From Atrios comes word that the RNC wants to fact check an upcoming miniseries.
The Republican National Committee Friday asked CBS to allow a team of historians and friends of former President Ronald Reagan and his wife to review a miniseries about the couple before it airs.Oddly, the RNC showed no such concern over the historical accuracy of the recent "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis" movie made by Showtime, which portrayed George Bush as being much more decisive and "heroic" than reports have indicated. As Mark Jerkowitz noted in his Boston Globe review of the film:Republicans have expressed concern that the miniseries, titled "The Reagans," may inaccurately portray the couple.
[...] [RNC Chairman Ed] Gillespie said that if CBS denies the request, he will ask the network to run a note across the bottom of the screen every 10 minutes during the program's presentation informing viewers that the miniseries is not accurate.
[...] Gillespie said that if CBS rejects both requests, the RNC would to sell tapes and DVDs on its Web site that would present "the real Reagan record."
If "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis" could ever be cut down to a bite-size portion, it would make the best presidential reelection ad ever conceived, one that would force every Democratic challenger to abandon the chase for the White House.One of the complaints about the Reagan miniseries is that one scene in it shows Reagan talking to his wife Nancy about AIDS and saying "They that live in sin shall die in sin". Gillespie objects to the line because there's no evidence that Reagan ever said it. Yet the Washington Post reports that "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis" likewise attributes words to Bush - "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home, waiting for the bastard!" - that he never said.[...] This Showtime "docudrama" promises to give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the administration's machinations and deliberations in the days right after 9/11. Instead, it proves a slick piece of propaganda that deifies the president and portrays the wheels of government as turning with well-oiled precision in the face of the gravest crisis to confront the country in a generation.
So, Mr. Gillespie, would you care to explain why you are so insistent on making sure that Reagan is portrayed accurately, but showed no concern whatsoever about accuracy of a movie about Bush?
Docudramas always take liberties - that's to be expected. Its one reason you can't take them as an accurate reflection of the truth. I also don't have a problem with trying to make a movie as accurate as possible. What I do object to is an organization wanting to review a movie to ensure "historical accuracy" when they didn't give a flying fig about accuracy when it was making their guy look better than he actually is. I'm not surprised, though - this kind of double standard is about par for the course.
Just a wish for a
HAPPY SAMHAIN
to everyone!
May the next year be filled with blessings to make it ever better than the last!
Kriselda
Courtesy of gttim at Notes from Atlanta: Rush on Rush - an absolutely priceless parody/commentary, all I can say is just check it out. I haven't stopped laughing yet!
I'd mentioned earlier that Neal Pollak is organizing a "Donald Luskin is a Stalker" day for next Tuesday, but it turns out that Jessie at Pandragon is sponsoring his own Donald Luskin day today. His announcement is as follows:
Friday, October 31st, is going to be Donald Luskin day. Speak as the man. Love as the man. Stalk as the man. Any Luskin satire, bromides, or novelty cakes should be posted far and wide on the Internet.Well, Jesse, you can count me in:On Halloween, celebrate the creepiest of all monsters - Donald Luskin.
Who's with me?
Donald Luskin is a Stalker*!
*Now, before he sends Jeffrey after me to threaten me with a suit, too, let me note - When I say Luskin is a stalker, I mean it in the colloquial sense of the term - you know, a guy who seems to be creepily obsessed with someone, pays attention to every little thing he or she does, makes note of it, slams the object of his affection every chance he gets and just, in general, seems - to the casual observer - to be just a bit more than a little unhinged.See, I don't want anyone to think I'm accusing Luskin of any kind of a crime. I don't know if he has or not. But in the "conventional wisdom" sense of the term, Luskin certainly is a stalker. Remember, we know this mainly because he, himself, told us!
Luskin, like Fox News before him (and, sadly, those who will most likely follow in his footsteps) needs to learn that there are a lot of us out here who won't stand for being bullied. We're not going to just bend over and then say "thanks" when he's done. If you read much of Luskin's work, you'll find that the things Atrios' visitors said about him are right in line with the kinds of things he says about his own targets.
If, like me, you think Luskin's threat to sue Atrios over the content of his comments section and his choice of a headline, is not only idiotic, but little more than an attempt at scaring people into a fear-induced inability to express disagreement with someone, even when they deserve it, please carry this message to your own blog, journal, website, or other forum where you can speak as you see fit.
The issue of making corrections hasn't always been a big issue in the blogosphere, but I think it's likely that, as time goes on, if blogs want to become a major legitimate force in public discourse, it's going to become a much more important. Ryan at the Dead Parrot Society has a post today on this issue, looking at the recent story about the White House website and their robots.txt file.
One of the things he points out is that even after the story was published in 2600 Magazine that they had spoken to someone in the White House who had offered an explaination as to why the change was made, many of the sites that had posted about the original story hadn't made note of the correction. In particular, the DNC blog, Kicking Ass, which has been largely responsible for how widely the story was spread, had no indication of the additional information.
Personally, I'm not sure I would categorize the 2600 information as a "correction", since that would indicate that it conclusively shows that the other theory - that they were trying to block the potential caching of pages that they might need to "update" in the future - is wrong - but it certainly its a plausible and reasonably legitimate explanation for the White Houses actions and at the very least offers a viable alternate theory of what happened. As such, even if a full-blown "correction" might not be warranted, I do agree that the information should be brought to the attention of people looking into the story.
That's why when I found out about the 2600 story, I decided to not only post an update to the blog itself, but also added a "Note" to an earlier post I'd written about the White House having edited certain web pages back in August to change headlines and other statements saying that Bush had declared "combat operations" as having ended to showing that he'd declared "major combat operations" had ended. That post had been linked to by the DNC's original story on the robots.txt file, and since I knew it was still getting a lot of traffic, I wanted to make sure that people coming to the site knew there was more information on the story.
Now, I'm not perfect at getting corrections posted (or at anything else for that matter), but if I know I've made a major screw up, I do try to get some kind of an update posted. What worries me, though, is that there are many blogs on both sides that don't ever seem to make note of any new information that might contradict something they've said before, or acknowledge if they're wrong.
The thing is, the only way blogs will have any credibility and be able to live up to their promise as a tool to help with promoting issues and agendas or helping lesser known - but important - stories break into the mainstream, is if authors and editors make a genuine, good faith effort to present valid information and to let their readers know if they've gotten something wrong. Readers need to be able to put reasonable trust in blogs. I'm doubt we'll ever have the credibility of the mainstream press - but we need to be more credible than the tabloids.
The Center for Public Integrity has release a report indicating that many Iraq-related contacts have gone to companies which donated money to the Bush campaign.
Companies awarded $8 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan have been major campaign donors to President Bush, and their executives have had important political and military connections, according to a study released Thursday.None of this is really surprising. I'm sure that, regardless of which party was in power, there would be a fair amount of cronyism in the process. Even by comparison, though, this case looks especially egrigious.The study of more than 70 U.S. companies and individual contractors turned up more than $500,000 in donations to the president's 2000 campaign, more than they gave collectively to any other politician over the past dozen years.
[...]The Center concluded that most of the 10 largest contracts went to companies that employed former high-ranking government officials, or executives with close ties to members of Congress and even the agencies awarding their contracts.
Major contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan were awarded by the Bush administration without competitive bids, because agencies said competition would have taken too much time to meet urgent needs in both countries.
[Update - added 6:26am 10/31 - A full copy of the CPI report can be found here.]
As with so many other things done by this administration, it just point out the utter hypocricy of the conservatives. When Democrats engage in cronyism, it's a major scandal that must be fully investigated and the politicans who have helped their buddy profit from their connections must be shamed into resignation or otherwise removed from office. I don't really have a problem with that. If politicians are selling influence, access, business or whatever, it's wrong and it should be looked into. Yet when it happens in a Republican administration - even when it's as blatant as this - the cries for integrity fall silent.
This isn't the first time that the current regime has been given a pass on charges of buying influence. Earlier this year, documents were discovered at Westar Industries main office (during the discovery for a fraud case against the company's chief officials) indicating that Westar was seeking a "seat at the table" with Congressional representatives and were wanting to have some legislation modified to include an exemption for their company.
The Westar documents said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay; Senate Banking Committee chairman Richard Shelby; and Reps. Joe Barton, of Texas, and Billy Tauzin, of Louisiana, had requested the contributions from Westar. A DeLay fund-raising organization collected $25,000 of Westar's contributions.In the end, the legislation ended up not being passed.[...] An e-mail by a Westar executive, which surfaced in an internal company probe, says that Tauzin and Barton had requested donations for a particular congressman "in lieu of contributions made to their own campaigns." The e-mail added that Shelby had made "a substantial request of us for supporting" the campaign of Shelby's former chief of staff and that DeLay's agreement "is necessary before the House conferees can push the language we have in place."
Democratic Rep. Ed Markey and House Democratic conferees tried to kill the Westar exemption, but they lost on a straight party-line vote with DeLay, Barton and Tauzin favoring the provision.The story never got much play and eventually faded away, yet had the parties involved been reversed, I have no doubt the story would have had legs.[...] The Westar exemption was dropped by Senate and House conferees after the company came under a grand jury investigation that has led to the indictment of its former CEO, David Wittig, on charges unrelated to any campaign donations.
We probably won't ever get rid of corruption in politics, but I'd like to see both sides start opposing it amongst their own.
Just a note for anyone interested - this came across one of the Heathen lists I'm on:
From: "Joseph Belcher"A quick note for non-Heathens: a "blot" is a simple religious ceremony in which thanks are given to a God or Gods along with any petitions, and an offering, in the form of beer, mead, ale, wine, juice or milk is made. The term "tru folk" is a reference to Heathens or others who are "true" - or dedicated - to the Gods. Please feel free to leave a note if you have any other questions.
Subject: World wide Thor blot
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 13:49:22 -0500Hail to the Thunder God in all his might. I am asking the heathen world, regardless of affiliation to join me in a world wide Thor's blot this weekend. I live here in Southern Califonia and am being threatened by the forest fires (as are all in this area) I am asking you to join me in making an offering to the protector of Midgard, for his help with these fires, but also to just honor him for all he does.
The blot will be at 23:00 GMT, Nov 1, 2003. That's 3pm here on the west coast. Check http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ to convert this to your local time.
Please forward this on to all tru folk who you feel are willing to raise a horn to Thor
Tom Tomorrow reports that Neal Pollak is planning to declare Tuesday as "Donald Luskin is a stalker day" in response to Luskin's threat of a suit against Atrios. Check either Neal or Tom's blogs for more details when they are available. Tom also notes that Neal will be on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" tonight, so be sure to watch for him there.
Most of the time, when we hear about "think tanks" in the news, they're groups funded by and working for the conservative side of the political spectrum. Now Progressives have a new think tank to work on promoting their issues. The Center for American Progress has opened a new website at http://www.centerforamericanprogress.org, and describes themselves as "Dedicated to a strong, secure and prosperous America that expands opportunities, extends our freedoms and ensures fairness." Not a bad goal.
There's not a whole lot of information available at the site yet, but I looks like they're working to change that quickly. They already have some interesting stuff posted, including a response to the Rumsfeld memo that was leaked recently, and a "Claim/Fact" sheet for President Bush's 10/28 Press Conference.
Their "Memo to Don" takes a stab at answering some of the qustions Rumsfeld posed in his memo, using fairly well sharpened barbs:
Q: Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?The second link in that excerpt goes to the website of the New American Strategies conference, put together by the Center for American Progress, The American Prospect and The Century Foundation and held just this week in Washington DC.A: On seeing this question, we phoned your office to make sure the date of the memo (October 16, 2003) was correct. Your briefings and Administration statements over the past two years had led us to believe that you had thought through the war on terrorism before you launched it.
We were further puzzled that you are asking this question now, considering that you and the members of the Project for a New American Century built the case for war with Iraq in 1997, six years prior to the first strike on Baghdad.
In response to your question, the answer is yes: we need a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists. We believe, however, that this war must be waged on multiple fronts and that we must move beyond preemptive military strikes to address issues that go far beyond the normal purview of DoD. We are preparing a more extensive memo covering these issues.
Their semi-Fisking of the President's press conference provides quotes from the conference, followed by quotes from other statements, news stories or relevent documents showing that what Bush said wasn't true:
CLAIM: “The world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership.” [Source: President Bush, 10/28/03]andFACT: According to Amnesty International’s 2003 annual report “The world has become more dangerous, and governments more repressive, since the effort to fight terrorism began after the 9/11, attacks on the United States.” For the U.S. specifically, “Since March, 353 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, including 229 in hostile fire.” [Source: NY Times, 5/29/03 and CNN, 10/28/03]
CLAIM: “So I’ve proposed additional measures to keep the economy on the path to greater job creation…by making permanent the tax cuts that have helped our economy.” [Source: President Bush, 10/28/03]As with any other group, I doubt I'll always agree with everything they say or do, but what they've got so far looks impressive, and I think they may have a chance to actually have some influence on - at the very least - public perceptions and debates, which can go a long ways to making actual changes in how this country is run.FACT: Since first Bush tax cut took effect in June 2001, the U.S. economy has lost 2.75 million jobs – the unemployment rate has risen from 4.4% to 6.1%. Since the second Bush tax cut took effect in May 2003, the economy has shed 124,000 more jobs. [Source: BLS]
Mark A. R. Kleiman has a great post giving some background information on the dispute between Donald Luskin and Atrios, suggestions on what should be done, and his own thoughts on the matter. It's a good place to start if you want to get a better understanding of what's going on.
A few weeks ago, Atrios at Eschaton posted an entry called "Diary of a Stalker", consists entirely of the following, and the comments made by Atrios' visitors:
Diary of a Stalker(As is often the case, the Haloscan count of the number of comments - which indicates there were only 3 comments - is off. There were actually about 115 - and roughly 10 of those were added in the last two days)By Donald Luskin.
-Atrios 12:45 PM
Comment (3)
The line "By Donald Luskin." is linked to Luskin's blog, "The Conspiracy to Keep you Poor and Stupid", but I'm choosing not to link to it because, honestly, I don't want to give him any hits. Atrios' post was in response to an entry at Luskin's blog called "Face to Face with Evil", in which Luskin detailed his first face-to-face meeting with Krugman. While the question of whether or not Luskin is legally a "stalker", these excerpts from the entry in question certainly show an ... unusual ... mindset toward Krugman on Luskin's part. I mean, everyone who's read this blog knows how little I care for President Bush, but I can't even begin to imagine feeling as "icky" - should I have the opportunty to meet him - as Luskin apparently felt after meeting the object of his obsession:
I thought it would be fun. I thought I could throw a tough question at him, or get him to autograph a copy of The Great Unraveling for me before he realized who I was. But there was nothing fun about this experience. I have looked evil in the face. I've been in the same room with it. I don't know how else to describe my feelings now except to say that I feel unclean, and I'm having to fight being afraid.The vast majority of the entries deal with Paul Krugman in some form or another - and every entry I skimmed could only be called "bashing."[...] I had planned to get Krugman to sign a book to me -- and I overcame my sense of dread and revulsion, and did it. I waited in line for a few minutes while he banged out scrawled signatures by the dozen, and when he was done with mine, I asked, "Would you inscribe it to me personally?" He said, "Yeah, alright, what's your name?" I said "Don..." and he wrote Don. Then I said "Luskin: L-U-S-K-I-N..." and by the time he got halfway through... he realized. He started up with the ferret-like shifty-eyed thing like when he's on TV. I said "Now you keep up the good work, Paul." He muttered, "Yeah... yeah... fine..."
And I walked away, with my skin crawling, worried that I'd gotten too close to something infectious. I flashed on the scene from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead when Peter Keating hears a speech by Ellsworth Toohey -- the diminutive newspaper columnist and professor to whom I've likened Krugman before -- and is gripped by fear and horror at Toohey's ability to feed off the energy of a partisan crowd. And I flashed on the movie Alien, in which contact with an extraterrestrial monster infects people trapped with it on a spaceship, and monsters just like it start to grow inside them.
At any rate, Atrios' post apparently upset Luskin, as did some of the comments left by visitors to Atrios' site. Luskin contacted Atrios, who told Luskin that he would remove any of the comments that had upset him, if Luskin would tell him which comments those were. He got no response, until he received a letter from Luskin's attorney threatening to sue him if he did not remove the offending post and all comments to it within 72 hours. The letter also says that they will subpoena Blogspot to force them to reveal Atrios' identity in order to file the suit. Atrios has mentioned that he considers the potential suit a 'nuisance', with the "not veiled threat to "out" me as the real goal."
The irony is that Luskin's main objection, according to his lawyer, is that Atrios - and several the visitors who left comments - called Luskin a "stalker."
You chose the unfortunate caption “Diary of a Stalker” for your link. More importantly, your readers, in responding to your invitation to comment, have posted numerous libelous statements regarding Mr. Luskin. Picking up on the theme you introduced, several have made false assertions that Mr. Luskin has committed the crime of stalking.Yet Atrios isn't the only blogger to have done so. Glenn Reynolds wrote that Luskin was stalking Paul Krugman - and linked to an article in which Luskin himself has used the term in reference to his own actions, titling one of his "Krugman Truth Squad" colums "We Stalked. He Balked."
Billmon at The Whisky Bar notes that he, too, has been threatened with legal action by Luskin, though, as he put it "apparently I didn't rate a lawyer letter."
As Atrios noted, this kind of action can have a very chilling effect on the blogosphere. Luskin is going after Atrios not just for what Atrios posted, but also for what his readers posted in his comments section. There are a number of bloggers who already choose not to allow comments to be offered, usually in an attempt to avoid having to deal with trolls and flamers, but also because some people just don't want to hear anyone disagree wtih them. If this suit goes through, I suspect there will be other's who will now remove their commenting scripts to avoid problems such as this.
This is an issue all bloggers should keep an eye on. Several notable blogs have already written on the subject (Atrios has a list here), and I'm sure there will be some kind of a defense fund set up, and probably an organized protest of Luskin's actions. I plan to join in (unless there's some compelling reason not to, which I seriously doubt will be the case). I'll also provide updates as much as possible.
Just in case he surfs by here today, I'd like to take a moment and wish my beloved husband a very happy anniversary. Nine years ago tonight, he took total leave of his sense and actually went through with marrying me - and I've never been happier.
I love you, hon!!
The Speed of Love
Love is born with lightning bolts
Electro-magnetic force
Burning skin and fireworks
A storm on a raging course
Like a force of nature,
Love can fade with the stars at dawn
Somtimes it takes all your strength
Just to keep holding on
At the speed of love
A radiance that travels
At the speed of love
My heart goes out to you
Love is born with solar flares
Form two magnetic poles
It moves toward a higher place
Where two halves make two wholes
Like a force of nature
Love shines in many forms
One night we are bathed in light
One day carried away in storms
At the speed of love
Nothing changes faster
Than the speed of love
My heart goes out to you
We don't have to talk
We don't even have to touch
I can feel your prescence
In the silence that we share
Got to keep on moving
At the speed of love
Nothing changes faster
Than the speed of love
Got to keep on shining
At the speed of love
Nothing changes faster
Than the speed of love
My heart goes out to you
- "At the Speed of Love"
lyrics by Neil Peart
Take a few minutes to check out this amusing (and far too true) look at the pitfalls of expecting your razor to perform as advertised.
President Bush actually spoke in response to General Boykin's controversial comments today, but his statement, offered at a dinner he was hosting for Islamic leaders, was somewhat tepid:
It's not what Americans think. Americans think terrorists are evil people who have hijacked a great religion. That's why Mr Boykin's comments were, uh, General Boykin's comments don't reflect the administration's comments.By the way, there's an IG (Inspector General) investigation going on inside the Defence Department now about that.
He doesn't reflect my point of view or the view of this administration. Our war is not against the Muslim faith. As a matter of fact, as you mentioned tonight, and we're celebrating the Iftar dinner with Muslim leaders. We welcome Muslims in our country.
The LA Times says that this is the strongest administration response to date to disclosures of Boykin's frequent appearances before religious groups at which he characterized the war on terrorism as a battle between Judeo-Christian tradition and "Satan." The strongest? Methinks the administration could use a workout at the old Charles Atlas gyms.
The Times also note that Boykin's comments have made things difficult for Bush:
With hundreds of supportive calls coming into the Pentagon and Bush facing a reelection campaign in which he'll seek the help of Christian conservatives, it might be out of the question for the administration to fire Boykin.Unfortunately, when it comes to doing what is right or avoiding any actions that might anger potential Bush voters, Bush's re-election ambitions win out every time. I know that's probably true for most politicians, but I have to keep hoping that occasionally what's right will win out."Gen. Boykin is kind of the living embodiment of a key Republican electoral constituency. So forcing him out would not be a very bright move with elections approaching," said military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based public policy group.
Atrios posted a link today about Congressman Steve LaTourette (R-OH), who called his wife on Friday saying he wanted a divorce. He had recently told her he'd been having an affair, and she'd asked that he consider counseling, but he decided against it.
Personally, I have very little tolerance for people who engage in adultry - but I also realize that it very much takes the participation of both spouses to make a marriage work. While I feel a great deal of sympathy for his wife, Susan, I have to wonder why on earth a woman who wants to keep her marriage intact would allow this kind of a situation to develop:
Susan LaTourette, who said she doesn't know where her husband lives when Congress is in session, blamed the Washington culture for the breakup.I'm quite sure the "Washington culture" didn't help much, but this is a man who's been in Congress for 10 years - and his wife didn't know where he lived while in Washington? If my husband had to live away from me for part of the year, you'd better believe that not only would I know where he lived, but I'd have a map with the route from the airpoint drawn on it, and I'd make a few unannounced visits each term, too! (And not just to keep an eye on him, either. I just can't stand being apart from him that long....)
Of course, this LaTourette guy is no prize - he obviously has a problem with keeping his promises - and just just his marital ones, either:
He is a member of the Financial Services, Government Reform, Transportation and Infrastructure and Standards of Official Conduct Committees. When first elected, he said he would stay for four terms at most.I must say, though, I loved Mrs. LaTourette's response when asked about why she was going public with her marital problems:He recently told GOP leaders that he would serve no more than 10 years, but he has announced that he will run for a sixth two-year term in 2004.
“Because I want to get him back. It’s very painful but I just wanted people to be aware of this. Most women who get treated like this can’t do anything about it, but I can.”That's the spirit :)
From Moby's journal:
ok, so here's the information on the contest that i'm organizing with moveon.org, david fenton, lee solomon, jonathan soros and laura dawn.This sounds like a great opportunity for creative types to put their heads together and try to come up with an ad that has the potential to really make an impact. If it sounds at all interesting to you, be sure to check it out!the contest is called 'bushin30seconds', and for the contest anyone can make & submit a 30 second tv ad that is somehow based around 'the truth about george bush'.
the ads will be put up on our website (bushin30seconds.org) and will be voted on by moveon's 2 million subscribers and the general public.
10 finalist ads (or 15 finalist ads) will then be chosen and sent to our celebrity judges, who at present are:
- Jack Black
- Donna Brazile
- James Carville
- Margaret Cho
- David Fenton
- Janeane Garafalo
- Stan Greenberg
- Moby
- Michael Moore
- Mark Pellington
- Tony Shalhoub
- Michael Stipe
- Gus Van Sant
- Eddie Vedder
and a winner (or possibly winners) will be chosen and broadcast on tv before george bush's january state of the union address.the idea behind the ad is best summed up in eli's 'why we're doing this' essay:
"Year after year, a few dozen Washington consultants make the great majority of political ads. They look the same, they sound the same and even the actors seem familiar.so please go and look at 'bushin30seconds.org', and, if you feel inspired, make an ad and help us to tell the truth about george bush.
Perhaps as a result, voters tune out, even when there are critically important messages to convey.For the last three years, President Bush's policies have ransacked the environment, put our national security at risk, damaged our economy, and redistributed wealth from the middle class to the very wealthiest Americans. Yet thanks to a complacent media, the President has managed to hide behind a carefully constructed "compassionate" image. As the 2004 election nears, it's crucial that voters understand what President Bush's policies really mean for our country. And to do that, we need creative new ads that clearly show what's at stake.
Thats why we decided to launch Bush in 30 Seconds, an ad contest that's intended to bring new talent and new messages into the world of mainstream political advertising.
We're looking for the ad that best explains what this President and his policies are really about -- in only 30 seconds.
The Bush in 30 Seconds ad contest has been developed and run by a small team of people: Laura Dawn, David Fenton, Moby, Eli Pariser, Lee Solomon, and Jonathan Soros. We've come together because we believe that by tapping into the vast talent pool of creative people beyond the Beltway, we'll find the right messages and ads to expose the failure of President Bush's policies.
Legally, Bush in 30 Seconds is a project of the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, a new 527 fund affiliated with MoveOn.org, the pre-eminent online advocacy group in the United States. The Voter Fund's mission is to create and run powerful political ads in swing states to challenge President Bush's policies and his administration."
thanks
moby
The website 2600 has done a bit of additional research on the White House's modifications to the robot.txt file at the whitehouse.gov website:
According to White House spokesman Jimmy Orr, the blocking of search engines is not an attempt to ensure future revisions will remain undetected. Rather, he explained, they "have an Iraq section [of the website] with a different template than the main site." Thus, for example, a press release on a meeting between President Bush and "Special Envoy" Bremer is available in the Iraq template (blocked from being indexed by search engines) or the normal White House template (available for indexing by search engines). The attempt, Mr. Orr said, was that when people search, they should not get multiple copies of the same information. Most of the "suspicious" entries in the robots.txt file do, indeed, appear to have only this effect.While it's unlikely that the White House would have admitted it if it was trying to ensure that revisions would remain hidden, on it's face, the explaination offered seems at least somewhat reasonable. I'm not much of a techie, however, so I can't really evaluate it in any significant depth. I recommend reading the full article, though, for any additional information or updates that they might add.According to the robots.txt of October 24, though, the In Focus: Iraq section of the site was blocked from search engines. Some of the information there does not appear to be available anywhere else on the White House site. However, it seems that, in response to inquiries from 2600 and other sources, the White House web team has recently changed their robots.txt so that these files are no longer blocked. (The current Last-Modified date on the robots.txt is 23:22 GMT, October 27th, after work on this article had already begun.)
When I first read about the Republican plan to have electoral challengers at several precincts in Kentucky for the upcoming gubernatorial election, I honestly didn't think much of it. I had read that the Republicans typically have a hard time finding enough people to serve as poll workers, and that these challengers would likely be used to help fill in some of those slots. It appears now, though, that there may be more to it than that.
When the plan was first announced, several complaints were posted saying that the GOP was targeting minorities in largely black neighborhoods. The Republicans, of course, deny this.
Jefferson County GOP Chairman Jack Richardson IV said the precincts were chosen at random or because the Republican Party has had trouble finding registered voters in those areas to serve as election workers. The challengers, who will receive the same training as precinct workers, could fill in if needed.Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has found a memo sent out in July from Mike Czerwonka seeking volunteers to work at polls in the upcoming election. Czerwonka is a Republican activist who had run for office last year. He had alleged that there were voting irregularities in his race which cost him the election, but the Jefferson County Election officials said that they found no improprieties.Richardson said the precincts weren't chosen because of their racial makeup or voting patterns. Using challengers is a "legal, proper and permissible" way to ensure that voters are bona fide, he said.
"It is in the best interest of everybody and the responsibility of both parties to protect the ballot integrity," Richardson said. "That is the bottom line."
This memo makes it quite clear that the precincts where the Republicans are planning to install challengers were specifically chosen because they are heavily populated by both minorities and Democrats. The memo reads (in part) as follows. Some lines in the memo itself are highlighted by the use of a larger font. I have reproduced those lines in bold type. Otherwise, I have typed this as exactly as I can based on the copy of the memo available at TPM:
Gubernatorial Election Integrity Call to ArmsThis memo clearly states that their concern is related to the Democrats encouraging poor blacks to vote illegally. Their solution is to bring in poll challengers who are empowered to challenge any voter they believe may be voting improperly and put that voter in the position of having to sign an oath swearing that they are who they say they are and that they are eligible to vote before that voter can be given a ballot. While signing the oath isn't necessarily a difficult thing to do, the prospect of being challenged at the poll over your eligibility to vote is something many people might find intimidating. There are many people who would be so indignant at being challenged that they would choose to leave rather than vote, and others who would be so concerned about the possibility of being challenged that they won't go out and vote at all. This, presumably, is the entire point behind the exercise - finding ways to prevent minority and Democratic voters from going to the polls is a charge that is frequently leveled against the Republicans. For example, last year, in Baltimore, flyers were distributed in an area known for having a large number of blacks and Democrats, which read:What do the 1994 Lary Forgy/Paul Patton Gubernatorial Race, the 2002 narrow victory of Congresswoman Anne Northup over Jack Conway, the 2002 Mike Czerwonka/Paul Bather Kentucky State Representative and the 2002 Louisiana US Senate race have in common???
All were adversely impacted by the presence and influence of the Democratic National Committee, the A. Phillip Randolph Institute (the black militant division of the AFL-CIO and funded in part by the DNC), and the NAACP and their efforts to marshal the Get Out To Vote efforts targeted toward the black, poor voters in selected communities and selected targeted races of national impact.
Their tactics are [illegible] in nature, encouraging people sometimes who aren't registered to vote and commit voter fraud by voting or sometimes engaging in illegal election practices (i.e. vote buying, etc.). All for the sole, singular intent of getting the Democratic nominee in Gubernatorial, and National Congressional and Senatorial races elected.
In Jefferson County alone during the 2002 General Election Fifty=Seven (57) Republican Precinct Poll positions went unfilled by Republicans and in the 2003 Primary Election One Hundred and Fifty (150) Republican Precinct Poll positions went unfilled by Republicans. During this same period the Democrats had a surplus of four hundred and fifty (450) Democratic Precinct Poll Workers. What this means is that we, as Republicans, have failed our civic responsibility and consequently a fair and honest election cannot be guaranteed. Fund Raising is incredibly important, it is the life-blood of a campaign; however, it is not enough.
We must protect the integrity of the voting process.
I have been asked by the Fletcher Campaign for Governor to serve in the capacity of insuring the integrity of the election process in the West End / Portland areas of Louisville. We will require approximately Three Hundred (300) Republican Precinct Poll Workers to achieve this goal. However, I cannot do it alone. I need the Associated Builders & Contractor members, staff, friends and families in Kentucky to step up and volunteer to help achieve the goal of a fair and honest election. With Ernie Fletcher, we have a real opportunity to bring honesty, integrity and dignity to the Governor's Office of the Commonwealth of Kentucky; a chance to end the corruption of many previous Democratic administrations and the rampant abuse of personal service contracts; and a gentleman who is conservative in nature, pro-business and who will put us on a level playing field.
Our goal is within reach. Let's make it happen now!
Your commitment as a Republican Precinct Poll Worker is to attend a Board of Elections training seminar and to work at the assigned precinct poll on Election Day, November 4, 2003 from 6:00 A.M. till 6:00 P.M.
The pay is not great but the reward is incredible. This is our civic responsibility.
Please join Ernie Fletcher and me for an informational meeting at the ABC Office's in Louisville, KY on Monday July 21, 2003 at 9:00 A.M. to learn more about this more important and vital issue.
We need your help!!!
Thank you
Mike Czerwonka
"URGENT NOTICE. Come out to vote on November 6th. Before you come to vote make sure you pay your parking tickets, motor vehicle tickets, overdue rent and most important any warrants."The goal there was to discourage anyone who might owe money or have minor tickets from voting, even though it would be perfectly legal for them to do so, and the information in the memo was entirely false. Even the Internet has gotten into the act, with e-mail messages being sent around stating that due to "concerns about poll crowding" (or something of that nature), Republicans were to vote on Tuesday - the actual voting day - and Democrats were to vote on Wednesday - after the polls had closed and the winners had been declared.
(When searching Google for this, I used the phrase " "Republicans vote on Tuesday" "Democrats vote on Wednesday ". Just to check and see if it really was more widespread on the part of Republicans than Democrats, I then tried " "Democrats vote on Tuesday" "Republicans vote on Wednesday" " to see how the result totals compared. Neither brought up a lot of hits - and all that did come up were from various Yahoo! Groups, but there were several more "Republicans on Tuesday" than there were "Democrats on Tuesday".)
To help poll workers better understand what poll challengers can - and cannot - do, poll workers were recently given a training session. Among other information, they were told:
Challengers can only question a voter's eligibility if they believe the voter:Kentucky Democrats have called on Ernie Fletcher, the Republican Gubernatorial candidate and President Bush to condemn the practice, especially in a situation where it appears to be a blatant attempt to intimidate minority voters, and DNC chariman Terry McAuliffe has called on John Ashcroft to do likewise. In addition, many black ministers in the area are planning to speak from the pulpit on Sunday, encouraging their congregations to be sure and vote in the election and not let the prospect of poll challengers intimidate them.
- Is not a duly registered voter in a precinct;
- Is not a resident of the precinct;
- Is a felon;
- Is not whom he or she claims to be.
"The law requires that the challenger has to have reason to believe the basis for his objections or his challenge," Cato said.Challenges must be issued to election workers before a voter receives a ballot, Cato said. Challengers can't confront voters directly.
A challenged voter must sign an oath verifying his or her identity and right to cast a ballot in that precinct. The challenger must sign the same oath and write down the reason for the challenge.
Even if election workers know the challenge isn't correct, "they have to go ahead and make his challenge," Cato said. "It's not a case where the election officers can assume that they have the power to determine whether a challenge is valid or not. They don't have that power."
A challenged voter will be allowed to vote — and that vote will be counted in the election. Voters' oaths are collected later by the election office and forwarded to the commonwealth's attorney for investigation.
While the practice is certainly legal and the Republicans are within their rights to make use of poll challengers, I have to agree that the way these challengers are being placed specifically at polls in areas that are predominately black and Democratic smacks of dirty politics. Just because something is legal doesn't automatically make it right or ethical. In my opinion, the Republicans plan is neither.
So, what would the Republicans do if Bush - by some miracle - should totally self-destruct and become un-re-electable? South Knox Bubba has a few suggestions - and provides a wonderfully irreverent guide to their various strengths and weaknesses. Go check it out.
Yesterday, Atrios posted a story about how the folks at The White House Website have changed their robots.txt file to prevent search engines from cataloging pages about Iraq. While no one is quite sure, yet, why they're doing this, one theory that has been floated is that it is to prevent those pages from being cached by Google, thus making it harder to prove that anything has been changed - such as earlier this year when they edited all the pages that has referred to Bush declaring that "combat operations" in Iraq had ended to show, instead, that Bush had said that "major combat operations" had ended.
For the record, in his original speech, Bush did say that it was "major combat operations" that had ended, but in the articles posted to the White House website and in the press releases sent out about the speech, the phrase was shortened to just "combat operations". Then, in August, a reporter asked President Bush about his having said that "combat operations" had ended, and Bush corrected him, pointing out he'd said "major combat operations". Shortly after that incident, the headlines were changed on the whitehouse.gov site. I had posted about the change at the time it occurred, and had included a few screen shots of pages that hadn't been updated yet showing the original text.
Part of what bothered me about the change was that these were copies of "press backgrounders" and such that the White House had sent out under the original headline using the shortened "combat operations", which is how the press then began referring to the situation. By going back and changing the website without noting that the original press releases had been sent out with a different phrasing in the headline, the White House is trying to erase the evidence that the use of "combat operations" instead of "major combat operations" was essentially endorsed by the White House Press Office itself, making it easier to imply that it was the press who got it wrong in the first place and that President Bush is, once again, simply being misrepresented by the media.
At any rate, this is one theory about why the White House might have decided to keep search engines out of most of the public files on Iraq, though there probably are other ways to achieve the same goal of preventing caching without blocking the files completely from search engines. Whatever the reasons, the change appears unlikely to be something that was done by accident.
Keith at bway.net appears to have made the initial discovery, and has posted two pages explaining exactly what changes were made. For those who have a fairly good technical understanding of things like a robot.txt file, he offers a technical explaination, and for those who are less familiar with Unix arcana, he has a non-technical explaination.
Whatever the reason for the change, I find it bothersome. The White House website should be easily accessible for all people. The information it contains is, obviously, publicly accessible and, one would presume, put there so that people can find out what our government has to say for itself. To systematically try and prevent external search engines from being able to find information on certain topics reduces its functionality considerably. I know for myself, I rarely go directly to the White House website to look for information unless I already know that what I'm looking for is likely to be there. More often than not, when I've found something at the White House website, its been because a Google search has sent me there to find what I'm looking for.
This tactic, though, fits well with the secretiveness and evasion that we've seen throughout the government during Bush's term. This administration doesn't seem to understand that, in America, the ability to govern is by the consent of the people, and that in order for us to give our consent, we not only need to know what the government is up to, but we have a right to know - except in cases where making certain information public would pose a threat to national security. I seriously doubt, however, that allowing publicly available articles about our activities in Iraq to be accessed through major search engines qualifies as a threat to national security.
Gttim of Notes from Atlanta links to a story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about a student who had a diary she'd brought to school with her confiscated by a teacher, who subequently read the diary. In there was a fictional story in which a teen dreams of killing a teacher. The girl ended up being expelled from school.
It reminded me of an experience I had in my 12th grade Creative Writing class. I posted about this also in notes over on gttim's site, but thought it was worth posting here as well.
We were given an assignment to write a story using the line "suddenly, everything was peaceful." Most of the students wrote a bit of fluff about being out on a picnic and bunnies hopping buy and "suddenly...." (I kid you not!) Apparently they'd thought "peaceful" was the key word in the required phrase. I, however, focused on the "suddenly" aspect.
My story was about a guy, fighting in a war, who had come to the end of his rope and decided to let the enemy kill him rather than face going on any longer. After a rather graphic description of the bullet tearing through his body, he dies, and it was there that I used the requisite line. After the readings were done, my teacher looked at me for a bit, and then sent me to the school shrink.
This was in 1982. At the time, it was humiliating to have a teacher send you to the counselor, because it meant they thought you were either a REAL trouble maker, or they were VERY worried about you. I managed to get through a single hour-long session and apparently convinced the woman I was fine - just imaginative - and that was the end of it.
Looking back, I have to say it's a good thing I went to school when I did. I'd HATE to think what a teacher would make of such a story today. Oh, and for anyone wondering - I've never been in a war or had anyone close to me have to go fight. I've only touched maybe 3 guns in my life and am deathly afraid of them. The story was just the first thing that came to mind where the peacefullness would truly be sudden. It certainly wasn't the warning sign of a psycho in the making....
The case in the Atlanta paper makes me really angry, though. The girl maybe wasn't very wise to have brought her diary to school, and obviously she shouldn't have been reading it in class rather than doing whatever the teacher wanted. If I were a teacher, under those circumstances, I might well have taken the diary away, also. From there, though, I have some serious problems with the teacher's actions.
The appropriate thing to have done would have been to either return the diary to the student at the end of the class period, or, if the teacher felt it was enough of a potential distraction that it wouldn't be a good idea to give it back to the student right away, she could have told the girl she was taking the diary to the Principal's office, where the student could pick it up after school.
Rather than do either of these reasonable things, however, the teacher takes the diary home and proceeds to read it. It was during the reading that the teacher found the story in question, and after she communicated the contents of the diary to the school officials, the girl was suspended and told she would have a meeting during which it would be determined if she would be expelled or not.
The inital determination, made on October 22nd, was that the girl would be expelled. Shortly after the decision was made, the student wrote an article that was published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about her experience and her intention to continue writing, if perhaps a bit more carefully. Since then, the story has hit the news, and the school has decided to rescind the expulsion while they study the situation further.
Hopefully, the school will come to its senses and allow the student to return. The teacher was, in my opinion, seriously out of line to take the student's journal home and read it, and the school overreacted in it's response. Unfortuantely, that kind of overreaction is becoming almost commonplace in this new age of zero tolerance, and undoubtedly, it will only lead to students stiffeling their own creativity in the hopes that they won't stand out enough to be considered a threat.
Michael Kinsley writes and impassioned and impressive column this week on the illogical paradox at the center of Bush's stem-cell research policy.
Kinsley suffers from Parkinson's disease, so he has a very personal reason to take this issue seriously, and he points out the same question that I've been asking myself since this whole issue blew up: How can someone who opposes stem-cell research on the grounds that it destroys an embryo - which is bad as it violates the sanctity of life - but not also oppose the use of fertility treatments in which multiple embryos are formed, and any which are left unused when the patient discontinues treatment (usually after they've given birth to a child) are simply thrown out like garbage?
The unused embryos that are leftover when a couple finishes their fertility treatment are no different that the embryos needed for stem-cell research. In fact, if stem cell research were to be allowed to resume and create new cell lines, those leftover embryos would be able to provide sufficient material for stem-cell research, so no new, lab-created embroys would need to be developed to use for expirimentation.
One would think that someone who holds life sacred would consider saving and improving lives to get a good thing. Under the current rules, though, because life is "sacred" - which somehow means the stem-cells can't be used for research - not only do we still have thousands, if not millions, of people dying every year from these illnesses and disorders, but ever single leftover embroy is tossed out and destroyed.
In other words, life is so sacred that it's better to throw away and destroy unused embryos and sentence any number of people suffering from potentially treatable illnesses that it would be to take thoswe embryos that are on the verge of being thrown out and use them to develop treatments to help save (or better) the lives of the people who have these disorders.
Vincent Cannistraro tells Financial Times that Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent was leaked - not as revenge against her husband for embarassing the White House - but rather to punish the CIA for not providing the kind of intelligence the White House wanted.
Vince Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, charged yesterday: "She was outed as a vindictive act because the agency was not providing support for policy statements that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear programme."Ths doesn't get us any closer to knowing who leaked the information - and given the way the investigation is going - slowly - it seem less and less likely that we will be anytime soon.The leak was a way to "demonstrate an underlying contempt for the intelligence community, the CIA in particular".
In late 2002, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States - also known as the "9/11 Commission" was established to look into the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. In most cases where there's been an attack or disaster (such as the the attack on Pearl Harbor or the shuttle explosions), commissions quickly established after the events to determine what went wrong and what was needed to prevent it from happening again, but not so with 9/11. It took over a year for the 9/11 Commission to be authorized and even then it was given only 18 months in which to do all of its work.
Of course, first the commissioners had to be chosen. Initially, Henry Kissinger was picked to lead the panel, but when he learned that Senate ethics rules would require him to disclose his client list, he resigned. Eventually, Thomas Kean, a former Governor of New Jersey was appointed to head the commission, and he seems determined to do a thorough job.
After spending several months trying to get a variety of documents from different government agencies as well as from the White House, Kean has started using the "s" word - subpoena.
"Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach," Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically damaging courtroom showdown with the commission over access to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports that reached President Bush's desk in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.In the continuing "perception gap" that seems to exist within the White House, Ashley Snee, a White House spokeswoman, said that the White House "believed" it was cooperating fully with the commission. Apparently some of the documents that are in dispute are considered very sensitive and are highly classified, but Kean feels strongly that the commission should have access to them nevertheless."I will not stand for it," Mr. Kean said in the interview in his offices here at Drew University, where he has been president since 1990.
"That means that we will use every tool at our command to get hold of every document."
"These are documents that only two or three people would normally have access to," he said. "To make those available to an outside group is something that no other president has done in our history.Kean does note that, for the most part, the White House has been very cooperative, but that they are committed to getting every document they need for the investigation."But I've argued very strongly with the White House that we are unique, that we are not the Congress, that these arguments about presidential privilege do not apply in the case of our commission," he said.
"Anything that has to do with 9/11, we have to see it — anything. There are a lot of theories about 9/11, and as long as there is any document out there that bears on any of those theories, we're going to leave questions unanswered. And we cannot leave questions unanswered."
There are concerns, however, that the time limit on the commission - the term expires in May 2004 - may run out before the commission can finish all of their work. One commission member, Max Cleland, has said that he believes the White House is intentionally delaying in handing over documents, in order to prevent the commission from finishing the job.
"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents — it's disgusting."It should be noted that Cleland recently lost his Senate seat in what was considered a very dirty campaign, and thus may hold a grudge against the Republican part in general, but given how hard the White House fought to prevent the commission from being established in the first place, and the lengths they've previously gone to in order to prevent any serious investigation into the attacks at all, Cleland's concern is certainly within the realm of probability.He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted."
If the time constraints do become an issue, the commission could ask for an extension, but the same forces that delayed the start of the commission for so long may also work to prevent an extension, though not all view it as hopeless.
"If the families of the victims weighed in — and heavily, as they did before — then we'd have a chance of succeeding," said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was an important sponsor of the legislation creating the commission. He said that, given the "obfuscation" of the administration in meeting document requests, he was ready to pursue an extension "if the commission feels it can't get its work done."I find the White House's stonewalling on the commission deplorable. We, the citizens, have a right to know why the attacks happened and why our government and law enforcement agencies were unable to prevent it. I'm glad to see the commission making it known that they intend to get every document they think they need and that they will use the powers granted to them to demand that the documents be turned over. I only hope that if the clock does run out, Congress will do the right thing and allow them an extension, even if it threatens to interfere with President Bush's re-election plans.
For some reason, when you click on the "comments" link, the little pop-up window comes up like it's supposed to, but it doesnt seem to ether store or read cookies, beacuse you have to enter you name, e-mail and URL every time you go to enter a new comment.
If anyone can help tell me what's wrong or what I need to do to fix i, I would be much appreciative!
Thanks!
Kriselda
I remember when, during Bush the first's presidency, people were agog at the idea that the President was so out-of-touch with reality that he was surprised to see a supermarket scanner in action. It seems that Bush the second is even more out-of-touch than his father was. This Bush was surprised to learn how others in the world view the US and our policies.
Minutes after President Bush finished an hourlong meeting with moderate Islamic leaders on the island of Bali on Wednesday, he approached his staff with something of a puzzled look on his face.Perhaps the President should stop relying on aides to deliver the news they think he needs to hear and start reading the papers for himself. He might have a better idea of what's going on if he did - rather than being sheilded behind a wall of syncophants who will only tell him what he wants to hear."Do they really believe that we think all Muslims are terrorists?" he asked, shaking his head. He was equally distressed, he told them, to hear that the United States was so pro-Israel that it was uninterested in the creation of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel, despite his frequent declarations calling for exactly that.
It was a revealing moment precisely because the president was so surprised.
David Corn offers an insightful column this week in LA Weekly about the President's reliance on Condoleeza Rice for most of his news. Corn wonders how Bush can know what's going on in the world if he relies on Rice and Andy Card for most of his news, especially given how often Rice's remarks indicate she's pretty out of touch with the news - and maybe even reality - herself.
Rice has been consistently mischaracterizing and misrepresenting Iraqi matters. And she is Bush's main source of news? No wonder he cannot get his facts straight. When Bush addressed the Filipino Congress recently, he compared the transition he wants to achieve in Iraq to the rise of democracy in the Philippines. After all, America, according to Bush, had "liberated the Philippines from colonial rule." That observation, though, ignored the fact that the United States ruled the Philippines for five decades before granting it autonomy. Had Rice - and all the other vetters of this speech - forgotten about the Spanish-American War?So Bush proudly eschews The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and he replaces them with The Daily Condi. Talk about filters. The president is relying on All the News That Fits the Spin.
With the rallying cry of "Ridding the world of the Bushbrain and his minions in 2004," the members of The League of Liberals have joined forces to help new, liberal blogs get attention in the Truth Laid Bear's New Blog Showcase, support each other, and make sure that next year, this country will (legitimately) elect Anybody But Bush Again!
With goals like that, how could I resist?
This week, the League of Liberals is lending it's support to Hell for Halliburton, who has posted a look at some of the highly questionable (and, in many cases, most likely illegal) activities that the company has engaged in. Yet, in spite of these offenses, Halliburton still gets a large number of the no-bid government contracts for work in Iraq. Take a look at what they've been up to - and then ask your Congressional representatives why we continue to support such a firm.
Also, be sure to take some time to check out the other League of Liberals blogs - and if you run a liberal blog and think this is a project you'd be willing to support - check out the League of Liberals Website or send an e-mail to aurabass at hotmail dot com.
After spending most of the last 24-hours in a Rush (the band, not the idiot)-induced haze (::ahhhhhh!:: and good haze it is!) I'm finally returning to the land of the non-Canadian power trios and decided to catch up on all the TV shows I've been putting off, starting with ER.
Something threw me for a bit of a loop, though - namely, a pair of naked, on-camera, human, female breasts. Last I heard, those were a no-no on broadcast TV - unless, of course, the show is a nature documetary on PBS. Now, I've never quite understood why, exactly, it was ok to show the nakes breasts of women in tribal Africa but not the breasts of white women in America, but it was one of those things I just sort of accepted as being the one exception to the rule.
This week's ER, however, apparently decided that there's a second exception to the rule. If the breasts are over a certain age, it seems, they're safe to show. The woman who's topless shot was included in the show is probably around 75 or so. Interestingly, she, like the African women are black - and, in both cases, the breasts in question are saggy and what most people would consider unattractive.
So, what, exactly, is the rule, then? Are just perky, standard-issue "sexy" breasts unviewable, but it's ok to show any that "no one" would find attractive? There's something about that kind of reasoning that just seem off. I can't imagine that it would be considered ok to show a 75-year-old man's penis on a prime-time TV show - probably because there's no real standard of beauty for penises.
Honestly, I'm not sure why this bugs me, but it seems like the standards are anything but standard. It's not "no sex organs can be shown on broadcast TV", but "no sex organs, except unattractive female breasts, can be shown on TV" - on the apparent theory that showing either male or attractive female genitalia would somehow cause a erosion of our morals and values. At the same time, however, they seem to try and get as close as they can to showing attractive breasts (I'm expecting that soon all that will be required as a "shirt" will be a couple strategically placed Band-Aids), and they also like to show as much sexual activity as possible, without exposing any of the forbidden body parts.
There's no rhyme or reason to it.
If anyone understand what the deal is, would you be willing to explain it to me?
As I've been surfing around this evening, I've seen a few references made to one of the suggestions in the Rumsfield memo:
Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course? What else should we be considering?While Rumsfeld's suggestion is for a private foundation to fund these madradssas, I've seen numerous references in the blogosphere to the US funding them.
If a truly private foundation, that received no money at all from the US government, wanted to set up these schools as an alternative to the more radical ones currently in place, in the hopes that they might be able to attract students and thus prevent them from being given a fundamentalist Islamacist education and potentially turned into terrorists, that would be a great idea I think. I have a serious problem, however, with the idea of the US government funding such schools.
While the idea behind the funding might be to try and prevent the creation of terrorists, it would be the direct government funding of a religious institution. Imagine if someone in the government was wanting tax dollars to go to funding Christian schools, using the justification that teaching children Christian values would help reduce the crime rate (since the general perception is that Christians would be less likely to commit crimes). In fact, if the government were to start funding madradssas with the goal of using them to reduce the number of potential terrorists, I can almost guarantee you that someone would start trying to use the parallel justification of "crime prevention" to sneak governmental funding of Christian schools through.
Personally, I think the idea of setting up moderate madradssas might not be a bad idea and could be worth a try. But we need to make sure that if it gets turned into an actual project, it's being funding by private individuals and/or corporations, and not by our tax dollars.
Sounds like Someone is trying to send a message to the set of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ". The film's assistant director, Jim Michelini and the actor playing Jesus, Jim Cavezliel were struck by lightning while working on the set. It's the second time Michelini has been struck.
Michelini had previously been struck during filming in Matera, Italy, when he suffered light burns to his fingers after lightning hit his umbrella.Fortunately, no one was seriously injured, so it's safe to giggle about. (And, of course, being a Thorian, gives me another reason to giggle - and feel almost jealous - the key word there being ALMOST.)
Describing the second lightning strike, McEveety told VLife, a supplement of the trade paper Variety: "I'm about a hundred feet away from them when I glance over and see smoke coming out of Caviezel's ears."
Link via Secular Blasphemy
I just got my copy of Rush's new "Rush in Rio" CD & DVD, so I won't be posting much today... BTW: If you like good live music, you REALLY ought to check this out. The Brazillain audience is incredible - it's been commented on a lot, but I'll tell you, there's nothing quite like hearing an audience sing along, note-for-note, with an instrumental to remind you of how great a live show can be.
Anyway, I'll be posting more later, after I come back down from this musical rush... :)
If you haven't seen it yet, here is the text of the Rumsfeld Memo. There still seems to be a bit of debate about whether the memo was leaked or intentionally released to the press. A variety of sites from about the Blogosphere (Instapundit, Tacitus, Tbogg, and IsThatLegal for starters) are all busily commenting on their various theories about how the memos got into the newspaper, what damage may occure from the leak (if it was, in fact, leaked), who might have leaked it, and why all the people who were so upset about Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative being leaked aren't calling for an investigation on this one. Personally, I'd need to be sure that there is a leak before demanding an investigation into it, but at this point, I'm honestly not sure what I think happened.
As to why Rumsfeld might want to see this memo given to the press (even if it was done in such a way as to make it look like a leak, which is yet another possiblity), speculation centers on the idea that some of the questions he asks are what might be termed "big" questions, and that in asking them, it makes Rumsfeld look more in touch and aware of what is actually happening, and that he is competent to handle running the War on Terror, no matter what the State Department might say. It might also have been a way for him to try and show up Condi Rice, now that she's been given more authority over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, by demonstrating the kinds of questions and concerns he has, compared to whatever Condi may have said or done to this point. Right now, though, that's all still just speculation.
What I find interesting is that the memo itself is now available on the Defense Department's Milink website as a .PDF file, which lends support to the non-leak theory (though, apparently, the memo was not posted until after the USA Today story that first reported the memo had been published and circulated). The accompanying article at Milink seems primarily focused on countering the view from USA Today that the memo indicates that things are going badly:
A story about the memo appeared in today's issue of USA Today. The story characterizes the questions Rumsfeld raised as an admission that the United States is losing the war on terror. "The secretary's not saying anything like what the memo's been characterized (as saying)," Di Rita said during a press conference.Batting for the "it was a leak" team, a FOX News report indicates that Rumsfeld is "livid" about the apparent leak, which, of course, supports the idea that it wasn't released intentionally by the Department of Defense.The spokesman said the secretary is asking the "big questions" that any government agency should be asking itself.
The original USA Today story, however, doesn't offer any indication of how it came about that they got a copy of the memo. As others have noted, though, this is USA Today we're talking about. They're not exactly known for in-depth hard-hitting investigative journalism. In any event, if it is a leak there may be some at least some reason for officials to be concerned about the possible impact it might have. Jonathan S. Landay of Knight-Ridder newspapers quoted one unnamed official as saying:
"This (memo) gives bin Laden his next tape. Nothing will inspire more jihadists than the prospect of victory."In addition, the memo lays out a possible strategy to help reduce the number of terrorists being recruited from the madradssas that are run in many Islamic nations. Madradssas are schools which frequently teach extreme forms of Islam along with basic, educational subjects, and are known to be fertile breeding grounds for future terrorists. One of the criticisms of the Saudi government comes from their support for madradssas within Saudi Arabia itself.
Rumsfeld asks whether the Defense Department is moving fast enough to adapt to fighting terrorists and whether the United States should create a private foundation to entice radical Islamic schools to a "more moderate course." Rumsfeld says the schools, known as madradssas, may be churning out new terrorists faster than the United States can kill or capture them.I think, from my perspective, the best news from this memo is that by asking if we are able to kill or capture terrorists as fast as they are being created shows that, just maybe, the administration does understand that there isn't a finite pool of terrorists that we can attract to Iraq so that we can wipe all of them out in one series of battles. It is an important question. I can only hope that as well as being concerned about our ability to kill and capture more terrorists than are being created, the administration will also take a serious look at our actions and the comments being made by representatives of our government and military to help ensure we aren't unnecessarily contributing to the growing number of terrorists we have to face.
TO: Gen. Dick Myers, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Pete Pace, Doug FeithFROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism
The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?
DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere - one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.
With respect to global terrorism, the record since September 11th seems to be: We are having mixed results with Al Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them - nonetheless, a great many remain at large.
USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis. USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban - Omar, Hekmatyar, etc. With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started. Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the U.S.? Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror? Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental?
My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?
Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?
The U.S. is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions. Do we need a new organization? How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools? Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"?
It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog. Does CIA need a new finding? Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course? What else should we be considering?Please be prepared to discuss this at our meeting on Saturday or Monday. Thanks.
John and Elaine Mellencamp have written an editorial that's been published at Counterpunch about the war, it's aftermath and what is needed now. Some excerpts:
Before a single bomb was ever dropped, some of us, formerly called the "anti-American and unpatriotic," have questioned or opposed this war. Now, each day, as the dust settles and the truth slowly surfaces, more and more people come to the inevitable conclusion of what a debacle this whole war was.Be sure to take a minute to read the rest - it's well worth the time.39,000 bombs later, no weapons of mass destruction uncovered, no dangerous dictators captured, no connection to Sept 11. What have we gained but relentless media coverage of a fallen statue and some stolen oil fields -- the spoils of this misadventure. Not to mention lucrative corporate payoffs and an enormous price tag of over 80 Billion dollars . . . some tax cut.
But what have we lost? We have lost the lives of over 300 Americans. Approximately 2 U.S. troop deaths each day, 193 deaths since the war was declared over. In total, an estimated 20,000 people have died, thus far, in this conflict.
In addition to the lives given for this effort, our nation has suffered the loss of respect within the world community, particularly the United Nations. We have managed to squander any goodwill we once had to now succeed in solidifying our image as the globe's leading bully. Arrogant and thoughtless.
[...]Who is to say what is or isn't "patriotic?" Do the flags that wave from every minivan really offer any support? Where is the support for the thousands of service men and women who return to the states to see their benefits cut, their health problems ignored, their jobs gone and their families living in poverty? How are they repaid for their efforts; for risking or losing their lives? So far, dismally.
This nation was founded to enable freedom and diversity of opinion, and many lives have been lost to secure that liberty. Paradoxically, some still resist the open mindedness that is the very foundation of this country.
Link via Notes from Atlanta
The New York Times has an editorial today calling for this dismissal of General Boykin in light of Rumsfeld's announcement that there will be an investigation into Boykin's comments.
This is not a debate about General Boykin's religious views, as his conservative defenders say, or about free speech. The question of what military rule he may have violated — which is what the Pentagon inquiry may seize on — is a distraction.The editorial also notes that Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, who has been roundly - and rightly - criticized for his anti-Semitic comments earlier this week, is now using Boykin's comments about Islam in trying to point out the Bush Administration's hypocrisy.General Boykin was not exercising the free speech rights of a private citizen. Speaking as he did in uniform the day after he was appointed deputy under secretary was indefensible. Not only did a high-ranking government official make remarks that espoused a single religious view and denigrated others, but he damaged the national security policy of the United States.
[...] Mr. Rumsfeld did not need a personal hearing earlier this year to chastise the Army chief of staff for differing with him on the war in Iraq, and to question the patriotism of retired generals who critiqued his war strategy on television. Unlike General Boykin, they did not have the backing of conservative Christians, a key constituency for Mr. Bush's re-election.
That right there is another reason why Boykin needs to go - keeping him on in a policy-making position and involved in the War or Terrorism undermines the Bush Administration's ability to point out hate speech by other leaders by being willing to tolerate it within their own ranks. We already have enough of a credibility problem, this is just one more thing we don't need.
Tom at Crooked Timber takes a look at the use of Microsoft Access in a system that needs to be secure. His basic opinion appears to be that Access provides just a bit too much of it's namesake - and too little in the way of security.
From a geek perspective, I offer the opinion that the whole e-voting thing is bad enough when you trust the political neutrality of the vendors, given the scope for technical fuckups. And it's also worth saying that we Brits have every reason to fear that we'll be subjected to similar nonsense given the blind optimism of our government, which appears to be countenancing voting mechanisms which include 'the use of the Internet, text messaging, interactive digital TV, and touch-tone telephony'. Gah.I agree with one of his conclusions - the software for election systems needs to be open-source, both to help with increasing security by allowing a wide range of tech-heads look it over and improve on it, and also so that it's functions can be verified and there can be reasonable certainty that the tabulation mechanisms are designed to count the votes accurately.Back to Diebold. As someone who fiddles with relational databases as part of my living, I don't know whether to laugh or cry when it is revealed that the system which is offered as the backing infrastructure for American democracy involves as its lynchpin an Access database.
Access, as any fule know, is a toy program for putting together a database upon which you want to record the details of your CD collection or keep track of the contents of your sock-drawer; it does not supply a platform which anyone with the tiniest bit of nouse would use for anything that actually mattered.
If making such systems open-source cuts into the profitability of making voting equipment, so be it. This is one area where secrecy serves only to help undermine the ability of the voting public to have any kind of confidence in the equipment - or its ability to accurately reflect who has actually been chosen as the leaders of this nation. The integrity of the system must outweigh all other concerns - even the capitalistic ones. Its really that simple.
From today's Cursor (Click here after November 1, 2003 to find it.)
Treasury Secretary John Snow predicts that the U.S. economy will generate about 200,000 additional jobs per month before next year's election. In February, reports the Economic Policy Institute's JobWatch, the Council of Economic Advisers projected 344,000 per month job growth starting in mid-2003 if the tax cuts were passed and about 250,000 per month without the tax cuts.In other words, not only are we no where near to the kind of jobs growth we were told we could expect if Bush's rich friends got their tax break, but we're actually doing worse following the tax cuts than had been expected if the tax cuts had never gone through!
Now if only someone could think of a snappy way to point this out so that it was easily understandable by just about anyone that not only are Bush's tax cuts driving the economy into a huge deficit, but they simply don't work they way we were told they would.
The following is a new Action Alert from the ACLU regarding legislation to roll back portions of the PATRIOT Act. The ACLU is offering to allow supporters of this new legislation (known as the SAFE Act) to send faxes to their Congressmen. If you wish to do so, please click here:
Two years after the passage of the PATRIOT Act, the movement to fix this broad and un-American piece of legislation is gaining incredible momentum. But with time running short this year, we are facing a serious deadline to persuade Congress to begin to fix the PATRIOT Act.One of the provisions of the bill - the part that prohibits the government from searching records without individualized suspicion - would also prevet anything like the "Total Information Awareness" system that DARPA had been developing from being tried again. Rather than being able to sift through vast amounts of data looking for someone who might fit a terrorist "profile", the government would have to have reason to believe that you, specifically, are possibly engaged in terrorist activity before they could just sift through your records.
Following on the House's strong vote last month to ban "sneak and peek" searches, Sens. Larry Craig (R-ID) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) have now taken the lead in the Senate by introducing the bi-partisan Security and Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act of 2003 (S 1709). In the House, Representative Butch Otter (R-ID) has introduced a companion bill (HR 3352). This legislation would represent a significant first step toward rolling back some of the PATRIOT Act's worse excesses.
This legislation would make sure that intelligence agents cannot search library records unless there is suspicion that an individual is involved with a foreign power. It would also limit the use of sneak and peek searches by government agents. Furthermore, it would limit the government's ability to conduct widespread searches of your personal information without probable cause or individualized suspicion.The SAFE Act would not hinder the investigative powers law enforcement agencies need to keep us safe, but would instead ensure proper checks and balances on these powers to help keep us free! The SAFE Act represents our best chance this year to fix the PATRIOT Act and deserves our support.
Take Action! Urge your Members of Congress to correct the PATRIOT Acts flaws.
- The government should not be allowed to indiscriminately investigate your library records.
This legislation would amend the PATRIOT ACT to require "individualized suspicion" that the records being sought are related to someone who is acting for a foreign government or organization. It prohibits the government from embarking on fishing expeditions where they examine a large number of people’s records without any reasonable suspicion in the hopes that they might find a potential terrorist.- Sneak and peek searches should be used in rare situations, not as a standard practice.
The PATRIOT Act allows the widespread use of sneak and peek searches and delays notification indefinitely. This new legislation would limit the use of sneak and peek searches to three specific purposes. It would also ensure that the targets of these searches are notified within seven days unless a court approves extensions.- The PATRIOT Act is an attack on fundamental American values. It needs to be fixed.
The Constitution and its Bill of Rights emphasize the need for checks and balances on government agents and limits to their power. The PATRIOT Act rolled back key judicial oversight and gave law enforcement significant new powers that go beyond the war on terrorism. The passing of these new bills would be an important step in bringing the PATRIOT Act back in line with core American values.
Please visit the ACLU SAFE Act Page now, and urge your Congressional representatives to support this bill!
General Boykin has decided to ask Donald Rumsfeld to review his statements and see if they violate any military regulations. As Josh Marshall points out, however, it's not necessary for military rules to have been broken for the General to be relieved of his political appointment as an Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
Another point I've read in a number of place, and that I think is well worth making, is that if General Boykin had been criticizing the war with Iraq, there'd be no questions being raised about his rights to free speech or if there were any constitutional issues involved in firing him. He'd simply be gone with no questions asked.
While the administration may agree with his views - and their actions so far indicate that they do - he was wrong to have expressed them the way he did, particularly while wearing his uniform, and that man simply is unfit to be place in a policy-making position that may require cooperation with other nations - especially since some of the nations he'll have to work with are Muslim.
Oh dear... people at LiveJournal are having far too much fun translating a certain song into different - ah - languages.
First, check out the Latin versions (Parts 1 and 2), and then check out the Geek (and no, I didn't forget an "r" there.... *g*)
While this isn't exactly a huge deal, its nice to see a government being a bit more tolerant of alternative spiritualities that many of us in the Pagan community have come to expect.
OSLO, Oct. 21 — A witch has won subsidies from the Norwegian state to run a business of potions, fortune-telling and magic. Lena Skarning, 33, won the unprecedented start-up grant of 53,000 crowns — about $7,400 — after promising not to try out harmful spells with her business, Forest Witch Magic Consulting.The article notes that Skarning says that the popularity of the Harry Potter books may have helped make society more tolerant of Witches and Witchcraft, but that Harry Potter is unrealistic - pointing out that in the books and movies, the Witches and Wizards ride their brooms with the bushy part in back, but that "Real witches ride with the brush part in front." Now, if it had been me, I probably would have picked something a bit more substantial to cite in order to point out the differences between the Harry Potter witches and religious Witches (like the fact that we don't walk through walls to catch the train to our secret school where we play a game like Quidditch and turn animals into stemware, for example.) But that's just me.
At any rate, an article at Ananova gives a few more details and points out that in order to qualify for a grant, her business plan had to pass the scrutiny of the Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund.
Skarning, a 33-year-old practicing witch said she plans to make a living mixing potions for clients, selling wares door to door and making house calls.Some may question the appropriateness of a government giving money to a person of any religion in order to run a religious business, but if the decision is made solely on the basis of the merits of the business plan and not because of the religious aspect of the business, then I don't see any problem with it - regardless of what religious community the business caters to. I certainly hope that American entrepreneurs who are interested in opening a religious-oriented business, be it a Christian bookstore, a Kosher grocery store or an Occult supply shop, would be given the same consideration in applying for government grants or small-business loans that any other entrepreneur would get. Religious communities have commercial needs, after all, and deserve as much of a chance to succeed as any secular business.[...] Her specialty products include night creams for vivid dreams, a day cream to combat indecisiveness and a foot cream to change a user's bad habits.
Skarning said has always been a witch, but needed seed money for her business to take root. She attended a seminar on entrepreneurship and then applied for the grant.
Ove Gahren of the SND insisted the agency wasn't under a spell when it gave her the money.
He said money was awarded for applications that were "exceptional, very innovative, and very importantly, offered a new service or created a job."
He said the notion of a witch getting a grant may seem out of the ordinary, but her business plan was "pretty reasonable and well thought out."
At any rate, I'm glad to see the Norwegian government be willing to take a step like this, and I wish Ms. Skarning the best of luck with her business.
The Washington Post writes about a couple other statements Lt. Gen. Boykin has made which not only make him sound a bit unhinged but which lead the editors to question if he's actually fit for the position he's been given. (And like both Fareed Zakaria and I have previously commented on, they also note that his explanation of his "idol" comment is bunk.)
Gen. Boykin now argues that his "idol" reference was to the worship of money and power, not Allah. But a review of the full text of his remarks cannot support this reading. In fact, the full text only adds to the questions about his suitability. At the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Ore., last June, just after he received his third star and was named to his Pentagon post, Gen. Boykin said, "Don't you worry about what these courts say. Our God reigns supreme."I gotta say, I am not the least bit comfortable trusting a man who think that he can photograph evil to deal and believes God stopped two additional planes on 9/11. I'm sure some will claim that at least one of the planes he's referring to is the flight that went down in Pennsylvania, even though the way he's phrased his statement ("I believe that there were at least two more airplanes...") makes it pretty clear he means that he thinks there were six planes total - but even if we accept that one of them was the Pennsylvania plane, he's still claiming that there was yet another plane - a 5th plane.Some of his comments also raise questions about Gen. Boykin's fitness to oversee military intelligence, questions of religious bigotry aside. He describes taking photographs during a helicopter tour before leaving Mogadishu, Somalia, and then finding an unexplained black mark on the developed pictures, which he explains as a manifestation of evil. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your enemy," he tells the Good Shepherd audience. "It is not Osama bin Laden, it is the principalities of darkness. It is a spiritual enemy that will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus and pray for this nation and for our leaders." He also offers this take on Sept. 11: "Whether you realize it or not, I believe there were at least two more airplanes that were headed for major installations in this country. I believe that there was one headed for the Capitol, but they were thwarted by the hand of God."
Here's the thing, though. There were no reports of other crashes that day, and no reports from any pilots of other attempts at hijacking. So, my first question would be what makes Gen. Boykin think one existed? Is he privy to information none of the rest of us have? If so, why is he talking about it at all? I think that a publicly-unreported crash or hijacking attempt would have to be under perhaps the highest level of secret classification in order for us to have not even a hint of its existence to have escaped into the greater wilderness of public knowledge - and you know that if any conspiracy theorists caught so much as a whiff of something that explosive, we'd be seeing reports of it sailing around the internet. So, either there is no evidence of a 5th plane, or the General is talking about something he really shouldn't be talking about - making him either whacked-out or careless. I'm not quite sure which worries me more (especially for someone in an intelligence position.)
For the sake of discussion, let's just assume he knows about the extra plane(s) because God told him. It's no wackier than his contending he took a photograph of evil, right? So, ok. God tells the General that there was at least one more plane (if not two) on its way to a major target, but that He stopped it from succeeding. What did God do? Make all the hijackers for those planes just vanish into thin air? I would have to assume either no one missed them or everyone just assumed that they were swept up in the post 9/11 raids. Maybe God just made them get stuck in their seats on the planes so they couldn't try anything - but wouldn't someone who found themselves unable to stand up be likely to at least ask a question about what was wrong with their seat? Maybe God just caused them to forget what it was they were there to do. I imagine He'd have the power to do that.
But all of those possibilities - along with any others anyone could come up with - beg another question, and it's a biggie: If God could miraculously stop one or two planes from being hijacked and crashing into major targets, why didn't He stop them all? I wouldn't think that God would be limited - stopping four shouldn't be any more difficult than stopping one or two. Does the General believe that God saved our lawmakers because they are somehow better or more necessary than any of the thousands who did die that day? Would he say they were more faithful than those who died (among whom I have no doubt where hundreds of good and faithful Christians?) Maybe God needed to make a point but felt it wasn't necessary to kill any politicians to do so.
Obviously, I'm not likely to have much insight into what the Christian God would do since He and I aren't exactly on speaking terms, but it would be great if General Boykin is going to claim to know what God has done if maybe he'd let us in a bit on why. It may not tell us much about God, but it should let us know more about Boykin. As it stands right now, though, he sounds like both a right-wing extremist zealot and someone who more than just a bit too wacko to be in charge of anything as important as an intelligence operation focusing on hunting down two of the most wanted men in the world. Unless maybe God wants to fill him in on where they might be hiding.
From and article in the Salt Lake Tribune
"If the people don't think I'm doing my job they'll find somebody" else, Bush said. "That's my attitude."That could be used in so many ways for Dem candidates - just by reminding people of Bush's "attitude" and pointing out that he's not doing his job - and hasn't been since the day he took office.
Newsweek features Fareed Zakaria's column this week on why Donald Rumsfeld should fire Lt. Gen. Boykin ASAP.
the issue is not whether the general is free to express his views, but whether Secretary Rumsfeld wants someone who holds such views in high office. After all, were the general to have expressed his opinion that the Iraq war was a blunder, he would have been fired. Were he to have made an anti-Semitic comment (like the noxious ones Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir made last week), he would have been fired. Why? Because those freely expressed views would contradict the Bush administration’s basic philosophy. So are we to assume that Boykin’s views do not contradict administration policy? No one is urging that Secretary Rumsfeld muzzle Boykin, merely that he allow him to enter the private sector, where he may express his views even more freely. He could even sit in for Rush Limbaugh.Zakaria is right on the money. We can hardly expect our allies in Muslim nations to be willing to work easily with a man who has made it clear that he considers "our" God to be "bigger" than "theirs" God - how can we possibly have any hope for cooperation from officials in Muslim countries that aren't quite as fond of us?This is not simply a matter of symbolism, though that is important because this story is now being broadcast across the globe. The position Boykin holds—deputy undersecretary for intelligence—is one in which he would have to interact routinely with Pakistanis, Egyptians, Afghans, Indonesians; Muslims from all over the world. Will he be effective in establishing close working relationships with these officials, who have all watched him slur their religion? Is this a man who will be able to objectively sift through intelligence and analysis about the state of Muslim societies, the difference between moderates and extremists, the distinctions among various fundamentalist groups? Or does he look at them all and see ... Satan?
His comments about the implications of the Bush administration's lack of concern with Boykin's comments are also well made. Just as Bush's unwillingness to question his staff about who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative signals how unconcerned he is about "getting to the bottom" of the scandal, his administration's defense of Boykin and refusal (thus far) to fire him is indicative of a lack of disagreement with his statement, in spite of Bush's previous statements to the contrary.
There is one rather amusing part of the column - which is used to point out just how forced Boykin's attempted apology is. Zakaria points out, as I had mentioned in an earlier piece, that Boykin's claim that he was referring to "money and power" when said that a Somalian warlord's God was an "idol" falls flat on its face when Boykin's actual words are taken into account. (He had spoken of how the warlord has prayed to Allah for safety.) He then writes:
His dissembling gets almost comic over another one of his comments. Boykin routinely told audiences that God elevated George W. Bush to the presidency. “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him,” he would say. “I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there.” Boykin now explains that he believes God routinely decides American elections and has done the same thing for “Bill Clinton and other presidents.” This is surely the first time a conservative evangelical has argued that Clinton’s election was caused by divine intervention.If that's the best explanation he can come up with, Boykin may well want to quit while he's ahead - before he has to come up with any more explanations.
Calpundit has a post referring to the following quite from a Wall Street Journal article. [No link available for the original article that I am aware of.]
House Aviation panel chairman [John] Mica, scrambling to pass a proposal allowing privatization of some air-traffic control towers, tells Republicans he would exempt those in their states in exchange for votes. "I have a bill to pass," he says; the proposal is in a larger bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration. Democrats aren't given the same offer: "They want to scuttle the bill," a Mica aide says.In other words, this guy has a bill he wants to see get passed. He wants it badly enough that if your state's Republican congressmen vote for it, your state may not even have to follow it!
What the hell kind of logic is that? If it's a good law, shouldn't Mica and the congressmen voting for it want to have whatever benefits it offers apply to their state? Talk about up-is-downism! It's almost like a threat - as if Mica is saying "Vote for my bill or your state will be subjected to it." That's just nuts!
Lambert has a few variations on the title question that would be nice to have answered...
And here's one of my own: If George Bush was put in the White House by God, why aren't there more jobs available - wouldn't God want George to have a good economy to preside over and take credit for?
While looking for more information on the new electronic voting machines, I found a sited called Verified Voting.org which is an organizational site for people interested in helping fight the new voting machines. They have a lot of information on the problems with the machines, what kind of steps can be taken to help ensure that even with electronic voting machines each vote is counted for the candidate the voter actually selected and resources for finding out more about the issue. I would strongly recommend spending some serious time there checking it out!
Also, I've uploaded a copy of the recent report by SAIC for the state of Maryland showing that there are a number high-risk security issues with the machines. This is the report that the state of Maryland commissioned and then ignored when it decided to go ahead and buy the machines anyway. The report is in PDF format.
There's been a lot of discussion on blogs recently about the new touchscreen voting machines (sometimes called "black boxes") that are being purchased by states eager to comply with the Help America Vote Act of 2002. An article in the Independent (UK) earlier this week offered an overview of some of the allegations and concerns raised by these new voting systems, and Wired is running a story alleging that patches were applied to the system before last year's Georgia elections, but that the machines were never recertified after the changes were made, something that should have been done, according to election laws.
I'm not really in a position to get into a serious discussion how much of a threat there may or may not be from the reported security problems with the machines or the concerns that there may be something of a conspiracy afoot to use them to help ensure Republican victories. Most of what I've read has been from the BlackBoxVoting site - a site who's sole purpose is to raise awareness of the potential threat to democracy that the operators believe these machines present, but I've not found much offering any other side to the story.
Still, there are solid reasons to be concerned about these machines. They leave no paper trail and there's no way to verify that the votes recorded are actually the votes that were cast. There are extensive security concerns about the machines - many of them listed in a report done by testers at John Hopkins (file is in .pdf format) - that, if left uncorrected, could leave the machines vulnerable to tampering both locally and from a remote location. On top of that many of the executives working for or otherwise associated with the firms designing and marketing these machines are staunch supporters of the Republican party. Walden O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold has - in a fund-raising letter recently sent to Republicans in Ohio - made a promise to "deliver" that state's electoral votes to Bush. Additionally, US Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) holds an ownership interest in ES&S, another firm that makes these machines.
There's another danger, though, posed by these machines, that I've not yet seen widely discussed - and in my opinion, it's the most dangerous one of all. In comments on several threads I've read about the black box voting machines, I've noticed a number of people saying that with these new machines being so vulnerable to tampering and with the companies that make them so firmly in the Republicans' pockets, they feel like there's no point at all to voting next year. The Republicans are going to win, these people figure, so their vote won't matter - especially since there's a good chance that their vote won't even be counted correctly by the machines.
What I find really ironic is that, the way things are going right now, the Republicans and their supporters in the election-machine industry may not have to do a thing if they want to win. The more alarmist stories that are published, with bold headlines shouting that the next election is already rigged, the more dispair I see in the comments being posted in response. By offering little or no defence to the charges, giving few answers to the questions being asked and paying minimal attention to the concerns being raised, all that's being heard are the voices of doom, telling us that the fix is in. But if we buy into that mentality - if we let the frustration, cynicism and anger we feel silence our voices - then the Republicans will win. They won't have to use any dirty tricks or try to manipulate the data. They'll win by default.
Like I said, there's plenty of reason to be concerned, and any problems that are found must be fixed - but we can't let the concerns get us down. If we do, then it won't matter if every single vote in every single district in every single state across the country is registered accurately and counted correctly. We will have defeated ourselves.
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Are you registered to vote? Are your friends? If not, be sure to give them the link!
Make sure you know when your state's registration deadline is!
Nitpicker, who notes that he has served in two branches of the military (and thus probably has a fairly good idea about military regulations), has a good piece on Gen. Boykin and how the speeches he's been giving violate those codes. He also notes that the recent spate of identical letters from several members of the 503rd that were sent to various newspapers around the country are also violations of the regulations as well.
Department of Defense directive 1344.10 says that an active duty military member may not make partisan political speeches and, frankly, this goes double for guys who do it while wearing their uniforms.He also points out that because Boykin's comments could cause a soldier to feel "negatively influenced if [s/he] were a Muslim and my commander said that [s/he] was placing my faith in an "idol" who was not a "real god."," that "he's made it clear that he is not, as the CGSC says, "Army leader" material," as defined in chapter two of the Command and General Staff Course (CGSC) manual.Boykin has embarrassed himself and should be relieved.
But he's not the only one.
As was discovered recently, Army Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, commander of 2nd Battalion, 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, wrote a form letter and then passed it around to be signed by soldiers (and in some cases those signatures are said to not be real) and then sent to American newspapers as letters to the editor.
Where's the harm? The letters were basically pro-soldier, right? Yes, but they were clear violations of 1344.10, too.
Lt. Gen. Boykin has issued and apology today and tried to explain his comments regarding religion and the war in Iraq.
In his statement, Boykin said for 33 years he has defended every American's right to "worship as he or she chooses" and the "right of free speech and a free press."An apology is all well and good as far as that goes, but in this case, I don't think its sufficient. For one thing, his attempt at explaining his comments, in at least one area, came off as more than a bit disingenuous. In his remarks today, he said:"I will continue to do so," he said.
[...] He concluded with an apology.
"For those who have been offended by my statements, I offer a sincere apology," he said.
"My comments to Osman Otto in Mogadishu were not referencing his worship of Allah but his worship of money and power; idolatry. He was a corrupt man, not a follower of Islam."Yet if you read his comments to Osman Otto, you see that his comment about "his god being an idol" were referring to his having prayed to Allah, and nothing was mentioned about his worshiping money or power. He tells how Otto (Atto in the excerpt below) has bragged about being protected by Allah, explains how he prayed that God would let them catch Otto and then tells Otto that he "underestimated" Boykin's God.
First Baptist Church, Daytona, FL, Jan 28, 2003As part of his explanation, he also says:“There was a man in Mogadishu named Osman Atto. You see him in the movie [“Blackhawk Down”], smoking a big cigar and talking philosophically. How many of you have seen the movie? Acting like a big shot. Well let me tell you something. That’s not what Osman Atto did. The reality was Osman Atto was Aideed’s closest ally. He was Aideed’s top lieutenant. He was a multimillionaire financier for Aideed’s clan. And we knew if that if we could capture Osman Atto and take him away, that we could destroy Aideed’s network. So we went after Osman Atto about two weeks before the battle.... We went after Osman Atto. We got into a terrible fight. And I’m sad to say a lot of Somalis were killed as we went after Osman Atto.
But we missed him by seconds. He walked out of the facility that we raided, he walked down the street and blended in with the crowd and we missed him.
“And then he went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, ‘They’ll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.’
“Well, you know what I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol. But I prayed, Lord let us get that man.
“Three days later we went after him again, and this time we got him. Not a mark on him. We got him. We brought him back into our base there and we had a Sea Land container set up to hold prisoners in, and I said put him in there. They put him in there, there was one guard with him. I said search him, they searched him, and then I walked in with no one in there but the guard, and I looked at him and said, ‘Are you Osman Atto?’ And he said ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Mr. Atto, you underestimated our God.’”
"My references to Judeo-Christian roots in America or our nation as a Christian nation are historically undeniable."Actually, they are deniable - there are a number of historical documents that contain statements from the Founding Fathers making it clear that the United States was not intended to be a "Christian Nation." As Americans United for the Separation of Church and State notes in their "Is America a 'Christian Nation'" brochure:
[...] The U.S. Constitution is a wholly secular document. It contains no mention of Christianity or Jesus Christ. In fact, the Constitution refers to religion only twice – in the First Amendment, which bars laws "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," and in Article VI, which prohibits "religious tests" for public office. Both of these provisions are evidence that the country was not founded as officially Christian.Given the nature of Boykin's statements and the fact that he made them while in uniform, the fact that they will undoubtedly be used by Islamist terrorist organizations to help recruit new terrorists, and they way they could create tension within the ranks by implying that our army is some kind of Holy Force for the Christian God, an apology and badly spun explaination isn't enough. As I mentioned yesterday, had his remarks been aimed at Jews, there'd be no question that his days in the military would be over. If it would be wrong to make such statements about one group, it is just as wrong to make them about any group.[...] Jefferson and Madison's viewpoint also carried the day when the Constitution, and later, the Bill of Rights, were written. Had an officially Christian nation been the goal of the founders, that concept would appear in the Constitution. It does not. Instead, our nation's governing document ensures religious freedom for everyone. Maryland representative Luther Martin said that a handful of delegates to the Constitutional Convention argued for formal recognition of Christianity in the Constitution, insisting that such language was necessary in order to "hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism." But that view was not adopted, and the Constitution gave government no authority over religion. Article VI, which allows persons of all religious viewpoints to hold public office, was adopted by a unanimous vote. Through ratification of the First Amendment, observed Jefferson, the American people built a "wall of separation between church and state."
Airlines have been ordered to inspect all of their planes in the wake of the discovery of box cutters and other items that were snuck aboard two Southwest Airlines planes.
The inspections were prompted by the discovery of bags containing box cutters, Play-Doh and a small amount of bleach in suntan lotion bottles in the bathrooms aboard two Southwest Airlines flights Thursday night, federal law enforcement officials told NBC News on condition of anonymity.This is one of those stories that seems to have bad news and worse news. I'm just not sure which part is the "worse" - that someone was able to sneak these items on the planes in the first place, or that even after they were tipped off to the items presence in September, it still took them another month to find them.
The cases, which were discovered by Southwest employees doing routine maintenance, also included notes that said that while federal security screeners were doing a good job, they needed to improve. “Look what I was able to get through” was how officials who spoke to NBC News characterized the nature of the notes.
The notes said the packages were stashed on the planes in August. NBC News has learned that the Transportation Security Administration received an e-mail in September bragging about carrying similar packages onto airplanes.
I'm going through the new article on Lt. Gen. Boykin that is being published in tomorrow's Washington Post. It's got a few additional quotes from some of his speeches that help show exactly why they've become controversial.
[...] He spoke of Islamic extremists hating the United States because “we’re a Christian nation” and added that our “spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” He said that President Bush “is in the White House because God put him there,” and that “we in the army of God . . . have been raised for such a time as this.”It also tells us what his job is:
A much-decorated veteran of covert military operations, Boykin took over in June as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, heading a new Pentagon office focused on hunting al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets.Given this, I feel even more strongly that he should resign or be removed. His views make him entirely unsuitable for any job where he would have a significant role in the War or Terror - and if he's going to be in charge of the search for important War on Terror targets, he's going to have some influence there.
As Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said:
“Putting a man with such extremist views in a critical policymaking position sends entirely the wrong message to a Muslim world that is already skeptical about America’s motives and intentions."Requests have been made that he either be reassigned or reprimanded, but I believe the harsher step of resignation or removal is more appropriate, because as I noted earlier, not only do his views send the wrong message to the rest of the world, they also send the wrong message to our troops - and that's of critical importance, too.
Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a new deputy undersecretary of defense who's promotion and appointment were confirmed by the Senate this past June, has been going to churches - in full military dress uniform - delivering speeches saying that the war on terror is a war between a "Judeo-Christian" America and America's enemy, Satan. On at least one occasion, he even said that his God is the "real" God, while the God of a Muslim "was an idol."
Here is a sample of some of what he's had to say:
First Baptist Church, Broken Arrow, OK, June 30, 2002:He also tells his audience that President Bush is God's chosen leader:
[Slide show, Picture of Osama bin Laden] “And then we began to see this face…the face of Osama bin Laden. And finally we said, ‘There’s the enemy. That’s our enemy. That’s the man that hates us. And all of those that follow him.”
[Picture of President Bush] “And then this man stepped forward. A man that has acknowledged that he prays in the Oval Office. A man that’s in the White House today because of a miracle. You think about how he got in the White House. You think about why he’s there today. As Mordecai said to Esther, ‘You have been put there for such a time and place.’ And this man has been put in the White house to lead our nation in such a time as this.“But who is that enemy? It’s not Osama bin Laden. Our enemy is a spiritual enemy because we are a nation of believers. You go back and look at our history, and you will find that we were founded on faith. Look at what the writers of our Constitution said. We are a nation of believers. We were founded on faith.”
[Picture of Satan] “And the enemy that has come against our nation is a spiritual enemy. His name is Satan. And if you do not believe that Satan is real, you are ignoring the same Bible that tells you about God. Now I’m a warrior. One day I’m going to take off this uniform and I’m still going to be a warrior. And what I’m here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors of God’s kingdom.”[There are two additional excerpts available at the same page.]
“Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”These comments are more than just offensive. They're statements that are likely stir up more resentment against America among Islamists. There's already been considerable concern from the Islamic community that our war on terror is really a religious crusade. Remember the flap that occurred when, 5 days after the September 11 attacks, Bush said "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while"? He ended up having to back away from that term because some in the Islamic world were taking it as confirmation that the War or Terror is, in fact, a religious war and that the "Christian" America was going to try and kill or convert all Muslims.
That was just one word. Boykin has given entire speeches filled with messages that Islamic nations are after us because we're a "Judeo-Christian" land, with an obligation to protect Israel, and that since our land follows the "real" God while our enemies worship idols, we will be granted the victory under our God-appointed leader. By claiming that the "real enemy" is Satan, Boykin conflates Islam with Satanism, and paints the terrorists who are attacking us as Satan's minions - his weapon - though which he is striking at the heart of righteousness. Boykin gives these speeches while wearing his uniform, something that may be perceived by other nations as an indication that he is speaking on behalf of the military - if not the government itself.
What is worse is that, so far, Rumsfeld is giving this man his support.
Asked about this Thursday, Rumsfeld told reporters he had not seen the videos and did not know the "full context" of Boykin's remarks. But the secretary did say, "We do know that he is an officer that has an outstanding record in the United States armed forces."Of course, when it was soldiers speaking out against the Pentagon leadership, there was no problem with "managing" or "controlling" what was being said.[...] "There are a lot of things that are said by people that are their views," he said, "and that's the way we live. We are free people and that's the wonderful thing about our country, and I think for anyone to run around and think that can be managed or controlled is probably wrong."
"None of us that wear this uniform are free to say anything disparaging about the secretary of defense, or the president of the United States," said Gen. John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command.These rules, and others that serve to limit the freedom of speech a soldier may have, exist to help ensure unit cohesion and prevent a breakdown of discipline and morale, so that our troops will be able to do their jobs as well as they possibly can. Logically, I would think that these rules would also apply to making other kinds of public statements that could potentially lead to problems with unit cohesion, disciplinary issues or lowered morale.
Comments like those made by Boykin can be misconstrued by our enemies or provoke them in such a way that it makes it easier for them recruit more soldiers to fight against us. They can also strengthens the enemy's resolve to defeat us. In addition, they can be taken by soldiers as indicating disapproval of who they are or what they believe, leaving them unsure as to how it might affect their careers in the military. And, of course, they can contribute to an atmosphere where there is hostility between soldiers of different religions. These are all definitely factors that can affect cohesion, discipline and morale.
Fortunately, Boykin now seems to understand that such comments are likely to be counterproductive.
Boykin tells NBC News that, given his new assignment, he is curtailing such speeches in the future. He says, “I don’t want … to be misconstrued. I don’t want to come across as a right-wing radical.”Unfortunately, his understanding has come too late. His comments are already out there - and he's already shown himself to be a right-wing radical, and while he's said that "he respects Muslims and believes the radicals who attack America are “not true followers of Islam," his comments make it clear that he views America's "Judeo-Christian values" as being key to our success in this war and that he considers this to be, first and foremost, a religious war. Given the repercussions as discussed above, I feel that he should resign or face disciplinary action from the military. While some may think that recommending he leave the military is to harsh, I'm sure if he made similar comments about Israel or Judaism, conservatives would have him drummed out of the corps in a heartbeat.
UPDATE 11:02pm: As I was hitting the "Publish" button on this piece, my little MSNBC pop-up news thingy started flashing, and it turns out there's a new story out about this subject. You can find it at: http://www.msnbc.com/news/981411.asp?0na=x2301582-.
I haven't had a chance to read it yet, and after working on this thing for the last 2 hours, I need a break, so I'm going to go play my guitar and stuff for a bit before I go through it - but if anything else I've said here needs to be updated based on any new information, I'll do another entry later this evening.
BTW: I just had my 40,000th visitor today - I never thought I'd create a site that would have that many people want to see it - even over a period of years, so I'm extremely flattered and pleased that so many of you have made this a stop on your trip through the web. Thank you very much!!
From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.
Link via Atrios
This may become something of a new feature around here - sometimes I run across things people have said that just don't quite work right, but I don't have any real comment to add, so I don't want to make a whole entry just for the one quote. Today, I found three that just threw me for a loop, so I figured I'd put 'em all together and let them stand on their own. The quotes aren't related to each other - theyy're just some of the stranger comments I've seen floating around today.
George Nethercutt on the comparitive value of the Iraq reconstruction story versus the Iraq war news:
"The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable," Nethercutt, R-Wash., told an audience of 65 at a noon meeting at the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs."It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day."
He added that he did not want any more soldiers to be killed.
Mickey Kaus on Rush Limbaugh's on-air performance while addicted:
I've never shared the liberal animus toward Rush Limbaugh. The few times I've listened to his show it has been conducted on what seems like a pretty high level.
New Republic Editor Peter Beinart responding to Bill Hemmer's assertion that the press may actually be under-reporting how bad things are in Iraq:
Peter, I think there's two sides of that coin. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) just a second here. If you're saying it's actually worse than being reported, could it also be better than what's being reported also, if you consider that these reporters, many of them tell us they want to go cover the new school opening, but they can't because there's another bombing or shooting and that prevents them from sending that story?
If you missed the 60 Minutes II segment tonight featuring Greg Thielmann's observations on the lead-up to the war in Iraq, CBS has a transcript of the segment available online along with video clips of the interviews included in the piece.
In the run-up to the war in Iraq, one moment seemed to be a turning point: the day Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations to make the case for the invasion.Among some of the more interesting points is that Thielmann and his group had come to the conclusion in 2001 that the aluminum tubes intercepted on their way to Iraq were for use in conventional rockets rather than uranium centrifuges - nearly 2 years before Powell claims that they were for uranium enrichment in his February speech to the UN.Millions of people watched as he laid out the evidence and reached a damning conclusion -- that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Correspondent Scott Pelley has an interview with Greg Thielmann, a former expert on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Thielmann, a foreign-service officer for 25 years, now says that key evidence in the speech was misrepresented and the public was deceived.
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“I had a couple of initial reactions. Then I had a more mature reaction,” says Thielmann, commenting on Powell's presentation to the United Nations.“I think my conclusion now is that it's probably one of the low points in his long, distinguished service to the nation.”
Thielmann's last job at the State Department was director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs, which was responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Secretary Powell. He and his staff had the highest security clearances, and everything – whether it came into the CIA or the Defense Department – came through his office.
Thielmann was admired at the State Department. One high-ranking official called him honorable, knowledgeable, and very experienced. Thielmann, too, had planned to retire just four months before Powell’s big moment at the U.N.
The story also notes that Adnan Sayeed Haideiri, a defector, associated with Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, who provided information to the US government about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction, was considered such an important source that he was put into the witness protection program. David Albright, a physicist who has helped interview defectors for the UN, said that from reviewing Haideiri's claims, it was clear he had no knowledge of WMD and his information has lead to no discoveries.
This whole "Marriage Protection Week" thing is a farce. Marriage needs far less protection from gays than it does from people who get married and then are abusive to their spouses, have affairs, neglect their marriage in favour of their careers, abuse drugs or alcohol, gamble themselves into financial ruin or engage in other such actions that not only are the leading causes of divorce, but also do immeasurable damage to the families that we're always being told are the true foundation of American society.
It seems to me that if conservatives and other who oppose gay marriage are so worried about the damage allowing gays to marry would do to the concept of the American family, why aren't they out fighting just as hard to make adultry illegal again, or create constitutional amendments that would prevent anyone with a history of substance abuse, bankruptcy, negligence or domestic violence from being able to marry? Why don't they pass laws to prevent such people from being able to ever adopt or gain custody of their own children?
It seems to me that it would be far more important to seriously work on these problems, which we know cause marriages to fail and cause harm to children than to try and pass a Constitutional amendment to prevent something that's already illegal (though it really shouldn't be) and which hasn't been shown to have nearly as much of an impact on families as these other issues have. We've all heard about criminals who blame their crimes on having been raised by abusive or neglegent parents (of any gender or sexual persuasion), but how many have said it was because they were raised by a non-abusive gay parent?
Of course, we all know the reason that the anti-gay forces don't put nearly as much energy into preventing the known problems that end marriages and damage children as they do into preventing gay marriage is that the point really isn't about what damage letting gays marry might do to "families". The issue is simple bigotry - and this is just the excuse they've latched on to in order to try and get their laws passed.
When I posted the previous entry about the NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin's response to questions raised about part of a story being cut, I also sent an e-mail to him asking the same question - and he responsded:
Dear Kriselda Jarnsaxa,While some may think that's a bit of a "lame" excuse for cutting an important part of a story, I still remember how much fun it could be trying to figure out how to fit all the news I wanted to include into the amount of time available when I was at my old church's station. I found I either had to cut a lot of information I wanted to include or read the news really fast - and reading news really fast isn't usually the best choice if you want to be understood.It was edited for time. The first edition was done live and ran over the
allotted length.Rgds.
Jeffrey Dvorkin, the ombudsman at National Public Radio offers an explaination for why the written transcript of a report was different from the story as broadcast by NPR. He ends up providing at least part of an answer, but seems to have missed what the question was really about.
A number of Web sites such as the Traprock Peace Center and Eschaton urged their readers to complain to NPR about an apparent discrepancy in a news story between the audio and its transcript.It's not a bad answer, as far as it goes - but it doesn't go nearly far enough. The main reason the question was being raised is that, as Dvorkin noted, the allegation about the Justice department being asked for and granting a delay in notifying the White House staff is an important part of the story, and the reason for it's removal should be offered.The story aired during Morning Edition on October 2. The report by legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg concerned the naming of a CIA operative who is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. [...]
Totenberg, in discussion of this story with host Bob Edwards, mentioned that the White House asked that the Justice Department delay the announcement of the investigation for several hours.
[...] Although Totenberg mentioned this in her report, the transcript showed no such allegation.
[...] Here's what was said on the air but is still missing from the transcript:
TOTENBERG: "The White House asked for and got permission earlier this week to wait a day before issuing a directive to preserve all documents and logs which led one seasoned federal prosecutor to wonder why they wanted to wait a day, and who at the justice department told them they could do that, and why?"An important part of the story, no doubt.The explanation from NPR is straightforward:
Morning Edition and All Things Considered are updated and re-fed to accommodate listeners in each time zone. Because it is cost prohibitive and repetitive for NPR to provide text and audio of every feed, it is our practice to use, for archival purposes, the last and most up-to-date, feed of each program as the final text. However, you can find the original audio of this piece on our Web site, www.npr.org.It's an explanation that makes the best sense, but perhaps not in an environment where listeners can assume the worst.In future, NPR Online might better serve its readers (especially in these politically charged times) by noting where a story has been edited for time between its first and last editions.
Dear Kriselda Jarnsaxa,While some may think that's a bit of a "lame" excuse for cutting an important part of a story, I still remember how much fun it could be trying to figure out how to fit all the news I wanted to include into the amount of time available when I was at my old church's station. I found I either had to cut a lot of information I wanted to include or read the news really fast - and reading news really fast isn't usually the best choice if you want to be understood.It was edited for time. The first edition was done live and ran over the
allotted length.Rgds.
I found this site courtesy of Uggabugga - it's a fairly new political cartoon site, called The Gotham City 13. Stop by and check 'em out - they're good :)
Talk about spin! Andrew Sullivan posits that, in a way, Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction has been a good thing for conservatives. I can only begin to imagine the ruckus it would cause if a liberal commentator has been revealed to be addicted to drugs - prescription or otherwise - and someone came to his or her defense by pointing s/he could well have been a better writer/broadcaster/etc because of it. Yet that's exactly what Sullivan is saying. Here's an exceprt:
In fact, it might be true that Rush was a better broadcaster because he was high. His particular blend of self-mocking, lacerating, funny and fluent commentary reminds me in a way of people on a kind of high. Or maybe this attitude is actually hard to sustain for so long at such a pitch - and so the drugs helped him endure the slog of daily broadcasting the way drugs can enhance athletes' performance. Either way, the drugs may well have helped him do his job well. Obviously, he got addicted in a major way - which is the mega-down-side of such meds. And he may have lost his hearing because of enormous abuse of the pills. But it behooves us to notice the upside as well: that these drugs, far from impairing his ability to do great radio, may have helped him. If there were a way for Rush to use the drugs in moderation without getting addicted, why would that be a bad thing? And how would that differ in a deep way from people on anti-depressants who aren't clinically depressed? Or casual pot-smokers? Or old-time columnists who used to write brilliant columns while under the influence of a triple scotch?Setting aside any moral issues for the moment, I do have a question. I used to be the program director at my old college radio station, and worked as a missionary volunteer at my old church's radio station in Nome, AK. Now, it's been awhile since I was last on-air, but at the time, I recall that one of the things the faculty advisor drilled into us was that it was a violation of our individual FCC licenses, as well as a violation of the stations FCC operating license, for us to be broadcasting if we were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. If we were caught, it was a $2,500 fine for each instance, and the broadcaster could lose their license for multiple violations. If it was a big enough problem, it could even threaten the station's license.
To the best of my knowledge, that rule hasn't been changed, and if it hasn't, that would cause a major problem with Andrew's idea for broadcasters to work under the influence of improperly or illegally used drugs.
But back to Andrew's big question, I'd have to say that there probably isn't much difference between someone using painkillers as a non-addicted level, and someone who isn't a depressive using anti-depressants, someone smoking pot now and then or someone having a few drinks at lunch. At the same time, however, I also have to say that I don't think that professional broadcasters/pundits/columnists/etc should be doing any of those things while they're working. Maybe it adds to the stylistic flow, but given the choice, I'll take clarity of thought.
Gallup did a door-to-door survey recently in Baghdad, and the results will probably set more than a few conservatives to gloating. It seems that in Baghdad, at least, the Iraqis don't necessarily want us to leave too soon.
The Gallup poll found that 71 percent of the capital city's residents felt U.S. troops should not leave in the next few months. Just 26 percent felt the troops should leave that soon.Not all of the news is good, though.[...] Almost six in 10 in the poll, 58 percent, said that U.S. troops in Baghdad have behaved fairly well or very well, with one in 10 saying "very well." Twenty 20 percent said the troops have behaved fairly badly and 9 percent said very badly.
However, a sizable minority felt that circumstances could occur in which attacks against the troops could be justified. Almost one in five, 19 percent, said attacks could be justified, and an additional 17 percent said they could be in some situations.Initially, I found the phrasing of that section to be a bit muffled - my initial impression was that only 20% felt attacks were sometimes justified, but reading it again, it's really 36% - or a bit over a third.
And then there's this:
[...] Six in 10 Baghdad residents said that within the past four weeks they had been afraid at times to go outside their homes during the day.Perhaps the most interesting part of the survey, though, was how eager the people contacted were to participate and have a chance to give their opinion. About 90% of those asked agreed to take the hour needed to complete the survey.
While the survey was handled by the Gallup organization, when the Iraqis were surveyed, they were not told that an American organization was doing the poll. Critics may see this as somehow invalidating the poll responses, but I think it might actually have been a good strategy. By not disclosing that it was an American firm handling the survey, it neutralized the possibility that the Iraqis opinions might be swayed by their own bias either for or against Americans in general. Of course, the Iraqis might have been able to guess that it was something being done by an American company. Who knows how often they were asked for their opinion under Saddam's regime, eh?
[Note: Updated at 6:13 am to add the phrase "door-to-door" in the first sentence - I realized that with the headline I'd used, it looked like this was a phone survey, but it wasn't - it involved face-to-face interviews. I also reworked the last paragraph to make it a bit cleaner (to many uses of the word "some" and its variations), though the meaning has not been changed at all.]
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the "Pledge of Allegiance" appeal, though apparently Justice Antonin Scalia has recused himself from the case.
The court said it would consider whether a public school district policy requiring teachers to lead willing students in reciting the pledge violated the First Amendment, which bars the government establishment or endorsement of religion.I imagine the hoopla surrounding this one will probably be even bigger than the Texas sodomy case decided on earlier this year.The justices agreed to review a controversial ruling by a U.S. appeals court in San Francisco that the pledge, recited by millions of American schoolchildren each day, violated the constitutional separation of church and state.
[...] Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the court's most conservative members who normally votes for government displays of religious phrases or symbols, did not take part in the pledge case.
Newdow had urged Scalia to remove himself from the case. In a speech in January in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Scalia questioned whether courts should remove religious symbols and phrases from public life.
"We could eliminate 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance. That could be democratically done," he said. But he added that would be "contrary to our whole tradition."
In a great show of pandering to the Religious Right, President Bush has declared this week to be "Marriage Protection Week".
Last week, President Bush declared Oct. 12-18 "Marriage Protection Week," a designation that sought to provide "an opportunity to focus our efforts on preserving the sanctity of marriage and on building strong and healthy marriages in America."First, let me say this idea makes my blood boil. Defining marriage based on religious teachings is not only favouring of one religion over all others by making it's tenets the law of the land, but it also creates a form of legalized religious discrimination, only in this case, the victims are being discriminated against because they won't conform to someone else's religious beliefs."During Marriage Protection Week, I call on all Americans to join me in expressing support for the institution of marriage with all its benefits to our people, our culture and our society," Bush announced in an Oct. 3 proclamation.
Fortunately, supporters of gay marriage are taking advantage of "Marriage Protection Week" to reinforce their own points about why marriage should be available to all couples, gay or straight.
Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays is holding their own "Marriage Equality Week".
"PFLAG has no wish to tread on the religious beliefs of any faith; each must remain free to define its own requirement for marriage, as mandated by our Constitution's separation of church and state," said PFLAG Executive Director David Tseng. "We only ask that the government and President Bush provide all people the same standing and extend to them their constitutional right to equality under the law."The Human Rights Commission has an Action Center project that will send e-mails to your Senators and Representatives (2 short pre-written paragraphs and room for you to add your own comments) in opposition to any kind of an amendment forbidding gay marriage.
One of my favourite protests, though, has to be this wonderful bit of satire by the Department of Faith at WhiteHouse.org which the authors describe as follows:
Beloved American patriot Jerry Falwell recently announced that he will devote the remainder of his Godly life to advocating a Constitutional amendment banning marriage between people of the same gender. The United States Department of Faith supports Mr. Falwell's desire to impose Biblical edicts on Americans of all faiths by converting the Constitution from a document that restricts the power of government into one that limits the so-called freedoms of individuals. Nevertheless, the Department of Faith also recognizes that the Bible is replete with verses restricting marriage in many ways, not merely as relates to Mr. Falwell's infatuation with men licking each other. As such, the USDOF has delivered to the President and each member of the U.S. Congress the following proposal to incorporate Biblical restrictions on marriage into our Christian nation's otherwise embarrassingly flawed and secular Constitution
Rob Salkowitz at Emphasis Added does a nice analysis of Bush's "leadership" qualities and the problems they're starting to cause. He does a nice job comparing Bush's version of leadership to that of previous presidents, and shows how little true "leading" Bush has done.
Bush's supporters point to his "leadership" as his defining quality. Let's look at leadership. Harry Truman fired Douglas McArthur, America's pre-eminent military figure, at the height of the Korean War for insubordination and imposed the Taft-Hartley Act on striking unions. Nixon went to China in contravention of an entire career of anti-Communism, shocking his hardcore base. Reagan reversed himself and raised taxes in 1986 when it was clear that the 1981 cuts were having too much of a negative effect on public finances. Papa Bush did the same in 1990, even though it meant electoral defeat. Clinton, the first Democrat elected President in 12 years, declared the era of big government over, passed welfare reform and balanced the budget.Bush's inability to truly lead is probably one of, if not the, biggest problem facing our country today. Bush seems to forget that he was placed in the position of President, not Figure Head, and that occasionally, being President means you have to make decisions all on your own - and that sometimes you have to upset your supporters in the process, if it's in the best interest of the nation.
By contrast, George W. Bush has never, in nearly three years in office, taken a single significant position against the wishes of his base. He has never challenged his supporters to move with him to a more moderate stance. He has never publicly rebuked one of his senior aides (the firing of the first Treasury secretary, a nonentity taken seriously by no one, barely registers). He has never moved with sincerity and purpose to common ground with his opponents or shown the least bit of grace and humility in his interactions with anyone.
[Note: I tried to link directly to the article, but for some reason, the link came up with a "404" error, so this is linked to the main page. The article title is "Follow the Leader" - just scroll down until you see it if Rob's added anything else to his blog since then.]
Last week, ABC News.com reported on a General Accounting Office (GAO) report showing that Pentagon was selling equipment suitable for use in creating biological weapons at "bargain" prices through a surplus equipment website.
According to the report, which is due to be released today and discussed in a hearing of the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security, Congress ordered the GAO — its investigative arm — to set up a phony company to see how easy it would be to buy surplus lab equipment from the Pentagon.To make matters worse, some of the equipment was then resold to people in Egypt, Malaysia and the Philippines, places from which terrorists have been known to work.Using fake names, GAO investigators went to a Web site that sells Pentagon surplus and ordered items needed to produce bacteriological weapons, including evaporators, centrifuges, bacteriological incubators and protective clothing.
In its report, the GAO found that the "Department of Defense has not attempted to determine who is buying excess biological equipment or how these items were being used."
Oddly (or perhaps not), this story has received little coverage. I found a few foreign papers carrying it, but no major US sites other than ABC. A couple of the other stories, though, had interesting tidbits. Reuters noted potential problems with defective protective suits.
But the GAO said it was able to buy hundreds of older Battle Dress Overgarments, some from defective lots the department had been trying to get out of circulation for several years.And the Guardian commented on a particularly ironic aspect of the story:Almost 5,000 defective suits may have been issued to state and local law enforcement agencies, it said.
"Vague recall notices by the Defense Logistics Agency mean some first responders may still be relying on protective gear that won't work," Shays said.
The news is particularly embarrassing, coming only days after the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group claimed the discovery of similar equipment in Iraq was evidence that the Saddam Hussein regime had a covert weapons programme.Of course, the Defense Logistics Agency that handles the surplus goods from the Pentagon has promised to study what they need to do to help keep potential terrorists from getting their hands on such equipment and are taking steps to let people know if they've purchased potentially defective gear.
Roger Ailes has posted excerpts of a letter from John Ashcroft to Dennis Hastert discussing how leaks from government officials should be handled. It's interesting to note the striking differences between what is discussed and what is current happening with the Valerie Plame case.
The full document is available also.
I now have the new MT-Blacklist plugin running to try and prevent comment spam. Please let me know by e-mail if you have any problems leaving comments.
Well, even after admitting there was no connection between Saddam Hussein, Iraq and the September 11th attacks, he's still trying to use September 11th to justify the war in Iraq.
On a day when two U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq, President Bush used a Columbus Day speech Monday to pay tribute to soldiers who have died in that war and others.And people in this administration pretend to be confused when a survey shows that 70% of people believe Saddam was behind the attacks."That's what's happening today: People are willing to sacrifice for the country they love," Bush said at the White House. "They remember the lessons of September 11th, 2001, and so do I."
The war with Iraq has nothing to do with September 11th. The soldiers dying over there are not dying to avenge the thousands killed that day.
They're dying because Bush wanted to see Saddam removed from power in a misguided attempt to "remake" the Middle East in America's image, in which he and his chief advisors have done little but make one misstep after another after another.
They're dying because Bush refused to work with the rest of the world to see Saddam disarmed, because Bush didn't care about disarming Saddam. Only removing him by force was good enough for him.
They're dying because the civilian leadership in the Pentagon used faulty assumptions (especially on how we would be treated by the Iraqis once we'd taken Saddam down) in trying to determine troop strength, tactics, equipment needed and how long the soldiers would need to be deployed.
They're dying because the chaos in Iraq is attracting terrorists to the area - and while supporters of the "flypaper" theory may think this is good, it's really not. There's no limited number of terrorists that we can attract to Iraq and "kill 'em all" there. The longer we stay in Iraq, the more terrorists we help create.
They're dying because people who thought this war was a good idea, including the President (with his "you're either with us or against us" language) and the Attorney General (who reminded everyone that if we spoke out against what the government was doing, we were, in essence, helping the terrorists), decided that rather than listen to the concerns being raised by people opposed to the war - concerns that, for the most part, have since been shown to be valid - they would vilify us as "unpatriotic" and call us "traitors".
So, please, Mr. President. Stop pretending that your war has anything to do with September 11th. You know perfectly well that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the attacks - you've admitted that there is no evidence that Saddam was involved in those attacks.
Those soldiers are being sacrificed on the alter of your own arrogance and incompetence. Don't try to pretend otherwise.
Link via Atrios
A few days ago, I posted an entry about a column John Dean had written in which he said he believed that a criminal case might be able to be made against White House staffers who tried to push the Plame story after Novak had initially published it, even if they were not responsible for the original leak. Today, Mark Kleiman has posted his response to Dean's comments and presents his argument as to why Dean's suggestion is evidence that we're better off without an "independent counsel" law. (Note that an "independent counsel", such as Ken Starr was, is different than a "special prosecutor", which is someone appointed by the Justice Department to handle a case. Special prosecutors are generally given specific issues to investigate, while independent counsels are supposed to prosecute every crime they possibly can.)
I was especially struck by how Kleiman shows that what Dean is suggestion is actually quite similar to a tactic Ashcroft has already used, and which Dean previously wrote about and condemned.
In any war, there will be casualties. It's a simple, inescapable fact that war kills. It's also pretty much to be expected that at least a few of those casualties will be soldiers who simply can't take it any more and decide to kill themselves. Though we haven't been hearing much about suicides in Iraq, they're happening - and the military is reporting that the suicide rate has increased enough that they're looking into why and what can be done about it.
In the past seven months, at least 11 soldiers and three Marines have committed suicide in Iraq, military officials say. That is an annual rate of 17 per 100,000. The Navy also is investigating one possible suicide. And about a dozen other Army deaths are under investigation and could include suicides.Most of the suicides have occured since May 1st, when President Bush declared the "Mission Accomplished." The difficult conditions that soldiers are having to live under in Iraq, combined with the uncertain nature of guerilla warfare and the long deployments soldiers are facing are all factors that can trigger or exacerbate depressive episodes. While the military provides mental health assistance to the soldiers, because they don't have necessary resources available to them in Iraq, they've so far had to send almost 500 soldiers home.The numbers suggest the rate in Iraq is above normal. Last year, the military services reported 8 to 9 suicides per 100,000 people. The Army rate is usually higher, 10 to 13 per 100,000. That mirrors the rate for the same age group in the general population.
Many of the soldiers who are being deployed to Iraq are Reservists and National Guardsmen and women, who, admittedly, knew when they signed up that they might be deployed to actual war zones, but never expected that it would be this kind of a war or for as long as they're now being told they may have to stay. It's sadly ironic that a man who chose to avoid serving as an active duty soldier during Vietnam by joining the National Guard and then failed to show up for the last part of his agreed-to term of service is now sending our National Guardsmen and women to fight in a long-term, active duty war - a war he quite clearly mislead the country into. That these - and other - soldiers are finding conditions there so intolerable that they become depressed enough to commit suicide is a national tragedy.
There's a thread over at Making Light about a specific comment spammer who has been posting ads for what is allegedly child pornography. This guy is really obnoxious - one blogger reports having it show up on 89 posts so far (I've only had to delete him 4 times - and I was getting frustrated with that!) Apparently, he has a large block of IP addresses that he uses (MT can block comments by IP address). Unfortunately, he was able to get through my setup of the "Kill Comment Spam Dead" hack even after I had added at least one of his URLs to the list, so I am going to be using IP banning also to try and keep him off.
As a result, I am banning all IPs in the "209.210.176." range. It's known that he holds at least 63 of those IPs, but I'm going ahead and blocking the entire IP range. For anyone else using MT who wants to do likewise, just ad the above string (including the final dot) to your "IP Banning" section under "Weblog Configuration". In addition, he also apparently is using 62.42.228.6 and 199.20.16.200
In the comments section of the same thread, Charlie Stross offers another list of IP numbers to block, which have been sending out large numbers of spam messages:
38.144.36.13
65.214.36.118
203.54.241.113
4.63.166.229
12.148.209.198
66.196.90.39
62.42.228.6
82.41.201.108
12.148.209.198
68.194.33.229
81.131.176.87
Also, Jay Allen will be releasing a plug-in version of his "Kill Comment Spam Dead Blacklist" tomorrow - he gave his URL in comments to check for more information: http://www.jayallen.org/journey/2003/10/mtblacklist_monday_hell_or_high_water
Eric Olsen offers a couple of different ideas on dealing with the situation. First is to modify the .htaccess file (if your host allows you to). He gives the following instructions on doing so, if you want to go that route:
.htaccess is the way to go, simply because you can use netmasks or CIDR to limit what you cut, and you don't have to type in a few dozen IPs.I'm not sure if I'm up to messing around with .htaccess yet, but I thought I'd at least post it here for anyone else who's interested :)It's dependent on htaccess configuation being turned on. Contact your sysadmin if this doesn't work. Otherwise, create the following file in the root of your webserver, named ".htaccess". The leading dot is important.
Order Allow, deny
deny from 209.210.176.0/26
Or, if you prefer netmasks to CIDR
deny from 209.210.176.0/255.255.255.178Kip's spammer is a 16 bit netblock (an old Class B) issued to Telecom Malaysia. If they are using DCHP, and this spammer's dialing up, the only way is to kill the whole Class B -- over 16,000 addresses. You can do that in one line
deny from 219.95.0.0/16
or
deny from 219.95.0.0/255.255.0.0How much extra damage this will do, I don't know. You may want to try just the one ip first, if you keep getting hit from the 219.95.14.0 block, expanded it to the /24, if that doesn't work, go for the whole /16
And, just so you know, one way to give up is.
deny from 0.0.0.0/0
Though, tecnically, the trailing /0 is redundant.
Another of his suggestions (apparently inspired by Charlie Stross's attempts at solving the comment spam) is to try and defeat the bots that do all of the postings. Apparently there is a spider bot that is out searching for "mt-comments.cgi" across the web and using that to post the spams, so a potential dodge is to re-name "mt-comments.cgi". This is a bit riskier, though, because you also have to modify your templates to make sure they know where to look. Here are the instructions for this particular method:
One defense is to rename mt-comments.cgi, call only it, and install a trap cgi that automatically blocks anyone calling mt-comments.cgi.Again, I'm not sure I'm confident enough of my own skills to try doing this, but there it is if you want to try it :)Problem: Anybody who follows an old link to your comments will get blocked.
Renaming the mt-comments.cgi alone may be enough to stop this spammer's bot -- but it may not last long.
To rename it, you'll need to rename the mt-comments.cgi file, then you'll need to edit your template to change the call. Look for the OpenComments javascript, in it, there will be a "window.open" call that should have, as a first parameter, a URL ending in mt-comments.cgi. Change that to match what you've renamed the comments cgi.
Easiest way to not lose.
1) Copy mt-comments.cgi to something else. Make up a name. I'm deliberatly *not* giving a name here, I want all of you to have different ones. (If the spider is looking for names, and you all change to the same name, he'll change the spider.) Make certain it ends in .cgi, though.
2) Edit your template, change the "window.open" call to the new name. On this blog, the function is right at the top, I don't know if that's universally true. Save it off.
Reload the page. Make sure comments still work. Now.
3) Rename mt-comments.cgi to mt-comments.off.
Reload page, make sure comments still work. If they do, then you're done. If they don't, rename mt-comments.off back to mt-comments.cgi, and check your templates to make sure you've changed the OpenComments function.
I wish I could test this, but I don't run MT or have a blog, I'm just a sysadmin. As Knuth famously wrote, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
The truly paranoid would back everything up first. The properly paranoid would make sure that the restore worked, as well.
I'll try to update this thread as I learn more - and be sure to check the comments at the original post over at Making Light, as that's where the actual discussion is happening.
UPDATE: Oh, yeah! I meant to mention - if, in my efforts to block comment spam, I've gotten a bit over-zealous and knocked out a few legit IPs - and if you have comments you want to post, but can't because your's is one I killed, just e-mail me with your comment and let me know what happened.
2nd UPDATE: Yoz Grahame offers 7 tips on defeating comment spam, including changing your comment script, not linking to your comment script from your front page, including several decoy forms in the Individual Entry template, requiring a hidden variable for the comment script, separating "Preview" and "Post" into two separate scripts, or including a "Delete this post" link in notification mail. He gives good instructions for each option and explains the reasoning behind each of the tips he's offering.
Kelsey Consulting is also looking into the problem and has a few threads on the issue, as well as links to others who are working on it as well.
And last (at least for this update), but certainly not least is the Moveable Type support forum's thread on the subject.
I just wanted to say a special "Thank You" to Philip at Just Playing for telling me about Jay Allen's "Killing Comment Spam Dead" solution. I set it up a few days ago, and while I'm still getting some comment spam (grrrrrr), so far, none of it has been from any of the URLs on the blacklist, so it seems to be working. I used the "Killing Comment Spam Dead for Dummies" set of instructions and it really was pretty painless, so if this has been a problem for you, I strongly advice checking it out.
Thanks again, Pogo! :)
Kriselda
Newsweek has a very depressing biography of Rush Limbaugh as a part of this weeks cover package. It paints him as a very lonely and sad man who has little love for life away from his microphone. If it weren't for the way the author makes a point of mentioning several areas where Limbaugh has shown hypocrisy (he was briefly on welfare when he was younger, and has admitted to "smoking a little pot and watching a little porn," as well as being into his third marriage) I'd almost think the point of the article was to serve as a bit of PR to convince people to have more sympathy for a man who not only was dealing with physical pain, but significant emotional pain as well.
What caught my eye the most, though, was a quote from Gary Bauer, in which he essentially claims that being a prescription drug addict is somehow morally better than being hooked on illegal drugs.
Will the Dittoheads forgive him? Probably. Gary Bauer, president of the conservative organization American Values, drew a distinction between a crack addict and Limbaugh’s brand of addiction. “From a moral standpoint, there’s a difference between people who go out and seek a high and get addicted and the millions of Americans dealing with pain who inadvertently get addicted,” Bauer told NEWSWEEK.That attitude really confuses me. As I mentioned in my earlier post on my own experience with pain medication, while I doubt anyone sits down and says "Gee, I think I want to become a drug addict," in order for an addition to develop, one must first choose to misuse the drugs. This thought is also echoed by Adam Felbar of Fanatical Apathy, when he says:
So if the media reports are to be believed, at some point Rush decided that his legally-obtained ultra-opiates simply weren't enough, and he opted to start making drug deals and self-prescribing. Knowingly. That's a big step. There's no way to do that without being aware that you're going behind your doctors' backs and breaking the law. It doesn't make Rush a Tony Montana. But it does make him a knowing criminal.The only real difference between the abuse of prescription drugs and the abuse of street drugs is whether or not there are any circumstances under which you can legally buy the drugs themselves. Beyond that, it's pretty much the same: Someone decides they want to soothe their physical and/or emotional pain by taking drugs in a way they know they shouldn't and that by doing so, they are putting themselves at risk to become addicted. I don't see any moral difference there at all.
There has been a large explosion near the Baghdad Hotel in Iraq. MSNBC (TV) is reporting that at least 10 are dead. From what I've gathered, the hotel that was targeted (though the explosion may only have been near there rather than actually hitting the hotel) is where US security personnel have been working, and may have been the headquarters for the CIA in Baghdad.
More when it becomes available....
Josh Marshall has commented several times recently about how Scott McClellan's response to questions about whether Karl Rove, Libby Lewis or Elliot Abrams took part in leaking the information about Valerie Plame's status as a CIA operative has consistently been "They were not involved in the leaking of classified information." Part of what's piqued Josh's interest is that this has been virtually the only answer McClellan would give. He also notes that it doesn't really answer the question, and it's a very narrow, very legalistic response.
Today, a reporter in the press gaggle decided to try and pin McClellan down a bit more, by specifically asking if the three were involved in the Valerie Plame leak. As might be expected, McClellan once again demonstrated what a good tap dancer he can be.
QUESTION: Scott, earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wondered if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?Right back to the basic "not involved in the leaking of classified information" again.MCCLELLAN: Those individuals -- I talked -- I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands.
QUESTION: So none of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?
MCCLELLAN: They assured me that they were not involved in this.
QUESTION: Can I follow up on that?
QUESTION: They were not involved in what?
MCCLELLAN: The leaking of classified information.
QUESTION: Did you undertake that of your own volition, or were you instructed to go to these --
MCCLELLAN: I spoke to those individuals myself.
There's definitely something more going on here. It's just a matter of how long it'll take to find out what.
John Dean has had a lot to say lately about the Bush administration. In his most recent "FindLaw's Writ" column, he discusses the possibility that criminal charges against members of the White House may be possible, even if the White House itself was not behind the leak. I'm reposting a good deal of the column here to make it easier to follow the legal issues he's discussing, but, as always, I recommend checking out the rest to get the full context.
The White House Need Not Have Leaked to Have Committed a CrimeIt should be noted that, according to the Newsweek article where Rove's contact with Matthew's was initially described, that a "source familiar with Rove’s conversation" has said that Rove did not say that Plame was "fair game", but that "it was reasonable to discuss who sent Wilson to Niger."[...] It is entirely possible that no one at the Bush "White House" or on the President's personal staff, was involved in the initial leak to Novak. It could have been someone at the National Security Council, which is related to the Bush White House but not part of it.
[...] But even if the White House was not initially involved with the leak, it has exploited it. As a result, it may have opened itself to additional criminal charges under the federal conspiracy statute.
Why the Federal Conspiracy and Fraud Statutes May Apply Here
This elegantly simple law has snared countless people working for, or with, the federal government. Suppose a conspiracy is in progress. Even those who come in later, and who share in the purpose of the conspiracy, can become responsible for all that has gone on before they joined. They need not realize they are breaking the law; they need only have joined the conspiracy.
Most likely, in this instance the conspiracy would be a conspiracy to defraud - for the broad federal fraud statute, too, may apply here. If two federal government employees agree to undertake actions that are not within the scope of their employment, they can be found guilty of defrauding the U.S. by depriving it of the "faithful and honest services of its employee." It is difficult to imagine that President Bush is going to say he hired anyone to call reporters to wreak more havoc on Valerie Plame. Thus, anyone who did so - or helped another to do so - was acting outside the scope of his or her employment, and may be open to a fraud prosecution.
What counts as "fraud" under the statute? Simply put, "any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing, or defeating the lawful function of any department of government." (Emphasis Dean's.) If telephoning reporters to further destroy a CIA asset whose identity has been revealed, and whose safety is now in jeopardy, does not fit this description, I would be quite surprised.
If Newsweek is correct that Karl Rove declared Valerie Plame Wilson "fair game," then he should make sure he's got a good criminal lawyer, for he made need one. I've only suggested the most obvious criminal statute that might come into play for those who exploit the leak of a CIA asset's identity. There are others.
I'm not sure, however, that in the context Dean is referring to, that the actual phrasing makes much difference when it comes to the possible criminal implications. Either way, Rove was trying to promote the story and encourage other reporters (or at least one other reporter) to run with it. I'm not a legal expert, but if I understand what Dean is saying in his analysis, it sounds like the law would still apply.
I really haven't said much yet about Rush Limbaugh's drug situation. It's kind of a difficult subject for me, because I have more than a bit of experience of my own with hydrocodone and other prescription painkillers.
Part of me wants to have compassion for him - drug addiction is a hard thing to deal with and can be very difficult to kick. Where I get hung up, though, is in my own experience, which has been that if you use the medications according to the doctor's instructions addiction can also be avoided.
In his Statement on Prescription Pain Medication Stories, Limbaugh points out that he was prescribed the painkillers following back surgery, and that he still has severe pain in his back. While he says he's not making excuses, the feeling I got from his statement is that he hopes we will understand that because he still has pain he "had" to take more drugs than he should have or that we're supposed to feel sorry for him because he's in pain.
I know what it's like to live with chronic, severe pain. Along with the depression and Tourette's Syndrome I've mentioned before, I also have severe arthritis. It's mostly in my knees, but it's starting to develop in other joints as well, and it's severe enough that it's the main factor in my being homebound for the last 5 years. To deal with the pain, I take prescription painkillers every day. I've always taken care, however, to make sure that I use them in accordance with my doctor's instructions. He prescribes a certain number of pills to last me for a certain amount of time. I make it a challenge to myself to make the pills last longer than I have to (and usually succeed). I take one dose when I first get up, because the pain then is at its worst. For the rest of the day, I only take more if I truly need it. There are some days I take the full allotment for the day and some days when, admittedly, I may take an extra dose, but there are also days where I take fewer than allowed and some where I only take the morning dose. Often I make a conscious choice to put up with more pain than I maybe have to, in order to ensure that I don't start abusing them.
Every time I pick up the bottle of pills, I make a conscious choice to take them or not. If I'm having an extremely bad day, and I choose to take more pills than would be allotted for that day, then I know I'm going to have to also choose to put up with extra pain another day to make sure I don't go through the bottle too fast (which would be a sign of a problem, as far as I'm concerned).
Yes, it takes some work to make sure that I don't take too many pills or go through them so fast that I run the risk of addiction, but I know the dangers and I deliberately choose to exert caution. By the same token, if I started taking more than I'm supposed to on a regular basis, it would be by my own choice - I'm the one that's in control, here. I decide how many I take and how often I take them. If I ran through my "stash" too soon and wanted more, I would have to make a deliberate choice to obtain more - whether it meant trying to find another doctor to prescribe them through a different pharmacy or finding someone to go make deals in the parking lot of the local Denny's. These aren't things that just "happen" on their own.
So, while part of me has sympathy for a fellow pain sufferer, part of me is angry that he's trying to explain away the choices that he made to abuse what could have been a useful tool - if used properly - to help alleviate the pain.
Believe me, I understand the temptation. The pain killers I take never make the pain go away entirely, but they do reduce it to a point where I can at least function somewhat normally - even if I still can't get out of the house. But they can also give me a nice, warm buzzy feeling that just makes it easier not to care so much about the pain I feel. I won't deny there are days I want to be able to crawl into that little bottle of white pills and just not give a damn about anything, but I choose not to.
Instead, I rely on my faith and the Gods to help me find the strength to keep going and I find ways to keep myself distracted from how I'm feeling - this blog is one of the biggest sources of pain management therapy I have. Playing the guitar and video games are a couple others. Each of them give me different ways to keep my mind distracted, and different ways to deal with the anger I feel as the injustice of having to live with all this pain. Yelling about Bush, researching a story that I find interesting or important, trying to sort out what's true, what's rumour and what's spin, soothing myself with music, numbing my mind with the repetition of practicing a certain lick or riff until I get it right, working out aggression playing a loud, rocking tune, blasting little pixelated men and beasts with my little pixelated warrior, solving puzzles, letting myself slip - temporarily - into some ancient magical world, all of these are ways I cope. And when they don't work, I seek solace in my faith.
So I really don't know how to approach this story. I don't want to condemn Rush Limbaugh - each of us have our weaknesses, and, apparently, this is one of his. I certainly wish him the best and hope that this time, his efforts at getting off and staying off the drugs succeed. But I don't want to see people lose sight of the fact that he has this problem because of the choices he made - and that there are other options to drug abuse for dealing with severe pain.
Josh Marshall has a couple notes up about the Plame scandal. One discusses the latest conservative attempt at finding what Josh calls the Holy Grail - an "innocent" explanation for the Plame leak. He quotes a "Nick. Y" who wrote
When was Wilson's wife last on a clandestine operation? As a 40 year old mother of 2 year old twins I would imagine it has been a long time ago. Don't you?He then has a second piece where he takes Bob Novak up on his suggestion that someone should search the Nexis database to show just how many times he's used the word "operative" and how that demonstrates that he might have used it in describing Plame without his having meant to imply that she was undercover. (Josh finds only 6 examples of Novak using it in reference to the CIA, and in each case, he uses it to refer to someone who's undercover). One of the stories he described this way:
Did the CIA change her status? Is she now just an analyst as she has been working at in the CIA Langley Office?Is there a pay scale difference among analysts and operatives? Could it be that she retained that title even though there was no intention of ever using her again in a clandestine operation? After all she is the wife of a former Ambassador and now has two small children.
The lady may have been an operative at one time but my bet is that she was still with the CIA and would have continued her career as an analyst until her retirement and that's why her role at the CIA was well known in Washington Circles.
The CIA needs to answer some questions about this woman.
Enough said.
On December 3rd 2001 Novak reported on the surprise and even outrage among CIA veterans that Mike Spann’s identity had been revealed even in death. Spann was the agent killed at the uprising at Mazar-i-Sharif Thus Novak: “Exposure of CIA operative Johnny (Mike) Spann's identity as the first American killed in Afghanistan is viewed by surprised intelligence insiders as an effort by Director George Tenet to boost the embattled CIA's prestige.”Oddly, these two pieces kind of found an intersection in my head. It seems to me that if people in the CIA expect that someone's identity as a CIA operative would survive even their death (presumably because of the need to protect the operative's contacts, networks, agents and projects), that there would also be a similar expectation that their identity as an operative would survive marriage and motherhood, and for the same reasons. So, even if Plame's duties have changed or if she's working more at the "home office" now that she used to, it doesn't make revealing the fact that she used to be undercover any less egregious.
Copolymer wrote a piece for morons.org about a recent interview of Robert Bork by Pat Robertson. In his comments on the interview, he makes, what I think, is an excellent point about the frequent claim that the Supreme Court, though rulings like the recent one overturning the Texas sodomy law, is "making up new rights" that weren't included in the Constitution.
Something to remember the next time the argument comes up.Pat Robertson: Where does the Supreme Court come off saying that homosexuality is a constitutional right? And to think that a staunch Catholic, Kennedy, wrote that decision.There's a basic problem with this argument, and that is this: there is a huge number of things not mentioned in the constitution that people nevertheless take as their right to do or practice. Carpentry, for one. Horseback riding. Standing on a street corner doing mime shit for money. The list goes on and on. There's no constitutional right to heterosexual sex either, but never mind.
Part of Bork's answer was "One of the really terribly disturbing features of the Supreme Court...is that they are making up constitutional rights that are nowhere in the Constitution."
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has a nice editorial about how Bush seems to be just a bit too casual about the Plame leak.
Bush has shown no sign of anger at the leak and, in fact, has publicly suggested that he doesn't think an investigation will succeed in finding the culprit. That doesn't concern him much either. He is trying to treat it as a leak just like any other leak, in a town that leaks like a sieve anyway.Hmmm.... I wonder what country they might be referring to, eh?This is not any leak.
The agent in question, Valerie Plame, has been a CIA operative for almost 20 years, recruiting and running undercover agents overseas to gather intelligence on the spread of weapons of mass destruction. That is a critically important line of work, so important that certain nations have even been known to go to war over WMD.
Bush, by his apparent indifference, sends the disturbing message to his staff that such behavior is no big deal. That reveals more about his administration than all the investigators in the world ever could.Assurances that he wants to "get to the bottom of this" aside, Bush's reaction to the entire scandal has made it clear that he really doesn't want the culprit to be found.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, 5 Democratic Senators, including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, have sent a letter to President Bush outlining five ways in which this investigation has already been compromised:
"Already, just fourteen days into this investigation, there have been at least five serious missteps," the senators wrote. "We are at risk of seeing this investigation so compromised that those responsible for this national security breach will never be identified and prosecuted."Bush has spoken before about how he's the "master of low expectations" meaning that he's so good at lowering expectations of what he's capable of doing that when he fails, it doesn't appear to be that big of a deal, and when he succeeds, he looks that much better by comparison to what he set people up to expect. In this case, he wants us to expect the inquiry to fail because that way he can claim it's a "non-issue", and try to repudiate anyone who wants to make it a point in the upcoming election.The letter was signed by Daschle and Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
The objections were:
- The Justice Department began the investigation Sept. 26 but did not ask the White House to order employees to preserve relevant evidence until Sept. 29.
- Gonzales did not order employees to preserve their records until the next day, when the investigation was announced.
- The Justice Department did not ask the Pentagon and State Department to preserve possible evidence until late on Oct. 1, after news reports that such a request was coming.
- White House press secretary Scott McClellan has said he determined that three senior officials who were the subject of speculation in news accounts were not involved in leaking classified information.
The senators wrote: "Clearly, a media spokesperson does not have the legal expertise to be questioning possible suspects or evaluating or reaching conclusions about the legality of their conduct."- Ashcroft remains responsible for the probe despite his close political and personal relationships with Bush and his top aides.
If his opponents try to paint him as someone who willingly tolerates having in his employ the kind of person who would not only put the life of a woman who has faithfully served the country for nearly 20 years in danger, but commits a felony in the process, he can respond by pointing out his statement that he wants to get to the bottom of this and the "thorough" investigation that was done and found nothing. Unfortunately, for many, that will probably be enough.
That's one reason why its so important to stay on top of this investigation and to keep the pressure on. The fact that we're starting to see papers, like the Atlanta Journal Constitution, denouncing Bush's laissez-fair approach to the investigation is good. We need to see it from more, though - and that means we need to be writing letters to the editor to help convince them that this is a significant issue that they should take a stand on.
It's also why we need to write to our Representatives and Senators and let them know that an independent investigation is necessary - something that isn't being run by someone with close ties to Bush, and a personal stake in seeing him re-elected (such as John Ashcroft who's personal interest would be in getting to keep his job - which he would lose if Bush is defeated).
This isn't some kind of blunder than can be set aside and easily forgotten. This is a serious, criminal matter and deserves to be treated as such.
I first read about this at Eschaton, and couldn't believe that Robertson would actually voice the opinion that we need to blow up the State Department. Why I couldn't believe it, I'm not sure - the man's made it clear more than a few times that he's a hate-filled idiot, but, yes, I was actually taken aback by his comments. I looked up the article that Atrios references, and then tracked down the actual interview transcript at CBN just to make sure that nothing was being taken out of context.
It's not.
This is right at the beginning of an interview with Joel Mowbray, who's promoting his new book Dangerous Diplomacy, which, apparently, is all about how evil the State Department is. Here's the exchange in question:
PAT ROBERTSON: I read your book. When you get through, you say, "If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer." I mean, you get through this, and you say, "We've got to blow that thing up." I mean, is it as bad as you say?It's really a shame that Robertson own his own TV show, because that means that it's pretty hard for anyone to fire him - but that's what's been needed for a long time. I'm simply appalled that he has as many followers as he does, and that he passes this crap on to others under the guise of being a minister of God. I may not be a Christian myself, but I have a lot of respect for Christians in general (at least the non-"you must live by my rules or die"-fundamentalist types), and damn it all, they deserve a lot better than Robertson and his ilk!Joel Mowbray: It is. Everything I wrote in the book sadly is true. I wish it weren't, and I wish that it could have been more fiction in the book. But the nonfiction is truly scarier than the dreamed up possibilities.
Agence France-Presse reported on this story (though I can only find the "SpaceWar" published version of the story), and reaction from Washington hasn't been exactly on the happy side:
[State Department] Spokesman Richard Boucher called the remarks -- which Robertson made last week on his nationally televised "700 Club" program -- "despicable" and a senior department official said a protest had been made "at the highest level."Despicable and outrageous. I'd say so."I lack sufficient capabilities to express my disdain," Boucher told reporters when asked about Robertson's comments. "I think the very idea, though, is despicable."
The senior official said Robertson had been made aware of Secretary of State Colin Powell's extreme outrage at the tone and content of the remarks.
"That's not the way one expresses an opinion in Washington," the official said, adding that Robertson's conduct had been "outrageous."
The Guardian has a report today on how the Coalition Provisional Authority is trying to "de-Saddamise" Iraq. Among other things, they plan to end a food rationing program he'd instituted that provided Iraqis with certain basic foodstuffs.
A more substantial assault on Saddam's legacy is under way in the Republican Palace, where the occupation authority is making preparations to dismantle the food distribution system which gave free rations of flour, rice, cooking oil and other staples to every Iraqi.Hunger and riots. Just what Iraq needs. Of course, maybe if the Iraqis are hungry enough, they'll be too weak to keep up the fighting that's been killing so many of our soldiers </sarcasm>
Described by the UN as the world's most efficient food network, the system still keeps Iraqis from going hungry. But the US civilian administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, views it as a dangerous socialist anachronism. The coalition provisional authority (CPA) is planning to abolish it in January, despite warnings from its own technical experts that this could lead to hunger and riots.
How is it that after all of the other boneheaded decision they've made, despite warnings from their own experts that the decision would result in bad things happening, they haven't yet figured out that maybe the experts are right occasionally? It just astounds me, really.
I just received this from MoveOn.org, and I would like to encourage everyone to participate if they want to make it clear to the President that we want to see some real effort toward finding out who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative:
Today we're giving you a chance to clear your name. We're asking you and tens of thousands of other MoveOn members to sign an affidavit affirming that you didn't leak the identity of an undercover CIA agent to the press last July.I have to admit, I find Bush's certainty that we'll find Osama and Saddam, but his uncertainty that we'll find the leaker is pretty ironic. One might even get the feeling that maybe our President doesn't want to find the leaker. I know, I know, it's shocking, but it's a truth we may have to consider here. It needs to be made clear to President Bush that we think the leaker can be found - and that he or she, in fact, must be found, as this leak is far more serious than some of the others he's gotten so worked up about previously.Here's why:
President Bush told the press on Tuesday that he doesn't "have any idea" whether the senior administration officials who blew a CIA operative's cover will ever be found. But if he just asked his staff to sign a legally binding affidavit confirming that they weren't involved, and referred anyone who wouldn't to the FBI, it's possible he could flush out the perpetrators in a day. To date, the President hasn't even discussed this matter with his staff.
We've already done the President's homework for him by writing the affidavit. Now let's show him how easy it is for innocent people to legally declare their innocence. You can sign the affidavit and send it to the President in under a minute by going to:
http://moveon.org/affidavitOn Sunday, Reuters reported that Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose cover was blown "was probably the single highest target of any possible terrorist organization or hostile intelligence service that might want to do damage," according to a former senior CIA official. It's now clear that the leakers in the White House are willing to put national security and the lives of CIA operatives in danger for their own ends. But President Bush seems unconcerned -- he hasn't even looked into who it might be.
Here are a few quotes from the Bush Administration that give some contrast to the task of finding the leakers.
On finding Osama Bin Laden in Central Asia:
"We're going to hunt them down one at a time. . . it doesn't matter where they hide, as we work with our friends we will find them and bring them to justice."On finding Saddam Hussein in the Mideast:--President George W. Bush, 11/22/02"We are continuing the pursuit and it's a matter of time before [Saddam] is found and brought to justice."On finding the leaker in the close confines of the White House:--White House spokesman McClellan, 9/17/03
"I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. I don't have any idea."President Bush can do better than that. He could start by simply asking his staff to sign a legally binding affidavit. Show the President how easy it is. Sign the affidavit and send it on to the President today at:--President George W. Bush, 10/7/03
http://moveon.org/affidavitIt's been three months since Valerie Plame's identity was leaked to the press. The time for President Bush to take command and find the leakers is long overdue.
Sincerely,
--Carrie, Eli, Joan, Noah, Peter, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn Team
October 9th, 2003(Many thanks to the Center for American Progress for the research and quotes.)
Go sign the affidavit, and then pass the address (http://www.moveon.org/affidavit/) on to others - lets get as many people involved in this as possible.
Josh Marshall offers a look at why he believes both Novak and his source were well aware that Valarie Plame was undercover and that her identity as a CIA operative was classified information. He offers three main points:
In other "Go Read This" News today, CalPundit has a thorough look at the Republican Party and how it is being shaped by it's Texas branch. He breaks out some of the scarier provisions of the Texas GOP platform, including their belief that gay sex should be a criminal act and that gays should be legally forbidden to have custody of or unsupervised visits with children, abortion should be Constitutionally outlawed, the Supreme Court should be forbidden to rule on issues related to the Bill of Rights, any department involved in Welfare should be abolished, as should Social Security and the Federal Reserve, and we should do away with the separation of Church and State.
Keep in mind that the Texas GOP produced George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, four of the most powerful men in this country - and four of the scariest. Apparently, there's a lot more where they came from.
Yesterday, I'd posted this based on a Michael Isikoff article in Newsweek. Today, Atrios reminds us of this quote from the Washington Post's 9/29 issue:
Another journalist yesterday confirmed receiving a call from an administration official providing the same information about Wilson's wife before the Novak column appeared on July 14 in The Post and other newspapers.So, even if Isikoff is right in his speculation that the senior administration official was confused about whether the "WaPo 6" were all called before or after Novak's July 14th column, there's separate evidence confirming that at least one other journalist did get a call before July 14th - which shows that there were other attempts to get the information put out there before Novak ran with it.
The journalist, who asked not to be identified because of possible legal ramifications, said that the information was provided as part of an effort to discredit Wilson, but that the CIA information was not treated as especially sensitive. "The official I spoke with thought this was a part of Wilson's story that wasn't known and cast doubt on his whole mission," the person said, declining to identify the official he spoke with. "They thought Wilson was having a good ride and this was part of Wilson's story."
Unfortunately, I'd totally forgotten about this when I wrote the piece yesterday, and I am sorry for any confusion.
Mark Kleiman offers a great idea one of his readers, Michael Ham, submitted for President Bush to get at the truth of who outed Valarie Plame
The President should require every official in his administration at Executive Level II or higher (that's cabinet secretaries and their immediate deputies, plus others of equivalent rank) to submit, within 48 hours, either a sworn statement that he or she had no discussion mentioning Joseph Wilson's wife with any reporter in the period before July 14, 2003 (the date of the first Novak column) and has no knowledge of anyone who did have such discussions, or a sworn statement listing any such discussions as that person did have or any knowledge that person has regarding such discussions by other persons.I like this idea - it would show that Bush actually has some integrity and that he actually meant it when he said he wants to know the truth. His continuing refusal to even simply ask the people in the White House who could be described as "senior administration officials" speaks volumes to how little he truly cares about the situation, and its a message that won't be lost on everyone.The President has, of course, no power to compel compliance with that order. He does, however, since all of the officials involved except the Director of the FBI and the Director of Central Intelligence serve at his pleasure, have the power to dismiss anyone who refuses to submit such a statement, or who submits a statement claiming the privilege against self-incrimination.
It would take intrepidity amounting to temerity for anyone to falsely certify innocence under oath, given the high probability that the truth will come out. There might be legal defenses for the original act, but not for a false statement.
UPDATE: Kleiman also has a discussion of some of the possible objections to this idea and his answers to those objections. I personally think this is a great idea and would love to see it get picked up by a group like, say, MoveOn or something of that nature, calling for Bush to make this kind of request and give members and other interested individuals the opportunity to sign on to a letter or ad promoting it, so that it can start getting out of the web-consciousness and into the general public's mind as well.
From the Tom Paine.com blog, Take On the News, a look at President Bush's latest excuse for his not knowing anything about who leaked Valerie Plame's information.
"I have no idea," President Bush said yesterday, "whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers." Pardon us? First of all, journalists do a good job of protecting their sources; an administration official who cold-calls a reporter and releases information amounting to a federal crime is not a confidential source -- he or she is just a vindictive person. Not only that, but we see from Bob Novak's July 12, 2001 column that he will expose sources - in that instance, Robert Hanssen - where national security is at stake. He wrote, "disclosing confidential sources is unthinkable for a reporter seeking to probe behind the scenes in official Washington, but the circumstances here are obviously extraordinary." Surely exposing an undercover CIA agent is also "extraordinary." Why won't the White House demand a similar concern for national security from Novak now?
Now here's something you don't see everyday - a staunchly conservative (sometimes ridiculously so) news site saying, flat out, that Bush lied. And they're right on the money with their analysis, too. The article starts by citing specific statements from the National Intelligence Estimate - a section I've quoted below - and then follow that up with quotes from the Bush Administration where they present information that is clearly at odds with what the NIE states. It's a fascinating article, and I strongly recommended you read it all. There's a lot of good information there. Here's the section discussing the NIE:
But page 4 of the report, called the National Intelligence Estimate, deals with terrorism, and draws conclusions that would come as a shock to most Americans, judging from recent polls on Iraq. The CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and the other U.S. spy agencies unanimously agreed that Baghdad:There's not much that can be added to that, really. But go read the rest. It's worth it."We have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against U.S. territory," the report stated.
- had not sponsored past terrorist attacks against America,
- was not operating in concert with al-Qaida,
- and was not a terrorist threat to America.
However, it added, "Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qaida could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct."
Sufficiently desperate? If he "feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime," the report explained.
"In such circumstances," it added, "he might decide that the extreme step of assisting the Islamist terrorists in conducting a CBW [chemical and biological weapons] attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."
In other words, only if Saddam were provoked by U.S. attack would he even consider taking the "extreme step" of reaching out to al-Qaida, an organization with which he had no natural or preexisting relationship. He wasn't about to strike the U.S. or share his alleged weapons with al-Qaida – unless the U.S. struck him first and threatened the collapse of his regime.
Now turn to the next page of the same NIE report, which is considered the gold standard of intelligence reports. Page 5 ranks the key judgments by confidence level – high, moderate or low.
According to the consensus of Bush's intelligence services, there was "low confidence" before the war in the views that "Saddam would engage in clandestine attacks against the U.S. Homeland" or "share chemical or biological weapons with al-Qaida."
Their message to the president was clear: Saddam wouldn't help al-Qaida unless we put his back against the wall, and even then it was a big maybe. If anything, the report was a flashing yellow light against attacking Iraq.
Bush saw the warning, yet completely ignored it and barreled ahead with the war plans he'd approved a month earlier (Aug. 29), telling a completely different version of the intelligence consensus to the American people. Less than a week after the NIE was published, he warned that "on any given day" – provoked by attack or not, sufficiently desperate or not – Saddam could team up with Osama and conduct a joint terrorist operation against America using weapons of mass destruction.
"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," Bush said Oct. 7 in his nationally televised Cincinnati speech. "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving fingerprints." The terrorists he was referring to were "al-Qaida members."
By telling Americans that Saddam could "on any given day" slip unconventional weapons to al-Qaida if America didn't disarm him, the president misrepresented the conclusions of his own secret intelligence report, which warned that Saddam wouldn't even try to reach out to al-Qaida unless he were attacked and had nothing to lose – and might even find that hard to do since he had no history of conducting joint terrorist operations with al-Qaida, and certainly none against the U.S.
If that's not lying, I don't know what is.
UPDATE: A note from Adrian Zoot in the comments section says that WorldNetDaily may be so conservative that they're actually anti-Bush (thinking he's too liberal). That may be, I honestly try reading WND as little as possible and usually only stop in when I hear about a story of interest - and if that's the case, their running this article may not be as surprising as it initially seemed to me to be. Still, the information in it is good, and worth making note of. Thanks for the heads up, Adrian!
Newsweek is running a story today suggesting that the senior administration official who told the Washington Post about two White House officials calling 6 reporters and telling them about Valerie Plame's CIA status may have been mistaken in implying that those particular calls came prior to Robert Novak's July 14th colum rather than after.
This still leaves unanswered the question of who told Novak, and while this is a theory that is, apparently gaining currency in some circles (and is, admittedly, quite plausible), it is by no means certain that such an error was made. It does, however, add another dimension to the scandal.
The article also notes that so far, the only specific denials to come from the White House have been through Scott McClellan and only that Lewis Libby, Karl Rove and Elliot Abrams have denied leaking any "classified" information to Novak. The phrasing is a bit vague, however. It could mean that they gave no information that was classified to anyone, or that they gave no information that they knew to be classified to anyone. If it's intended to mean the second of those options, then its possible one of them may have given the information to Novak, unaware that her status as a CIA agent was classified. In that case, the Intelligence Identities Act wouldn't apply, as one of the requirements for conviction under the act is that the person is knowingly transmitting classified information.
As things stand right now, the main questions to be answered are:
One thing that is clear right now is that after Novak's article was published, at the very least, Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews were contact, most likely by Karl Rove, to push the Wilson story and try to get word spread that Wilson's CIA wife had "gotten" him the Niger gig. Rather than being concerned that a NOC operative - the deepest kind of undercover agent that we have (these are the people who, if they get caught by a foreign government, are on their own, the government won't provide them with any assistance) - had just had her cover blown, they were more interested in using that information to smear her husband because he had the temerity to make Bush look bad. Even if nothing that happened was technically illegal, that, in and of itself, should be cause for heads to roll.
It's hard to see that happening, though, when the President, while promising to 'get to the bottom of this' and swearing he wants to know the truth, continues to refuse to ask his staff any questions himself and is having all of the documents that are to be turned over to the Justice department for their investigation, reviewed by the White House counsel to make sure they're ok to pass on.
The Guardian (UK) does an overview today of what our previous weapons inspections in Iraq had told us about Iraq's weapons capability, and what we might have learned had we allowed inspections to continue. The story provides a recap of what was known as of 1998 about Iraq's weapons capabilities - that, at that time, it had the capability of possibly restarting various programs, but had not.
Neither Bush nor Blair have produced evidence that turns these unpleasant but familiar facts into a "current" threat against the US, the UK or even Iraq's immediate neighbours. The question, as the UN inspectors knew, was not whether Iraq maintained a capacity to resume production of such weapons, but whether that potential had been activated after British and US bombing ended the inspections in 1998. The resumption of UN inspections - under the US administration's credible threat of the use of force - would have answered that question.In other words, continuing the inspections would have told us what we now know - that Iraq hadn't restarted it's nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs, and didn't appear to be ready to at any point in the near future. It would also have told us that Iraq was no threat to the US or even it's neighbors, thus making the war unnecessary.
Of course, I suspect that's exactly what Bush was afraid would happen - and he didn't want to risk losing his opportunity to oust Saddam by having it shown that Saddam wasn't nearly the menace Bush made him out to be. It should have been obvious that whatever information we allegedly had that was such "convincing" proof of Saddam's perfidy was deeply questionable when we gave the UN inspectors supposedly the "best" information available to us about where Saddam was hiding his WMD and they UN inspectors found nothing.
I'd never had a problem with our decision to attack Afghanistan (though I still have grave issues with our lack of follow-thru there). That one made sense. But I never bought into the administration's rhetoric about Iraq, and when CBS published their story about how the inspectors were finding nothing and called the information we were giving them "garbage", I felt that not onlyy was Bush lying, but that he knew that he was lying.
Through it all, though, I have to admit that I've found the pro-war side's views toward the UN weapons inspectors, and the UN in general, alternately amusing and infuriating. They argue that invading Iraq was justified by the fact that Saddam violated the UN resolution, even if nothing else holds true - yet the UN itself didn't consider Iraq's breech of their resolution sufficient justification for going to war at the time that we decided they were "irrelevant" and started the war anyway. Point that out, however, and you're likely to be told that the UN's position on the violation of their resolution doesn't matter because the UN is a bunch of idiots who no longer matter in this world. If that's the case, I ask, then why does it matter whether Iraq breeched the resolution or not.
The point of all this is that, like it or not, the UN does matter, and they are relevant. Their inspectors, who are trained to handle situations like Iraq, and who are well-versed in the methods dictators use to hide their weapons caches, could have answered the question of whether Saddam was a threat or not. We just didn't let them finish their job - most likely because we knew it wouldn't give us the answer we wanted.
The Guardian's article also notes what this whole misadventure is likely to cost us - not in terms of dollars, but in those intangible terms like credibility and respect.
It's kind of hard to justify all of that, isn't it?
The cost of this adventure can be counted in many ways: there is the damage to future potential for international action against rogue states; the risk of terrorism is heightened; and the possibility of disaffected personnel from Iraq's weapons programmes throwing in their lot with some kind of jihad is higher than before. Equally dangerous is the manner in which a system of internationally sanctioned monitoring and control has been sacrificed in favour of unilateral action.
Over the last couple of weeks, I've been getting a lot of comment spam - messages left in the comments section that are advertisements for - in almost all cases - buying prescription drugs over the internet.
This is just a note to say that, if you haven't already noticed, I will erase every bit of comment spam that is left on this site and I'll ban your IP from being able to leave any futher messages. I don't appreciate having to take the time to do this, but I'm not going to tolerate the use of my blog as your marketing tool. And if I can find a way to be able to filter the spam comments out before they get published, believe me, it'll be put into effect.
So, there's no point in posting such messages here. They won't last long.
According to reports, Bob Graham has decided to drop out of the race for the Democratic Presidential primary. He announced his decision on the Larry King show, saying: "I'm leaving because I have made the judgment that I can not be elected president of the United States."
As many of you may know, before I became homebound, I was on track to earn a Masters in counseling. While this doesn't make me a psychological expert by any means, it does afford me a bit of insight into how counselors work - or at least are supposed to work - and basic psychological ethics and theory. I think sometimes, that makes a story like this one, run a few days ago by the Washington Post, that much harder to deal with.
The story is about a woman, referred to as Patient C, who had gone to see a therapist about what she thought might be Attention Deficit Disorder, and ended up so dependent on her therapist that she was paying him $100 a day to rent a room in his office space so she could be near him, and believing that her father had been the leader of a satanic cult that had abused her and forced her to witness a number of murders.
There are many kind of abuse we see in this country these days - physical, emotional, mental, spiritual - all of it horrifying. Yet, in my opinion, some of the worst comes when the very people we are supposed to be able to trust to help us, use that trust to hurt us - be it a psychologist who plants false memories or a doctor who kills patients for the thrill of it - because it not only further damages someone who's already hurting (else why would they be seeking a doctor or therapist), but because when the story gets out (as they so often seem to), it also erodes the trust everyone else has with the healing professions.
Satanic ritual abuse (often referred to as "SRA") has been a hot button issue in psychological circles for years. It started in the early 80's after the publication of a book called "Michelle Remembers", which claimed to be the tale of a girl who had been forced to participate in satanic rituals as a child and was often abused as part of those rituals. According to The Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance (OCRT), however, three independent investigations have shown it to be a work of fiction.
It's not just the book "Michelle Remembers", though, that's been called into question. The entire SRA theory has, over the years, been discredited. OCRT says that
During 1991, the State of Virginia investigated SRA and found none. During 1994, the Federal Governments of Great Britain and of the Netherlands conducted extensive inquiries and also found none. Most recently, a US government study obtained input from over 10,000 therapists, social workers, police offices, DA offices and social service agencies. They uncovered one possible case of SRA. Although it allegedly was abusive, and did involve rituals and was perpetrated by Satanists, it had few points of similarity to classic SRA stories.In addition, as the Washington Post article notes:
The phenomenon had been discredited in mainstream psychiatric circles well before 1992, when a noted FBI behavioral scientist, Kenneth Lanning, issued an influential report saying that despite extensive investigation, there was no evidence of such cults.So how is it that in 2003 we're still hearing about cases of people believing that they were part of a SRA situation and therapists making thousands of dollars by trying to "cure" patients of SRA-induced psychosis? Unfortunately, despite it's reputation as being one of the "soft" sciences, there are a lot of psychologists, counselors and other therapists who don't worry that much about science in their practice.
In this particular case, Martin Stein, the therapist Patient C was seeing, simply didn't believe in the material discrediting SRA. (Well, it may be a question of whether he didn't believe in the discrediting information or if maybe he just saw how much money he could make by creating a need for additional treatment that he could then fulfill, but there's not enough information in the article to make that judgment). The article notes that even after Lanning's report was published, Stein continued to believe in the possibility of SRA as an explanation for behavioural problems.
Stein disagreed. In 1995, according to a teenage patient and her mother, he kept trying to convince the girl that her estranged father had been a cult member. The patient, now 22, said Stein threatened her with hospitalization if she did not "remember" the abuse.Stein's "treatment" of the woman was so aggressive, that even her Merrill Lynch broker became concerned about the amount of money she was spending from a trust fund she'd inherited.
Sadly, Stein isn't an isolated incident. There have been a number of therapists over the years who have had their licenses revoked for issues related to SRA and their own abusive treatment of patients. Among other cases are those of Dr. Bennet Braun, who was sued by his former patient Pat Burgess over her treatment that wound up with her believing she had 300 alternate personalities and had participated - by force - in cannibalism as part of satanic rituals. Braun had been the co-founder of the Rush St. Luke's Presbyterian Hospital Dissociative Disorders Unit, which was closed down, and has faced at least seven other suits from former patients making similar allegations.
Then there's Dr. Judith Peterson who worked at the Spring Shadows Glen Dissociative Disorders Unit in Houston, Texas and was sued by at least 8 of her former patients for complaints that she had used hypnosis and drugs to convince them that they had memories of SRA from went hey were children. The Spring Shadows Glen DDU was also shut down, in this case by the state of Texas in 1992.
All of these patients have had years of their lives stolen from them, first by the therapist who has convinced them to remember things that never happened, and then by the need to deal with the trauma of what the therapist had done to them. In the case of both Patient C and Pat Burgess, the therapists even brought their children into the process, causing them significant harm as well.
I remember when I was studying for my degree one of the big debates was state licensing for therapists. Some of the therapists-to-be were dead set against the idea of licensing counselors, claiming that it would allow the state too much control over their work, and might prevent them from being able to work on certain kinds of problems or make it hard for them to use "cutting edge" therapies. I can sort of under stand that - but as one who would like to see a lot more science brought into the art of therapy, I don't think licensing is such a bad thing, really. While I'm sure there are many situations in which some hot, new therapy might actually help the patient, there are a number of untested and unproven therapies out there, and little knowledge about what other effects - including harmful effects - they might have on the patient.
No, we're never going to be able to prove what, if any, therapies are 100% effective - they can't do that in medicine, either, since so much depends on the individual nature of each person's body. But while I agree that there should be room for some kinds of alternative therapies, cases like those mentioned above convince me that it is vital that there be some kind of legal authority that has the power to say when a therapist is dangerous and take steps to prevent them from being able to hurt any more patients than they already have.
CalPundt has a good look at Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, his qualifications for being sent to Niger, and his opposition to the war, and points us back to where the real scandal lies: With people trying to find ways to distract everyone from the fact that one of our nations top government officias has both committed a felony and compromised national security.
I know I'm giving a lot of links lately without much analysis, but there's a lot of good material out there, well worth reading, and these writers have done so well with it, I don't think I would have anything new or original to add to it, so I figure I might as well just let y'all go read it for yourselves. It doesn't mean I've changing my basic concept here or anything - I just don't see any reason to either steal their thunder or duplicate their efforts on some of these stories.
Interested in how the administration's claims about WMD stack up to the current evidence as reported by David Kay? The Beltway Bandit has just the comparison chart for you. Check it out.
Short version? They don't hold up at all. But we knew that already, right?
UPDATE 10/6/2003 - Also be sure to read the comment - ScrewDriver has posted some good info there about Kay's report.
Mark Kleiman has a good piece detailing why it's unlikely that no one in the White House knew about the Plame story back in July. And excerpt:
What all that means, to me, is that the White House, though not necessarily the President personally, showed guilty knowledge of this affair nearly from its inception. So far, they've done fairly well at spreading the perception that, as soon as they learned about the problem, they acted to "get to the bottom of it." That has worked because the laxity of the mass media didn't bring this to the public's attention until eleven weeks after it started, and of course the media have little incentive now to remind us that the White House was keeping silent at the same time they were.Go read it all - he has a very thorough timeline and does a good job of showing just how much they had to have known, and when.
David Corn has a new column on the Plame scandal, looking at the White House reponse so far and how the administration has tried to use the leak for their own purposes. In one place, he notes some of what I was trying to say in an earlier entry, but does it much better and points out the extra little twist to it:
He was arguing that a serious leak attributed to anonymous sources was still not serious enough to cause the president to ask, what the hell happened? And he made it seem as if the White House just ignored the matter. Not so. Mitchell's remark and even the Rove-friendly account of the Rove-Matthews conversation are evidence the White House tried to further the Plame story--that is, to exploit the leak for political gain. Rather than respond by trying to determine the source of a leak that possibly violated federal law and perhaps undermined national security ( The Washington Post reported that the leak also blew the cover of a CIA front company, "potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure"), White House officials sought to take advantage of it. Spin that, McClellan.So, not only did the White House, upon learning of the leak, fail to begin trying to find out who had threatened national security and broken the law, they tried to get more people to write about the "Plame got her husband the job" aspect of it.
He also notes in his article that at least one NSC staffer was aware of Plame's connection to the CIA, and that Bush, contrary to the image of someone who is taking the investigation seriously and is committed to "getting to the bottom" of the situation, is amusing himself and his admirers by making jokes about it.
Bush met with reporters for African news organizations and joked about the anti-Wilson leak. When asked what he thought about the detention in Kenya of three journalists who had refused to reveal sources, he said, "I'm against leaks." This prompted laughter, and Bush went on: "I would suggest all governments get to the bottom of every leak of classified information." Addressing the reporter who had asked the question, Bush echoed the phrase that McClellan had frequently used in his press briefings and quipped, "By the way, if you know anything, Martin, would you please bring it forward and help solve the problem?"Corn also looks at the still-changing story about Iraq's WMD and differences between how the case was presented before the war and how it's being characterized now.
Perhaps Bush needed a good chuckle after reading--or being briefed on--the testimony that chief weapons hunter David Kay was presenting that day to Congress. In an interim report, Kay had noted that his Iraq Survey Group had found evidence of "WMD-related program activities," but no stocks of unconventional weapons. Kay also had an interesting observation about the prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMDs: "Our understanding of the status of Iraq's WMD program was always bounded by large uncertainties and had to be heavily caveated."My favourite paragraph, though, has to be this one:Wait a minute. That was not what Bush and his compadres had said prior to the war. Flash back to Bush's get-out-of-town speech on March 17, two days before he launched the war. He maintained, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal" weapons of mass destruction. Yet Kay was saying there had been "large uncertainties" in the intelligence. How does that square with Bush's no-doubt claim? It doesn't.
Kay's testimony is more proof that Bush misrepresented the intelligence. Regular readers of this column will know that Kay's remark were preceded by similar statements from the House intelligence committee and former deputy CIA director, Richard Kerr, who has been reviewing the prewar intelligence. Both the committee (led by Representative Porter Goss, a Republican and former CIA officer) and Kerr have concluded the intelligence of Iraq's WMDs was based on circumstantial and inferential material and contained many uncertainties.
Prior to the invasion, administration officials consistently declared there was no question Iraq had these weapons. On December 5, 2002, for instance, Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, said, "the president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it." But what had been that "solid_basis"? Intelligence "bounded by large uncertainties"?
Kay also reported, "Our efforts to collect and exploit intelligence on Iraq's chemical weapons program have thus far yielded little reliable information on post-1991 CW stocks and CW agent production, although we continue to receive and follow leads related to such stocks." But before the war, the Bush administration had said flat-out that Iraq possessed chemical weapons. Did it neglect to pass along to Kay the information upon which it based this claim? (Actually, the Defense Intelligence Agency in September 2002 concluded there was no "reliable information" on whether Iraq had produced or stockpiled chemical weapons, but that did not stop Bush and his aides from stating otherwise.)Indeed
The Washington Post has an interesting article today on the ethics of revealing sources. In on part, it discusses one aspect of the Plame scandal - that reporters are now trying to determine if once the info about Plame was out there, were officials trying to get the story (of Plame's identity, not of the leak) noticed.
The murkiness of the subject emerged at a White House briefing last week. Reporters wanted to know whether administration officials had not only leaked the identity of Wilson's wife but also called attention to Novak's July 14 column in subsequent conversations with reporters. Press secretary Scott McClellan accused them of "moving the goal posts," saying: "The subject of this investigation is whether someone leaked classified information."And he's right, in a sense. The current investigation really is about whether someone leaked classified information or not. (Perhaps he could also remind those in the administration who keep trying to turn this into a question of Joseph Wilson's character that the investigation is about who leaked, not who Wilson supported for president.) But the question of whether, once the information was out there, the administration tried to get the story spread further is also an important one, as it helps to show that there was certainly interest within the White House to make this information known.
As noted earlier, though, it looks like we have at least part of the answer to that question. According to Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, Karl Rove brought the suject up while talking to Chris Matthews and let it be known that it was "reasonable" to discuss "who sent Wilson to Niger" - implying that talking about Plame was ok because it could cast doubt on why Wilson was chosen, thus making his conclusions and his opinion more suspect - which was, apparently, the goal all along.
So, while McClellan is right in that the true story is who leaked the information, the reporters are also right to be "moving the goal posts" a bit - it looks like this story may require a bigger playing field before it's all over.
Israel strikes terror base in SyriaThere's more to the story if you follow the link, and I'm sure more information will be added throughout the day as it comes in.The Israeli army attacked an Islamic Jihad training base in Syria in retaliation for a suicide bombing at a Haifa restaurant that killed 19 people, the army said in a statement Sunday.
THE STRIKE, which occurred late Saturday or early Sunday, targeted a base deep in Syrian territory used by several terrorist groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the army said.
Israel radio said the attack hit the Ein Saher camp.
The attack came several hours after a Palestinian woman wrapped in explosives entered a beachside restaurant in Haifa during the busy lunchtime hour and blew herself up, killing 19 people, including four children.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
A new article by Michael Isikoff of Newswee says that both Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews were among the reporters who called Joseph Wilson after the initial leak of his wife's connection to the CIA was published, letting him know that they, too, had spoken to Karl Rove and that his wife had come up as part of the conversation.
Whoever initially leaked Plame’s name, the White House clearly had a hand in fanning the flames. Wilson told NEWSWEEK that in the days after the Novak story appeared, he got calls from several well-connected Washington reporters. One was NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. She told NEWSWEEK that she said to Wilson: “I heard in the White House that people were touting the Novak column and that that was the real story.” The next day Wilson got a call from Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC show “Hardball.” According to a source close to Wilson, Matthews said, “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game.” (Matthews told NEWSWEEK: “I’m not going to talk about off-the-record conversations.”)This will, of course, add more grist to the mill, and shows that, at the very least, once the initial leak had been made, Karl Rove had no problem with trying to spread the information - and the allegations being made by releasing it (that Wilson got the Niger trip mission because of his wife's connections inside the CIA.)The White House spokesman dismissed as “ridiculous” the charge that Rove outed Plame. A source familiar with Rove’s conversation acknowledged that Rove spoke to Matthews a few days after Novak’s column appeared, but said that Rove never told Matthews that Wilson’s wife was “fair game”—rather, that it “was reasonable to discuss who sent Wilson to Niger.”
Note that the "source familiar with Rove's conversation" isn't denying that he contacted Matthews or that Plame was a topic of conversation. He or she is only saying that Rove did not specifically say that Plame was "fair game", though it's not hard to see how someone might get that impression from Rove's comment that it's "reasonable to discuss who sent Wilson to Niger" since the allegation is that it was Plame.
There's more to come - it's mainly just a matter of when at this point, though there's still no guarantee we'll get the top names. Still, there is some hope, right?
[Updated 3:06 am to correct a minor error in a name I'd mistyped]
Brian Flemming offers us a hard-hitting, day-by-day analysis of everything George Bush has done to bring the person who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent to justice.
If for any reason the above leak doesn't work, Billmon is mirroring the post at the Whisky Bar.
Looks like the Iraqi Governing Council may be more concerned about the wasting of taxpayer money and possible corruption within the awarding of contracts for rebuilding Iraq than some of our own Senators and Representatives are.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 3 — Last month the Iraqi Governing Council questioned why the American occupation authority had issued a $20 million contract to buy new revolvers and Kalashnikov rifles for the Iraqi police when the United States military was confiscating tens of thousands of weapons every month from Saddam Hussein's abandoned arsenals.The article details other issues with waste and corruption that are apparently widespread in the way America is going about the rebuilding of Iraq. And sadly, this isn't even surprising - we've all expected it ever since it was announced that some of the largest "no-bid" contracts were going to Cheney's old firm, Haliburton, and it's partners and subsidiaries.On Wednesday the Iraqi council, in a testy exchange with the occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, challenged an American decision to spend $1.2 billion to train 35,000 Iraqi police officers in Jordan when such training could be done in Iraq for a fraction of the cost. Germany and France have offered to provide such training free.
These decisions are being questioned by Iraqi officials as Congress is also seeking to examine how the American occupation authority and the military are spending billions of dollars here. Iraqi officials and businessmen charge that millions of dollars in contracts are being awarded without competitive bidding, some of them to former cronies of Mr. Hussein's government.
"There is no transparency," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Governing Council, "and something has to be done about it.
"There is mismanagement right and left, and I think we have to sit with Congress face to face to discuss this. A lot of American money is being wasted, I think. We are victims and the American taxpayers are victims."
Just as a general principle, it's probably not a good thing to have the Iraqi Governing Council see us as engaging in waste and corruption, because we kind of need for them to trust us a bit, and that doesn't really go very far toward achieving that goal.
Link via Atrios
Marie Cocco reminds us of a few other Bush Administration improprieties that not only would have caused unending hissy fits from Republicans if or when Clinton had done the same thing, and which have yet to be investigated.
First up: Dick Cheney and the use of government property to entertain or otherwise benefit big donors to the Bush/Cheney campaign:
Dick Cheney, vice president for four months, held a reception for elite Republican donors at the sprawling house that is his taxpayer-owned residence. Word of the event brought snickers from those with a memory. They recalled hot Republican demands for investigation and a blizzard of congressional subpoenas when President Bill Clinton used similar public perks for the care and feeding of political fat-cats.Next: Dick Cheney and the
Cheney was chairing meetings of his secret energy task force. That is, he was hearing from lobbyists, many of them elite Republican donors and most with a large financial stake in this or that detail of national energy policy. Cheney has fought, successfully so far, to keep secret the list of those who so generously offered their expertise.Then there's Army Secretary Thomas White and evidence he might have been involved with insider trading in regards to Enron:Executives of Enron got six meetings with the Cheney task force. According to an analysis by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the White House energy plan adopted all or most of Enron's recommendations in seven of eight areas in which the now bankrupt and criminally entangled firm made suggestions. Enron-affiliated political committees and employees were among the top donors to the Bush campaign in 2000. Chairman Kenneth Lay was a Bush "Pioneer," who raised $100,000.
It so happens that during the time when the Enron schemes were being exposed and the company's executives were cashing out their own stock, Army Secretary Thomas E. White, a former Enron executive himself, placed dozens of calls to officials of the embattled company. Forty-nine occurred between Aug. 14, 2001, the day former CEO Jeffrey Skilling resigned from Enron, and Dec. 3, 2001, the day after Enron filed for bankruptcy. White cashed out his Enron stock for $12.1 million.How about Cheney's former country and it's Iraqi contracts?
a subsidiary of Halliburton, a company once headed by the vice president and from which he still receives a generous compensation, won no-bid contracts for rebuilding Iraq. The contracts have no apparent limit and, according to an analysis by Rep. Waxman's staff, could be worth up to $7 billion.Lastly, she notes:
three top officials of the Interior Department are under scrutiny by inspectors general for involvement in matters affecting their former clients in the grazing, mining, oil and gas industries.There are, of course, man other examples, but this is just a handy reminder that the only kind of honour this White House seems to understand is that you honour all your friends wishes, and their idea of integrity is to maintain a wall of silence of such integrity that it can't easily be brought down.
One of the risks involved in outing a US undercover operative is that in revealing their status as a spy, it's likely that other things will become known as well. According to a report in the Washington Post, the blowing of Valerie Plame's cover and subsequent attempts by conservatives (in this case, Robert Novak - again) to make the Wilson's look to be of dubious credibility has exposed a company used by the CIA as a front.
The name of the CIA front company was broadcast yesterday by Novak, the syndicated journalist who originally identified Plame. Novak, highlighting Wilson's ties to Democrats, said on CNN that Wilson's "wife, the CIA employee, gave $1,000 to Gore and she listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates."The CIA has said that it was not immediately known if other agents also used Brewster, Jennings and Associates as part of their cover. If any did, however, it is now likely that their cover will be blown as well. Foreign governments can look through whatever information they have on contacts made by people in sensitive positions to find out if they ever met with or had dealings with someone from Brewster, Jennings & Associates - and if they did, they can conclude that the person was dealing with a spy. How likely is it that other could be outed this way? I honestly have no idea, but it's both possible and plausible, and it's inexcusable."There is no such firm, I'm convinced," he continued. "CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're under a deep cover -- they're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told. Sort of adds to the little mystery."
In fact, it appears the firm did exist, at least on paper. The Dun & Bradstreet database of company names lists a firm that is called both Brewster Jennings & Associates and Jennings Brewster & Associates.The phone number in the listing is not in service, and the property manager at the address listed said there is no such company at the property, although records from 2000 were not available.
The revelation came about because Novak was trying to point out that Wilson and Plame are Democrats, and show that they had donated money to Al Gore in 1999/2000 for the Presidential campaign. Apparently, Wilson had given Gore's campaign $2000, which was over the limit, so they returned $1000 of it, and Plame went ahead and made a $1000 donation in her own name. This isn't anything terribly sinister in that. Of course, he neglects to mention that they also gave $1000 to George Bush's campaign, but since that might mitigate the hoped-for damage of "he's a Democrat" that would be considered irrelevant by Novak and his ilk.
What they fail to understand, however, is that what's irrelevant here is Wilson. If the evidence in this story rested solely on his claim that Plame's cover had been blown, then Wilson and his character would be relevant to the discussion at hand. At this point, however, it's gone well beyond whatever Wilson might be claiming. The CIA has confirmed that they have enough reason to believe that a law has been broken that they turned it over to the Justice Department, and Justice decided there was enough meat on the bones of this story to warrant a full criminal investigation. They're not acting only on Wilson's word, so his credibility no longer matter. So what if he's a partisan Democrat who's out to get Bush? (Not saying that he is, mind you, but I'll go with the concept at the moment for the sake of argument) So what? It doesn't matter. Wilson isn't the story any more, and neither is Plame, for that matter. The story is the White House and whether they deliberately burned an agent - regardless of their motive, be it revenge, as a warning to others not to get too uppity about leaking information or just for the hell of it.
The article points out that the election document filed by Plame citing Brewster, Jennings and Associates as her employer is evidence that she was still working undercover within the last 5 years, which means at least one of the criteria used to determine if the Intelligence Identities Protection Act applies in this case.
It'll probably be a while before it's know how much, if any, additional fallout there is from the uncovering of the Brewster, Jennings & Associates front agency, but it stands as a warning of the potential dangers that exist when an agents identity is made known.
MSNBC has provided additional information on the report that Kuwaiti security had foiled the smuggling of $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads. Turns out it's yet another false alarm.
''Kuwaiti security forces were able to seize some Iraqi artefacts smuggled to Kuwait,'' al-Sabah, who is also interior minister, was quoted as saying by al-Seyassah daily. He did not identify the other items.I was first lead to this story when my husband told me that a poster to a forum he posts to regularly had brought it up as part of a debate on the war in Iraq, citing it as evidence that the war was somehow justified. As I'd mentioned when I posted about this earlier, though, the article being referenced (which was apparently featured at the Drudge Report) had almost no details to it, aside from the assertion that a plot had been foiled and that it involved chemical and biological weapons.
Al-Sabah was responding to a question about a report the paper carried on Wednesday that Kuwaiti security forces had foiled an attempt to smuggle artefacts, chemical materials and biological warheads from Iraq to a European country via Kuwait.
Kuwaiti security sources told Reuters on Wednesday the report on the seizure of such weapons was baseless.
Asked about the report of seized biological warheads, al-Sabah also told al-Qabas newspaper: ''Up to now we have not verified this...There are some artefacts that were seized which we are examining to see if they are real or fake.''
In a story almost completely devoid of details (and so far, only running in the Hindustan Times, from what I can tell, along with an additional story in World Net Daily) the Associated Press reports that Kuwaiti's pro-government paper, al-Siyassah is claiming that Kuwaiti's security service had prevented the smuggling of chemical and biological weapons from Iraq to an "unnamed European country".
The article states that the plan was foiled, but noted that the al-Siyassah article did not say "when or how the smugglers entered Kuwait or when they were arrested," and that
Interior Minister Sheik Nawwaf Al Ahmed Al Sabah would hand over the smuggled weapons to an FBI agent at a news conference, but did not say when.It also says that the AP tried to contact the government, but they "not be immediately reached for comment."
Its interesting that a story like this would break on the same day that David Kay is reporting, essentially, that we still haven't found anything demonstrating that Saddam had any WMD. I expect we'll be hearing a lot more about this alleged smuggling operation from the right - it'll be interesting to see which, if any, of the details get filled in.
An article in the New York Times looks at how the White House is planning to defend itself dring the Plame scandal.
The White House encouraged Republicans to portray the former diplomat at the center of the case, Joseph C. Wilson IV, as a partisan Democrat with an agenda and the Democratic Party as scandalmongering. At the same time, the administration and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill worked to ensure that no Republicans in Congress break ranks and call for an independent inquiry outside the direct control of the Justice Department.It's imperative that those of us who want to see a full and honest investigation into this mess do what we can to prevent the White House from changing the topic. "Slime and Defend" depends on their ability to make Joseph Wilson the focus of this investigation when, in reality, who he is, what he believes, who he supports and what is does are all completely irrelevant to the matter at hand."It's slime and defend," said one Republican aide on Capitol Hill, describing the White House's effort to raise questions about Mr. Wilson's motivations and its simultaneous effort to shore up support in the Republican ranks.
"So far so good," the aide said. "There's nervousness on the part of the party leadership, but no defections in the sense of calling for an independent counsel."
Some are saying that if the CIA hadn't decided to send a partisan hack to Niger, we'd never have gotten to this point. Well, duh, if things were different they wouldn't be the same. However you want to characterize Wilson, if he hadn't been sent to Niger, they're right, we wouldn't be talking about his wife at all.
That is, however, entirely beside the point. The issue isn't who the CIA sent or why that person was chosen. Its how the White House and others in the Administration chose to react to that decision that matters.
If they wanted to discredit Wilson or his findings, they could have released as much information as they wanted to about his alleged partisanship. They could have brought up every flaw they think the man possesses. They could have provided evidence to show that his conclusions were wrong (if, in fact, any such evidence existed, which I, at least, doubt). There were a thousand different things they could have done to make his character or his opinions look weak. What they chose to do, however, was to blow his wife's cover. That's not Wilson's fault, no matter how you slice it.
The whole idea that Wilson, by going on the trip to Niger and then making his own views on the matter known, or the CIA, by choosing to send Wilson on the Nigerien mission, are somehow responsible for the way the White House responded is no different than when a criminal tries to blame his victim for "causing" him to commit a crime. In fact, if the allegations being investigated are true, it is a criminal trying to blame its victim for "causing" it to commit it's crime.
We abhor the defense when it's used in court. We should abhor it no less when it's used by the White House and Bush Administration.
The LA Times is reporting that the investigation into the Plame scandal may take a long time to produce any kind of real information, in part because it's not easy to get access to some of the information that will be needed.
"It is going to take them several weeks just to get the relevant records from the CIA and the White House," a former Justice Department criminal division official said, requesting anonymity. "The White House is not going to turn over all of [chief political advisor] Karl Rove's phone logs. There is going to be a negotiation over it. You have to negotiate the terms and conditions. It is going to take some time."The Weekly Standard, however, didn't find it all that difficult to get information about Rove's phone logs when it wanted to try and smear Wesley Clark a couple weeks ago.
Unfortunately for Clark, the White House has logged every incoming phone call since the beginning of the Bush administration in January 2001. At the request of THE DAILY STANDARD, White House staffers went through the logs to check whether Clark had ever called White House political adviser Karl Rove. The general hadn't. What's more, Rove says he doesn't remember ever talking to Clark, either.Of course, in the case of the investigation, the outcome is more likely to be embarassing to the White House than to any of the Democratic presidential candidates, and they are looking for a pattern of calls rather than a single incoming call, but it seems to me that if White House offices are willing to provide info from the phone logs for a magazine, they should certainly be willing to provide info from the phone logs for investigators.
One issue in the Plame scandal that the press has been asking about is why, if Bush is so eager to "get to the bottom of this", it took him 2 1/2 months to start looking. Yesterday, the press corps peppered White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan with questions regarding when President Bush learned that a CIA operative's status as an undercover agent had been blown, allegedly by "two senior administration officials" (as cited by Robert Novak". McClellan said he'd look into it and post an answer later.
Well, today, he got asked again, and his response was a bit dodgy
McClellan said he could not say when Bush first learned of the leak. "I looked into it, and I just don't know," he said.Seems to me that, since Bush has acknowledged that leaking classified information is a serious matter, and since he's said he wants to find out who - if anyone - did this, it wouldn't be that difficult for him to remember when he first learned about the incident. Even if he doesn't know the exact day he heard about it, I'd think he'd be able to recall whether it was, say, last week when the story really broke wide, or two months ago, when Novak's original column was published.
Yet if McClellan is to be believed, the President can't seem to remember that - unless, of course, McClellan didn't ask the President when he learned of the leak. But that doesn't really make any sense either - I mean, if you were the President's press secretary, and you needed to report back to the press on when the President learned that a CIA agent - one working on the crucial issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction proliferation - had been burned, and suspicion was centering on someone within the White House, wouldn't you as the President? I mean "Mr. President, when did you first learn that someone had leaked Valerie Plame's status as a covert operative for the CIA?" would be one of the first questions I'd want to ask.
Unless I simply didn't want to know when the President found out about it because giving a firm answer - regardless of what that answer might be - would be embarrassing to the President. Think about it. If the President knew about it back in July, why didn't he pursue the identity of the leaker back then? And if he didn't learn about it until more recently, why didn't he know?
So for McClellan to say that he "just doesn't know" is more than a bit disingenuous. The more accurate answer would be that he just doesn't want to know - and the honest answer would be that he just doesn't want the American people to know.
A few days ago, I pointed out that one potential conflict of interest for John Ashcroft in running the investigation into the Plame scandal is the fact that Karl Rove has worked on Ashcrofts campaigns since 1985. Now it turns out that a Republican senator is speaking out about the same concern.
Asked whether White House political aide Karl Rove's history as a political advisor to Ashcroft during his gubernatorial and Senate campaigns were grounds for the attorney general to step away from the case, Sen. Arlen Specter said, "Recusal is something Ashcroft ought to consider."Senator Charles Shumer, a New York Democrat offers an additional reason for Ashcroft to consider recusing himself from the case.
Schumer's press secretary said Justice Department rules hold that a federal prosecutor cannot issue subpoenas of news media phone records without the express written consent of the attorney general. Since media phone records may end up being subpoenaed, Schumer believes Ashcroft should step aside.With even Republicans starting to be willing to speak up and say that Ashcroft should consider handing the investigation over to someone else, he probably should start paying attention to the idea. It may be that Ashcroft could run the investigation fairly, but, like many others, I don't trust him to. The fact that there is sufficient concern from so many - in and out of the government - to question his suitability should send a message to Ashcroft that his very presence could cause a taint - fairly or not - on the investigation, particularly if the investigation doesn't find anything.
While it's certainly possible that the investigation may not be able to break the wall of anonymity, if Ashcroft - and especially Bush - ever want the investigation to be able to offer the last word on the matter, Ashcroft at the very least needs to back out of it now. Otherwise, there will always be those who will ask if he blocked the investigation in some way or manipulated the situation to help protect Bush or whomever close to him could be caught up in the scandal.
Howard Fineman has a piece posted at MSNBC offering his take on what is really at the root of the Valerie Plame scandal, and why the issues involved are more than just whether or not a law was broken. He offers a good history of both Wilson's involvement in the first Iraq war, explaining why some in the White House probably weren't happy with the CIA choosing to sent him to Niger in the first place, as well as a history of the relationship between the Bushes and George Tenet. He also provides this bit of insight into the scandal:
Bush presumably trusted Tenet and the CIA to get the goods on Saddam and his WMD. Cheney's staff evidently did too. But why did Tenet send Wilson to Africa? Maybe he just thought he was sending the most qualified guy. But the neo-cons and their allies came to see it as a conspiracy to ignore the truth - especially after Wilson, last July, went public with the essence of his findings, which was that the yellowcake rumors were false.It's a bit of an interesting theory as to why the Plame leak was engineered - I'm not sure what I think of it, but I can certainly see it as plausible. I'm still more of the mind that it was done as a means of intimidating anyone in the CIA who might think of leaking information that might be embarrassing to the President - a kind of "we burned her and we'll burn you too", but I can see that pointing out that Wilson has a reason to side with the CIA could also be a factor.
The moment that piece hit the op-ed page of the New York Times, it was all-out war between the pro- and anti-war factions, and between the CIA and its critics. I am told by what I regard as a very reliable source inside the White House that aides there did, in fact, try to peddle the identity of Joe Wilson's wife to several reporters. But the motive wasn't revenge or intimidation so much as a desire to explain why, in their view, Wilson wasn't a neutral investigator, but, a member of the CIA's leave-Saddam-in-place team. [Emphasis mine, except for the underscore on "did", which Fineman emphasised in his piece]
Of course, the most interesting aspect of the article is Fineman's assertion that he, too, has been told that the White House did want to burn Plame. It'll certainly be interesting when some of the names of who did the leaking - and maybe also who's giving information to the press confirming parts of the story - come out.
Yesterday I posted a quote from The Note inferring that Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, may be starting to look like a suspect in the leaking of Plame's CIA status. Kevin at CalPundit posts an email he received today, which indicates former CIA agent Larry Johnson seems to be hinting at Lebby as well, along with a quote from a 2001 Newsweek issue pointing out that Libby isn't a total stranger to scandal.
Like other theories about who may have leaked the information, it's still speculative at this point, but it's worth keeping an eye on.
This time around, the question so far isn't "What did the President know and when did he know it, but "When did the President know it, and what did he do about it?"
QUESTION: When did he become aware that --Josh Marshall frequently posts the transcripts - or exceprts from the transcripts - of the morning press gaggles in DC. Scott McClellan has been having some difficulty the last couple of days with lots and lots of questions about the Plame scandal. Fortuantely, it seems that some reporters are still on the ball and are willing to ask some of the more difficult questions. There's other good stuff in this transcript, take a minute to check it out.MR. McCLELLAN: That there was an allegation that someone leaked classified information? When was that first --
QUESTION: No, no, that an undercover official of the United States government had been outed. When did the President of the United States know that? When was he informed of that? And what was his reaction? Where's the outrage, I think, was the question that was asked.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the outrage has always been made known. If someone leaks classified information -- are you -- when did --
QUESTION: When did the President know it, and what did he do about it?
MR. McCLELLAN: When did someone make the allegation that this -- that someone had leaked classified information?
QUESTION: On July 14th or 15th, it was clear that --
MR. McCLELLAN: I'll look back at the timing and post the information --
While there's still no proof that Karl Rove was involved in the Plame leak, an article in The Nation from 2001 provides a look at Karl Rove's history and reputation as someone for whom dirty tricks are apparently standard operating procedure.
In a 700-word article that Slater said wasn't the most significant thing he'd written about Rove, he referred to questionable campaign tactics attributed to Rove: teaching College Republicans dirty tricks; spreading a rumor that former Texas Governor Ann Richards was too tolerant of gays and lesbians; circulating a mock newspaper that featured a story about a former Democratic governor's drinking and driving when he was a college student; spreading stories about Texas official Jim Hightower's alleged role in a contribution kickback scheme; and alerting the press to the fact that Lena Guerrero, a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party, had lied about graduating from college. Rove was explicitly linked by testimony and press reports to all but the gay and lesbian story; the college incident had been so widely reported for fifteen years that it was essentially part of the common domain. Slater also reported that primary candidates Steve Forbes and Gary Bauer blamed the Bush camp for the smear campaign.He also seems to have a Clintonian ability to parse questions:"He said I had harmed his reputation," Slater recalls. Says another reporter who was traveling with Bush, "It was pretty heated. They were nose to nose. Rove was furious and had his finger in Slater's chest." Adds the same reporter, "What was interesting then is that everyone on the campaign charter concluded that Rove was responsible for rumors about McCain."
That Karl Rove, who, according to the White House press office is not giving interviews, hasn't always abided by the Marquess of Queensberry rules of political engagement is not exactly breaking news. As long ago as 1989, when Rove collaborated with an FBI agent investigating Hightower, the then-Texas agricultural commissioner complained about "Nixonian dirty tricks."
When questioned under oath before a Texas Senate committee in 1991, Rove was evasive about his relationship with Rampton and engaged in semantic hairsplitting worthy of Bill Clinton. "How long have you known an FBI agent by the name of Greg [Rampton]?" a Democratic senator asked Rove. The answer should have been fairly straightforward, as Rampton had cleared Rove of the bugging incident five years earlier and had met with him a number of times subsequently, which Rove had disclosed in a federal questionnaire in 1989. Yet Rove was, to say the least, evasive: "Senator, it depends. Would you define 'know' for me?"If this history is accurate, then doing something like outing a CIA agent to intimidate others who might think about coming forward and punishing someone who had embarassed the Bush Administration might not be out of character for him.
I find it somewhat disheartening that reporters seem to think its necessary to mention that investigations of leaks usually don't seem to lead anywhere. While this may be a valid point, repeating it can help set the public expectations to expect a failure, making it easier for journalists not to probe the case - or their own involvement in it - with more vigor.
While I'm sure it's awkward for reporters to be working on a story that involves other reporters and brings to a head questions about source confidentiality, I don't think that they should back down from something that has the kind of potentially serious implications that the Plame scandal does. If they accept the canard that leak investigations lead to nothing, they can create and atmosphere that might make it easier for the FBI to tank their probe.
Obviously, though, the CIA was able to come up with enough information that Ashcroft knew he couldn't just bury it, which is why the FBI has it now. It may well be possible to get information on who made the leaks without forcing journalists to reveal their sources, and that would perhaps be the best approach for reporters to take.
Kevin at Calpundit has a section from Larry Johnson's interview with PBS's Terence Smith where Johnson, a former CIA analyst and official at the State Department, confirms that Plame was a covert agent for the CIA. His comments are excellent and I recomment reading them. There is, however, one potential problem with his comments that I'm sure the right will be jumping all over.
TERENCE SMITH: Larry Johnson, explain what the dangers are that are inherent in identifying an undercover operator. What is the worry here?Twice he mentions that Plame has been with the CIA for "three decades". According to this article at the Washington Post, however, Plame is 40 years old. This makes her having been with the CIA for 'three decades' sound impossible, and will, I'm sure, lead to many conservatives branding Johnson as either a liar or someone who's trying to exaggerate the situation for political gain (even though Johnson makes it clear that he is a Republican).LARRY JOHNSON: Let's be very clear about what happened. This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst. But given that, I was a CIA analyst for four years. I was undercover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency until I left the agency on September 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it.
So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go undercover. Let's put them overseas and let's out them and then see how they like it. They won't be able to stand the heat."
What I suspect has happened, though, is that Johnson, when he said 'three decades' didn't necessarily mean 'thirty years'. Rather I think he meant that she had served in three distinct decades - the 80's, 90's and now 2000's. During the interview, he says that he and Plame were in the same training class, and he also says he left the service in 1989 after serving 4 years - meaning he started in 1985. Put it all together, and you get that Plame also started in 1985, which jibes with what I think he may have meant.
I've heard the 'decades' term used this way before - most commonly in reference to the musical group "The BeeGees" who are the only act to have had at least one hit record in each of 5 decades. Their first album came out in the late 60's, and they've had songs chart in the 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's as well.
Still, it's not the most common useage of "decade", which is frequently taken to simply mean "ten years" as opposed to a specific 10-year-period, and I think that Johnson probably would have been better to use the clearer "for alomst 20 years" rather than "for three decades".
One of the arguments some on the right have been making to try and defuse the Plame scandal is that if it was so important to keep her identity secred, then why did Joseph Wilson include her maiden name in a bio of his that is available online? Mark Kleiman explains
why this is just one more specious argument among man. My favourite part is this:
Now energy consultant Valerie Plame marries Ambassador Joseph Wilson. That probably rates an entry on the New York Times social page. It certainly rates a line in his Who's Who entry and his c.v., and it would be very odd indeed -- undesirably attention-catching -- to exclude the bride's maiden name from the newspaper announcement, the Who's Who, or the bio. "Mr. Wilson is married to a woman named Valerie, whose maiden name is available only on a need-to-know basis." And of course the people who knew Valerie Plame before her marriage had to know that she was now Ms. Wilson, and would be very puzzled to see a reference to Amb. Wilson's marriage to "the former Valerie Chojnowski." There simply wouldn't have been any alternative to the truth.Kleiman has a lot more, though, so be sure to read it all.
