Me: Frank Lynch

Home
(Current commentary)

These are my mundane daily ramblings.
For something less spontaneous, I maintain The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,800 Johnson quotes).

Email:
frank
dot
lynch2
at
verizon
dot
net

The surge is working? Media Matters points out that outlets like CNN are too ready to simplify what's happening with American troop deaths in Iraq. There have been fewer deaths since the surge, but as a result of the surge? Probably not: the recent decrease follows a seasonal pattern that's been going on for some time. In fact, US troop deaths for June-July-August of 2007 are the highest of every June-July-August since we've been in Iraq. One explanation which has been offered is that in the summer the heat makes it too uncomfortable to do as much killing as in winter.

So tell your friends: they're hearing the same stories on TV as Media Matters picks up on, and you need to give your friends some kind of vaccine to protect them. (By the way, I think it was Kevin Drum who first parsed out the seasonal issue and how deaths have actually increased.)
Link | | | 10:48 PM | Home

Check your listings... See if your cable/dish provider carries Ovation: it's an arts station owned by the Weinsteins which reminds me of what Bravo was like 20 years ago, before it started running more "commercial" shows like Moonlighting reruns. But in many ways, Ovation seems better because of the diversity of its programming. Go to their web site, and scroll down to the bottom: on the lower right on your screen plunk in your zip code and it will spit back the availability in your area. Seriously, check it out, you might have it and need to know it's there.
Link | | | 10:28 PM | Home

Someone is poisoning the waters. Some advance team is working against Democratic members of Congress who went on information-gathering tours in Iraq: biographical fliers were distributed to the troops which misrepresented their positions on the war.

It's one thing to give the troops an idea who the politicians are, but to provide them with distorted profiles sounds malicious. The impact doesn't stop with the profiles: should the troops shun politicians who voted, for example, to get the troops more time on leave to spend with their families, and a perception develops that these politicos are unpopular with the troops, a snowballing occurs. Fools at Powerline print emails from soldiers, share photos of the politicians being mocked (or sitting alone in the mess tent), and so on, and another wedge is driven home.

In a sense, it's a Nixonian dirty trick. And it looks like someone doesn't think the truth is in their favor.
Link | | | 10:02 PM | Home
 

Music for a summer's day. I loved this for the same reason I love Todd Rundgren's "Just One Victory," the lead vocal against a cheery chorus. If you didn't see this on Letterman Monday night, you need to see it now. Click and enjoy. (The link is to Gothamist's, because it's through them that I saw it. I immediately ordered her CD.)
Link | | | 10:25 PM | Home

Taking Mohgro by storm. [Ed: I believe the term "Mohgro" may have been coined in the pages of The New Republic, in the 1980's; it means "Moral High Ground."] So much to be brief about regarding Senator Larry Craig. Matthew Yglesias has been asking what's illegal about expressing sexual interest. And others, including Yglesias, have noted how the Right is clamoring to throw Craig overboard when they didn't react similarly to Senator Vitter (R, LA) whose name turned up in the records of a prostitution ring. And Glenn Greenwald notes how the right's attitude towards Craig's possible indiscretions were very different prior to the 2006 elections.

Kevin Drum highlights the "well, duh" argument that when it's safe to jump on Craig, it makes perfect sense. The Right doesn't jump on Vitter because the governor of his state is a Democrat, and should Vitter resign the governor could well replace him with a Democrat. With Craig, the governor of Idaho is a Republican, and the seat is "safe." With this reasoning, you have an alternative explanation to the accusation that the Right reacts differently to homosexual offenses than to heterosexual offenses. Or, at least, you have a sense that some odd sense of self-righteousness is being used to cover up bald political pragmatism.

There's an additional argument pragmatism is at the root of the charge to seize Mohgro: compare the swift condemnation of Craig with reactions, prior to the elections, of the obviously corrupt politicos like Tom Bob Ney, Tom Delay and so on. Their transgressions had nothing to do with sex. So if we didn't have an election as an intervening context, you'd conclude that the Right is forgiving about genuine corruption, but ballistic about men expressing sexual interest in men. But we do have the election as an intervening context, and context is everything.

In this case, the right may be charging Mohgro, but it's a very small hill they're charging, and they need a bigger one if they think anyone is going to be impressed with the flag they plant at the peak.
Link | | | 7:50 PM | Home
 

A one-sided way of viewing Senator Larry Craig's actions. Senator Craig, you may or may not be aware, pled guilty to disorderly conduct after being arrested in an airport men's room for actions suggesting he was interested in the kind of action which shouldn't occur in an airport's men's room. If'n you get my drift. "Disorderly conduct" was not the entire charge he would have faced if it had gone to trial. If'n you get my drift.

After having pled guilty to a lesser charge, and having it come out in the press, Craig denies he did anything inappropriate and that he now feels he shouldn't have pled guilty to the lesser charge.

OK, let's be really simplistic and ignore context. Just because.

1. Why would anyone plead guilty in such a case? To avoid trial.
    
2. Why would anyone want to avoid trial? Because their acquittal might depend on them testifying on their own behalf.
    
3. Why wouldn't someone, in such a case, want to testify for themselves? To avoid cross-examination.
    
4. What's so bad about cross-examination? Sometimes the questions are difficult, and you're under oath.
    
5. What's wrong with that? Sometimes you'd rather not tell the truth, and lying under oath can send you to jail.

And when you avoid all that, you can make statements in front of a mike and say anything you want, because you're not under oath.

That's just one way of looking at it. I'm sure there are others.
Link | | | 11:01 PM | Home

When I wrote about Patrick Fitzgerald being considered a "bold" choice to take over as Attorney General, I was unaware that Mark Shields wasn't the only person suggesting it. Apparently Senator Dick Durbin made the same suggestion. I was just reading Fitzgerald's blog, and he seems to think the timing is good.
Link | | | 7:18 PM | Home

Bold is the new bold. Early in his administration, Bush was regularly given credit for making "bold" moves which weren't. Last night on PBS Newshour (transcript here) political analyst Mark Shields suggested a "bold" (his word) choice for a replacement for Alberto Gonzales: Patrick Fitzgerald. And David Brooks agreed that Fitzgerald would be a bold choice, allbeit with a "yeah, like that will happen" smile. But there you have it: the standard for "bold" has been reset back to its original meaning, "bold." So use it sparingly.

Also, in a prior segment, two former DOJ attorneys (one during the Clinton administration, one during the Bush administration) spoke about Gonzales' resignation and the broader context of the DOJ's position in the government. In defending Gonzales and his execution of Bush's policies, Noel Francisco made the same point not once, but twice, repeating himself concept for concept if not word for word. In each instance he was arguing for pushing the envelope against personal protections in favor of his idea of homeland security, and taking curtailments by the judiciary as a positive sign that the government was doing everything it could to protect us. The repetition was kind of scary:

"And I don't think there's any question that there was disagreement on certain aspects in the war on terrorism, but I think what gets missed is the larger point, which is that we really did need to turn a government around in terms of its approach to terrorism and criminal law enforcement, and Gonzales did that.

"Yes, there were disagreements. But I as an American would much rather have those disagreements be erring on the side of being too robust in our protection of the homeland than not robust enough, which is unfortunately, I believe, what we had prior to September 11th.

...

"I, for one, would much rather be in a position of being rebuffed when we are too aggressive and try too hard to protect than homeland than to face the consequences of not being aggressive enough, which I believe is what we did face on September 11th."

In between those two sections was commentary from Michael Greenberger, who had served under Clinton, regarding the specific cases which the White House had lost regarding its anti-terrorism policies.

As for Noel Francisco, it seems to me as if his brain has been re-wired out of fear. (See Gore, Al, Assault on Reason.)
Link | | | 8:20 AM | Home
 

The Bush Code. Well, actually, remember "The Bible Code"? That was the book which took a backwards look at the Bible and claimed there were patterns in the letters which told this or that. The general refutation was along the lines that the patterns which were described weren't evident in the parts which weren't talked about; as if, the only place the patterns were evident were in the parts which the authors wanted to talk about.

In statistics, the recommended procedure for such an analysis is to randomly pick half of the data, discern your pattern, and then see if your hypothesis holds with the other half. Otherwise, people might accuse you of "cherry picking" to support your hypothesis. This, of course, is what the Bush Administration was accused of in the run-up of our Greatest Foreign Policy Mistake. And what some say Bush did in a speech this week...

Will Bush do a Truman turnaround and be history's "Comeback Kid"? Uh, you could also read McClatchy...
Link | | | 6:31 PM | Home

In honor of the picture of the coffee pot. In the early days of the Internet, there was a camera focused on a company coffee urn, intended only to set the expectation of the employees as to whether they'd find coffee available or have to make a carafe. I read a book that once said it was a popular hit for bored surfers in the early days, before we had the scintillating pillow fights over at NRO's The Corner. Well, courtesy of McClatchy's Washington Bureau, here's a link to share with your bored friends.
Link | | | 6:13 PM | Home
 

Is Giuliani fooling anyone? You would hope that after Bush's Iraq debacle, America would have a very low tolerance for those who play with the truth as if it were a bunch of plates to be perpetually spun. Sure, there are some Republicans who support staying in Iraq, but I'd think that at this point practically everyone thinks we got in with questionable reasoning.

So why is Rudy running radio ads about his NYC mayoralty that leave out crucial details? According to theAccording to the New York Times,

Rudolph W. Giuliani has been broadcasting radio advertisements in Iowa and other states far from the city he once led stating that as mayor of New York, he "turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus."

The assertion, which Mr. Giuliani has repeated on the trail as he has promoted his fiscal conservatism, is somewhat misleading, independent fiscal monitors said. In fact, Mr. Giuliani left his successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, with a bigger deficit than the one Mr. Giuliani had to deal with when he arrived in 1994. And that deficit would have been large even if the city had not been attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

"He inherited a gap, and he left a gap for his successor," Ronnie Lowenstein, the director of the city's Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that monitors the city budget, said of Mr. Giuliani. "The city was budgeting as though the good times were not going to end, but sooner or later they always do."

The assertion is factually correct but so easily knocked out of the ring that I can't understand why he would take the risk: a competitor could easily paint Giuliani as untrustworthy, and you would think that trust is at a premium when you want to succeed Bush. Giuliani may as well continue misportraying his time at Ground Zero.
Link | | | 9:43 PM | Home
 

Senator Warner offers Bush a fig leaf. Warner made a statement that Bush should start a troop draw-down in Iraq this fall, and bring some troops home by Christmas, in the interest of making it clear to the Iraqi government that ours is not an open-ended commitment:

He quoted Bush telling Maliki on Jan. 10 that America's commitment "is not open-ended." He quoted Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who recently warned Maliki that America's support for his government is "not a blank check."

"The time has come to put some meaningful teeth in those comments," Warner said, "to back 'em up with decisive action."

The problem with Warner's stance is that his idea of a recommended minimum draw-down is 5,000 troops out of the 160,000 that are there:

Warner, perhaps the most influential Republican senator on national security issues, said that withdrawing a small number of troops — perhaps as few as 5,000 — would send a "sharp, clear message" to Iraq, America and the world that the U.S. commitment in Iraq isn't open-ended.

This isn't teeth, it's gums. It's the parent saying to the incorrigible child they're going to count to three, and when two passes, they go to two and a half, two and two-thirds, two and three-quarters... or diminish the threat. Warner has done nothing more than enable Bush, given Bush an out where he can pull out 5,000 troops and say he was willing to compromise but that it didn't work.

Admittedly, there is a value to the kind of approach Warner has taken. By giving Bush wiggle room, it give Bush the opportunity for more independent action, so that he can act without feeling anything has been forced upon him. It's kind of a "face saving" negotiating ploy, let the guy on the other side of the table leave the room with some pride.

The problem is this: the negotiating model assumes that the party across the table is looking to make a deal. Bush isn't. Bush wants to stay and pass it on to the next administration: then, whatever happens, he won't think it's his fault.

Ah, yes, the Ownership Society.
Link | | | 10:28 PM | Home

Hush hush clampdown all over in the Bush Administration? There have been reports over the years that the Bush Administration has gone to great lengths to keep its cards close to its chest... Generally, when it's a case of Dick Cheney refusing to divulge who he met with when creating energy policies, suspicions naturally arise. And regulations which can't even be divulged to judges because of national security claims. And on top of that, the reclassification of previously unclassified information. Like, can we get real?

But what would you say if I told you that I read in the New York Times that employees of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are forbidden from even saying who is at the top?

Orwell wrote that in his 1984 society knowledge would be treated as a powerful commodity, but revealing the name at the top of the pyramid doesn't strike me as the biggest thing in the world to talk about, especially since she went through a very visible Congressional approval process.

Funny thing, this: I don't remember Valerie Plame going through any kind of job interview which was so visible, and yet in spite of the fact that she was a covert employee of the CIA, focused on weapons of mass destruction (that's right, Weapons. Of mass. Destruction.) that didn't stop Libby and Rove from sharing her name with the press.

So, when you're so cavalier about the covert identities of valuable assets like Valerie Plame, what's the deal with Nicole Nason?
Link | | | 10:05 PM | Home
 

What were the priorities leading up to 9/11? Richard Clarke wrote that in the months leading up to 9/11, it was as if CIA Director George Tenet's "hair was on fire" over the chatter and sense of an imminent threat. From what I see in a newly released report on the performance of the CIA in the time leading up to 9/11, I can imagine the frustration which Tenet must have felt. Sure, there was Bush's inaction after the August 6 PDF (which, if I recall, was after Tenet's flaming hair), but I can imagine Tenet also felt trapped by an organization he couldn't redirect to address Al Qaida. The CIA may have been the proverbial oil tanker which couldn't turn on a dime, at least not under Tenet's direction. Here, for instance, are a couple of paragraphs in the report:

The DCI Counterterrorist Center (CTC) was not used effectively as a strategic coordinator of the IC's counterterrorism efforts. CTC's stated mission includes the production of all-source intelligence and the coordination of the IC's counterterrorism efforts. Before 9/11, however, the Center's focus was primarily operational and tactical. While focusing on operations is critically important and does not necessarily mean that other elements of mission will be ignored, the Team found that this nearly exclusive focus—which resulted in many operational successes—had a negative impact on CTC's effectiveness as a coordinator of IC counterterrorism strategy. The Team found that the most effective interagency effort against UBL was that of the Assistant DCI for Collection, who, from the early months of 1998 to 9/11, worked with representatives of several intelligence agencies to stimulate collection.

In the years leading up to 9/11, the DCI worked hard and with some success, at the most senior levels of government, to secure additional budgetary resources to rebuild the CIA and the IC. At the same time, the Team found that he did not use his senior position and unique authorities to work with the National Security Council to elevate the relative standing of counterterrorism in the formal ranking of intelligence priorities, or to alter the deployment of human and financial resources across agencies in a coordinated approach to the terrorism target. While the nature of the IC makes the mission of managing it problematic and difficult, the DCI at the time had some authority to move manpower and funds among agencies. The Team found that, in the five years prior to 9/11, the DCI on six occasions used these authorities to move almost [redacted text] in funds from other agencies to the CIA for a number of important purposes [redacted text] One of these transfers helped fund a Middle East program that was terrorism-related, but none supported programs designed to counter UBL, or al-Qa'ida. Nor were DCI authorities used to transfer any personnel into these programs in the five years prior to 9/11.

I've seen plenty of situations where people simply didn't have the power to create the change that a situation required, due to the immensity of the mountain needing to be moved. Still, it seems as if the executive summary is at sixes and sevens, leaving the Team scratching its heads over where the blame really lies. Another passage addressed inconclusiveness from prior investigations:

The JI [Joint Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] concluded that, before 9/11, neither the US Government nor the IC had a comprehensive strategy for combating al-Qa'ida. It charged that the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was either unwilling or unable to marshal the full range of IC resources necessary to combat the growing threat to the United States.

It's not as if Tenet weren't trying, it's more like he didn't know how to try:

Funding for the Agency's counterterrorism programs increased significantly from Fiscal Year (FY)1998 to FY 2001 as a result of supplemental appropriations. These funds were appropriated, in part, because of the efforts of the CIA's Director and senior leaders to convince the Administration and Congress that the Agency was short of resources for counterterrorism and other key programs. The Team preparing this report did not attempt to reach a conclusion regarding the proper level of funding for counterterrorism programs.

The Team did find, however, that during the same period they were appealing the shortage of resources, senior officials were not effectively managing the Agency's counterterrorism funds...

If you have the time, read the whole thing. But one of my conclusions hits on Bush's awarding Tenet his Presidential Medal of Freedom. I know it was widely interpreted as some kind of hush vote of confidence; maybe I even took it that way. But the way this report reads, it's a situation where management didn't know how to confront what it faced. In that light, it's conceivable that Bush's awarding of Tenet is merely a blessing of "couldn't have done it better myself, George." Kind of a "heckuva job, Brownie" thing: less a conspiratorial wink, than, say, "You know, I don't know what it takes to do your job, kind of like I don't know what it takes to do my job."
Link | | | 9:54 PM | Home
 

Back to top.