Me: Frank Lynch

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Was Cheney trying to smear Edwards as being overly ambitious? One of the questions which arose out of last night's debate was Cheney's claim that he had never met Edwards before, when Cheney, as president of the Senate, would have expected to:

You've missed a lot of key votes: on tax policy, on energy, on Medicare reform.

Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you "Senator Gone." You've got one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate.

Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session.

The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.

Subsequent information shows this isn't true. Another time they met was on NBC's Meet the Press, and Media Matters has questioned why NBC debate commentator Tim Russert — who hosts Meet the Press — waited until this morning to question Cheney's charge, instead of doing it immediately after the debate. But something in what Russert said last night caught my eye: (All emphases below are mine)

RUSSERT: [W]hen he [Cheney] turned to John Edwards and basically said to him, you know what, you are a young man in too much of a hurry. I never met you before in my life until you walked on the stage tonight, it was basically saying to the American people, you may disagree with me, but I am steady and I am resolute, and I have a lot of experience, and you don't have to worry about the government if I am a heartbeat away.

And then this morning (same link):

[H]e clearly is trying to give the impression that John Edwards is a young ambitious man in a hurry who just doesn't stop by the Senate and do his job in a serious way, but is out campaigning and politicking, suggesting it's all politics.

Russert could be correct, because there was also this Cheney bit in the debate about the qualities of a Vice President...

What [Bush] said he wanted me to do was to sign on because of my experience to be a member of the team, to help him govern, and that's exactly the way he's used me.

And I think from the perspective of the nation, it's worked in our relationship, in this administration. I think it's worked in part because I made it clear that I don't have any further political aspirations myself. And I think that's been an advantage.

So while some pundits are talking about Cheney's "I never met you" as merely a small lie which is indicative of a broader symptom, it could be part of a fabric that the RNC is trying to paint Edwards as destructively ambitious: his ambitions will make it difficult for Kerry as a President. Poppycock, of course, but I wouldn't put it past them to try it.
Link 10:29 PM Home

More smoke and mirrors from our friend in the White House. The cable networks were promised a major policy address by the President this morning, and broadcast it in full. Guess what? Just your regular stump speech. I guess the real thing wasn't ready yet.
Link 6:23 PM Home

Iraq was a threat that had to be dealt with because, uh, because it's name is similar to "Iran." Maybe that will be the next rationale, after the latest report comes out discounting even ideas that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction:

The government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The officials said that the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. President Bush has continued to assert in his campaign stump speech that Iraq had posed "a gathering threat."

How many reasons are we up to now?
Link 2:40 PM Home

A fine quote. Today's Daily Howler criticizes the inclusion of Ana Marie Cox, aka "Wonkette" in NBC's brief post-debate coverage. Noting her tendency to irrelevant, uh, "spicy" comments, Bob Somerby writes...

"Wonkette," by the way, seems to be an amalgam of two words: "Wonk" and "Tourette's."

Not off by much.
Link 1:02 PM Home

The AP has a piece which "fact checks" the debate, and just for fun I'll give you a link to it over at the Fox News web site. It's a fairly good write up, although I was struck by one point which seemed to allow for deceit I didn't hear:

[Edwards] also asserted, "They sent 40,000 American troops into Iraq without the body armor they needed," a comment that might suggest they had no body armor at all, when in fact they did.

Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said 40,000 troops did not have the brand new, improved armor but, "every soldier and Marine on the ground over had body armor."

Personally, I didn't think Edwards implied they had no armor, only that they were under-supplied; to bring this point up seems like carping.

But it also gets into Iraq-al Qaeda discussions versus relationships; Iraq and 9/11; and Kerry's record of voting on taxes.

Yet for all that, it missed two key points:

• Kerry never "voted for war," as Bush and Cheney continue to contend. Kerry voted for an authorization of force: his stated intent at the time was to give Bush clout in going to the UN to get the inspectors back in. Here's what Bush himself said in Cincinnati prior to that vote: (scroll down to the update for a better quotation)

  Clearly, to actually work, any new inspections, sanctions or enforcement mechanisms will have to be very different. America wants the U.N. to be an effective organization that helps keep the peace. And that is why we are urging the Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough, immediate requirements. Among those requirements: the Iraqi regime must reveal and destroy, under U.N. supervision, all existing weapons of mass destruction. To ensure that we learn the truth, the regime must allow witnesses to its illegal activities to be interviewed outside the country -- and these witnesses must be free to bring their families with them so they all beyond the reach of Saddam Hussein's terror and murder. And inspectors must have access to any site, at any time, without pre-clearance, without delay, without exceptions.

  (snip)

  Later this week, the United States Congress will vote on this matter. I have asked Congress to authorize the use of America's military, if it proves necessary, to enforce U.N. Security Council demands.

  So was this a vote to launch war, or to get the inspectors back in? Kerry said he was voting to get the inspectors back in.

• Cheney repeated the charge about Kerry not supporting the troops, pointing to the $87 billion bill which Kerry voted against. Cheney also imputed Kerry's "no" vote to internal Democratic party pressures, citing Howard Dean's rise in the polls. Cheney's not alone in this view — it was also mentioned in a recent Washington Post article but the AP article doesn't mention that Bush also threatened to veto a similar $87 billion bill where the funding was drawn differently.

The Kerry campaign may not be adequately concerned about America's perceptions here. Joe Lockhart suggested that rather than taking an "I'm rubber, you're glue" approach to flip-flopping (pointing out Bush's changes over time), they prefer to criticize Bush's record: "We are prosecuting a different case. We are not arguing that he's a flip-flopper — he is — but that the policy choices he has taken have failed miserably."

UPDATE: After posting this I learned that I failed to really get at the core discussions surrounding the vote, that the quotations above barely scrape the surface. Here is some additional information.

Before the speech in Cincinnati, Bush had an exchange with the press as part of a photo op; on that occasion, there was this...

Q Mr. President, are you going to send Congress your proposed resolution today? And are you asking for a blank check, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: I am sending suggested language for a resolution. I want — I've asked for Congress' support to enable the administration to keep the peace. And we look forward to a good, constructive debate in Congress. I appreciate the fact that the leadership recognizes we've got to move before the elections. I appreciate the strong support we're getting from both Republicans and Democrats, and look forward to working with them.

Q Mr. President, how important is it that that resolution give you an authorization of the use of force?

THE PRESIDENT: That will be part of the resolution, the authorization to use force. If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force. But it's — this will be — this is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It's a chance for Congress to say, we support the administration's ability to keep the peace. That's what this is all about. (All emphasis mine.)

Had the intention of the law changed between the suggested language and the final version? Certainly not in Kerry's mind. On October 9, 2002, just days after the Cincinnati speech, Kerry discussed the scope of the authorization for force:

In recent days, the administration has gone further. They are defining what "relevant" U.N. Security Council resolutions mean. When Secretary Powell testified before our committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, on September 26, he was asked what specific U.N. Security Council resolutions the United States would go to war to enforce. His response was clear: the resolutions dealing with weapons of mass destruction and the disarmament of Iraq. In fact, when asked about compliance with other U.N. resolutions which do not deal with weapons of mass destruction, the Secretary said: The President has not linked authority to go to war to any of those elements.

When asked why the resolution sent by the President to Congress requested authority to enforce all the resolutions with which Iraq had not complied, the Secretary told the committee: That's the way the resolution is currently worded, but we all know, I think, that the major problem, the offense, what the President is focused on and the danger to us and to the world are the weapons of mass destruction.

Kerry then laid out the process he understood the President would use in engaging the U.N., and went on to explain his feelings about the future, should the President not comply:

If the President arbitrarily walks away from this course of action--without good cause or reason--the legitimacy of any subsequent action by the United States against Iraq will be challenged by the American people and the international community. And I would vigorously oppose the President doing so.

When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region. I will vote yes because I believe it is the best way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. And the administration, I believe, is now committed to a recognition that war must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and that we must act in concert with allies around the globe to make the world's case against Saddam Hussein.

As the President made clear earlier this week, "Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable." It means "America speaks with one voice."

Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.

Clearly, Kerry expected Bush to fully commit to inspections. The end game rhetoric of claiming that time was running out, that there would be no vote on the findings of the inspectors, these all fell far short of what Kerry had been led to believe. There is no way in my mind that you could legitimately call Kerry's vote a "vote for war."
Link 12:44 PM Home

It's the mistress, stupid. Media Matters caught a bit from Bill O'Reilly wherein he attributed the strength of Clinton's European relationships to his having a mistress. "They love that mistress stuff over there." This was his support point for why he predicted that Kerry will be more successful in dealing with Europe than Bush has been, and "it gives [him] pause." Of course, the rumors of Kerry's mistress were unfounded, and the media feeding frenzy only served to make life very uncomfortable for the innocent.
Link 11:27 AM Home

The first reaction I posted to last night's debate (although not primary in my mind) was regarding Gwen Ifill's questions. If her only odd question had been that one towards the end where she asked Cheney and Edwards to refrain from mentioning Bush and Kerry, I probably wouldn't have listed her as an issue. But I remember I was struck from the beginning. In an attempt to weave recent events together into a question for Cheney, she asked,

Vice President Cheney, there have been new developments in Iraq, especially having to do with the administration's handling.

Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, gave a speech in which he said that we have never had enough troops on the ground, or we've never had enough troops on the ground.

Donald Rumsfeld said he has not seen any hard evidence of a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Was this approved — of a report that you requested that you received a week ago that showed there was no connection between Abu Musab Zarqawi and Saddam Hussein?

To what, exactly, was she asking Cheney to respond? The administration's handling of... intelligence that Iraq and al Qaeda were linked? Zarqawi? the war? the peace? What a bad foot to get off on!

Later, when she asked Edwards about the global test Kerry had mentioned in Thursday's debate, she read from the Thursday transcript, but started at a point which ignored a directly connected thought which Kerry had made. When asked about the idea of preemptive war, Kerry responded,

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

That was what Kerry said, but Ifill only read this part: "You've got to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons." This completely ignored Kerry's statement that he would never defer responsibility to defend the US to any other country's prior approval. Edwards caught her on it, and reminded her of the context, but still, she had some weird set of blinders on.

At two points she referred to a news article which had just come out that day regarding flimsy connections between Iraq and al Zarqawi. She referred to it once in her opening question to Cheney, and later in a question to Edwards. Yet she never told viewers what the report was, and I think she was assuming too much on the part of the audience. For instance, the second time she mentioned it, all she said was, "If this report that we've read about today is true, and if Vice President Cheney ordered it and asked about this, do you think that, in the future, that your administration or the Bush administration would have sufficient and accurate enough intelligence to be able to make decisions about where to go next?" Now, how are the people who hear Edwards' response supposed to evaluate it with the odd bit of vague background which Ifill provided?

Many of the questions she threw were just plain slow pitch softball, such as asking Cheney whether or not, from a VP perspective, he still held a perspective he had four years ago at Halliburton that sanctions against Iraq should be lifted. Soo stupid: you don't need to be a political insider to have a different view four years later. And of course, being no dummy, Cheney swung at the pitch and drove it far, demonstrating cogently that sanctions have to have more than one country participating in order for them to work. Duh.

Later, she asked Edwards about the math behind reducing the deficit in half by merely retracting tax breaks to those who earn $200,000 or more. Here's how she asked it: "Senator Kerry said in a recent interview that he absolutely will not raise taxes on anyone under — who earns under $200,000 a year. How can he guarantee that and also cut the deficit in half, as he's promised?" If she didn't think the math works out, why didn't she ask that specifically, pointing out why, rather than just giving Edwards the opportunity to repeat campaign pledges without supporting the math?

Silliness continued when she asked Edwards to reconcile the Kerry-Edwards position on same sex marriages (they are against legalizing them) with what is going on in Massachusetts (Kerry's home state):

As the vice president mentioned, John Kerry comes from the state of Massachusetts, which has taken as big a step as any state in the union to legalize gay marriage. Yet both you and Senator Kerry say you oppose it.

Are you trying to have it both ways?

Uh, Ifill probably forgot this, but Kerry serves in the US Senate, and so far he has no say in the laws of Massachusetts. Having it both ways? Was she suggesting that, in order to reconcile his own opinions with those of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, that Kerry should move?

I have to admit I also bristled when one of her questions to Edwards suggested that the Kerry-Edwards plan for internationalizing Iraq might be "naive;" I think I would have found the word "impractical" less baiting, but in the context of all else that she did it was a minor offense.
Link 11:01 AM Home

Fairly even debate, I'd say, and I bet the Bush-Cheney supporters are glad Cheney didn't repeat Bush's miserable performance from Thursday. A few initial thoughts without having a chance to consult a transcript:

• What was up with some of Gwen Ifill's questions? That one near the end where they weren't supposed to mention their Presidential candidate's name, for instance... Why?
   
• Are there any Bush-Cheney supporters who don't know that Cheney has a lesbian daughter? He seemed so incredibly lacking in passion when talking about an issue which effects their family... He didn't even mention her, never used the word "daughter" — it took John Edwards' response to make it a human question, and then Cheney bowed out of any significant comment besides thanking Edwards for his kind words.
   
• It seemed to matter greatly to Cheney whether Iraqi casualties were included in the numerator and denominator before you calculate the share of casualties which the US has borne. But there is no formula by which our coalition partners bear anywhere close to the share they bore in 1991. Under Cheney's formulation, their share actually goes down.
   
• Someone in the Kerry-Edwards campaign is going to have to take the opportunity to explain the deal about the $87 billion vote clearly and succinctly enough that it prevents the topic being raised again; also that the vote to authorize force was not a vote to war. They need to find a silver dagger.
   
• I think Cheney scored a significant hit with the topic of his closing statement (homeland security). Edwards' human story was nice, but he missed an opportunity to talk about all the ways we are at greater risk because of the was Bush has responded to 9/11.

I'll probably have more thoughts tomorrow.
Link 11:04 PM Home

Why do these soldiers hate America so much? Via the Guardian, some emails which Michael Moore has received from troops in Iraq. One writes, "Soldiers are calling their families urging them to support John Kerry. If this is happening elsewhere, it looks as if the overseas military vote that Bush is used to won't be there this time around." Another: "The illiteracy rate in this country is phenomenal. There were some farmers who didn't even know there was an Operation Iraqi Freedom. This was when I realised that this war was initiated by the few who would profit from it and not for its people."
Link 4:25 PM Home

Bush campaign admits it's curtains. Kind of, anyway. Ken Mehlman just said, "I believe in this campaign the American people want to elect substance." He was talking about Cheney vs. Edwards on CNN's Inside Politics just now, but if the point pertains...
Link 3:45 PM Home

"I don't know why we didn't invade Canada, it's so much closer." Leo Kottke, just now, on Al Franken's show.
Link 12:59 PM Home

"We never had enough troops on the ground," admits Paul Bremer, and not stopping the looting hurt us too. "We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness."
Link 11:16 AM Home

What job did Bush think he was running for in 2000? I mean, I'm not just talking about how shocked he seemed in the debate about how hard a job it is, but there was also this:

MR. LEHRER: Mr. President, new question, two minutes. Does the Iraq experience make it more likely or less likely that you would take the United States into another preemptive military action?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I would hope I'd never have to. I understand how hard it is to commit troops. I never wanted to commit troops. I never -- when I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, I never dreamt I'd be doing that.

"I never dreamt I'd be doing that." You know, the 9/11 Commission said that September 11 was a collective failure of the imagination. Bush must have fit right in, if he never dreamt he might need to commit troops.

Let's see what he said in the first debate in 2000 between him and Al Gore:

"I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. So I would take my responsibility seriously."

Now, for someone who never dreamt that he would have to send troops in to battle, that's a pretty cogent response. I wonder if he thought that question in 2000 was just some wild hypothetical? Hmmm.

What else do we know? Did we have troops anywhere in the world, which might make such an issue relevant for a President? Hmmm. There's Korea of course, and I think we had bases in Europe, right? Japan?

And was Iraq looming on the horizon as an issue? Let's turn the clock back and talk about the Project for a New American Century, a group established in the spring of 1997 (this would have been before Bush campaigned in 2000). This group is pertinent because in their first statement, a letter to President Clinton, they wrote:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding ... The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. ... The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. (Emphasis mine.)

Now, just because that idea is out there, it doesn't mean Bush was in the loop on it, does it? Well, look at who has signed the group's statement of principles: his brother Jeb, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld... In short, it's highly unlikely that Bush would have been unaware of the group's desires, seeing as how his choice for vice-president had actually signed on.

Was there any actual contact between this group and Bush during the 2000 campaign? PBS Frontline reported that in March, 1999:

Bush sets up an exploratory committee for a presidential campaign and foreign policy experts descend on Austin, Texas, to help prepare him for a White House run.

His tutors include both neo-conservative hawks, such as Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, and pragmatic realists, including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. During the campaign, neither side will really know where it stands with the candidate.

All those ongoing international troop commitments; all that discussion during the campaign; a question during the 2000 debate; and still Bush "never dreamt" he'd have to commit troops as President of the United States. What job did he think he was running for?
Link 1:12 PM Home

Who had what intelligence? Bush has been defending his pursuit of war against Iraq by pointing out "My opponent looked at the same intelligence I looked at and declared, in 2002, that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat." Well, did he? That would include intelligence that the Department of Energy had rejected the notion that the anodized aluminum tubes were unlikely to have been used for uranium enrichment. Did Kerry really have access to the same intelligence which Bush and his advisors had? Apparently not.

• Kerry left the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, 2001.
   
• Not being on that committee when the march to war with Iraq was heating up, he wouldn't have had access to all the information that members of that committee would have had.
   
• John Judis & Spencer Ackerman wrote an analysis concerning the selling of the war first published in The New Republic, available online here. In it, they describe how crucial, balancing footnotes were omitted from CIA reports as they became less and less classified:

  The Senate Intelligence Committee, in fact, was the greatest congressional obstacle to the administration's push for war. Under the lead of Graham and Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, the committee enjoyed respect and deference in the Senate and the House, and its members could speak authoritatively, based on their access to classified information, about whether Iraq was developing nuclear weapons or had ties to Al Qaeda. And, in this case, the classified information available to the committee did not support the public pronouncements being made by the CIA.

  (snip)

  In the late summer of 2002, Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies — noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes. According to one congressional staffer who read the document, it highlighted "extensive Iraqi chem-bio programs and nuclear programs and links to terrorism" but then included a footnote that read, "This information comes from a source known to fabricate in the past." The staffer concluded that "they didn't do analysis. What they did was they just amassed everything they could that said anything bad about Iraq and put it into a document."

  Graham and Durbin had been demanding for more than a month that the CIA produce an NIE on the Iraqi threat--a summary of the available intelligence, reflecting the judgment of the entire intelligence community--and toward the end of September, it was delivered. Like Tenet's earlier letter, the classified NIE was balanced in its assessments. Graham called on Tenet to produce a declassified version of the report that could guide members in voting on the resolution. Graham and Durbin both hoped the declassified report would rebut the kinds of overheated claims they were hearing from administration spokespeople. As Durbin tells TNR, "The most frustrating thing I find is when you have credible evidence on the intelligence committee that is directly contradictory to statements made by the administration."

  On October 1, 2002, Tenet produced a declassified NIE. But Graham and Durbin were outraged to find that it omitted the qualifications and countervailing evidence that had characterized the classified version and played up the claims that strengthened the administration's case for war. For instance, the intelligence report cited the much-disputed aluminum tubes as evidence that Saddam "remains intent on acquiring" nuclear weapons. And it claimed, "All intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons and that these tubes could be used in a centrifuge enrichment program" — a blatant mischaracterization. Subsequently, the NIE allowed that "some" experts might disagree but insisted that "most" did not, never mentioning that the DOE's expert analysts had determined the tubes were not suitable for a nuclear weapons program. The NIE also said that Iraq had "begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents"--which the DIA report had left pointedly in doubt. Graham demanded that the CIA declassify dissenting portions.

  In response, Tenet produced a single-page letter. It satisfied one of Graham's requests: It included a statement that there was a "low" likelihood of Iraq launching an unprovoked attack on the United States. But it also contained a sop to the administration, stating without qualification that the CIA had "solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." Graham demanded that Tenet declassify more of the report, and Tenet promised to fax over additional material. But, later that evening, Graham received a call from the CIA, informing him that the White House had ordered Tenet not to release anything more.

  That same evening, October 7, 2002, Bush gave a major speech in Cincinnati defending the resolution now before Congress and laying out the case for war. Bush's speech brought together all the misinformation and exaggeration that the White House had been disseminating that fall. "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program," the president declared. "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." Bush also argued that, through its ties to Al Qaeda, Iraq would be able to use biological and chemical weapons against the United States. "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," he warned. If Iraq had to deliver these weapons on its own, Bush said, Iraq could use the new unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that it was developing. "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas," he said. "We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States." This claim represented the height of absurdity. Iraq's UAVs had ranges of, at most, 300 miles. They could not make the flight from Baghdad to Tel Aviv, let alone to New York.

  After the speech, when reporters pointed out that Bush's warning of an imminent threat was contradicted by Tenet's statement the same day that there was little likelihood of an Iraqi attack, Tenet dutifully offered a clarification, explaining that there was "no inconsistency" between the president's statement and his own and that he had personally fact-checked the president's speech. He also issued a public statement that read, "There is no question that the likelihood of Saddam using weapons of mass destruction against the United States or our allies ... grows as his arsenal continues to build."

  Five of the nine Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Graham and Durbin, ultimately voted against the resolution, but they were unable to convince other committee members or a majority in the Senate itself. This was at least in part because they were not allowed to divulge what they knew: While Graham and Durbin could complain that the administration's and Tenet's own statements contradicted the classified reports they had read, they could not say what was actually in those reports. (Emphasis mine)

Note: Kerry did not have access to information that the DOE felt the tubes were not for uranium enrichment. Got that? Bush's claim that Kerry had access to the same intelligence is a lie. Sadly, given the dots we have, we have to ask a question we hoped we wouldn't have to: what did the President know, and when did he know it?
Link 8:03 PM Home

Condoleezza Rice, hoping you don't notice. Rice was on ABC today, and was asked about the New York Times article I mentioned yesterday, wherein it was pointed out that in 2002 Rice appeared on CNN and overstated the danger implied by some anodized aluminum tubes which Iraq had ordered. (Recap: On CNN she had said the tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." In doing that she was relying on the CIA's assessment, and ignored the Department of Energy's assessment which was that they were likely for conventional missiles, and not uranium enrichment. The DOE is far more of an authority on centrifuge requirements than the CIA is.) Here is the full transcript of Rice's appearance (all bold emphases are mine)... The short version seems to be that as a "policy maker" she felt sufficiently entitled to concentrate on the larger truth she saw that it gave her liberty to twist the actual information.

Here's what you said about that on September 8, 2002, on CNN in the run-up to the war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICE: We do know that there have been shipments going into Iran, for instance -- into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to -- high-quality aluminum tubes that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: But The New York Times writes this morning that Almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials. The experts at the Energy Department believe the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets. If the government's top nuclear experts doubted that they were for nuclear weapons, why did you say that they were only suited for nuclear weapons?

RICE: George, at the time, I knew that there was a dispute. I actually didn't really know the nature of the dispute. We learned that -- I learned that later, as the NIE was being produced, and that the Department of Energy had reservations about what these tubes were for.

There were other people, of course, people, for instance, who did rocket launchers, who said that they thought they were unlikely to be for rocket launchers.

So what you had was a debate within the intelligence community.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But according to this article, that debate had been going on for more than a year, all through 2001. The State Department had weighed in on the side of the Energy Department, British intelligence had weighed in, Australian intelligence had said that the idea that the tubes were for nukes was patchy and inconclusive.

RICE: Unfortunately, George, the intelligence community assessment as a whole was that these were likely and certainly suitable for and likely for his nuclear weapons program, for a number of other reasons.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... the CIA's, and they were saying...

RICE: Well...

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... the nuclear weapons, not only for nuclear weapons.

RICE: Well, the director of Central Intelligence believed that the centrifuge part for these tubes, which were for centrifuge parts, were a part of a procurement effort for a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. Now, I'll point out that the Department of Energy, of course, joined in the assessment that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But that was separate from their judgment about these aluminum tubes.

RICE: But George, the tubes were alongside a lot of other evidence about experts being kept together, about balancing equipment being brought in, about how these procurement efforts were being funded.

When you're a policy-maker, you're sitting there looking at assessments that say that Saddam Hussein is reconstituting his nuclear weapons program. That's the key judgment. Secondly, that he can have a nuclear weapon likely by the end of the decade if something is not done about his program.

Those are assessments that cannot be ignored...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But that conclusion was based in part on faulty evidence...

RICE: George...

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... on the aluminum tubes.

RICE: George, what we knew at the time, what we knew at the time, was that there was, yes, a dispute in the intelligence agency about this. And, by the way, knew later, as the NIE came out, that there was a dispute within the intelligence agencies about this, but that there was dispute only by one agency, that's the State Department, about his...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Not the Energy Department?

RICE: No, the Energy Department said he was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program. And when you are a policy-maker...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But wait a second. They also said they believed that the tubes were for rockets, not for nuclear weapons.

RICE: George, when you are faced with an assessment that Saddam Hussein is reconstituting his nuclear weapons program, that he has, by the end of the decade, the probability of having a nuclear weapon, when you know that the intelligence agencies tend to underestimate these things -- after all, missing the Indian nuclear test in 1991 -- when the IAEA actually got there after the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was much closer to a nuclear weapon than anybody had thought, the tendency is always not to want to underestimate these programs.

And that is, by the way, a methodology that I would stand by to today.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Was...

RICE: A policy-maker cannot afford to be wrong on the short side, underestimating the ability of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein, who had expertise, who had weapons of mass destruction and had used them in the past, and who kept a very strong intent to keep those programs in place...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, then, today...

RICE: ... you can't afford to underestimate that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Today, then, you know, the weapons inspectors have found no evidence of centrifuges. Do you now accept that these aluminum tubes were almost certainly for artillery rockets, not nuclear weapons?

RICE: George, the fact is that what you know today can affect what you do tomorrow, but not what you did yesterday. I stand by...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, I'm asking about today.

RICE: ... I stand by to this day the correctness of the decision to take seriously an intelligence assessment that Saddam Hussein would likely have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade if you didn't do something. The assessment of the intelligence community as a whole, and the director of Central Intelligence, that he was reconstituting his nuclear program, that he had biological and chemical weapons, if you put that in the context of a dangerous man in the world's most dangerous region, in whom...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I know, but that's...

RICE: ... still in a state of suspended hostility...

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's not precisely what I'm asking. Do you accept today that these tubes were likely for rockets, not nuclear weapons?

RICE: George, as I understand it, people are still debating this. And I'm sure they will continue to debate it.

But whatever the case there, I stand by the decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein and remove this threat to American security, this threat to the Middle East, this thorn in the side of any effort to build a different kind of Middle East.

When you're a policy-maker, yes, you can try and you can get ground down in the details of this debate versus that debate. But you have to keep your eye on the most important assessment. And that was Saddam Hussein a threat? Of course he was a threat.

And anyone who believes that the world was better with a false sense of stability with this dictator in power than we are now, with an opportunity to build a different kind of Iraq as a linchpin for a different kind of Middle East, really isn't making a good judgment.

Note the difference here: Rice is mostly talking about the safe conclusion in her eye (Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons or was in danger of successfully doing so shortly); the specific claim that these anodized aluminum tubes were intended for use in a centrifuge was debated, as she admitted, yet she doesn't really talk about whether or not it was ethical to claim certainty for that. And unfortunately Stephanopoulus doesn't get her back on that; he might have by saying something like "setting aside for a moment whether or not the overall conclusion was reasonable, let's focus on what you told the American people: you told the American people that they were 'only really suited for nuclear weapons programs' when, as you've admitted here... Now, why was that?"
Link 5:00 PM Home

Changes at a right-wing extremist blog... Horsefeathers, which ran that disgusting Open Letter to Our Enemies earlier in the week — which argued for transporting Arab-Muslims in the US to the desert, raiding all Arab-American charities and so on — apparently decided it didn't like all the nice comments it received in response to that letter. They now want you to register in order to post a comment.
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This was lying, plain and simple. Condoleezza Rice knew the aluminum tubes were probably not for nuclear weapons when she said they were on CNN.

In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. In a speech to veterans that August, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Hussein could have an atomic bomb "fairly soon." President Bush, addressing the United Nations the next month, said there was "little doubt" about Mr. Hussein's appetite for nuclear arms.

The United States intelligence community had not yet concluded that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program. But as the vice president told a group of Wyoming Republicans that September, the United States had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States.

The tubes quickly became a critical exhibit in the administration's brief against Iraq. As the only physical evidence the United States of Mr. Hussein's revived nuclear ambitions, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President Bush and his advisers. The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, asserted on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

But before Ms. Rice made those remarks, she was aware that the government's foremost nuclear experts had concluded that the tubes were most likely not for nuclear weapons at all, an examination by The New York Times has found. As early as 2001, her staff had been told that these experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were probably intended for small artillery rockets, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and a senior administration official, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information. (Emphasis mine.)

It's a fairly long article with lots of details about how the Administration used the intelligence on Iraq. This is information which won't be in an official senate report until after the election, so read it now and share it with your friends, ok?
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The global test. Conservatives are making hay over this debate statement from John Kerry:

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

The ore which Bush supporters are trying to mine is in that idea of a 'global test,' which they read as suggesting that Kerry has said he would do what he explicitly said he wouldn't do: cede the right to preempt a threat to the U.S. He said that, they can't deny it. So what did Kerry mean by this seeming conflict of a "global test"? Well, it's only a conflict if you deny the richness of the English language, thus labeling yourself as a buffoon once it's demonstrated. Beyond the international connotation of global, there is also a connotation of comprehensive or overall, and Kerry is not alone in using the word global this way.

The problem arises when pundits who are either ignorant or deliberately misleading act as if 'international' is the only way the word global can be used, and expect that their audiences will not understand it any other way. It harkens back to the Florida politician who smeared his opponent by stressing that his opponent's daughter was a thespian. It's just low. And it's something they're entirely capable of doing (they're doing it already). Prior to the debate, we knew they would do anything to win, and now they probably feel they need to.
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Safe from all retort, Bush acts tough. I guess it's a compelling story of bravery under fire: think about Bush's pathetic performance in Thursday's debate when under pressure — his pauses, sputters, over-reliance on stock phrases and so on — and compare it to how he talked yesterday on the campaign trail. He reverted to accusations about Kerry which he knew he couldn't get away with in front of Kerry. While Thursday night Kerry couldn't have been clearer that he would defend America without demurring to any foreign country,

A day after the first presidential debate, President Bush ripped into Senator John Kerry on Friday as an equivocator who denigrates American troops and who would subject national security decisions to vetoes "by countries like France."

Now isn't that bravery and valor on the President's part? In an arena where he won't be challenged by his carefully screened audience, Bush resorts to lying about what Kerry said again. This man is not Presidential timber.
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Let's play "Take Words Out Of Context."

"I know putting artificial deadlines won't work."
  — President Bush, September 30, 2004

"Time is running out on Saddam Hussein."
  — President Bush, January, 2003

Fun, ain't it? If Bush can not just take Kerry out of context, but twist it and lie about it, let's have that fun! And tell me why this is wrong, too...
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Is it safe yet? In one of the comment threads, Mike of Ishbadiddle points to a released-private email from a WSJ reporter in Iraq saying that all things considered you'd rather be in Philadelphia... The link he provided isn't in the easiest format to read, so you might try this one. Very much worth your time, if you haven't read it. (I gotcher progress right here, Mr. Bush.)
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Here's a quick question for you... Pretend for a nanno-second that Bush isn't the incumbent. Did he look like presidential timber last night to you?
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Hardly "The Great Communicator," no one will ever confuse John Kerry with Ronald Reagan. But there were some flourishes last night which Kerry pulled off exceptionally well. (Transcript here.)

• Opening with a salvo of independence and superiority: "I believe America is safest and strongest when we are leading the world, and when we are leading strong alliances. ... I'll never give a veto to any country over our security. But I also know how to lead those alliances. This president has left them in shatters across the globe, and we're now 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq and 90 percent of the costs. I think that's wrong, and I think we can do better." This of course builds on perceptions of Bush as an isolationist, without ceding authority to other countries.
   
• His reference to Richard Clarke: Clarke is a polarizing figure in politics these days because while he's a conservative, he angered many Republicans for the way he talked about Clinton (praise) and Bush (blame) in his book Against All Enemies and for his apology in testimony to the 9/11 Commission. Kerry quoted Clarke's point about the irresponsibility of warring against Iraq after 9/11 ("Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor"); but Kerry knew that saying the name "Richard Clarke" would befuddle the message, so rather than do that, he identified the idea as coming from "The terrorism czar, who has worked for every president since Ronald Reagan." That was great: not only did he remove the negativity associated with the name "Richard Clarke," but by pointing out his time under Reagan, enhanced the idea.
   
• His handling of "I voted for it before I voted against it": "Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?" It was an honest admission of an error, used as a springboard to get people to start thinking about what really matters in this election (judging Bush's performance and thinking about its implications for the future).
   
• Refocusing the audience on the issues: "The president just talked about Iraq as a center of the war on terror. Iraq was not even close to the center of the war on terror before the president invaded it." With this (and another response) he undercut Bush's argument that it was "worth it" to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. On other occasions, Kerry has stressed that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, but questioned whether war was the right way to do it.

Just really well done by Kerry overall. But this is not to say he didn't have weaknesses; for instance, his allusions to service in Vietnam seemed gratuitous (thankfully there were only three in 90 minutes).
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Who do you mean by "we"? Slate's William Saletan writes:

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

That's what it all comes down to this debate, this war, this election. For all the differences between Iraq and Vietnam, the awful question John Kerry posed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 is the same one hanging over us now.

This time, however, Kerry isn't raising the question. His opponent, the president of the United States, is raising it. Why? Because Iraq is different from Vietnam. We were attacked on 9/11. We thought Saddam Hussein was behind it. We thought Iraq posed the next threat. We don't want to believe that we were wrong, that we've committed $200 billion and sacrificed more than 1,000 American lives in error. We can't imagine asking thousands more to die for a mistake.

Bush can't imagine it, either. So, he offers himself and you a way out. Ignore the bad news, he says.... (Emphasis mine.)

What "we" is he talking about? I don't recall getting a membership card for that we-club. Never applied for it, either. And I doubt he means these thoughts are limited to Bush, because he goes on to refer to Bush with "either." Leave me out of your club, Mr. Saletan.
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Republicans finding comfort as best they can, even stealing some. There seems to be a consensus that Kerry "won" last night's debate (see this summary of poll results at Brad Delong's blog). Over at the National Review blog The Corner, note is made that the perceived winner of the first debate rarely wins the Presidential election:

INTERESTING [KJL]
More of what Bush camp is noting: How important is "winning" the first debate? Since 1984, when Gallup began asking the question, "Regardless of which candidate you happen to support, who do you think did the better job in the debate?", only one candidate to win this measure in the first debate went on to be elected. In 1996, Bill Clinton "won" the first debate and went on to be elected President. Candidates Gore, Perot, Dukakis, and Mondale all "won" their first debates, but failed to win election.

Sept. 30, 2004: Kerry 53/ Bush 37 (-16)
Oct. 3, 2000: Gore 48/Bush 41 (-7)
Oct. 6, 1996 Clinton 51/Dole 32 (-19)
Oct. 11, 1992 Perot: 47/Clinton 30/ Bush 16 (-17, -31)
Sept. 28, 1998 Dukakis 38/ Bush 29 (-9)
Sept. 28-30, 1984 Mondale 54/Reagan 35 (-19)

That 84 example is a tad relief.

What's wrong with their taking comfort in these? Well, look at 2000: Gore won the first debate, he won the popular vote, and if the voters of Palm Beach County hadn't been befuddled by the butterfly ballot, he'd have taken Florida's electoral votes and the election. It's just amazing to me how significant details like this are conveniently "forgotten."

UPDATE: There were also debates in 1976 and 1980; I wonder if they were left off because they're contrary to the preferred spin?

UPDATE 2: I just heard Bill Schneider on CNN go through the same drill on "Inside Politics," and his list also started in 1984. He also didn't asterisk the Gore result. I wonder if there's no data for 76/80, or if he's taking his info right off an RNC fax? And why didn't the RNC send that fax out in advance of the first debate? If this were anything more than dishonest damage control, it would have gone out before, it would have been clearer about Gore, and it would have explained why the analysis starts with 1984.

UPDATE 3: According to this page, the post debate polls in 1976 had Carter and Ford "about even;" this page from Time magazine written in 1976 gives Ford a slight lead over Carter (34.4% vs. 31.8%, with 33.8% calling it a tie/no opinion; margin of error 2.9%). Ford's small advantage was trounced in ensuing days over his Poland flub, and he eventually lost the election. 1980 is more complex: incumbent Jimmy Carter didn't participate in the first debate because 3rd party candidate John Anderson qualified under the League of Women Voter's rule — so really, Reagan won the 'first' debate (and the presidency later). More pragmatically, Reagan won the second debate (the first between him and Carter) with his famous "There you go again."I haven't found any poll results to support that. But needless to say, starting the analysis in 1984 is a bit disingenuous, wouldn't you say?
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Bush to pardon Enron's Ken Lay (and other thoughts on last night's debate). Don't be disappointed that I post this morning rather than last night: I'm the type that considers "instant analysis" of limited benefit. But last night we learned more about Bush's sense of justice when he said that a Pakistani nuclear scientist had been "brought to justice:" he had, but the leader of Pakistan immediately pardoned him. Bush didn't focus on whether or not his operations had been stopped, but that he had been "brought to justice." So, in BushWorld...

On to more important thoughts: I found it interesting that the two candidates' appeals were different: Kerry was based on facts, Bush was based on belief or faith (in a non-religious sense). Kerry's arguments referred to historical records (even when he got them wrong, such as when sanctions were placed against Iran); Bush reiterated key tenets, and in my view didn't use facts to support his arguments as well.

It's not that Bush couldn't call on supporting information: he did so, but what he called on doesn't do well in daylight. The Pakistani nuclear scientist is one case, but there was also his claim that Kerry had flip-flopped on the war an on the $87 billion to support the troops. He also pointed to progress in self-governance in Iraq by talking about all the local forces which had been trained, yet a Reuters article on Monday found that Bush was overstating the figures. The overstatement is an important plank in Bush's claim that rebuts July's CIA-prepared estimate forecasting dark scenarios foe Iraq.

It's tempting to say Kerry was better prepared than Bush was, but since Bush was working at a disadvantage (defending his record) I'm not sure what more Bush could have done than act compassionately, which he did. At times, however, he sounded as defensive as a child in the dean's office — he hesitated in his answers, sounded formulaic, couldn't support his actions with much more than central beliefs, and picked on his opponent.

Did Kerry do what he needed to know? I have no idea — only November will tell. But I thought he was very clear to the audience about points which he made in Boston and Zell Miller twisted (that he would never cede to another nation when it came to defending the US), and he was articulate about his position on Iraq having been consistent. I think he should have counter-attacked on the flip-flop suggestion, however, and pointed out that Bush had threatened to veto an $87 billion bill which would have supported the troops, and not merely talked about his own record. I think he could have launched a massive offense on Bush for how his flip-flops have put us at greater risk (resisting/acceding to a 9/11 panel, resisting/acceding to that panel's interview requests, resisting/acceding to their recommendations, resisting/acceding to a department of Homeland Security and so on). Kerry cannot point to any attacks within the US since 9/11, and we're all thankful that there have been none, nor would we have wanted one for the sake of political capital; but Bush's several failures to address opportunities promptly have not helped our situation in the least.

I also think Kerry did well in marshaling non-Iraq failures in Bush's foreign policy, such as when Bush and Powell were giving conflicting signals to North Korea in the spring of 2001 and not working with other governments on global warming treaties. That could have been made a lot stronger by talking about the Geneva Convention, which is held in a vaguely sacred status by the country, and I regret his not failing to make that.

Kerry also helped himself by usually being on target in his answers; there were a couple points where I wasn't sure why he started where he did, but he always spoke immediately, and because his responses went to the question he came off as more sincere to me.

Overall, I think Kerry won last night's debate, but that may be due less to Kerry himself than to Bush being in the position of having to defend his foreign policies.
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