June 15
Some developments on the Iraq War II deception front:
Whoever leaked the Downing Street memo found some more. The first disclosed memo reminded me of Watergate in that it sounded like the revelation that Nixon had been taping Oval Office conversations. By that I mean it isn't sufficient proof to start impeaching Bush, but it is cause to investigate and a good clue of where to look. These new memos likewise feel like the trickle of evidence that eventually caught Nixon. Bush apologists will certainly defend their man saying these aren't proof he lied about his intention to go to war, but they sure are reason to investigate. Shouldn't every member of the press and Congress be asking whether there are similar US memos? Something must have been written on the Bush side about the same meetings the British were writing about. Let's see it. Let's get the people who wrote the memos and got mentioned in them under oath and ask what the truth is. Bush denied the first memo is accurate about his actions, but they've been found authentic. Their accuracy deserves full investigation.
Speaking of full investigations, or lack thereof, on top of the bizarre way Rep. James Sensenbrenner sort of ended a hearing (does walking out and turning off lights without a motion to adjourn count?) including testimony he didn't like on US government use of torture, now his deputy chief of staff, Sean McLaughlin, wants to deny use of hearing rooms to Democratic committee members. He said in an e-mail to a Democratic staff member, "I'm sitting here watching your 'forum' on C-SPAN. Just to let you know, it was your last. Don't bother asking [for a room] again." McLaughlin is learning the "send" button is a dangerous thing when you're ticked. Of course, if arrogance keeps quiet, it's not really a proper sort of arrogance, so I suppose that had to be sent. Just remember that when you elect a Republican in your US House race, you're voting to keep guys like that in their jobs.
And to really get depressing, remember how the neocons crowed when there wasn't a large number of refugees in Iraq right after the invasion? It looked like the one thing that went right. Well, guess what can now be found in neighboring Syria in numbers possibly as high as half a million? That's right, Iraqi refugees --- who went to Syria for safety. As an ironic juxtaposition, Rumsfeld just said yesterday, "A lot of bad things that could have happened have not happened." Naturally he added in the expected accusation against Syria. For good measure, he added some doublespeak about whether Iraq was more secure since he invasion, "Well, statistically no. But clearly it has been getting better as we've gone along.,"
So now that the neocon defense that things are working out is looking more and more like nonsense, and their attempts to stifle defense are exposed and hopefully that means less likely to work, how long before they start blaming war opponents for everything going badly? Watch, they will simultaneously continue to praise Bush as a stand up guy who does what he wants and pays zero attention to critics while trying to make it sound like the critics screwed it up.
June 13
Those of us mystified at the failure of the mainstream media to give more coverage to the Downing Street Memo will find some interesting things in this article by the Star Tribune's ombudsman, Kate Parry, on why the Star Tribune didn't cover it for two weeks, and just as important, why they finally did. It's not that complicated but tells quite a lot, probably about a lot of media organizations. It wasn't picked up by the wire services. That was it, even though, as Parry said, "Cyberspace was roiling with it." Many people in mainstream media didn't know about it, or heard just a little and assumed, and here's that media pack mentality showing, that it would have been getting bigger coverage if there was anything to the story, so they didn't cover it either. What changed? They were deluged with angry readers demanding to know why there was no coverage, eventually prompting the editors to look into it. Parry says the Star Tribune was actually ahead of other newspapers in losing patience with the wires and putting their own reporter on it. What followed was not exactly the stuff of conspiracy. The story went on an inside page because it was a busy news time and this was no longer breaking news. The editorial board mentioned it in an editorial and later reprinted the whole thing. Most newspapers keep the editorial and news staffs separate, though I'd wager few readers know that (the Star Tribune is known on the right as the "Red Star", though it's only the editorials where they can find a leftward tilt --- and the editorial board definitely doesn't like Bush). Parry said they got a lot of letters asking why it wasn't in the news section. I wrote one of those, though to thank them for running something that needed running when the news editors wouldn't do it, albeit I did say I thought its location in the editorial section made it look like a matter of opinion.
To summarize the two important points: many in the mainstream media still believe news is news only if it comes from certain sources, like wire services or the government; conversely, it is possible for web-savvy news consumers to have an effect by asking that something be covered.
June 12
Last night my wife and I attended a fundraiser for the Minnesota House DFL (Democratic Farmer Labor party) caucus. It's reassuring, when allegedly the national Democratic party and many state parties are supposedly demoralized and soul searching, to see the contrast between the state parties here. The DFL is feeling rather good right now, while the Republican chairman was involuntary replaced despite support from the governor, who was supposed to be a rising star nationally. The House DFL especially feels good after whittling the biggest Republican majority ever down to a majority of two. The rejection of his choice for chairman shows further weakness from Gov. Pawlenty, who has plenty of trouble already. "Governor Gambling", as I like to call him, has been unable to push through an expansion of gambling despite including additional gambling money in his budget. He keeps raising fees to avoid raising taxes, but went to far when he proposed a new cigarette "fee".
On the federal side, Sen. Norm Coleman has been nice and quiet since George Galloway gave him a good spanking. His likely opponent for reelection appears to be last night's main attraction, Al Franken (the opening act was a local country band, Westbound). Franken seems to generate considerable enthusiasm among Minnesota liberals. A Republican relative compared him to Paul Wellstone. He meant that as a criticism, but aside from whether it's praise or criticism it's a fair comparison in some ways. Like Wellstone, Franken wears his heart on his sleeve. The politics are very similar, including the emphasis on veterans issues, and their sense of the party's roots including FDR and Hubert Humphrey. Both are intellectuals who learned how to appeal to the gut as well as the head. Their speaking styles are different. Wellstone was a bombastic speaker while Franken is a comedian, so he builds to a punchline rather than rousing the audience. It's hard to believe he could take to the handshaking meet-and-greet sorts of stuff as well as Wellstone because I've never seen anyone do that as well as Wellstone. It seemed to come naturally to him, not just a required part of the job. The most important quality Wellstone had was he also spoke and voted his conscience. He certainly cut deals with Republicans, even conservative Republicans, but it was above board stuff where they could find areas of agreement. Even those who couldn't stand Wellstone's politics conceded that about him, and that must in part explain his better than expected margins of victory in each election.
Franken doesn't have a record in office of course, but my feeling is he'll be much the same way. Unlike the opposing party, he can actually admit a mistake. For example, he supported the invasion of Iraq, even appearing at a pro-war rally. This may explain the passion behind his remarks last night about Bush deceiving us into the war. He made a point I've made too, that the Republicans will investigate no wrongdoing by a president of their own party. He mentioned it in context of $8 billion that's gone missing in Iraq, and that we know where it's gone. He said it's been stolen by the contractors connected to Bush and Cheney, and that is why Congress won't look into it. In a moment that shows he still straddles the line between speechmaker and comedian, he once used the phrase "after the show". It was in reference to the screw ups in Iraq, like ignoring recommendations that the army be kept together instead of fired and left to the join the insurgency, and that care be taken to prevent looting. He made fun of Rumsfeld for blowing off the looting by saying that's what people do in a free society. Franken said he didn't know that was all right, so "after the show, let's all go down to Nicollet Mall (the main retail street in downtown Minneapolis, not far from the University of Minnesota concert hall where the event took place) and help ourselves." The Nicollet Mall merchants will be glad to know we were more law abiding than that.
It could be rightly pointed out that Wellstone didn't spend his time dissecting the lies and distortions of the right the way Franken does, and that's true, but I think that mostly speaks to the different era we live in now. In 1990, Minnesotans were angered by the "better Jew than you" letter the Rudy Boschwitz campaign sent to Minnesota Jews claiming that Boschwitz was a more faithful Jew than Wellstone. It backfired enough that it might be what put Wellstone over the top in a year when he was the only senate candidate to beat an incumbent. Contrast that with 2002, which was a nasty campaign all year long. The difference strikes me as being the right wing attack machine. Wellstone didn't accuse his opponents of lying, and he didn't have to. The Boschwitz letter would have been nothing in 2002. In fact, Boschwitz was the only Republican I know of to cut some slack to the Wellstone family and friends who got too partisan in their grief at Wellstone's public memorial. The rest of them took the real anger many Minnesotans felt at those speeches occurring at a memorial, and twisted it by misrepresenting or even lying about what happened. One of the people who documented this dishonest propaganda campaign was Al Franken, who devoted a chapter to it in "Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them". Franken has likewise devoted his radio show and his public appearances to pushing back and debunking the lies, something Wellstone didn't have to contend with nearly as much his first two campaigns.
One other thing Al Franken mentioned was that he searches his own name to see what is being written about him. In case Al Franken includes blogs in his searches, maybe I should mention Al Franken's name as often as I can in order to come up higher in search results when someone searches for "Al Franken", and maybe Al Franken will see this little blog of mine mentioning Al Franken. Mostly of course Al Franken is looking out for people lying about him, so let me say there is no doubt that Al Franken pastes my blog into an email every day and sends it to Dick Cheney.
Did I mention Al Franken?
June 8
The best interview I've ever seen with a member of the Bush administration was interestingly enough on tonight's Daily Show. It will be repeated tomorrow. Jon Stewart is one of the best interviewers on TV in terms of having his facts on hand and asking questions that need asking without interrupting guests, getting into shouting matches and such. He interviewed Colin Powell tonight, and managed both to let Powell speak at length and to explain why fewer people are buying the administration line on Iraq. Powell was disingenuous on some things, like saying intelligence is never perfect when this time it was dead wrong and some delusion qualities were needed to have no doubt about its accuracy. Stewart pointed out how spreading democracy and human rights were "accents, not the thrust", and Powell said he mentioned human rights at the end of his presentation to the Security Council in February 2003, missing that this was the point, that he spent most of the time giving information about Iraqi weapons that was all wrong, and human rights was just tacked on. Stewart correctly pointed out that Americans before the war agreed threats needed to be confronted, but that even before the invasion the intelligence presented to the public wasn't holding up.
June 4
I've been having an interesting e-mail conversation with friend of mine who supports the war in Iraq and doesn't get the thinking of opponents. He gave me an analogy to explain his thinking. Imagine you came home one night. As you got to your door, a man came out and shot you, then began to rape your wife. Your landlord, a generally dislikable or maybe awful person, intervened and killed the attacker. Are you suspect of his motivations, like maybe he just wanted to collect the rent and killed the attacker while he was at it? Was he wrong to intervene because he could have kept his door shut and called the police? As my friend put it, "Are you going to bitch and moan about how he really shouldn't receive any accolades, as he didn't do it with a pure heart?"
There are problems with the analogy of course. War is usually, and was in the case of Iraq, a long considered policy decision with a lot of planning, not a street crime in progress. One might suggest that if the analogy were like the war, the landlord might have shot the wife too or started raping her himself. The point I'm driving to is that whether anyone thinks the comparison apt or not, this reflects his thinking, and I'd be shocked to find he's unique. What we who opposed the war and are trying to expose Bush have to realize is that it isn't enough to expose the lies behind the selling of the war, the incompetence of the planning, the profiteering of the reconstruction, or even the human rights abuses committed by our government. It isn't enough because in the big picture as some see it, the removal of a murderous dictator was so important as to make the rest unimportant, and I know at least one person who can't understand the focus of war opponents on these less important aspects. It gives the impression we don't care about what Saddam did.
I am trying to counter that impression of course. I explained that the people on the anti-war side yelled about Saddam when the present day war hawks just sold him arms. I asked if every criticism of the war or it's conduct had to be accompanied by a disclaimer that we understand Saddam was nasty. It's not as if Saddam's awfulness is in doubt. I suggested war crimes don't cease to be war crimes merely because they're not the worst ever committed, or because they're committed by Americans. I asked why Saddam warranted an invasion but not every dictator. The main thing though is I hope I've given war opponents an insight into the thoughts of war supporters, and why Bush has retained significant minority support despite all the revelations thus far.
I've had plenty of criticism of the mainstream media for acting like government stenographers, so I wasn't pleasantly surprised today. Associated Press reporter Robert Burns wrote an article about the Pentagon admission that copies of the Koran had indeed been desecrated (didn't Newsweek just report that they were about to admit that?). He mentioned that the finding were released after business hours Friday. Normally only outlets Air America point out that bad news gets released when it will get the least coverage, so to see it from the AP is good. The link is to AOL, but partial credit goes to the Pioneer Press, which not only carried it in the print edition (the web version has several articles together) but put it on the front page.
Amnesty International isn't backing down from the choice of the word "gulag" to describe Bush's prisons in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly elsewhere. Good for them. A network of prisons is what "gulag" means, coming from the acronym for Stalin's prisons. It raises a question like I asked above: do war crimes have to reach Stalinist levels to be war crimes? Is detaining people without charge or trial OK if you do it to 10,000 but not 100,000? Killing thousands by torture and harsh imprisonment is wrong but hundreds is OK? Funny how no government has ever reacted well to being criticized by Amnesty International, but when foreign governments are the targets the Bush administration just calls it evidence. When it's themselves, they act insulted. Notice they deny only the characterization, not the charges.
June 2
The revelation of the identity of Deep Throat shows a shameful contrast between now and 30 years ago. Evidence of the Watergate coverup resulted in Congress mounting full investigations. The current Congress wasn't moved in investigate when Bush stonewalled the 911 commission. They looked into how pre-war intelligence on Iraq was wrong, but stopped short of the obvious question of how it was used. The ignore the suspicious circumstances of Bush's reelection. Though Sen. Harry Truman looked into war profiteering during World War II when the president was of his own party, this Congress won't look into war profiteering in Iraq. Can you see the Congress of the 70's letting the Downing Street Memo go by without hearings right away? Yet this Congress won't investigate the acting president. It doesn't matter what sort or quantity of evidence they have in hand. They will not investigate. More so than Tom DeLay and travel on the lobbyist dime, this is what will stain this Congress.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press has an editorial page associate editor, Mark Yost, who has always struck me as being unable to write without a smirk, like a high school kid whose tenuous place with the popular kids hangs on his sneering ability when confronting the other cliques. A prime example is his most recent column, "Why Ignore Diesels and Nukes?" There's nothing wrong with the policy questions he raises, namely whether we should consider greater use of nuclear power and biodiesel as energy sources. However, beyond referring to environmentalists as "greenies" and "enviros", he made the rather remarkable statement, "But don't hold your breath waiting for the Sierra Club ad for biodiesel." Instead of holding my breath, I went to a search engine and guess what I found: two instances of biodiesel being promoted on web sites belonging to, get this, the Sierra Club. Here's one. Here's the other.
It took more time than I could have held my breath, but not by much. Moreover, when I looked to see if other "enviros" promoted biodiesel, that was easily done within a single breath (go to a liberal web site,Common Dreams, and search their archives to immediately see several examples of environmentalists supporting biodiesel). So if you have a large lung capacity, you can hold your breath waiting for the Sierra Club to promote biodiesel, though waiting for Mr. Yost to check his facts might take longer.
See the archives for earlier entries.
