Copyright © 2005 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2005 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings. Email: |
CNN's "Dead Wrong." I was glad to see CNN take a crack at a hard look (for television, anyway) at what went wrong with the intelligence failures surrounding conclusions that Iraq had WMDs. But in a way there's a problem with the scope implied by the phrase "intelligence failures," in the same way that there's a problem with the scope when the Senate didn't look at Administration failures regarding the use of intelligence. Thinking in terms of intelligence failures implies that some failures will not be looked at. For instance we know that the White House was not very good at listening to Tenet's recommendations to tone down the rhetoric. Tenet has said he tried to keep Cheney in a harness, but Cheney refused. And the idea of laying the 2003 "16 words" at the feet of the CIA is laughable. I also think the documentary was interesting for its complete omission of references to Graham and Deulfer. Graham was the driving force behind getting the CIA to issue an NIE on Iraq, and if you read Judis and Ackerman you get a greater sense of how Graham was trying to educate the Senate on the weak intelligence. But he's not mentioned, and that's unfortunate. And I also don't think it gave adequate attention to what the Administration did when it appeared on the talk shows in October 2002 and ignored the intelligence of the Department of Energy regarding the aluminum tubes. It was there, but the flagrancy wasn't as clear as it should have been. After all, this was an instance which really crystallizes the way the Administration ran to war. But if you can see it's second showing later tonight, you
really should.
Why is CNN the only awake media outlet? Tom Smith ("filkertom") writes of an AP article posted at Yahoo! which, in labeling pro-Bush demonstrators as "patriotic," implies that those who are against Bush are not patriotic. Very good catch. The odd thing is that this "patriot" perspective is absent from CNN's version, but present everywhere else. Tom Smith didn't insert it, he's accurately cut-and-pasted the content from Yahoo!'s feed. But Yahoo!'s version is dated Sunday August 21, with a time stamp around 9 AM eastern; an earlier version of the same article from last night at CNN's site, date-time stamped Saturday August 20 10:42 PM leads with the phrase "A pro-Bush camp with a 'God Bless Our President!' banner..." not "A patriotic camp with a 'God Bless Our President!' banner..." As best I can tell CNN toned it down, as there are examples on the web that refer to the camp as "patriotic" before CNN's, based on a Google news search. CNN's version is unique, and plenty of other news organizations took the AP as is. So much for the alert media... UPDATE: Earlier I failed to paste in one of the Google
News search links; it's there now, sorry. Also, there were two
other outlets who caught the issue and pulled the word
"patriotic" from the lede, but only two. They were the Fort Worth Star Telegram and the Pioneer Press. Both these sites require registration,
which I have not done; I'm relying on this Google news search.
I can't decide between mockery and outrage, so I'll do both. First, here's the story:
Okay, let's do the mockery first. This is actually a good thing for the right. Why, you ask?
The outrage part just rolls off the keyboard. Remember that press conference where the President argued against the idea that some nations might not be "ready" for democracy? (I can't find it yet; if you do, put a link in the comments please.) It's really too bad that Bush didn't lay out his criteria for what constitutes democracy at that point, but it seems he's been pretty good about slipping away from anything you can hold him accountable for. In the meantime, we have all our dead and maimed, all the moneys spent, no WMDs, plenty of innocent Iraqis dead, all for some vague "noble cause." Cindy Sheehan should not be the only person asking for
definition of this "noble cause." Bush is starting another push
to drum up support for the war, and I
can only hope that this drive is about as successful as his
Social Security tour was. Bush needs to see the mess he's made.
Somehow!
The Pentagon project that identified Mohammed Atta in 2000? There's a story that's been in the press for maybe two weeks, that a data mining group in the Pentagon called Able Danger had identified Mohammed Atta in the summer of 2000 as being in the US and part of al Qaeda; that this group was prevented from sharing its information with the FBI by Pentagon lawyers; and that this same group shared its information with the 9/11 Commission when it was conducting its post mortem, but were ignored. I've deliberately held back from commenting on this story because, 1, I felt it was developing so rapidly that prudence dictated patience, and 2, because I have a day job most of the opinions on the day's rush of claims and insinuations had already been posted elsewhere. But through Kevin Drum, we now hear the click-click-click of the ten speed while the bicyclists are back pedaling: we would never have been bothered with this story if the New York Times had been more aggressive about reporting and less aggressive about printing. Unfortunately, there was much greater care about the Swift Boat Vets smear effort, and when the press decided — properly — that there was "no 'there' there," the tomfool Bush-bloggers wouldn't let it rest, not when their guy was genuinely vulnerable to fair charges that he skipped out on his National Guard duty. (No matter that it hasn't been proven regarding his service in Alabama, we know he didn't report in Massachusetts for sure.) Did the Times run with this story because it had too little
else to report on, in August? Perhaps; I'm certainly not privy to
their newsroom conversations. I suspect it has more to do with
the profit motive than anything else. Let's all just remember
this when we hear about the "liberal New York Times," ok? Never
let an unfair smear get in the way of making a buck.
MORE evidence that Clinton did nothing about al Qaeda. I don't know why the New York Times didn't challenge a quote it printed earlier this week, that Clinton did nothing about Osama Bin Laden; anyone who reads the 9/11 Commission's report knows that there was significant focus on bin Laden, that there were bombing efforts, and if they were called off it was because the CIA knew how quickly their intelligence gets stale. So if there are any out there who still think Clinton didn't act on bin Laden, we now have the news that in 2000 the State Department was trying to get the Taliban to expel bin Laden from Afghanistan. So Clinton was working on multiple front, not just through bombing runs. That's a helluva lot more than spending August 2001
vacationing on your ranch in response to a Presidential Daily
Brief warning that bin Laden was determined to strike the U.S.
It's not the facts, it's sharing them that's the problem. At least, that what Cliff Kinkaid seems to feel:
Now, I'm confused, and maybe Kincaid can clarify it for me... I thought that we were proud of the fact that ours is such a free and open society? Kincaid seems to feel that our moral standing is so fragile that we cannot afford to take a hard look at how things can be improved. For Kincaid, it would be better if we were dressed up like a Hollywood set of houses with white picket fences and 2.2 children. In a totalitarian state, we would never see the kind of information which Kincaid wants kept under wraps. If success is measured by how you react to failures, Kincaid would apparently prefer that failures not be understood; yet if you don't understand them, you can't remedy them, and they're more likely to occur. It spirals. If anything, the American people have to wise up to the tricks
of Bush apologists.
For your Sunday night viewing... Sunday night on CNN, 8 PM and 11 PM Eastern, a show on the intelligence failures surrounding Iraq. Apparently there are some regrets:
For this, of course, Tenet received a special medal from the President. (I hope Tenet displays it proudly in his home, along with a running tally of all our troops who have died in Iraq since the invasion began.) More of the Administration needs to take ownership for what went wrong, and my assessment of course runs all the way to the top. There is some party nervousness over the political backlash from Iraq in 2006. Grover Norquist is quoted as having said... "If Iraq is in the rearview mirror in the '06 election, the Republicans will do fine. But if it's still in the windshield, there are problems." Well, in order for it to get to the rearview mirror, one of
two things has to occur: either brilliant success, or acceptance
of responsibility (and apologies), so you can move on with
success elsewhere. But I have the feeling the White House will
lose its opportunity to pursue the latter by holding out for the
really low probability former.
The Samuel Johnson Zeitgeist meter. This isn't something I plan on quantifying, because it would be really time consuming. But because I run one of the most popular Johnson web sites, I have a unique perspective I'd like to share. In 2002, there was a lot of talk about Johnson's quotation Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Without a doubt it was because of the chest beating over how politicians expected others to respond, and questioning the patriotism of anyone who didn't toe the line. Recently it seems as if the traffic pattern has been different: a lot of people are coming to Ye Olde Web Site after searching for a proverb widely (but inaccurately) credited to Johnson: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Some interpret the saying to suggest that intentions are not enough, that if you do nothing you're bound for disaster. My own interpretation has always been that good intentions can seem to justify stupid actions which will put you on a path to hell. For the life of me, I cannot imagine anything in world events or otherwise which would justify such a shift. Hey, anything going on in Iraq?
More Cindy Sheehan smears. Compassion for a mother who lost her son for a questionable cause is obviously absent from those who prefer to cocoon the Preznit and his supporters from the realities of Iraq. The aspersions cast upon Cindy Sheehan from O'Reilly, Malkin, et al are trickling throughout the warbloggers. I honestly can't tell if this is a crass bid for traffic, but over at Horsefeathers we read:
I have to stop here. These are the words of people who cannot conceive that rational others disagree with them; it's really pathetic. The odd bit is that in so many of their other posts they've complained about remote psychoanalytic diagnoses. I'd really love to know how these jerks presume to imagine that this poor woman, who lost her son in war, is expressing rage at her son? Are these bloggers so irrational that they can't tell the obvious, that her rage is at Bush? What contortions and twists have they put their minds through? Is this some asinine effort to support a house of cards which exists in their minds? Horsefeathers argued long and loud for invading Iraq. Perhaps they're really filled with self-loathing and are in denial. I don't know. I'm not trained to make that diagnosis; and even if I was, for damned sure I'd know better than to diagnose mental illness in people I've never met. But if these crackpots aren't in need of help, than they're at the very least in need of being called out for their absurdities, their trashing of all that is good and decent in this world. They should be shunned, those who know them should cross to the other side of the street rather than to have to be courteous. They are a pox, a tax on all we consider good. It's accountability the President's
avoiding, not a timeline. I'm completely sold on the idea
that if the President simply schedules an end date in Iraq,
that's a mistake. But when he talks in those terms, it's a straw
man. America doesn't want a timetable for withdrawal, America
wants to know the plan for success, what constitutes progress,
and what the goals are for that. This is not a timeline. This is the President, our "MBA
President" putting up the slides and telling us, "here is what
I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it." It's a commitment
that he'll achieve accomplishments, not a timeline. Tell us that, Mr. President. On several occasions
you've said we'll be gone when the Iraqi people are capable of
providing their own security; how about if you tell us what
you're going to do to help create that security and what your
expectations are for creating those forces. Do you believe in
accountability? Then put yourself on the line as being
accountable. Don't wimp out.
Uh, NO. In a word, NO. Here's what
GOP strategists have to say about the news from Iraq: Some said that the perception that the war was faltering was
providing a rallying point for dispirited Democrats and could
pose problems for Republicans in the Congressional elections next
year.
Republicans said a convergence of events - including the
protests inspired by the mother of a slain American soldier
outside Mr. Bush's ranch in Texas, the missed deadline to draft
an Iraqi Constitution and the spike in casualties among
reservists - was creating what they said could be a significant
and lasting shift in public attitude against the war.
Let's be clear about this. Let's not be namsy pamsy people who
can't tell coincidence from causality. This is not "a convergence
of events," as if none of this had anything to do with their hard
work here. Plain and simple, this is the chickens coming home to
roost. This is the "Pottery Barn rule" writ large (Colin Powell's
warning that if you break it you own it, in fact not Pottery
Barn's policy). Invading Iraq was a screwed-up idea, and America now faces
something analogous to a balloon mortgage: our President signed a
contract that's not paying off, many are reading the fine print
and recognizing the long term obligations, that democracy will
not pay off so quickly when a minority can't control the
government but has command of the country's oil revenues, and
that even though our soldiers continue to die there are no easy
solutions. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Would you
mind telling us what you've ever been successful at? (Most of us
know the answer is not nothing, apparently you successfully
skipped out on National Guard service, that must rank high.) Yikes, I sure spewed there. Let's bring the train back onto
the track, and point out this
piece by Paul Begala. If you read Joe Conason's Big Lies, you know how all the claims about the GOP
as the Daddy Party, fiscal responsibility, morality, and so on,
don't hold up in sunlight. Well, Begala's
essay points out how the Right is showing how little it
supports the troops by the way it dumps on the mother who's
protesting the war death of her son. Many on the left (myself included) differentiate between
supporting our troops and supporting the war. Some on the right,
it seems, can't differentiate between supporting the President
and supporting the troops. Cross the President and you're walkin'
on the fightin' side of me. (No offense meant to Merle Haggard; I don't know how he feels
on these issues.)
Still a lot of dust to settle on prior
warnings about Mohammed Atta. Yes, of course I read
the news, but the story is developing so rapidly, even a week
into it, that I don't think this is the arena for blogs. Bloggers
generally don't do original reporting, and can only do ongoing
commentary: this is a story that really calls for patience, not
first responders. That was my story a week ago, and I'm stickin'
with it.
Just how tongue in cheek? I think
Kevin Drum raises a valid point. There's a new kid on the
block when it comes to intelligence and acting intelligently, and
its TLA is not CIA.
Justice in training? A lot of
attention has been paid to the memos and briefs which Supreme
Court nominee John Roberts wrote when working in the Reagan
administration. Perhaps we get additional insight into his
judicial philosophy from how he's behaved while under
consideration for the Supreme Court — and if it's not
insight into his judicial philosophy, at least it's perspective
into his ethics. While Roberts was interviewing for the
Supreme Court slot, he was hearing and deciding a case of
great importance to the Bush Administration and how it wants to
combat terrorism. Yet Roberts failed to
recuse himself from the case. There's no evidence to suggest that the Supreme Court
opportunity influenced Roberts' decision in favor of the Bush
Administration, but Roberts really should have recused himself,
even if he was confident he could remain uninfluenced. (Roberts
certainly knows that you can be influenced without recognizing
it.) The fact that he didn't may have been a cue to the Bush White
House about how likely he would be to recuse himself in the
future. Was this reassuring? Were there high-fives in the Oval
Office and a realization that, "hey, this is our guy?" I have no
idea. But you have to believe that when Scalia was hearing a case
relevant to Cheney and failed to recuse himself, having gone on a
duck hunting weekend with the VP, that there were sighs of relief
then.
We can only have words of derision
for the way the White House treats the planet. The President
appointed Cheney to head the development of his energy policy, a
decision which allowed greater secrecy than would have been the
case otherwise; and when the Cheney policy came back apparently
crafted with the interests of the energy industry in mind, and
little or no attention paid to environmentalists, there was
little anyone could do to understand the dynamics of its
development beyond pointing to how few times the VP met with
anyone who wasn't in the interest of selling energy. And then
there was that lovely tax break for small businesses which
bought the huge SUVs. Slight diversion: you remember how much our President loves
free trade, and how all the levers were pulled to enable the
passage of CAFTA in the House, right? Well, it really seems as if
the President is interested in anything but a level playing
field, and if it harms the environment while increasing energy
consumption, so much the better. Well here's the connection: we
have an opportunity to raise the fuel efficiency requirements on
SUVs, mini-vans, light trucks, and so on, in an effort to
encourage lower gasoline consumption, less dependence on foreign
oil, and an improved environment. You wanna
guess its likelihood of going forward? Click through if you haven't read it, but this morning I was
struck by this passage: The broad outline of the Bush plan is almost certain to meet
objections from environmentalists and those hoping for an
aggressive approach to curbing dependence on foreign oil. But
domestic automakers are likely to see it as a victory, since the
new plan will decrease advantages that some foreign automakers,
like Honda, have in the current system because they do not make
the heaviest trucks and S.U.V.'s. Now, the domestic manufacturers may look at it as a "victory,"
but then again, when screw-ups escape retribution they look at is
a victory, too. What we're really doing is, we're enabling
their shortsightedness. This is the same situation which gave the
foreign makers an entree decades ago: Detroit was making these
huge boats (sailing, sailing...) and the fuel embargoes happened
and the US manufacturers were completely unprepared; their
portfolios weren't diverse enough to be ready for when American
consumers woke up and realized they wanted a tank to last longer
than a couple days. When the government decides to emphasize one sector over
another, it is basically manipulating the economy. You realize
that, don't you? Sometimes the effort is for positive reasons,
such as nurturing the Internet. Other times it's to reward
friends. Somehow I think this is more of the latter than the
former. (An alternative explanation is that the GOP dearly wants
Michigan to go Red, and so is kowtowing to its local interests:
you may remember how quickly Bush removed the steel tariffs when
it was clear that it was having greater negative impact on the
auto manufacturers than positive impact on the domestic steel
industry.)
"How can you ask someone to be the last
man to die for a mistake?" asked John Kerry many years ago.
No, Iraq's not at all like Vietnam; no, Iraq's not a quagmire.
Anyone who thinks such thoughts hates America. It couldn't be
clearer. Actually, with word that those in the Bush administration are
lowering their expectations about what
we can hope for in Iraq... recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far
less progress than originally envisioned during the transition
due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in
Washington and Baghdad. The United States no longer expects to see a model new
democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which
the majority of people are free from serious security or economic
challenges, U.S. officials say. "What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the
timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official
involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process
of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding
the unreality that dominated at the beginning." ...a lot of things couldn't be clearer, but today I'll
emphasize just one: The Bush Administration has never yet
given a justification for the war which didn't wither under
scrutiny. In fact, when you think about it, the Bush administration and
its supporters have gotten very little right about Iraq.
Not just the candies and sweets thing (always an easy target,
that one!), but the being greeted as liberators thing, too. And
the need for security after the fall (oh, we didn't
really believe it would be as easy as we said and he fell
too precipitously!), and the pleasure after the January elections
which we now can all agree involved two few parties. So long as
it's other people's children who were dying, they apparently
don't mind. Hasn't it continued in fine fashion? In May we had the New
York Times' John Tierney writing that
reporting on suicide bombers is pointless, because it's not
really news and only gives ammunition to the insurgents. Well, it
just turns out that the media is so biased these days, that if
you're not reading closely, you don't learn that deaths by
suicide bombers are only the tip of the iceberg: Lovely, huh? Never a better example of all the news that fits
the print. 65 times a day: Tierney should be grateful his
newspaper doesn't really do its job. So here we are today, with a President completely cowed by a
mother who waits outside his home while he vacations. When will
this man have his true accountability moment?
The next genius. So here's the need:
you have an iPod, you're traveling, and you have an iPod
accessory that allows you to play your iPod over your car's FM
radio on unused FM frequencies. What frequency to choose? It's
actually a lot of work. Who wants to develop the technology that
links GPS location tracking to this? (Please...)
No comment. I've been away for a few
days, I don't know the news. I haven't read the news, so I
have nothing new to say or worth your reading, except to say that
of course he's guilty, and the astonishing thing is his
wife/lover/ice man didn't leave him sooner. Assuming it's a him
you care about.
Parent's weekend. If you've been here
for the long haul, you know that the Vermont pictures come out of
taking Zoe to camp. And if you watch the calendar carefully, we
take her to camp, we go to Parent's weekend, and we bring her
home. But because we're Democrats, such activities could only
really be construed as padding our resumes, as Rush might
say. Never mind the letters I've written to Zoe 5 or 6 days a
week, it's only really because I'm angling for a spot on
the Supreme Court. All this is just to say it's a three day shut down here. I
like it less than you do (eek! no web access!), but spending time
with our daughter beats anything, it just does.
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