Latest spin: Iraq is about terrorism

I caught a few minutes of today's press briefing with Scott McClellan. At one point, in response to a reporter's question about whether the administration was trying to point out the good news from Iraq, McClellan said about three times that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism.

To anyone watching the briefing, it was a pretty obvious talking point -- and I'm guessing the White House wants the press to pick up on it.

Indeed, I expect this to be a major point of tonight's address from the Army War College in Carlisle, PA.

Then again, it was already the title of a presidential speech as recently as September 7, 2003: "A CENTRAL FRONT IN THE WAR ON TERROR." I wonder if the White House web site used all caps for emphasis?

It's not really true, so let's see if screaming helps emphasize the point.

Why isn't it true? Because most of the attackers in Iraq are insurgents or guerillas, not terrorists. They are primarily engaged in a war against an occupying army, not primarily targeting innocent civilians. Neighboring leaders and some US legal scholars say it is a perfectly legal resistance campaign.

I wish the US hadn't gone and I certainly don't want to see US soldiers die, but it is completely misleading to say that this is a central front in the war on terror. A few terrorists might have relocated to Iraq after the war started, and some innocent civilians have died, but the elephant in the room is the US Army.

In any event, the transcript of today's press briefing isn't yet available, but I did find a Bloomberg piece that shows how the administration is running with this idea today:

Bush wants to keep Americans informed about progress in Iraq, spokesman Scott McClellan said, calling the plan's success ``critical to winning the war on terrorism.''

Also, the Vice President used the phrase at a campaign event on Friday:

In Iraq, thugs and assassins are desperately trying to shake our will, and they have made Iraq a central front in the war on terror.

Cheney also used the phrase in a commencement address to the Coast Guard last week: "Iraq has become a central front in the war on terror."

Actually, using Google News, I found the Vice President using this phrase often recently -- at other campaign functions and other commencement addresses. And of course, at the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, Siemens Campus.

The neocons agree with this framing, since Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz used it May 6, 2004, in Philly before the World Affairs Council.

The target audiences are interesting too. Cheney used the phrase in front of fire and emergency services workers, May 5. Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed said it in April, in Nevada.

Swing voters and swing states, eh? That's really what tonight's presidential address is all about.

Meet the Press

Nearly two weeks ago, I was interviewed by journalist Shelley Emling, who used to cover New York (including the United Nations) for Cox News Service and has been working as a freelance journalist in the UK for some months now. Ms. Emling and I have spoken on the phone, but for the past year or so, she has contacted me exclusively by email. We have communicated numerous times and she quite often quotes me in her stories about the UN, Iraq, US-British relations, etc.

Most recently, Emling wanted me to talk about whether the news about Abu Ghraib prison could strain US-UK relations. Read her piece, published the other day in USA Today, and you get the impression that Blair's position is endangered by the war in Iraq, which I think is probably true, and that US-UK relations could be threatened if Blair falls. This is also possible, but I think there are some important caveats to note.

However, I do not think the caveats are explained in the article. Here's what Emling quoted me saying:

"[Tony] Blair and [George W.] Bush are in the same mess," says Rodger Payne, an expert on Iraq and international relations at the University of Louisville. "If one or the other one of them loses his job because of events in Iraq, then it is possible that the successor government would have strained relations with the counterpart across the Atlantic."

If Blair was toppled, Payne says, a new Labor government might start reversing British policies toward Iraq. "British withdrawal, which seems unlikely but at least plausible, could seriously strain relations with Washington," he says. Britain has 7,500 troops stationed in Iraq.

In case you are wondering the point of this post, yes, I said all those things.

But...

I am going to reproduce my original email in total so as to compare what I said with what she actually wrote. Indeed, I'll put the part she quoted in bold:

I do not think the current [prison scandal] will strain relations all that much in the short term. Bush and Blair, however, are in the same mess. If one or the other one of them loses his job because of events in Iraq, then it is possible that the successor government would have strained relations with the counterpart across the Atlantic.

Well, she quoted me accurately, but Emling left out the caveat from first sentence -- perhaps because I made a typo and left out the reference to her specific question.

In any case, this particular edit largely changes the punch line she implies in her article.

This next part is key:

For example, if Blair is toppled (and some are now suggesting that this is possible), a new Labour government might start reversing some UK policies towards Iraq. British withdrawal, which seems unlikely but at least plausible, could seriously strain relations with Washington - under a Bush presidency, at least.

Then again, if Kerry topples Bush even as Blair survives and wins re-election, I do not think US-UK relations will be stressed. Kerry is not talking about withdrawal, so any strategy short of that might actually meet with Blair's approval. Blair would invite a greater UN, European,or NATO role, for instance.

Notice what happened?

I argued that British policy reversals would hurt relations with the US under a Bush presidency. The context would perhaps be significantly different if Kerry is President. Bill Clinton and Blair got along great and Clinton, Blair and Kerry all want much greater UN involvement in Iraq. Thus, British withdrawal might mean very little if the point is to internationalize the situation on the ground.

I don't really fault Emling for leaving this out, but did want to clarify the issue in my own part of the blogosphere.

Plus (I probably shouldn't be saying this, but google makes everyone a snoop), I recently learned that Emling is married to Scott Norvell, who is European Bureau Chief of Fox News. I just linked to an interview with Norvell, which has two parts.

Search him out on the web, and one quickly discovers his relatively conservative take on the world. I'm pretty sure his blog is Tonguetied.

Kyoto Update: Russia to Ratify

Reuters just posted this story a few hours ago:

Russia Friday secured a deal with the European Union on terms for its entry into the World Trade Organization and immediately rewarded the bloc by promising to back a worldwide environmental pact.

This is essentially what I predicted would happen back in October, though Anders Åslund did better. He even had the details of the swap correct in mid-April. Åslund said then that the deal would occur either April 22 or May 21 -- and he noted that gas prices would figure into the specific pact:

An EU statement after the signature of the deal said Russia had agreed to gradually raise domestic gas prices for industrial users to pave the way for WTO membership -- rising by a third or even a half by 2006 and doubling by 2010.

Bingo!

Putin, of course, gave himself some wiggle room on Kyoto, in case there's a delay in Russia's entry to the WTO:

"This cannot but have a positive effect on our position on the Kyoto protocol. We will speed up Russia's moves toward ratifying the protocol. ... We clearly set out our position on Kyoto long ago. We are for the Kyoto process and we support it."

"I cannot say how things will be 100 percent, because ratification is not an issue for the president but for parliament, but we will speed up this process," said Putin, who toughly controls the Russian legislature.

Still, it looks like this is a done deal and this means Kyoto will soon be international law -- and the US will be a notable outlier.

Hopefully, Kerry will find some time to talk about energy and climate change this summer. Bush is vulnerable on the environment.

Prison break

AFP has an revealing story today on Yahoo! News, "US forces release hundreds of prisoners from Abu Ghraib."

Hundreds of Iraqi prisoners were being released from the infamous Abu Ghraib jail, some accusing their US captors of maltreatment, as an abuse scandal continues to dog coalition forces.

Some 13 buses filled with Iraqis left the gates of the notorious prison Friday, where thousands of political prisoners were executed under president Saddam Hussein, as part of a scheduled release of 472 prisoners.

Wow, nearly 500 Iraqi prisoners released all at once.

I'm sure this will be widely noted, but I wanted to save a reference demonstrating just how wrong Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) was when he declared he was "more outraged by the outrage" than by the abuses:

"You know, they're not there for traffic violations," he said. "If they're in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners -- they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."

I guess he was wrong -- or none of these nearly 500 prisoners were in cell block 1A or 1B.

Anyone following this story knows that some soldiers and at least one General have said the abuse was "normal" and that the military is investigating many homicides.

I saw David Gergen on CNN this morning and he pointed out (a) that the conventional wisdom among national security and foreign policy types is now quite pessimistic; and (b) that no one in the Bush administration seems willing to take responsibility for anything that's gone wrong.

We're a democracy, so voters can take care of that last problem this November.

Oh, those Straussians

Journalist Robert Dreyfuss wrote yesterday that the apparent recent divide between the United States and Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress is a ruse. Let's use this post as a chance to celebrate the con in neocon, eh?

To review, the US started the week by cutting off funding to Chalabi's group (to the tune of $340,000 per month). That's some stipend, eh?

Today, US forces have raided Chalabi's house in Baghdad (though one report said it was his office) and carted off boxes full of files. Here's what he said in response:

Hours after the raid, Chalabi repudiated the American occupation authority and declared himself a leader of the new Iraq.

"My relationship with the Coalition Provisional Authority doesn't exist."

That sounds like a complete fissure in the relationship.

That would be huge, because just three months ago Chalabi was so connected to the Pentagon that he was willing for the INC to take the fall for the faked intelligence. Then again, strong evidence suggests that the INC was responsible for much of the bad WMD intelligence.

But, Dreyfuss says it is a trick -- and quotes a neocon, Michael Rubin, formerly in the Pentagon, now at AEI, who says so:

"By telegraphing that he is not the favorite son of America, the administration will bolster him, showing he is his own man."

Here's Dreyfuss's final paragraph:

In other words, it’s all a big con game. The still-neocon-dominated Pentagon—which this week stopped funding Chalabi’s INC —is playing its last card, hoping that it can boost Chalabi’s sagging fortunes by pretending to sever ties with him. That, the neocons hope, will allow Chalabi to strengthen his ties to Sistani, the king-making mullah who, they hope, holds Iraq’s fate in his wrinkled hands.

My guess is that some politicos at the Pentagon spent some recent time watching "House of Games," "The Sting," "Matchstick Men" and other flicks about confidence games and, as I said, decided to emphasize the con in neocon.

How can you blame them? I love this genre, and would probably toss in "A Big Hand for the Little Lady."

Moreover, the time may be right. As one of my old debate coaches used to say, "When it's fourth-and-long, and you're behind late in the game...throw deep."

For more info about the neocons and the INC, check out Laura Rozen's new piece in the American Prospect. I know people are interested in this stuff since I get several hits every week for my early February blog entry highlighting the known links among neocon Michael Ledeen, Iran-contra figure (and con man) Manucher Ghorbanifar, and the Niger-uranium story. Rozen mentions these figures in passing, along with the DoD's Doug Feith (who may yet be punished for leaking a widely repudiated memo about alleged Iraq-al Qaeda links).

Safire's Satire, Part II

Last Monday (May 10), Abu Aardvark commented on William Safire's defense of Donald Rumsfeld:

When I went to the New York Times front page this morning, I swear to god I thought I saw this under the op-ed heading: "Satire: Rumsfeld Should Stay." Only when I followed the link did I realize that of course this was William Safire, not an amusing Satire. But, oddly, the effect is much the same.

Today's Safire column, "Sarin? What Sarin?", is awful.

I blogged about the Sarin Monday, so I'll try to make some new points as I dissect Safire's latest:

You never saw such a rush to dismiss this as not news. U.N. weapons inspectors whose reputations rest on denial of Saddam's W.M.D. pooh-poohed the report. "It doesn't strike me as a big deal," said David Kay.

David Kay, of course, was not merely a "UN weapons inspector." He headed the Iraq Survey Group for the Bush administration.

Safire:

"Sarin Bomb Is Likely a Leftover From the 80's" was USA Today's Page 10 brushoff; maybe the terrorists didn't know their shell was loaded with sarin. Besides, say our lionized apostles of defeat, a poison-gas bomb does not a "stockpile" make. Even the Defense Department, on the defensive, strained not to appear alarmist, saying confirmation was needed for the field tests.

Safire's point: "Confirmation? Ha! Why should we need facts?"

Many field tests in Iraq have identified the presence of chemical weapons and to-date, none have found any upon further examination.

In this rush to misjudgment, we can see an example of the "Four Noes" that have become the defeatists' platform.

The first "no" is no stockpiles of W.M.D., used to justify the war, were found. With the qualifier "so far" left out, the absence of evidence is taken to be evidence of absence. In weeks or years to come — when the pendulum has swung, and it becomes newsworthy to show how cut-and-runners in 2004 were mistaken — logic suggests we will see a rash of articles and blockbuster books to that end.

The tide on WMD didn't turn until Kay said "we were all wrong." No stockpiles have been found and the US didn't even bother guarding many of the mostly highly suspect sites.

These may well reveal the successful concealment of W.M.D., as well as prewar shipments thereof to Syria and plans for production and missile delivery, by Saddam's Special Republican Guard and fedayeen, as part of his planned guerrilla war — the grandmother of all battles. The present story line of "Saddam was stupid, fooled by his generals" would then be replaced by "Saddam was shrewder than we thought."

Is Safire wish-casting? What is very clear is that there was no vast infrastructure of WMD programs and no readily deployable arsenal. The nuclear program was dead. No one denies Iraq had chemical weapons in the 1980s and that scientists could again make them. What is the appropriate level of threat justifying preventive war?

This will be especially true for bacteriological weapons, which are small and easier to hide. In a sovereign and free Iraq, when germ-warfare scientists are fearful of being tried as prewar criminals, their impetus will be to sing — and point to caches of anthrax and other mass killers.

A vial is easy to hide. A lab with equipment, not so easy.

Defeatism's second "no" is no connection was made between Saddam and Al Qaeda or any of its terrorist affiliates. This is asserted as revealed truth with great fervor, despite an extensive listing of communications and meetings between Iraqi officials and terrorists submitted to Congress months ago.

The DoD disavowed the list. As did the CIA. This is the biggest red herring among all the red herrings.

Most damning is the rise to terror's top rank of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who escaped Afghanistan to receive medical treatment in Baghdad. He joined Ansar al-Islam, a Qaeda offshoot whose presence in Iraq to murder Kurds at Saddam's behest was noted in this space in the weeks after 9/11. His activity in Iraq was cited by President Bush six months before our invasion. Osama's disciple Zarqawi is now thought to be the televised beheader of a captive American.

News reports suggest that the administration had several opportunities to kill Zarqawi before making the case to attack Iraq -- but didn't, apparently because it would have weakened their case for war. The terrorist was apparently hiding in Kurdish territory before the war and was certainly no tool of Saddam Hussein.

Moreover, Zarqawi is Jordanian and apparently has a prosthetic leg. The CNN linquist says the speaker on the video was not Jordanian and many viewers say the killer did not have a prosthetic leg.

The third "no" is no human-rights high ground can be claimed by us regarding Saddam's torture chambers because we mistreated Iraqi prisoners. This equates sleep deprivation with life deprivation, illegal individual humiliation with official mass murder. We flagellate ourselves for mistreatment by a few of our guards, who will be punished; he delightedly oversaw the shoveling of 300,000 innocent Iraqis into unmarked graves. Iraqis know the difference.

Outrageous. The DoD is investigating 5, 10 or 12 homicides (depending upon which source can be believed), along with rape and other abuses. This is not sleep deprivation. Did Safire hear Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC)?

The fourth "no" is no Arab nation is culturally ready for political freedom and our attempt to impose democracy in Iraq is arrogant Wilsonian idealism.

Imposing democracy is very, very difficult anywhere. Start ticking off successes and then compare the precursor conditions to Iraq. Still optimistic?

What evidence suggests that the best way to democratize a nation is via preventive war? What route was employed for South Africa? Nicaragua? Eastern Europe?

I have a blog read by maybe 75 people on an average day. Safire gets the NYT op-ed page.

Update: Matt Yglesias says this is Safire's "time warp."

Demagogue was on it today too.

Baseball fever

Congratulations to my friend Neal Traven for landing a short piece in USA TODAY "OPS on-base plus slugging valuable and easy statistic." If your inner stat geek wants to understand "OPS" then check out this short explanation.

Since I'm talking baseball, let me note that on any given evening, I'm highly likely to tune into a game on TV. Sometimes, the only game being broadcast on cable involves the Atlanta Braves. After all, they are "America's team" according to TBS.

Last night, the only game on our local cable was Atlanta's.

So, had yesterday been an ordinary Tuesday night, I would have watched at least some of last night's Atlanta-Arizona Diamondbacks games and would have seen Randy Johnson throw one of baseball's 17 perfect games. In about 125 years of history, that's one every 7.5 years. I've never seen one, despite watching a lot of baseball in my lifetime. A lot.

This time, I was at a going away party for a friend, he had election returns on his TV (Kucinich 2% vs. uncommitted 9%), and I missed the perfect game.

Sigh. To recap the bad news: the friend is gone for six weeks, I missed the perfecto, and my anti-war candidate finished behind just about everyone (I think he beat LaRouche).

Primary message to Kerry

Today is Kentucky's primary. John Kerry has already secured the Democratic nomination for president, of course, but I nonetheless took my vote seriously.

A week ago, the local newspaper pointed out that Clinton won the 1992 primary after he was assured his party's nomination, but 28% of voters went for "uncommitted" -- apparently to signal some dissatisfaction with his candidacy and/or campaign.

So, what message did I want to send with my vote?

A. Vote for Kerry, signaling to the world that "the party is united" and I'm very satisfied with the candidate.

B. Vote for someone else, signaling to the Kerry people that his campaign needs to work harder to secure my interest. This is hard to do since it's difficult to imagine a scenario whereby I wouldn't vote for John Kerry. I've defended him on this blog and will not vote for Nader.

C. Vote for "uncommitted" on the off-chance that all hell breaks out in Boston (and around the country) this summer and the Democratic convention becomes an open one.

I rejected "A" because the party has plenty of time to be unified after the primaries and the convention love fest. I also rejected option "C" because the odds are very much against an open convention and a vote for a particular candidate could send some strong signals.

Like what? Here are the choices that were on the ballot today:

A vote for John Edwards could signal that I liked his "two Americas" campaign rhetoric -- and just might want to see his name in the Veep slot. My spouse apparently bought into some part of this logic.

A vote for Wesley Clark would signal that I'm really concerned about national security issues and might want Kerry to think about Clark as Veep.

A vote for Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich would signal that Kerry is moving too far to the right and needs to reconnect with the Democratic base.

A vote for Lyndon LaRouche would suggest I'm a wacko -- and I'm afraid a vote for Al Sharpton might suggest that I'm a cynical Republican.

A vote for Joe Lieberman would signal that I'm 100% DLC.

I picked the third choice and voted for Kucinich. He's still campaigning and is the clear anti-war candidate, so I'm hoping some of my fellow Kentuckians vote similarly to amplify my message.

I'm not saying Kerry has to say that the US is coming home in January 2005, but he does have to stop implying that he will "stay the course." We don't need Brand X when we already own the "leading brand."

Sarin attack?

The BBC has the latest news about the "nerve gas bomb" that "exploded" in Iraq a few days ago.

I put "nerve gas bomb" in quotation marks because it was a binary shell containing two components of Sarin. The agents were designed to combine in flight. Absent the combination, the individual agents are relatively harmless.

I put "exploded" in quotation marks because the conventional explosive agents rigged to the device detonated, but the Sarin elements did not disperse. Two soldiers were treated for minor exposure.

While this could signal something important -- whether the presence of WMD in Iraq or the escation of war by the insurgents -- the BBC quotes a coalition official who does not think it amounts to much:

However, a senior coalition source has told the BBC the round does not signal the discovery of weapons of mass destruction or the escalation of insurgent activity.

He said the round dated back to the Iran-Iraq war and coalition officials were not sure whether the fighters even knew what it contained.

Iraq used Sarin against Iran during their war in the 1980s, and had the capability to produce large quantites as the UN discovered after the war. But the arsenal and production facilities were apparently destroyed in the 1990s under UN oversight.

As one talking military head said on MSNBC earlier today, explosives from WW II are still occasionally found across Europe. This may not mean much of anything.

If the insurgents have some more of these old warheads, however, the US has now told them what they have. Thus, I suppose it is possible that they might figure out a way to launch and activate the Sarin.

Let's hope not.

Minor game

OK, it's a slow Saturday in the blogosphere...

Thursday night, I went to a AAA baseball game between the Louisville Bats and the Toledo Mud Hens. My university had organized a group trip, so the tickets were cheap and even the Provost was in attendance.

I sat next to one of my recently graduated master's students and we were sandwiched between two philosophy professors and their partners and friends. Our row kept the beer guys fairly busy, so we didn't sit around and talk about Habermas or anything -- even though one of the philosophy profs is a genuine expert on the German social theorist.

We were also entertained by a very exciting baseball game. Toledo hit several early homers and had a 9-1 lead by the fourth inning. They couldn't hold it and the home team closed to 9-8 by the 8th. It was one of those warm/humid pre-rain games, which is very conducive to homers and scoring. No, really, it is.

Anyway, by the bottom of the 9th inning the Bats trailed 11-8 again as the Mud Hens scored 2 insurance runs in the top half of the final frame. Thus, the stage was set for a dramatic last inning comeback.

And the home fans who stuck around for more than 3 hours were rewarded (the philosophy profs were long gone by the 9th). With 2 outs and 2 men on base, Bats leadoff hitter Jermaine Clark hit a 3 run homer to tie the score. The very next batter, shortstop Felipe Lopez, hit another homer and the home team won 12-11!

A couple of interesting notes: The Mud Hens had a centerfielder named, get this Bull Durham fans, Nook Logan! Logan had a homer among 3 hits in the game, and stole a base. From his past stats, he doesn't look like a future major league star.

Also, Joe Vitiello hit 2 homers for the visitors. Vitiello has long been a favorite of mine. I'm a KC Royals fan and Vitiello used to be a top prospect in the organization. He won a AAA batting title in 1994 for the Omaha Royals (he hit .344 and slugged .526...and he walked in 15% of his plate appearances), but has only about 750 at bats in the majors over the last decade. He's hanging on, hoping for another chance and I hope he gets it.

Finally, the Bats had two real major leaguers in their lineup, both on DL rehab assignments: catcher Jason LaRue and outfielder Austin Kearns. I look for the latter to be a star player, if he can stay healthy, and he hit a homer and stole a base in the game.

Memo: King Richard to Lord Hastings

"Off with his head!" Or that's how Shakespeare put it.

What can I say about the tragic death of Nick Berg? The beheading was horrible and I certainly hope that the terrorists are brought to justice.

Of course, I'd like to see more discussion of the relatively common use of beheadings. This is from the February 2004 State Department Country Report on Human Rights:

The Government punished criminals according to its interpretation of Shari'a. Punishments included imprisonment, flogging, amputation, and execution by beheading. At year's end authorities acknowledged 32 executions, lower than the 43 in the previous year. Executions were for killings, narcotics-related offenses, rape, and armed robbery. The authorities punished repeated thievery and other repeated offenses by amputation of the right hand and left foot.

Can you guess the country?

It is Saudi Arabia, of course. According to Amnesty International's latest (2003) country report, Saudi Arabia has executed more than 1000 people in the last decade. Meanwhile, over 30 nations have banned the death penalty during the 1990s, bringing the number to over 105.

So what does the US think of Saudi Arabia? As I've blogged before, there's an interesting relationship between Bush and the Saudis.

President George W. Bush in 2002 on his relationship with Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Abdallah of Saudia Arabia:

I was honored to welcome Crown Prince Abdallah to my ranch, a place that is very special for me, and a place where I welcome special guests to our country. The Crown Prince and I had a very cordial meeting that confirmed the strong relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States of America.

Our partnership is important to both our nations.

...one of the really positive things out of this meeting was the fact that the Crown Prince and I established a strong personal bond. We spent a lot of time alone, discussing our respective visions, talking about our families. I was most interested in learning about how he thought about things. I'm convinced that the stronger our personal bond is, the more likely it is relations between our country will be strong...

It's a strong and important friendship, and he knows that and I know that...

On May 16, 2003, the President added simply:

Saudi Arabia is our friend...

Is the White House outraged when the Saudis behead someone?


You can find similar photos here.

International Response to Abu Ghraib

Yesterday, members of Congress were invited to see the still-secret photos and videos from Abu Ghraib. What did they see? Pretty clearly, as Taguba and others have emphasized, they saw prisoners who were not treated with the respect due under the Geneva Conventions:

They saw Iraqi women forced to bare their breasts, forced homosexual sex, sex between U.S. troops, hooded Iraqi prisoners forced to masturbate in front of their captors, another forced to sodomize himself.

They also reported viewing pictures of dead bodies, badly wounded soldiers and untrained soldiers stitching up injured detainees. A couple of Congress members were struck by pictures they said showed a detainee forced to smash his head against a wall at Abu Ghraib until his skull appeared to split.

In all, there were about 1000 new photos and around 300 showed abuse or sexual activity. In the words of Senator Mark Dayton (D-MN), the photos were "worse and more graphic" than those seen to-date.

I've taken these quotes from the Toronto Star, because I'm trying to gauge the international response to the prison abuse. Of course, I'll let experts like Abu Aardvark handle the Arab reaction (though the Aardvark has been thoroughly disgusted and has not found it easy to discuss this particular episode). I will note the reaction from Turkey:

"Ordinary Turks were appalled at the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners and later by the murder of the American businessman," said Omer Madra, founder of Open Radio, an Istanbul station. "But they are not surprised. The Turkish population is aware of a certain double standard . . . that while the U.S. preaches democracy and human rights, it does not always practice them."

Having one's foreign policy perceived as complete hypocrisy is never good -- especially if the current main justification for war is democratic transformation of the Middle East.

Indeed, that's a good reason for right-leaning politicians and analysts to stop comparing American behavior to the criminal acts of al-Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. As Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) said, "The American people need to realize we are talking about rape and murder charges here. We are not just talking about people giving a humiliating experience."

What are America's long-time friends and allies in Europe saying? Here's something widely quoted from Portugal's leader (a member of the "coalition of the willing."):

Portuguese Prime Minister José Durão Barroso, whose country's contribution to the occupation consists of 128 police officers, said: "You cannot, in the name of the struggle against terrorism and for the sake of freedom, contravene the very values and principles on which that struggle is based."

Not good. As Bush officials might say, they could be losing their will.

The news is worse from the unwilling....who, um, had no "will" to lose:

The brutality has "confirmed everyone's worst fears, and confirmed feelings, in France and Germany especially, that they were right to stay out of this mess," said William Drozdiak, director of the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center in Brussels, Belgium. "More and more Europeans are openly expressing their fear of getting too involved with the U.S.... ," he said. "They are questioning whether a security relationship with the U.S. is becoming a negative instead of a positive."

The implications for policy are obvious. And bad. Potentially, very bad.

NATO is not going into Iraq anytime soon. The US better not want anything in particular from the UN for awhile. For example, this is yet another reason that the Bush Doctrine is dead:

Imagine that, in the next few months, Iran continues to defy UN inspectors and to build nuclear weapons, something that virtually all of the partners in the Atlantic alliance say it would be essential to stop, and, in response, the Bush administration proposes leading a military action aimed at seizing the Iranian nuclear installations.

Perhaps some would agree, but it seems virtually axiomatic that in the wake of the Iraqi fiasco it would be vastly more difficult to persuade most of them, as they were persuaded in the Gulf in 1991, Bosnia in 1995, Kosovo in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2001.

"Even countries that supported the U.S. without a UN resolution in Iraq would find it difficult to do so again without a UN mandate," said Jiri Pehe, a Czech political commentator and the director of New York University in Prague. "If a new war should take place it would be subjected to much closer scrutiny."

Not that the Doctrine had much life anyway.

The Germans, in particular, are now more convinced than ever that they were right and the US/UK were wrong:

To be sure, the prisoner scandal has produced no public gloating, not even in countries like Germany that opposed the Iraq war vociferously from the beginning. Still, the Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has, literally, turned itself into the poster boy of opposition to the Iraq war, using the phrase "Power for Peace" as its campaign slogan for the elections for the European Parliament next month. The slogan expresses what the rising crescendo of bad news from Iraq has led the Germans to believe, namely that all of the German government's warnings about the war have proved true: that it was unnecessary in the first place, that it would be difficult to win the peace, and - most relevant to the Abu Ghraib matter - that it would cause Arab public opinion to be inflamed against the West. The conservative opposition parties in Germany, many of whose leaders supported the war and criticized Schröder for not supporting it, are on the defensive.

"It will be much more difficult for any party in Germany to go on a course of clear-cut support for any American position in the future," said Berthold Kohler, a commentator for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Any American policy that would ask for the support of Europe in another crisis would have to be very good, very strong and based on provable arguments."

I guess we already knew that.

Update: Reuters had a story this morning, "France Raises Alarm Over Iraq Chaos." Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told Le Monde newspaper: "What strikes me is the spiral of horror, of blood, of inhumanity that one sees on all fronts, from Falluja to Gaza and in the terrible pictures of the assassination of the unfortunate American hostage."

His warning:

"The fully sovereign government which emerges from the 2005 elections should be able to decide what becomes of this force, and if need be, its departure," he [Barnier] said.

French officials see the chaos in Iraq strengthening their hand in the Security Council negotiations over the future of Iraq and as a justification of their stance against the war, which they said flouted international law.

Barnier said the difficulties of the U.S.-led coalition only demonstrated the importance of adhering to international law, respecting human rights and seeing armed force as a last resort.

"This is all the more reason to reaffirm (those principles) as guides in these moments of trouble and doubt," he said.

So the French are still with the Germans.

Investigative Reporting?

Almost all the news about the Iraqi prison abuses (especially Abu Ghraib) has flowed from official investigations and/or the photos taken by the American soldiers/guards.

How about some investigative reporting? If any reporters are reading this blog, I recommend you look into the case of Abu Abbas.

Yesterday, I recalled that the Palestinian terrorist responsible for the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985 -- and the death of American Leon Klinghoffer -- died in an Iraqi prison earlier this year.

So I checked. Abu Abbas, the New York Times reported on March 10, 2004, died "apparently as a result of natural causes."

However, Abbas was only 55 years old, had not complained of ill health in recent letters to his friends, and the Palestinian Liberation Front (he renounced terror in 1993, but was a member of this group) accuses his American military captives of assassination. Abbas's family also raised serious questions at the time of his death . His widow, for example, wondered if he was tortured.

Using google, I could not find out whether Abu Abbas was held at Abu Ghraib. However, the recent reports that the military is investigating 10 or 12 possible homicides among the 25 deaths in Iraqi prisons apparently does not include his case. All the deaths being investigated are from 2003 or before, while Abbas died in March 2004.

There are some interesting obvious questions.

First, would his status as an alleged terrorist have fit the criteria for more rigorous interrogation methods? If so, were they used -- and what were they? Who had to approve them?

Second, consider the date of his death -- Monday, March 8, 2004, according to the news reports. This is weeks after the investigation began and the photos had already surfaced. Indeed, Taguba presented his report on March 12. Were interrogators changing their tactics in response to internal review? Was Abbas interrogated vigorously because his captives knew that all hell was about to break loose?

I do not know the answer to these questions, but if I were an investigative reporter, I'd be asking.

The "Other" Superpower

On Valentine's Day weekend, 2003, an estimated 10 million people around the world protested against the Iraq War. Remember, the war didn't actually begin until March 19, so this was pretty amazing. After those remarkable protests, Patrick Tyler of the New York Times wrote that "there still may be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion."

James F. Moore, of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School has written an interesting piece on "The Second Superpower." I'm grateful to Jude at iddybud for providing the link, though Moore's use of Tyler's phrase has received some critical scrutiny. Apparently, I'm late to the discussion of Moore's idea since the paper (available also in pdf) received 50,000 (!) downloads in five days.

In any case, I will plow forward: Moore argues that the "second superpower" is emerging from global civil society.

There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the people” in a global social movement. The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights. This movement has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests with world society as a whole—and who recognize that at a fundamental level we are all one. These are people who are attempting to take into account the needs and dreams of all 6.3 billion people in the world—and not just the members of one or another nation. Consider the members of Amnesty International who write letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience, and the millions of Americans who are participating in email actions against the war in Iraq. Or the physicians who contribute their time to Doctors Without Borders/ Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Since my book (coauthored with Nayef Samhat) is partly about the development of "participation" norms in international institutions that increasingly require the inclusion of these social actors, I found Moore's argument quite interesting. Among his suggestions for promoting the "second superpower," Moore quite explicitly calls for greater participation by individuals and non-governmental organizations in international institutions.

As you might guess from his affiliation, Moore is especially interested in the way the internet connects these socially concerned people together. He also seems to be interested, as I am, in the potential for truly deliberative democracy.

where deliberation in the first superpower is done primarily by a few elected or appointed officials, deliberation in the second superpower is done by each individual—making sense of events, communicating with others, and deciding whether and how to join in community actions.

The article recognizes the limits of traditional mass media -- and of course acknowledges the limited power the second superpower has to check the first. After all, the US went to war despite the public protests of millions of people around the world. Opinion polls clearly showed the war was unpopular everywhere.

In many ways, the ongoing controversy about the Iraqi prisoners reflects the "second superpower" in action. Global civil society, using perhaps the internet or other media, is able to publicize and scrutinize government action. This participation, coupled with transparency (recall, there was no critique until people could review the evidence), sets the stage for debate in the public sphere.

The outcome of the public debate is yet to be determined, but it seems obvious that the discussion can have meaningful effects on the practice of politics. Whether Don Rumsfeld is fired, or not, I think we can all be fairly certain that prisoners taken by the US military in Iraq (and likely elsewhere) are going to be treated differently from this point forward. And people are going to be watching to assure that result.

The strength of deliberative democracy is public accountability.

And, of course, in a related development, George W. Bush's approval ratings are down to 46% (his all-time low). This Gallup polling data reveals that losers Jimmy Carter and George Bush were at 43 and 42% respectively at this point in 1980 and 1992, while re-elected winners Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were at 54 and 55% job approval.

Conservative Revolt Hits the Front Page

Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman have a story on the Washington Post webpage today called "Conservatives Restive About Bush Policies."

The article includes a lot of quotes from prominent conservatives and neoconservatives criticizing the Bush agenda -- especially on domestic policy. One theme recurs. This White House makes policy based on politics (i.e., winning partisan battles, especially elections) rather than ideas or ideology.

Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist with the National Center for Policy Analysis, said policy ideas typically bubble up from experts deep inside federal agencies, who put together working groups, draft white papers, sell their wares in the marketplace of ideas and hope White House officials act on their suggestions. In this case, ideas are hatched in the White House, for political or ideological reasons, then are thrust on the bureaucracy, "not for analysis, but for sale," Bartlett said.

Recent columns by George Will and Robert Kagan are cited, as well as disgruntled past members of the administration such as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and John DiIulio, Jr. (who headed the faith-based initiatives program).

Richard W. Rahn, described in the piece as "a prominent Republican economist" asserts that Bush II is more like Bush I than Ronald Reagan. In short, like his father, George W. Bush lacks the "vision thing."

Rahn said he has grown concerned over what he sees as "a lack of vision and policy consistency" in the Bush administration. "I mean, we knew where [President Ronald] Reagan was heading; at times there were deviations from the path, but we knew what it was all about," he said. In contrast, he said, now "there doesn't seem to be a clear policy vision."

Part of the problem may be that Karl Rove serves as both top political "hack" and top policy "wonk." The guy in charge of maintaining presidential popularity and winning re-election probably should not be the same person coming up with ideas for policy.

If I were in John Kerry's campaign, I think I'd try to work some of these ideas and quotes into my new ads -- alongside some conservative criticisms of the foreign policy problems as well.

Update: The Mahablog puts this story into a wider context -- with lots of useful links to other related media stories.

Generals against the war

Some active military leaders are starting to speak out against the war -- joining retired critics like General Odom.

Most, of course, are speaking anonymously to reporters -- and prefer to critique the way it is being fought, rather than its rationale or objectives. Still, it is damning stuff.

Some, impressively, are willing to speak on the record:

Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he said, "I think strategically, we are."

Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the U.S. failure in Vietnam. "Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," he said in an interview Friday.

"I lost my brother in Vietnam," added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. "I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in."

The original article, from Thomas E. Ricks of the Washington Post is filled with quotes about the battle that is not going well for the hearts and minds of Iraqis.

The off-the-record remarks are even more skeptical about the US likelihood of prevailing in the war -- even militarily:

A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. "It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this," he said. "The American people may not stand for it -- and they should not."

Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. "I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion," he said. "Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military advice."

...One Pentagon consultant said that officials with whom he works on Iraq policy continue to put on a happy face publicly, but privately are grim about the situation in Baghdad. When it comes to discussions of the administration's Iraq policy, he said, "It's 'Dead Man Walking.' "

The worried generals and colonels are simply beginning to say what experts outside the military have been saying for weeks.

...a senior military intelligence officer experienced in Middle Eastern affairs said he thinks the administration needs to rethink its approach to Iraq and to the region. "The idea that Iraq can be miraculously and quickly turned into a shining example of democracy that will 'transform' the Middle East requires way too much fairy dust and cultural arrogance to believe," he said.

The article is filled with quotes from military leaders saying (anonymously) that Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, and General Myers should be fired. A few Democratic politicians call for this quite publicly.

I wonder how many generals would like to fire the commander-in-chief?

Wolfowitz is quoted as saying that the anonymous sources should have been willing to tell him of their views face-to-face.

So why the need to speak off the record to a reporter?

Like several other officers interviewed for this report, this general spoke only on the condition that his name not be used. One reason for this is that some of these officers deal frequently with the senior Pentagon civilian officials they are criticizing, and some remain dependent on top officials to approve their current efforts and future promotions. Also, some say they believe that Rumsfeld and other top civilians punish public dissent. Senior officers frequently cite what they believe was the vindictive treatment of then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki after he said early in 2003 that the administration was underestimating the number of U.S. troops that would be required to occupy postwar Iraq.

A few leaders are quoted on-the-record saying that the US can win and that the war is going OK, considering the handover date and the prison scandal.

This may be the bottom line Bush position:

In addition to trimming the U.S. troop presence, a young Army general said, the United States also should curtail its ambitions in Iraq. "That strategic objective, of a free, democratic, de-Baathified Iraq, is grandiose and unattainable," he said. "It's just a matter of time before we revise downward . . . and abandon these ridiculous objectives."

Instead, he predicted that if the Bush administration wins reelection, it simply will settle for a stable Iraq, probably run by former Iraqi generals. This is more or less, he said, what the Marines Corps did in Fallujah -- which he described as a glimpse of future U.S. policy.

This anonymous general is angry though:

"Like a lot of senior Army guys, I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration, the young general said. He listed two reasons. "One is, I think they are going to break the Army." But what really incites him, he said, is, "I don't think they care."

This is obviously a story to watch.

Update: Mark A.R. Kleiman posts a followup to the story. Congressional Republicans are sliming a conservative Democrat for saying some of the very same things that General Odom and the other military leaders quoted in the Washington Post story say.

Turning point?

The media is trying to discern how the images from Iraq are going to effect the prosecution of the war, the President's re-election campaign, and the larger war on terror.

Apparently, the images are going to get worse -- presuming that additional photos and videos documenting torture and rape are revealed.

They show "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman," embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress.

He used the word "radioactive" to describe these images.

The British press (and some bloggers) are reporting that the fault lies not with a few soldiers, but with a problematic interrogation policy.

The media stories are starting to point to analogies from Vietnam -- as I did yesterday.

"There's such a big question mark there, it's unlike anything we've seen before," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

"The public is very critical of (Bush's) management of Iraq. They don't think he has a clear plan for bringing it to a successful conclusion, but a thin majority of the public has been hanging in with that it was the right decision to go to war," Kohut said. "This could be the event which makes people say 'Oh, we did make a mistake.'"

Political scientist James Thurber of American University likened the Iraq images to the infamous Vietnam pictures of a naked young girl fleeing a napalm attack and a Viet Cong prisoner being executed on a Saigon street.

Referring to the new pictures, Thurber said, "That's what we're going to remember about Iraq. It's just not going to go away. That may have a lasting and negative effect on his campaign. It certainly does right now and I think you'll see it in the polls immediately."

I vividly remember these images from Vietnam:

I suspect everyone who lived through that era recollects the horror.

The people representing my country have let me down -- and I'm not just talking about the soldiers in the Iraq prison photos.

Update: Jacob at Volokh has a post from May 10 called "The Tipping Point" that includes quotes from a lot of material I've been referencing this past week. Numerous political analysts ordinarily sympathetic to the "war on terror" are quite pessimistic about the latest developments in Iraq.

Walter Cronkite Broadcast

Walter Cronkite's broadcast from February 27, 1968 is famous among students of mass media because of his willingness to break the journalistic acceptance of Vietnam.

Here's what Cronkite said on that night's newscast:

For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate...

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

It was strong stuff. Remember, most Americans got their news in those days from one of the three major network TV broadcasts.

Cronkite was a true opinion leader. Tens of millions of people depended upon him to tell them what to think about -- and maybe what to think.

Greg Mitchell, writing in Editor & Publisher wonders who will be the Walter Cronkite of 2004. To date, he writes, no major newspaper has called for American withdrawal from Iraq.

Mitchell points to the "Nightline" appearance by General Odom this week. I missed it, but blogged about his interview with the Wall Street Journal earlier this week.

If a Republican General can come out against the war so forcefully, and call for a hastened withdrawal, surely a newspaper could.

Doesn't this further prove that the notion of the "liberal media" is a myth?

Update: Atrios links to the Editor & Publisher piece.

Republican EPA Administrator Jumps Ship

This seems to be "Republicans attack Bush" week on this blog.

A environmentalist friend of mine sent me this link to the Bush Greenwatch website.

Here's the scoop, again from a new book, Politics, Pollution and Pandas: An Environmental Memoir (Island Press, December 2003):

Russell Train, a lifelong Republican who played a key role in forging environmental policy under Presidents Nixon and Ford, charges in his recently published memoirs that the current
Republican Administration not only lacks leadership on crucial environmental issues, it fails to grasp the "long-term
implications" of its bias toward the energy industry...

Now chairman emeritus of WWF [World Wildlife Fund], Train also offers his insights on the current lack of U.S. leadership on environmental issues, going so far as to say that President Bush "is not playing square with the American people" by "blatantly ignoring" solid scientific research, particularly on man's contribution to climate change.

Train writes that he does not blame the EPA or other federal agencies, because "it has been clear from the beginning of the George W. Bush Administration that it is the White House that is calling the tune. Moreover, it seems that the tune is being called not by program staff in the White House, but by political operatives. I find it unacceptable that the current U.S. political leadership should demonstrate such disregard for and disinterest in values that are among the most crucial concerns of humanity today."

Train was Undersecretary of the Interior under Nixon and later the second Administrator of the newly created Environmental Protection Agency (1973-1977).

This is nearly as damning as the Democratic critique.

Update: Thanks to Tom Street at Bad Attitudes, I can send everyone to Mother Jones for an interview with Train.

Another Republican/General Jumps Ship

I'm starting a good collection of these now...

Thanks to a link from Parapundit (in an interesting post), I found this Arnaud de Borchgrave column in the Washington Times, which details the remarks of General William E. Odom.

Odom is described by de Borchgrave as "a Republican who once headed the National Security Agency and also served as a deputy national security adviser."

Odom apparently called plans for democratizing Iraq a "pipedream" and this conclusion is quoted

Remove U.S. forces "from that shattered country as rapidly as possible."

Gen. Odom says bluntly, "we have failed," and "the issue is how high a price we're going to pay — less by getting out sooner, or more by getting out later."

Strong stuff.

And there's more. The General thinks that the current situation could explode, as Iraq could become a new launching point for global terror attacks:

At best, Iraq will emerge from the current geopolitical earthquake as "a highly illiberal democracy, inspired by Islamic culture, extremely hostile to the West and probably quite willing to fund terrorist organizations," Gen. Odom explained. If that wasn't enough to erode support for the war, he added, "The ability of Islamist militants to use Iraq as a beachhead for attacks against American interests elsewhere may increase."

The situation in Iraq, Odom claims has further radicalized Saudi Arabia and Egypt (just what we needed, eh?).

Odom's solution sounds an awful lot like hallway chatter from my left-leaning colleagues in the social sciences:

The retired four-star's proposed solution is for the U.N. and the European allies to take charge of political and security arrangements. This formal request from the U.S., says Gen. Odom, should be accompanied by a unilateral declaration that U.S. forces are leaving even if no one else agrees to come in.

Apparently, we can look forward to more comments of this type.

The article reports that a "company-size bevy of retired U.S. generals and admirals were in constant touch this week with a volunteer drafter putting the final touches to a 'tough condemnation' of Bush administration Middle Eastern policy."

This follows the letter signed by 52 former British diplomats criticizing Iraq/Middle East policy.

A slightly larger (60) collection of former American diplomats have signed a similar letter criticizing the Bush administration.

And of course, I've blogged about an array of military leaders (in uniform or out):General Anthony Zinni, Reagan's Navy Secretary James Webb, Bush Sr. National Security Advisor General Brent Scowcroft, and (Democrat) General Wesley Clark.

These military guys join Republican critics: Nixon lawyer John Dean, Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, and terror/NSC guy Richard Clarke.

Plus, there's former head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay.

Maybe someone should alert John Kerry.

Senator Pat Roberts at K-State

Kansas Senator Pat Roberts is both a Republican and a graduate of Kansas State University. He's also been serving as the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Those data points make me a likely opponent on many grounds -- my readers know that I'm quite skeptical about the way the "establishment" viewed the Iraq intelligence, I'm anti-Republican, in general, and I'm a former grad of the University of Kansas (Rock Chalk Jayhawk, KU!).

Yesterday, however, Senator Roberts gave an interesting talk at K-State that bears some scrutiny.

Of course, Roberts includes a lot of political boilerplate in this speech that is not worth examining. He says that Bush finally stood up to the terrorists (who wouldn't, after 9/11?), that America is a global custodian of freedom (elected by? and where have new democracies emerged from the Bush Doctrine?), and that the choice is currently between appeasement and action (that's a knee slapper, actually).

So why am I referencing this speech?

First, consider what he said about the pre-war Iraq WMD intelligence:

The problem is, the information was wrong.

Some Bush supporters, of course, refuse even to acknowledge this basic fact.

Roberts says the French, UN, Russians, Germans, Democrats, Congress, and White House were all fooled prior to the war in Iraq. Everyone thought Iraq had WMD.

So why was everyone so wrong? Roberts said:

While I cannot say too much about the report’s findings in this forum because it is still a highly classified document, I can tell you that our report does not paint a flattering picture of the performance of our Intelligence Community as they developed their pre-war assessments.

...It is my view this was clearly an intelligence failure as opposed to alleged manipulation....We need to get the full story of denial, deception and status, but it is unlikely that we are going to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as was predicted by U.S. intelligence.

The declassified version is supposed to come out in June. Apparently, the Committee compared intelligence reports with political statements to see if anyone was over the line. I'm looking forward to that.

Roberts goes through and lists a number of intelligence reforms recommended by Congress that have already been implemented since 9/11 (12 of 19). Still, he is upset that no one within the intelligence community has been held accountable for the failings. And he calls for additional administrative changes that might affect intell analysis.

Still, nothing exciting.

Here's his solid shot at the neocons:

However, with all of this talk about preemption, I do have a word of caution and warning. Whether or not the United States views itself as an empire, it is obvious that for many foreigners and international critics, we look, walk and talk like one and they have responded accordingly.

An empire that displays weakness and is not taken seriously is in serious trouble. However, being perceived as capricious or imperious is also dangerous. The problem has often occurred when an imperial power insists on imposing a particular vision on the world.

It seems to me that in fighting the global war against terrorism, we need to restrain what are growing U.S. messianic instincts – a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy – by force if necessary.

Again, the United States must be willing to use force, unilaterally if necessary to protect our security and that of our allies. But, it is also time for some hard headed assessment of American interests.

Now that's newsworthy.

Inspiring Fear

I'm behind, as usual, on reading the print media that comes into my home, so I only yesterday read Jason Vest's piece on the intelligence community in the April American Prospect .

A lot of it was familiar, but I wanted to save this bit of reporting:

At least one confidant of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's was unabashed about the real agenda. At a friendly March 2003 brunch with several journalists, Wolfowitz's adjunct minced no words: "Everyone knows this isn't about weapons of mass destruction but about regime change." Everyone inside the Beltway, perhaps. But, as a senior intelligence official generally sympathetic to the administration told me late last year, after September 11, it was easier to build a case for war around weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda. "You certainly could have made strong cases that regime change was a logical part of the war on terrorism, given Baghdad's historic terror ties," he said. "But that didn't have enough resonance. You needed something that inspired fear."

Too bad the quote wasn't on the record.

Vest also helps explain the muddle that is the intelligence organization:

As it stands now, the person many think of only as the CIA director has, in fact, two roles: director of the Central Intelligence Agency and director of central intelligence. In theory, the director of central intelligence has ultimate authority over every U.S. intelligence agency, including the three with the largest budgets -- the National Security Agency (NSA, signals intelligence), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO, the spy-satellite maintainers), and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA, the eyes in the sky). Budget control over those three agencies, however, lies not with the director of central intelligence but with the Pentagon -- whose own intelligence agencies, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the individual armed services' agencies, exist primarily to gather tactical intelligence for military operations.

Who would organize information-gathering and analysis in such a manner?

Bush and the Photos

To his credit, President Bush spoke out Friday about the photos depicting abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American and British troops/intelligence officers.

"Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That's not the way we do things in America. I didn't like it one bit," Bush said. "I share a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated," he said.

Will he go further in his condemnation?

The AP said he's been mum all weekend:

Over the weekend, however, he kept silent on the matter, although he made an indirect reference to it on Saturday night.

"We count ourselves lucky that this new generation of Americans is as brave and decent as any before it," Bush told the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

In the AP story, Senator Joe Biden is quoted saying the President should go further. And Tristero points out that (a) Bush's comments can be read in a less favorable light; and (b) Tony Blair's condemnation was much stronger and more direct. Other bloggers criticize Bush's words as well.

Why the silence?

I have a theory.

These photos completely screw up the "attack Kerry" plan. Remember what Karen Hughes said just last weekend (on CNN) about John Kerry's old testimony that US soldiers committed war crimes in Vietnam?

"I remember watching Senator Kerry, back when he was against the war, when he came home, and I was very troubled by the kind of allegations that he hurled against his fellow veterans, saying that they were guilty of all kinds of atrocities," said Hughes, the daughter of a retired Army officer who served in three wars, including Vietnam.

"As someone whose father was over there fighting, I don't appreciate that. I resent that. I know my father was not guilty of any atrocities, and I really find that that's an irresponsible kind of charge to make."

The White House spin doctors must be hard at work trying to get out of this dilemma.

Condemn the troops in Iraq?

Or, condemn the guy who used to condemn the troops in Vietnam?


Update about the abuses: This is apparently not just a few bad apples at the prison -- and there seems to be at least one dead (murdered?) Iraqi prisoner. Thanks to Lambert at corrente for the link.

Somebody Alert the President

Yesterday, in the President's weekly Radio Address, George W. Bush said:

One year later, despite many challenges, life for the Iraqi people is a world away from the cruelty and corruption of Saddam's regime. At the most basic level of justice, people are no longer disappearing into political prisons, torture chambers, and mass graves...

However, based on photographs released just this week, the Arab world is getting a different message -- and American citizens should be disgusted.

In case readers here missed it, "60 Minutes II" reported earlier this week that US soldiers and contractors are torturing Iraqi captives -- and photographing their alleged crimes. The Memory Hole has a group of the photographs. Some of the Americans shown in the photographs are smiling. It's quite despicable, really.

One of the mostly widely circulated photos provides an image of this scene:

"According to the U.S. Army, one Iraqi prisoner was told to stand on a box with his head covered, wires attached to his hands. He was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted.

The SF Chronicle has a story in today's paper with many more details, including the involvement of US Army intelligence personnel and British soldiers:

...images of American soldiers smiling, laughing and signaling "thumbs-up" as Iraqi detainees were forced into sexually humiliating positions...

Iraqi detainees allegedly were beaten and sexually abused, officials announced Saturday.

Also Saturday, the New Yorker magazine said it had obtained a U.S. Army report that Iraqi detainees were subjected to "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

The abuses included threats of rape and the pouring of cold water and liquid from chemical lights on detainees, said the internal report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. According to the report, detainees were beaten with a broom handle, and one was sodomized with "a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick," the New Yorker reports in its May 10 issue.

The scandal broadened Saturday after Britain's Daily Mirror published new photographs of a hooded Iraqi prisoner who reportedly was beaten by British troops. The newspaper's front-page picture showed a soldier apparently urinating on the prisoner, who was sitting on the floor.

The newspaper quoted unidentified soldiers as saying the unarmed captive had been threatened with execution during eight hours of abuse and was left bleeding and vomiting. They said the captive was driven away and dumped from the back of a moving vehicle, and it was not known whether he survived.

The war for "hearts and minds" is over and the US and its coalition partners have lost.

And al-Jazeerah and other worldwide outlets are showing these images.

The photos appeared in newspapers across the Middle East, angering Arabs who accused the United States of caring only about the rights of Americans.

Egypt's Akhbar el-Yom newspaper splashed photographs of U.S. soldiers posing by naked, hooded inmates on Saturday's front page, with the banner headline "The Scandal." Al-Wafd, an opposition paper, displayed similar photos beneath the headline, "The Shame!"

Although the pictures have not been published widely by Iraqi newspapers, many Iraqis have seen them on Arabic-language satellite television stations, such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.

This doesn't quite match the President's words, do they?

Where is the outrage?

Zinni on Iraq

Brad Delong sent me to this SD Union-Tribune interview with General Zinni. Read it.

Maybe in a day or so I'll have time to comment on his remarks -- though the General's remarks are pretty clear.

Here is some of the best of what he said:

I know the area, I know the people, I know the culture, I know the situation. I knew the intelligence right up until the day of the war and I knew it wasn't there, the threat.

Do you think Saddam had any stocks of banned weapons?

I believe there probably might have been some laying around that he wasn't aware of. They would have been obsolete, even dangerous to move around. There might have been some that were destroyed, there just wasn't proper accounting. But he wasn't even focused on that; they (the U.N. arms inspectors) were. So my belief of what was there was the possible, the potential that you had to plan for, of old stocks, artillery shells, rocket rounds. There was probably about two dozen Scuds (ballistic missiles) that were unaccounted for at the outside that could have possibly been weaponized. But as time went on, these things would have been much more difficult to move, much more difficult to upload. If he possessed those tactical weapons, these things would have had maybe marginal tactical effect on the battlefield in the short term. But certainly nothing of a great threat to the United States. So I really did not think this was a major or imminent or grave and gathering or potential threat.

The worst-kept secret in Washington is that as soon as this administration came in there was talk about taking down Iraq from day one. It's the worst-kept secret in Washington. There were Cabinet meetings where the deputy secretary of defense and others were pushing this. And certainly after 9/11 it was even more intense.

So what they did militarily and politically in Iraq, none of what you recommended happened?

Well, I'll give you my hopeful formula to get out of this. But every day and every decision makes it worse. The first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging. They seem to continue to dig. This 'stay the course' idea is wonderful except the course is leading us over Niagara Falls.

What would you recommend doing?

I would go to the members of the Security Council; France, Russia, China and others and ask what will it take to get a U.N. resolution that we need that will give cover, that will give the countries that might be willing to participate at least what they need back home to contribute in some way, to help share the burden on the ground.

Secretary of State, January, 2005?

Zinni, just to refresh everyone's memory, was sent to the Middle East in November 2001 -- by the current Bush administration. He supported Afghanistan.

I think someone needs to assemble all these credible critics (James Webb, Brent Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger, David Kay, and get them to tell the full story on national TV.

Title: Republicans and Generals against the War.

Weekend update

Expect light blogging for a couple of days.

It is Kentucky Derby weekend and that's a big deal in Louisville. Basically, it's a great excuse to have a party -- and not to work. Don't look for any betting tips here. I pick my "winners" out of a hat in a blind draw. The method is not infallible, so I don't recommend it.

Unfortunately, I've also got a big pile of papers to grade this weekend...a lawn to mow...and a solicited textbook chapter on Kyoto in US Foreign Policy to zip off ASAP.

So, with all this work, I naturally spent this evening watching Jack Black in "School of Rock." I was dubious, but found the video very entertaining. It reminded me of college, sitting around talking about music with my friends, joking, eating pizza, drinking beer...you get the picture.

The good old days.

Years ago, when I watched "A Few Good Men" with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, I had the same sort of reaction. That flick really reminded me of all the late nights from college working on debate cases -- and then using that work to beat other teams into oblivion. Sure, it was a different part of college, but still a good time.

Since this is nearly a content-free post, let me mention again the comments. The tech seems to be working, and I haven't faced any spam yet. Feel free to start a thread about movies that remind you of good times in your life -- or something like that.

Or give me a Derby winner.

Webb Jumps Ship

Hey, I get to link to my old college town paper, the Lawrence Journal World. Former Navy Secretary to Ronald Reagan, James Webb, gave a talk earlier this week at the University of Kansas and sounded off on Iraq.

He's a pretty strong critic of the war -- like Generals Zinni and Clark.

The Vietnam War was "more justifiable and more defensible" than the war in Iraq, Webb said Wednesday night.

He called the ongoing war "a palpable strategic error" and "a strategic mousetrap" that arose from "a breakdown in group ethics."

It's disingenuous, Webb said, for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to say that problems in Iraq weren't foreseeable. Webb alleged the Pentagon ignored or brushed aside qualified aides who painted a realistic picture of the problems of occupation.

"There is literally nothing happening in Iraq that was not fully predictable," Webb said.

Webb cited two main problems with the war. One, he said, was that instead of focusing separately after Sept. 11 on three important issues facing the country -- terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict -- the Bush administration mingled them in the public mind with the war against Iraq.

Another problem, he said, was that the invasion put the military into a weaker position. Too many U.S. soldiers are either in Iraq, preparing to go there or coming back from there, he said.

"This endangers our posture elsewhere," he said.

Webb refers to Dick Cheney as "The Godfather" and says the neocon "minds were programmed" to attack Iraq before 9/11.

There's really nothing new here, but the message may seem more credible to the average Joe coming from the mouth of a Republican. Webb is quite concerned that the administration has no idea of how troops could be withdrawn -- no "exit strategy," as the Powell/Weinberger Doctrine used to call it.

"What are the conditions?" Webb asked a crowd of more than 300 people in Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. "If you can't answer the question, then you shouldn't have been there in the first place."

Too bad we can't have a mulligan and move on.

Record book

Salon.com has a lengthy excerpt from Jeffrey Record's new book, Dark victory. Record, some may recall, was the visiting research professor at the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute who attracted a lot of attention for his study "Bounding the Global War on Terrorism."

In that piece, Record argued that the Bush administration had erred by attacking Iraq -- diverting resources from the war in Afghanistan, blurring distinctions between rogue states and Al Qaeda, setting dangerous precedents, etc.

Since SSI is the Army's think tank, Record's criticisms attracted a lot of attention. While his views did not reflect the views of the Army, Record is a long-time defense analyst. He used to work for Senator Sam Nunn and has tours at both the Brookings and Hudson Institutions. Presumably, he'll be returning to his regular job soon at the Air Force's Air War College, where he is a professor of strategy and international security.

The excerpt provides 7 lessons from the Iraq war. I recommend reading the whole piece as a prelude to buying the book. Salon also has an interview with the author that is worth checking out too.

Here are some things Record says in the interview about security and political legitimacy in Iraq versus security and political legitimacy in Vietnam decades ago:

More troops generally will provide you with more security. It allows you to do more things, such as buy time so you can get the Iraqis sufficiently trained. I've been working on a study comparing Iraq and Vietnam. In Vietnam, in addition to half a million American troops, we had a South Vietnamese military establishment numbering anywhere from about 800,000 to over a million, depending on what year you're talking about. And even though they weren't crack, elite troops, they did provide a lot of static defense and soldiers and things like that that allowed some American forces to do the other operations. We don't have anything like that in Iraq, so in some respects we are worse off now than we were in Vietnam, even though the scale of fighting and the number of people killed in Iraq are much lower.

...in Vietnam we failed to create a legitimate government in South Vietnam, and I think we face the same challenge today in Iraq under circumstances that are much more difficult.

As Billmon wrote yesterday, Iraq is starting to look in some respects like Vietnam on crack.

Record, however, generally doesn't think Iraq and Vietnam are military comparable -- there are important differences strategically and militarily. Politically, he sees parallels:

From a strategic and military standpoint, there are no meaningful comparisons between the situation in Iraq and the situation in Vietnam in the '60s and the '70s. The nature of the war, the scale of the fighting, the scale of the losses, the size of the contending forces, the quality of the enemy that we faced....

I see only two dimensions of the Vietnam conflict that ought to be looked at to provide some instruction for what we face in Iraq. One is our failure to create a legitimate, indigenous government in South Vietnam despite an enormous effort over a long period of time.

The other is the issue of the domestic sustainability of this entire enterprise. We ultimately got out of Vietnam because it became domestically unsupportable from a political standpoint. We're not there yet with Iraq for sure -- it took us seven years to get out of Vietnam. Reasoning by historical analogy is generally dangerous, and these wars are very remote from each other in time, place and strategic circumstances. So you can easily say, "This is not Vietnam." But are there dimensions of the Vietnam conflict that may have some parallels to the problems we face? Yeah, I think there are.

Of course, Record doesn't think the reconstruction of Japan and Germany provide good analogies either.

Like me, Record says we are over-extended thanks to Iraq and may be hurting our security. But instead of summarizing all of it -- let me recommend you read the interview too.

My Baby Thinks She's French

Anyone watch "Hardball" yesterday? After being questioned about the accusation from Commerce Secretary Don Evans that he looks French, John Kerry told Chris Matthews that Karen Hughes was born in Paris.

I wonder if W has ever sang this song to her:

...My Baby Thinks She's French

Well its Paris this
And its Paris that, it makes me cringe
She thinks she's French she likes to kiss and kiss
Her Flame is hard to quench!

My Baby Thinks She's French
My Baby Thinks She's French
She reads Madamoselle
and when the clock strikes twelve
she wants to give me a pinch.....
My Baby Thinks She's French

She's a Texas doll
She likes shopping malls where the mood is French
With a southern drawl
They say come back y'all
and they never even flench!

My Baby Thinks She's French
My Baby Thinks She's French
She wants to start a fire
In the Eifel Tower
She's lost all common sense!!
My Baby Thinks She's French

Note: These lyrics are excerpted from Joe Ely's song, "My Baby Thinks She's French."

Legitimacy of resistance

‘‘Look, it can’t be fun to be occupied.’’

-- Paul Bremer, quoted on October 27, 2003

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

-- The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Reuters is reporting an interview Al Jazeera television broadcast today with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In the interview, Assad said the Iraqi resistance is legitimate:

"Certainly, what has happened on the popular level gives legitimacy to the resistance and shows that the major part of what is happening is resistance," Assad said in comments aired on Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera.

"You are talking now about resistance which is against the occupation forces," Assad said. Asked if the resistance was legitimate, he said: "Well, of course, it's understood that way."

Assad is not alone. University of Illinois Law Professor Francis Boyle has been making this argument for awhile:

The Iraqi people have a right to use military force to resist US occupation consistent with the laws of war. I mean, they can’t target civilians but other than that they can certainly use military force to this illegal, criminal invasion.

Boyle has served as an attorney for the Palestinians in their legal struggle with Israel. Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle has previously agreed with Boyle that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone."

There are echoes, of course, of this "right to resistance" in the US Declaration of Independence:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Personally, though I recognize that self determination is a powerful motivating political force, I would strongly prefer that the various parties in Iraq work towards a non-violent solution to the civil and political breakdown.

President Bush seems to think that the Iraqi resistance is a perfectly natural response to their situation. Bush, recall, made a comment not all that different from Assad's in his April 13, 2004, prime time press conference:

they're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either.

Right now, no one is happy.

To summarize: thousands of Iraqi innocents are losing their lives, they have no true liberty under occupation, and the President agrees they are not happy.

Steal this post

Dammit. Blogger just ate my post. I have a lot to do today (and this week), so this will have to be the condensed version:

Kevin Drum agrees with my post from yesterday.

John Kerry is having trouble wounding George Bush on foreign policy because their positions are starting to sound alike. Drum refers to:

an article by Farah Stockman in the Boston Globe today that highlights a key Kerry problem: as Kerry moves rightward after the primaries, and as Bush becomes more receptive to ideas that Kerry has long championed — giving the United Nations a far greater role in Iraq, emphasizing the importance of welcoming NATO to Iraq, and beefing up the number of US troops in Iraq — Kerry loses any chance of distinguishing himself from Bush over foreign policy.

This strikes me as a serious problem. National security is almost certain to be the defining issue of the campaign, and there's just no way for Kerry to get any traction there if his positions aren't clearly distinguishable from Bush's. And despite the pro-war partisans' continuing fantasy that George Bush is dedicated to the same kind of vast war of civilizations they are, the fact is that Bush has adopted an awful lot of Democratic positions in the past year. Aside from rhetorical tone, it's getting harder and harder for Kerry to find points of disagreement that are more than just nitpicking.

So what can Kerry do?

Drum says that "if John Kerry wants to win, he has to figure out some genuinely bold and popular foreign policy initiative."

I'd recommend Kerry look into "borrowing" from the so-called "Blair Doctrine."

The UK Prime Minister has often spoken of a "doctrine of international community" that emphasizes genuinely multilateral approaches to shared global problems. This includes not only fairly traditional security threats like WMD and terror, but "human security" problems like global warming and humanitarian emergencies.

Kerry is a strong environmentalist and multilateralist. He's neither a hawk nor a dove. While owls may be wise, they can nonetheless have a hard time explaining their positions in short TV commercials.

Who knows, maybe Kerry could even arrange a meeting with Blair sometime during the hottest part of the summer to call for action on Kyoto.

Of course, calling attention to multilateral processes and climate change is going to be difficult if the US starts losing 100 troops per month in Iraq on a regular basis.

Under those circumstances, however, Kerry could credibly (and boldly) turn further away from Bush's war. If the US loses 3 to 400 soldiers between now and the convention, even as it fails to find WMD, the Democrats can more prominently challenge the wisdom of the entire enterprise.

Kerry will need help from people like Wesley Clark (potential Secretary of State or Defense?) to craft the message carefully for the national stage.

Think bold.

Update: See also Pandagon, Priorities & Frivolities, and Speedkill.

Another image

David Weinberger pointed me to an image that I'd forgotten about when I blogged the other day about the casket photos from Iraq:


That image is from George Bush's early March TV advertisement.

Yes, the President used an image of a fallen firefighter from 9/11 in his own political ads.

Weinberger said this about the hypocrisy:

I don't have a problem with using images of fallen heroes in campaign ads. I do have a little problem with censorship for rank political aims.

Bingo.

Kerry's Plan for the Purple States

"Liberal media" polling analyst William (Bill) Schneider of CNN is actually a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which is home mostly to conservatives and neoconservatives.

Lately, Schneider has been explaining why the Bush campaign is doing fairly well -- despite just having had a horrible several weeks in the news. Leah at corrente excerpts some of his recent analytical dialogue with Wolf Blitzer at CNN. She quotes (and highlights in yellow) this key passage:

SCHNEIDER: Despite the losses, what Americans think two words, Bush in Iraq, they remember something the United States won. They went in with overwhelming force, they got rid of Saddam Hussein regime and Saddam Hussein is now in captivity. So, the view is if you want someone that can handling a situation like that, a man of strength and decisiveness and resolve, Bush is your man.

Leah goes on to quote some other Washington talking heads who are openly criticizing Kerry for a number of campaign blunders, including the vote against the $87 billion.

I found another interesting Schneider piece, apparently from the National Journal last week, but published on the AEI website. In this piece, Schneider explains why Kerry isn't able to wound Bush's candidacy on the issue of Iraq.

Essentially, Kerry is overtly trying to reach swing voters. Good idea, right? Well, as Schneider says, "They're the ones who think that the United States was right to go to war with Iraq but that the Bush administration isn't conducting the war properly."

Kerry and Bush seem to be saying similar things about fixing the problems in Iraq -- more troops and a greater role for the UN. Thus, Kerry cannot easily distinguish his arguments when Bush is making the same ones. It reminds me of an off-color slogan involving Nixon's re-election campaign in '72. You can find it in the first comment here.

Anyway, for Kerry's base, this "pro-war" approach is potentially disastrous. True blue Democrats don't really want to fix Bush's mistake in Iraq and might be tempted by an anti-war candidate (like Nader) if Kerry persists in advancing a defense wonk's agenda for addressing the Iraq problem.

One more Nixon reference: In 1968, he let it be known that he had a "secret plan to end the war" in Vietnam.

Maybe Kerry should try that instead.


Update: I've been doing a little reading and can point everyone to a piece in the SF Chronicle from April 25 (yesterday) arguing that Bush and Kerry are "notable as much for agreement as differences" on foreign policy. Ouch.

The piece quotes Rand Beers, who left the Bush White House to work as Kerry's chief foreign policy advisor is quoted as saying,

"Bush is the wrong messenger. We will go to the European powers at a higher level to get cooperation from NATO. We will get cooperation to share the burden because we take a different approach than this administration."

The Europeans may be ready to shoot the messenger, but I'd guess they also want a different message.

Fantasy Ad

None of the blogs I regularly read has yet mentioned the latest column from Matt Miller.

As anyone who watches TV knows (and it is probably repeated every couple of minutes on talk radio, but I don't listen), the Bush campaign has tried to make an issue of John Kerry's vote against the $87 billion supplemental request for Iraq.

For comic "waffling" effect, they also note that Kerry also voted for the $87 billion.

Hmmm.

Matt Miller Online has the syndicated columnist's "fantasy ad" for Kerry, explaining these votes -- and using them to define the difference between the President and the challenger. "If I were Kerry," opines Miller, "I'd use this fight over the funding for Iraq to showcase the difference between his values and the president's on a choice where the vast majority of Americans would side with Kerry."

It's good:

"Here are the facts: George Bush is having our children pay for Iraq. He has put $160 billion so far on our kids' credit card to pay for a war we chose to wage. We are running record budget deficits of over half a (ITALICS) trillion (END ITALICS) dollars a year because George Bush says our children should pay for their parents' war.

"My plan was different. My plan was to pay to finish the job in Iraq by repealing some of the tax cuts that George Bush gave to the best-off Americans.

"Every well-off American I've asked has told me they would have gladly supported such a plan. They feel, as I do, that it is un-American to stick our children with debts for today's wars in order to preserve big tax cuts for people at the top. It's just wrong.

"So I voted for my plan to pay for our own choices today, and against President Bush's plan to slip our children the bill so that he could give tax cuts to the wealthiest. I can't think of a clearer way to show you how my values differ from those of this White House. You'll be choosing between these values come November.

Miller then imagines Kerry challenging Bush to abandon the "hit-and-run" sound bites to explain why his administration's approach is better than Kerry's would be.

A pro-Bush blogger named Oberon says "No way dude," but I think he (or she?) underestimates the American people's intellect.

Was Kerry voting against the troops? No, he voted for the troops -- right? Even the Bush people say so. The vote against one version of the $87 billion was precisely the kind of gamesmanship that Congress engages in all the time. Bills are forwarded from committees and amendments are typically offered on the floor. This pits two or more versions of a bill against one another. Usually, the alternatives address the same issues, but are different in some important way.

It's a basic truth of Congress.

With the Republicans in power, the Democratic-preferred bills virtually never pass, but that doesn't mean they haven't proposed better ideas. In 2002, the Republicans used the Homeland Security Department bill as a weapon against Democrats like Max Cleland. Dems had pushed the agency, but wanted a bill that assured union rights. The administration actually originally opposed the new department, but worked to frame a bill that Democrats would have to oppose because it spit in the face of one of their core constituencies (labor).

Republicans play these games too. As Kerry said the other day, the President threatened to veto the $87 billion for Iraq "if it included money to pay for health care for reservists and required Iraq to pay back some of the money set aside for its reconstruction."

Neither Oberon nor I quote the last line from Miller's fantasy ad:

"I'm John Kerry and I approved this message because one of the choices you face this fall is whether you want a leader who will finally trust you with the truth - or one who can only achieve his goals by misleading you or insulting your intelligence."

Surely what Miller and I argue here is readily understood.

Elections are about choices, but the "drive by" false choices are a poor way of thinking about them. Yesterday, I wasted 90 minutes watching Chris Rock's movie "Head of State" on HBO. The southern white candidate for President runs an ad pointing out that his black opponent (Rock) didn't speak at an anti-cancer forum.

Conclusion: his opponent is for cancer.

Idiocy.

I think the American public can figure it out, especially if Kerry did something like what Miller suggests.