandar said he wanted to hear it directly from the president, Cheney arranged a meeting with Shrub who assured him that the decision to invade was his. Woodward writes: “Bandar believed it was exactly what Cheney had told Bush to say.”

5. Dick Cheney was the “steamrolling force” behind the invasion and had pushed the idea from the moment the administration took office.

6. Dick Cheney ran, and probably still runs, a “separate government” out of his office. Powell and Dick Armitage call Cheney’s group the “Gestapo.”

7. Shrub was initially skeptical of the WMD evidence but George Tenet assured him that it was a “slam dunk.” Tenet must have something big on the Shrubster or he would surely be out of a job.

8. Colin Powell warned Shrub that Iraq was subject to the “Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.”

9. Bush often speaks of himself as in the third-person and describes himself as a “messenger of God.”

10. George W. Bush is naïve, unsophisticated and somewhat mentally unbalanced. "I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Woodward. "I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty."

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:39 AM

Why Are We in Iraq?

Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. From Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward

Excerpt here but you can skip the book--excellent summary here.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:48 AM

Friday, April 16, 2004

Untermenschen

"Why are the liberators killing the liberated," wonders Haroon Siddiqui, editorial page editor emeritus of the Toronto Star.

"One explanation is offered in the Telegraph, the conservative British daily, Siddiqui writes. "Defence Correspondent Sean Rayment writes that senior British commanders in Iraq are appalled by the heavy-handedness and racism of the U.S. forces. He quoted a British officer as saying Americans view Iraqis as 'untermenschen,' the term used by Adolf Hitler for Jews and gypsies."

Now we know American soliders don't literally call Iraqis "untermenschen" but, as I said to my wife last night, our ever creative forces must have come with a derogatory name for our Iraqi friends by now. Anybody know what the Iraq equivalent of "gook" is?

posted by Jerry Bowles 5:39 PM

Two Guesses

Why does Colin Powell no longer speak to Dick Cheney? Bob Woodward knows.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:03 PM

Ashcroft Jacking Justice

John the Elder is leading the call for a new megabucks internal security agency desinged on the MI-5 model. He says that his FBI doesn't have the power to do the job right, that Congress stripped the FBI of the power to make Americans feel safe. He blames big government. What he fails to acknowledge is that Congress clipped the FBIs wings because it became a partisan political arm of the Nixon White House during the Watergate era. And, clipped wings and all, it remains a partisan political arm of the Bush-Rove White House today. If our growth industry Drug Enforcement Administration has a big budget and lots of employees and can't slow down the flow of drugs, how can we expect a new anti-terrorist agency to slow down terrorosim?

posted by Groom 1:16 PM

Tax Ax: Where’s Kerry?

With a new round of ads coming out this weekend from both the Bush and Kerry camp, the consensus on the first round is that BuchCo’s attack ads are not working, except for the tax one that says Kerry will raise taxes by $900 billion in his first 100 days. They get to this big number by using the Enron accounting method of projecting costs for Kerry’s programs over 10 years. Of course it’s wrong by at least a third and more importantly it is wrong because Congress, not the president, raises or cuts taxes—a point Kerry has not made.

I just spent a few days with my new son-in-law who lives in Republican Country, Ohio, one of the key swing states that is tenatively leaning toward Kerry. When politics came up, not an advisable topic for most families, I was pleased to hear him express his unease—hey, I’ll take what I can get—at Bush’s handling of the war and claims about WMDs. But on taxes he surprised me when he said, “but Kerry is a going to raise my taxes.” When I pointed out that Kerry could not raise taxes, only Congress could, he was surprised and even challenged my assertion. That’s pretty scary stuff.

I’ve got some work to do, and so does Kerry.

posted by Josh 11:18 AM

Losing One for the Gipper

Those busy beavers of the Club for Growth (-of-a-corrupt-Banana Republic) have just lost one in an unlikely location: the rock-hard Republican Legislature of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The bill still needs to go the Senate which has already signaled a willingness to raise taxes, but this looks like a turning point in the tax or not to tax debate.

This is also significant because Virginia is almost a Republican “pure play.” It’s the home of Pat and Jerry after all. And the state has not voted for a Democrat for President since 1964, when LBJ won by only 54% of the vote.

The ChristoAnarchofundamentalists hijacked the state Republican Party years ago. But it seems that their pitch to the Old Dominion is growing old. After all, the state has seen significant cuts to their once vaunted public colleges and universities, and traffic is so bad it takes about 45 minutes to drive any 5 miles in Fairfax County. But the Democrat and Vice Presidential “whisper” nominee, Gov. Mark Warner, was able to lead the state from near fiscal disaster and loss of its AAA bond rating by persuading 17 Republican legislators to fear something greater than Tom DeLay and his local clones.

CFG and the state Republican Party have tried to put the tax increase to a referendum, which Warner rightly and shrewdly warned would turn the state into another California (to ole Virginians, the only thing worse than being from California is to hail from New Yawk). But the no tax Fundos like to paint theirs as a "populist" movement, and are trying to make Warner look like a totalitarian.

Of course, the language I’d really like to see on a referendum would be: “If we raised the taxes for the very richest people in the state so you folks would have better education and roads would you vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”

posted by Evelyn 10:02 AM

One Hand Clapping

Not a peep out of Congress about Shrub's unilateral tilt toward Israel which is not really surprising considering the enormous amount of money that our favorite little Middle Eastern nation kicks back to American politicians. One of George Bush's achievements that we failed to mention in response to Vicki's post yesterday is that he exposed Yassar Arafat as the warmongering old fraud that he is. Too bad, he didn't do the same for Ariel Sharon.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:50 AM

Rumsfeld Surprised? The Pros Aren't Surprised

Nobody will ever call retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni a weekend warrior. To bad the Neocons and the White House had no use for his warnings before the war in Iraq. Here are the first two paragraphs of the story in which the San Diego Tribune reported his reaction to Donald Rumsfeld's statement that Rumsfeld was surprised by the scale of recent U.S. casualties.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni wondered aloud yesterday how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be caught off guard by the chaos in Iraq that has killed nearly 100 Americans in recent weeks and led to his announcement that 20,000 U.S. troops would be staying there instead of returning home as planned.

"I'm surprised that he is surprised because there was a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to be thus," said Zinni, a Marine for 39 years and the former commander of the U.S. Central Command. "Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?"

Didn't consider, I suppose, that if you are Incurious George you never listen to anyone. At least Rumsfeld is willing to acknowledge unpleasant facts.

posted by John 5:57 AM

Post Turtles

While suturing a laceration on the hand of a 70-year-old Texas rancher whose hand had caught in a gate while working cattle, a doctor and the old man were talking about George Bush's chances of being reelected. The old Texan said, "Well, ya know, Bush is a 'post turtle'."

Not knowing what the old man meant, the doctor asked him what's a post turtle. The old man said, "When you're driving down a country road, and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle. Kids and drunks do that kind of thing to turtles sometimes".

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain, "You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he can't get anything done while he's up there, and you just want to help the poor dumb son-of-a-bitch get down."

Courtesy of Jerry Warren, via Anthro-L

posted by John 1:53 AM

Thursday, April 15, 2004

The Bush/Jihad Gas Tax

Shrubby tells us that this is not a religious war. But our good friends in the World of Islam-dominated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) really took him and working Americans to the cleaners with their cutback earlier this month. The White House supposedly did its best to lean on the oil-tyros but Shrubby´s crew got kicked in the chops big time. Nobody in the media threw any sunshine on this Oval Office screw-up.

Here along the Avenida Insurgentes Sur in Mexico City this afternoon the price for a liter of Magna Sin, the regular unleaded product produced by PEMEX was 6$30 centavos per litre at the pump. With the exchange rate hanging at about 11.3 pesos to the US dollar, that means that the folks in California and Arizona are now paying as much as folks in Mexico City. The spread used to be about 25%... more expensive in Mexico. Thanks to OPEC shaving their output, barrel prices are being pulled higher by demand, pump prices are trending past $2/gallon and the profits our Islamic friends tote up and pass through to the nudniks Shrubby calls "despotic theocrats" fill the war chests of the al-Sadrs and the madras schools where it is politically correct to preach hatred and death to Americans and their allies. And you are trying to tell the American people that John Kerry will create $900 billion in new taxes in his first 100 days. Without OPEC jerking our chain there is wiggle room for a modest gas tax hike to pay for your war of lies in Iraq. But since your crew can´t lean on them, now it´s your Jihad/Opec/Oil tax, Mr. President. Can´t you send Poppy or Jim Baker or your Enron pal "Kenny Boy" Lay to tote up the vig on those dudes in Vienna before we´re paying $3/gallon at the pump after Labor Day?

posted by Groom 8:30 PM

With Friends Like These

Matthew Schofield of Knight Ridder Newspapers provides a grim report on how well "Iraqification" is going:

In Ramadi, U.S. troops gave two-way radios to Iraqi forces, not for communications, as they claimed, but so they'd know when their allies were phoning Marine positions to the enemy.

In Sadr City and Najaf, Iraqi police asked permission from Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr - the man they were expected to capture or kill - before they reported to work.

In Fallujah, at least two Iraqi battalions refused to join the fight against insurgents.

posted by Jerry Bowles 6:55 PM

The Powell Doctrine Outlives the Bush Doctrine

In the real world, the Powell Doctrine is trumping the Bush Doctrine.

The Powell Doctrine, spelled out by Doug DuBrin, says: "Military action should be used only as a last resort and only if there is a clear risk to national security by the intended target; the force, when used, should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy; there must be strong support for the campaign by the general public; and there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict in which the military is engaged."

The Bush Doctrine, spelled out at the World History web site, has four parts: "Preemption, Unilateralism, Strength beyond challenge, and Extending democracy, liberty, and security to all regions."

posted by Vicki 6:45 PM

With tools like PROMIS how could we go wrong?

From Ft. Meade to Diego Garcia we´re supposed to have the best stuff on the block. The INSLAW-PROMIS tracking software is just part of the tool box our "security services" bring to work each day. To say that our tax dollars aren´t paying for the technology to follow the money, triangulate the communications and liquidate at will is another lie that is being blasted into the Skinner Box by the Pinnochios in this big charade. Why isn´t the Kissinger... oops Kean Commission laying the good cop/bad cop on Cowboy Tommy Franks about botching the snatch at the Tora-Bora caves.

posted by Groom 2:36 PM

A little self-indulgence
What Kerry Needs To Do About Fighting Terrorism

I’d like to think that Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism, writing an op-ed, “Will the Opposition Lead?," in today's New York Times, got his recommendations for what Kerry should do about the war in Iraq and fighting terrorism from my post earlier this week, Press 10, Kerry 4, Bush 3. While Berman adds a wrinkle or two, the idea is that Kerry should appoint a group to broaden the context of understanding and dealing with terrorist—and this group should function as a road show for our “fence-sitting” allies who would welcome new leadership in the White House, and view such a process as a way to see that Kerry is ready to act on a collaborative globalization of the war on terrorism starting day one.

Kerry probably doesn’t read our blog (his loss) but hopefully he has seen Berman's piece. It is the most balanced analysis I have read to date, and his/my recommendations are the kind of boldness lacking in Kerry’s foreign policy pronouncements. Kerry needs to get off this UN kick and strike a parallel course with some fresh zing to it. Let’s see what he does.

posted by Josh 2:00 PM

Has Bush Done Anything Right?

President Bush in his press conference had trouble finding any mistakes he had made--or any he'd admit to.

I'm wondering--has he done anything right? I'm having trouble thinking of anything he's done at all that I approve of.

I've disliked him and mistrusted him from the beginning, when he first began running for President. (He's been far worse than I expected, however. Not in my wildest dreams.....)

The only glimmer of anything I can come up with is: I had a teeny-tiny bit of good feeling toward him when he stood at Ground Zero on the Friday after the September 11 attacks. You've seen the picture: he had his arm around some worker or firefighter and the moment seemed genuine. That's the only thing he's done that I can approve of.

There must be more things he's done that I would approve of. Can anyone name any?

posted by Vicki 12:08 PM

I's Comin', Miss Scarlett

In its continuing efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world and make America more secure, the Bush administration has dropped any pretense of being an honest broker between the Palestinians and Israelis and sided with aging terrorist and barely unindicted kickback extortionist Ariel Sharon's new plan to hold on to choice real estate in the West Bank. Once more, Colin Powell is publicly humiliated and "endures" in silence, as old Bill Faulkner might say.

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:20 AM

Gobble, Gobble

It wasn't exactly Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger but Shrub got his figures wrong on the amount of mustard gas found on that Libyan turkey farm. Turns out 23.6 tons of mustard gas were found in Libya, instead of 50 tons. The big unstated lie, of course, is that Colonel Gadhafi was scared into dismantling his weapons program by the invasion of Iraq when, in fact, he had been negotiating the deal for several years with the British.

posted by Jerry Bowles 7:48 AM

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF PLUS CA CHANGE, PLUS C'EST LA MÊME CHOSE:

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster."

-- T.E. Lawrence, aka "Lawrence of Arabia" writing on the British occupation of Iraq in 1920

posted by Michael 2:44 AM

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

The Price of Incuriosity

That's the title of a New York Times editorial today that begins with the words,

Americans knew George W. Bush was an incurious man when they elected him, but the hearings of the 9/11 investigating commission, which turned yesterday from the F.B.I.'s fecklessness to the C.I.A.'s blurred vision, have brought that fact home in a startling way. The president is trying hard to present himself as a hands-on manager who talked terrorism incessantly with the director of central intelligence, George Tenet. ("I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time.") But Mr. Tenet had to concede yesterday that he was not in Crawford, Tex., for the Aug. 6, 2001, briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Mr. Tenet told the panel he didn't meet with Bush all that month, but the C.I.A. later said there had been two meetings. No one has been able to say whether Mr. Bush followed up in any way after he asked his intelligence agencies whether there was a domestic threat from Al Qaeda, and got a loud "yes" in response.

posted by John 11:09 PM

Are we Bushed?

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (B follows A, so A must be the cause) is a famous logical fallacy. Still, I have to wonder. The blogosphere continues to chatter (and some of the recent posts on BestoftheBlogs have been outstanding); but, on various e-mail lists to which I belong, many but not all having to do with politics, the traffic and enthusiasm seem to have sagged following the Bush speech. It's almost as if we are all reduced to saying, "Oh...My....God" and otherwise rendered speechless.

Then, again, maybe it's just me, on another warm Spring day in Yokohama, looking forward to my third political event this week--"Voting Rocks," where Democrats Abroad Japan will be running a voting assistance table at Piper's Lounge in Roppongi, while the Michael Jacobsen band, which has volunteered its services, and the bar which is offering (by Tokyo standards, anyway) cheap beers provide the draw for the young and trendy.

posted by John 10:40 PM

The MI5 Jive

Shrubby and Elder Ashcroft have been jawing about a revamping of the "internal security" services with their technical model borrowed from the "cousins" MI5. A lot of blather about great management structures. Maybe they could try to worrk in a little extra on the boondoggle for the Inslaw-Promis "tracking software" that former Senator Warren Rudman was so big on... The bottom line from where I sit, which today just happens to be about 200 yards off the Reforma in Mexico City, is that MI5 is a great technical model if you are an island nation, which Britain happens to be. The issue is as much how the public relates to the culture as what kind of internal security ïnfrastructure and culture a government is trying to retool, or implement anew. Our society in the US is too transient, too uprooted, too much in turmoil to entertain the fantasy that the "cousins" model can be exported to our shores. Before any reorganizing is done, how about checking the brow ridge and cephalic index on our current Homeland Security top banana. And follow that by changing the name of that organization to something that doesn´t sound like it was invented by Himmler or Heydrich. When that´s all taken care of perhaps John Kerry will get up the gumption to call for a repeal of the Patriot Act and propose new, more sensible legislation that doesn´t run ragged over the Constitution and Bill of Rights. We´ll save the "inter-service rivalry" between our ¨current domestic and foreign spook shops for another time.

posted by Groom 8:25 PM

Rum Raisin? Chocolate Marshmallow? Decisions, Decisions

Last night Bush claimed he couldn't think of a specific mistake he'd made since 9/11. The Center for American Progress has thought of five, and is inviting us to vote for the one we think is the biggest. The choices: invading Iraq without a plan for the aftermath; telling the American people that Iraq definitely possessed WMDs; failing to send U.S. troops into Tora Bora to capture Osama Bin Laden in November 2001; disparaging Gen. Eric Shinseki when he said more troops would be needed in Iraq; and focusing on missile defense while ignoring repeated warnings of an imminent Al-Qaeda attack before 9/11.

Not since my last trip to Baskin-Robbins have I had this much trouble making a decision.

posted by jabartlett 5:42 PM

Another Rip in the Emperor's New Clothes?

Did CIA Director George Tenet actually testify today that he did not speak to George Bush for the whole month of August 2001?

posted by Evelyn 5:00 PM

Mistakes Made

UN Special Adviser, Lakhdar Brahimi, says the United Nations believes an Iraqi caretaker government can be formed before the June 30 handover to guide the country until elections are held in January 2005. Buried in the annoucement were two indirect criticisms of the CPA and Paul Bremer. On the matter of the thousands of Iraqis who are being detained without charge, Brahimi said: "They should be either charged or released, and their families and lawyers must have access to them," he said. He added that it was "difficult to understand" that thousands of sorely needed Iraqi professionals were dismissed during the de-Baathification process.

When historians begin assessing the mistakes made by the American-dominated CPA, these two are likely to loom large. None of them, it should be noted, will be George W. Bush's mistakes.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:22 PM

Oh. My. God.

Guess who's being touted as the first US Ambassador to the post-June-30th Iraqi government? John Negroponte.

As David Sirota points out in his excellent blog, Negroponte was hip-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal, which means he was instrumental in helping Iran wage war against Iraq not so very long ago. Great -- that should go over big in Baghdad! (Not to mention the irony -- for those of you whose irony-meter hasn't already broken -- of a man with a dismal human rights record helping Iraq transition to "freedom.")

November can't come soon enough, I tell you.

posted by Michael 11:25 AM

Where's Poppy?

I had always thought that the single most tragic moment in American political family history was the Kennedy family having to inform the speechless and stroke-impaired Joe that his son the President had been killed.

But now I would venture that whatever happened in Bush 41’s living room last night would be pretty darn close. For all his lack of visionthing, for all his futile toadying to the Pat Robertson crowd, Bush I knows a thing or two about foreign policy. Richard Clarke in an interview with Chris Matthews acknowledged as much.

Can you imagine how George Herbert Walker must have felt hearing the one about mustard gas on the turkey farms? Can you imagine how he reacted to W.’s maniacal insistence on the existence of WMD’s?

Well, perhaps Barb kept the scotch handy.

posted by Evelyn 11:25 AM

Crazy George

The first George Bush may have lacked "the vision thing" but Bush Junior has it to burn. "See, we're changing the world," he kept repeating in his rambling non-responses last night. People everwhere are yearning for American-style democracy and unbridled capitalism and the good Lord has chosen George W. Bush to bring it to them. I've seen men on New York City's streets dressed in Saran wrap scribbling secret messages onto walls who had a better grip on reality.

Iraq is a deadly and expensive disaster that didn't have to happen. Cheney and Rumsfeld convinced Junior that the Army could overthrow Saddam in two or three weeks, and the other Arabs would see how tough we are and start cracking down on terrorists. Grateful Iraqis would flood the streets to cheer the victors. No need to have much of a post-invasion plan; the Pentagon would airlift in Cheney and Wolfowitz's buddy Ahmad Chalabi, who was, afterall, a Shite although we owned him, and enjoyed tremendous grassroots support. Chalabi would quickly put together an orderly government and most of the troops would be home well before Christmas. Meanwhile, we would drag out tons of hidden WMDs and show the world just how worthless the UN and "old Europe" really are.

Of course, the "plan" fell apart the moment American troops reached Baghdad and it became clear to Iraqis that there weren't enough of them to maintain order. The buildings and property that were spared through "smart" bombing were looted and destroyed by maurading Iraqis. Chalabi turned out to have no popular support; Iraqis saw him for the opportunistic criminal that he is. There were no weapons of mass destruction, although the Bush team clings to the fiction that they are there somewhere, probably hidden at a "turkey farm."

Iraq now stands on the brink of civil war and American soldiers, as well as civilians from "coalition" countries, are caught in the middle. 700 young Americans are dead; thousands more have been permanently maimed and disabled. The administration's exit plan is nothing more than a wish list of dates when things are suppose to happen--transfer of power, a permanent constitution, elections, and so on. The smart money thinks violence in Iraq will get worse, not better, after June 30.

Meanwhile, Shrub behaves like none of this has much to do with him. When asked who we planned to turn power over to on June 30, he suggested that it's now the UN's problem. "That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing; he's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over." When asked if more troops were needed, he demurred to General Abizaid. A curious passing of the buck to a man who perceives himself as a strong, decisive leader.

Despite all the false assumptions on which the Iraq invasion was based and the endless quagmire it is fast becoming, Shrub could not think of a single mistake that he has made in his three years in office. There isn't anything he would do differently if he could do it over again with the advantage of hindsight.

It's a good thing for him that this poor deluded man is president because otherwise I suspect he would spending a lot of time in the company of mental health professionals.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:22 AM