Me: Frank Lynch

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Osama Bin Laden's tape sounded like lefty bloggers. Says New York Times columnist David Brooks. Remember how united we all were after 9/11? Brooks apparently wants to bury those times completely.

UPDATE: Was there some kind of GOP fax that went out with this talking point? Amanda, over at Think Progress, hears the same riff on CNN and a similar one from John Gibson.
Link | | | 10:32 AM | Home
 

In the Spring of 2003, whose time was really running out? We remember Bush's ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, that time was running out. For me the biggest shoulda has always been that the weapons inspectors should have been given more time: not a pepetually open blank check like some war mongerers thought was implied by "more time," just more time, as requested by people like Hans Blix. You remember Blix? One of the sane people who came out of this whole thing smelling like roses? Ah, Bush would love for anything approximating the smell of roses, and would probably settle for the smell of two-day-old brussels sprouts water.

I couldn't find it at Talking Points Memo, but I seem to remember a 2003 note that some liberal hawk, perhaps Kevin Pollack, saying that there was an "if not now, then when" moment: with all the ships in place to invade Iraq, if you decided to turn them around, it would be like the bride deciding not to walk down the aisle (this simile is mine), and you couldn't easily get her back to the church, so the momentum for war was in place.

But when Bush was telling Hussein that time was running out, who was he really talking to? Sidney Blumenthal had a piece in Salon today that in the fall of 2002 Tenet briefed Bush that a source high up in the Iraqi government — an expensive source in the Iraqi government — had said that the WMD's were nonexistent. Bush obstinately refused to believe it, the info got trashed, and that some analysts in the CIA who were focused on their careers chose to sweep it under the rug. Others courageously tried to keep it alive, to no avail.

So you have to ask: when the inspectors were finding nothing, did Bush remember this report and work to go full steam ahead? Whose time was running out? Was Bush afraid that if the inspectors were given more time that all the air would be taken out of the balloons? (I think I voiced this suspicion here years ago, but I'm not going to bother to find it.)
Link | | | 9:25 PM | Home
 

About those "benchmarks." Ahh, if you haven't read it elsewhere, I'll point it out here. The surge escalation wasn't designed to just improve security, the presumed improved security was supposed to allow breathing room for the Iraqi government to improve and overcome sectarian differences. Therefore, the "success" of the surge requires success on both fronts: if it merely improves security without the Iraqis seizing the opportunity, then it was a fool's mission. (And it goes without saying, the fool is not the US troop laying his or her life down, it was them that sent 'em. Our troops have done everything the government has asked them to do, and they have served with honor.)

Well, those who want to keep the US in Iraq through your grandchildren's lifetimes and beyond are in the process of moving the goalposts, complaining that the benchmarks which were set by law aren't as relevant as they were once thought to be. In the New York Times, David Sanger wrote how Bush is doing it; Think Progress has written about how it's being done by House Republican Leader John Boehner; Media Matters reminds that when Ambassador Ryan Crocker pointed out the benchmarks's lack of comprehensiveness, the media should emphasize that the benchmarks were endorsed by Bush.

This is all an exercise in weasel-words, of course: the dog ate my homework, and such. And let's make it clear: if benchmarks move, then we have an open-ended timeline and are going to be there forever. It's probably the chief reason why Bush has consistently avoided benchmarks in the past, prior to the law which forced this accountability. In Bush's mind, there is no measure of success beyond staying there. Damn, but doesn't it seem we've spent a lot of lives and dough thanks to Bush's weird, undefined goals?
Link | | | 10:09 PM | Home

Bob Somerby's got a point. Bob Somerby writes The Daily Howler, and one topic he knows a lot about, and has written often about, is the way the press mishandled the 2000 Presidential election: the press basically gave Bush a free ride; regarding Gore, the press lazily slandered him, and settled on a path of least resistence, trashing Gore with little or no investigation. One of my favorites from his site was the story of the tour through the luxury hotel where Gore supposedly grew up: it wasn't so luxurious, just a two-room suite in Gore's dad's days, but since the RNC fed its fanciness to the press, it must have been true.

Now, I didn't need to be explicit, I could have just given you the link. But I know that very few people really click the links I provide. So I can certainly understand Somerby's dismay that Kevin Drum only gave a shorthand reference to the history of the Gore smear in referring to a Vanity Fair article on the trashing of Gore. Wrote Drum,

"It's a pretty good piece. It covers fairly familiar ground for most blog readers, I think, but does a nice job of summarizing Campaign 2000 for magazine readers who haven't heard all this stuff before. It's worth revisiting."

Somerby's point is that in order to prevent the practice from being repeated, it's not enough to tease with a blocked quote and an offhand reference and assume that your audience will either know or will click through. The history should be repeated until it becomes so well known that it's emblazoned on all our memories and can be talked about around the water cooler. Sure, Johnson felt that knowing where to find something was a form of knowledge, alongside actually knowing your facts and being able to speak with authority, but isn't it better to be armed?

Arming yourself is incredibly valuable on something like this, because it enables you to settle the argument immediately rather than asking someone to read your footnotes later.

As for Gore, once the press had given him an undeserved reputation as a self-aggrandizing exaggerator, that allowed the Bush campaign to chip away at legitimate points Gore had made in debates, spinning Gore off as untrustworthy on matters of national policy. Bush wouldn't have had that wedge if the press had been doing its job instead of lapsing into lazy practices.
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Kind words for Josh Marshall. Columbia Journalism Review. Really too bad that it doesn't come from a dot-com like the NYT, which was late to the game on the attorney scandal - - yet when you read their catch-up article you felt as if their only source was Josh.

If you've been reading him long enough, you know that the DOJ attorney scandal is only the latest issue he kept on the burner until it started to percolate more broadly. Remember Trent Lott's sentimental birthday greetings for Strom Thurmond, implicitly endorsing segregation? Josh brought that baby to a boil through diligence and perseverence. And who was talking about Duke Cunningham before him? Who was threading the eyelets of the Jack Abramoff scandal?

I don't think many other bloggers could have achieved the same result: he has attention, and uses it well. With great power comes great responsibility, as they say in the comix.
Link | | | 11:00 PM | Home

Blands have more fun? Why the New York Times and other newspapers blanch from calling people liars.
Link | | | 10:36 PM | Home
 

Yeah, but the consumers said... I don't have a problem, conceptually, with Bush flying into Iraq on his way to Australia. My problem is that 'conceptually' lasts for a wink: concepts are not reality, and while you could trust that some politicians might actually be going on a fact-finding mission (presuming they either broke away from their state- sponsored guides or knew that their guides were state- sponsored and considered that in what that they heard), Bush isn't of that ilk. We know from the cherry-picking which led us into Iraq that Bush went there only so that he could claim 'due diligence.' He didn't go there to learn, he went there for the kabuki.

The cherry-picking game is also the big problem with Gates' strategy to have Bush hear from five different sources on Iraq: from Gates' standpoint it only makes sense as a CYA maneuver, Gates can say that different perspectives were offered, unfiltered; Bush can basically say "this is what I heard" as he opts for the one which provides him the best disposable diaper.

My headline on this goes back to my marketing research experience, where a marketing manager would not only cling to focus groups as if the comments represented significant proportions of Americans, but would glom on a specific comment from some dude in Easton (among a table of 12) as if it justified a new direction and the strategy going forward. (A bit of an exaggeration here, but the point is that anecdotal information only goes so far, and the pre-packaged crap which Bush got in Iraq today far less; and by the time you get to the cherry-picking round you're probably into the negative.)
Link | | | 10:17 PM | Home
 

Nothing for the GOP to be proud about. Leaders in the GOP are "proud" about their swift decapitation of Senator Larry Craig:

"One of the things I'm proudest about our leadership is the swift action, not only calling for an immediate Senate investigation, ethics investigation, removing him from his committees, but also sending the signal to him that it was probably best that he resign," Ensign said in an appearance on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "It was best for himself, best for his family, and best for the institution of the Senate."

This shouldn't be seen by anyone as a point of pride, unless you're thinking of political gamesmanship. The GOP didn't react similarly when Senator Vitter (R-LA) was found to have been using DC call girls; Ensign finds this distinction for their defense:

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., the Senate Republican campaign chairman, said Craig "admitted guilt. That is a big difference between being accused of something and actually admitting guilt."

"David Vitter never did that. Larry Craig did," continued Ensign on ABC's "This Week" program.

Ensign's distinction is nonexistent: Vitter apologized for his actions.

"This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," Vitter, 46, said in a statement, which his spokesman, Joel DiGrado, confirmed to the Associated Press.

"Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling," Vitter continued. "Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there -- with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way."

That apology is a clear admission of guilt, even if he wasn't charged or tried for the punishable crime.

Ensign is just lying.
Link | | | 6:44 PM | Home
 

The anniversary of 9/11 looms. And here in NYC it looms differently. (It does get tiring: the endless series of tourists' buses stopping at St. Paul's Chapel, the Fulton Street vendors of framed commemorative photos of three firemen putting a flag on a staff and so on. I think at one point there was a sign saying "USA out of NYC.") And the New York Times asks How much is enough?

I have an idea for a 9/11 tribute: get OBL. It's been nearly six years. How come he hasn't been captured yet? I think we should blame it on Clinton. After all, the 9/11 Commission found a lot of evidence that the Bushies launched a thousand ships after that August 6 Presidential Daily Brief. Bush's failure to capture OBL must also be Clinton's fault.
Link | | | 11:56 PM | Home

Where WERE you? This is what you missed. (Even better, of course, with the Grade B maple syrup we have on hand...)
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