Thomas Friedman's latest column is the closest he has come to jumping the liberal hawk fence. It's a good one, except for one graph:

The world does not want to be led by transparent cynics like the French foreign minister and his boss. But it also does not want to be led by an America whose Congress is so traumatized by 9/11 that it can't think straight and by a president ideologically committed to war in Iraq no matter what the costs, the support, or the prospects for a decent aftermath. But, France aside, the world is still ready to be led by an America that's a little more humble, a little better listener and a little more ready to say to its allies: how can we work this out? How much time do we need to give you to see if inspections can work for you to endorse the use of force if they don't?

Admittedly France has cynical reasons for its particular foreign policy positions. But so do Britain and America. Or does Friedman really believe we are about to engage in this war only for the purest of motives? You don't have to believe that it is all about oil in order to believe that oil is a part of it. Please explain to me how France's position of a few months back is any different than what Friedman's is right now. Perhaps they just didn't take as long to realize that Bush was not the one to lead the world in this fight. Perhaps this says less about France's cynical self-serving approach than it does about Friedman's overwhelming naivete when it comes to Bush's push for war. Still, all in all, there is a glimmer of hope in this column. Come on over to this side of the fence Tom. We're really friendly here and we promise not to rib you, much, about placing your trust in Dubya..

The NY Times gets off the fence and says no to war.

Jimmy Carter on a Just War and how attacking Iraq doesn't qualify. Of course, don't expect Dubya to listen. Carter is, after all, a Democrat and a one-termer to boot. In Dubya's mind Carter is a loser, like his father. So why should he bother to listen to either of them? Didn't George "win" an election against a candidate who had "peace and prosperity" on his side? Didn't he defeat the Taliban? None of this wimpy stopping half-way to Baghdad stuff for Junior. Dubya is a winner and winners don't waste time listening to losers.

Maureen Dowd finally seems to get it. She's been hedging around the truth for months. She's been expressing qualms about Dubya in her cute style since before the election. But, for the first time, she seems to finally be taken the horror that is Dubya seriously.

WASHINGTON — You might sum up the president's call to war Thursday night as "Message: I scare." As he rolls up to America's first pre-emptive invasion, bouncing from motive to motive, Mr. Bush is trying to sound rational, not rash. Determined not to be petulant, he seemed tranquilized. But the Xanax cowboy made it clear that Saddam is going to pay for 9/11. Even if the fiendish Iraqi dictator was not involved with Al Qaeda, he has supported "Al Qaeda-type organizations," as the president fudged, or "Al Qaeda types" or "a terrorist network like Al Qaeda." We are scared of the world now, and the world is scared of us. (It's really scary to think we are even scaring Russia and China.) Bush officials believe that making the world more scared of us is the best way to make us safer and less scared. So they want a spectacular show of American invincibility to make the wicked and the wayward think twice before crossing us. Of course, our plan to sack Saddam has not cowed the North Koreans and Iranians, who are scrambling to get nukes to cow us.

Of course, it might have been nice if Ms. Dowd had realized back in the 90s when she was constantly harping on Clinton and during the 2000 campaign when she made her fair share of wooden-Gore comments, that there was a serious side to this business and that maybe, just maybe, we need serious analysis of politicians in order to decide who should make those decisions. But that would have spoiled the fun and she probably wouldn't have made as much money in the process. Karl Northman, a poster on Table Talk, posted the perfect eviceration of Ms. Dowd (profanity alert):

Nice line, Bitch. And how hard did you work to put that fuckhead in office? How much did it seem like just a fucking game to you, politics, schmolitics, it's all a game, let's make fun of the dweeb? That was a pretty good column. Sounds like you might have suddenly realized that there is Real Shit in the Real World. Three years late. Tell you what. Write a fucking column, the column that is your plea as you throw yourself on the mercy of the court, that says: "Man, did I fuck up when I thought there was no difference between Gore and Bush, when I thought Bush was a nice guy, and I made fun of wooden-dork Gore. I was just having fun. That's what we all did. It was just fun. We didn't really think about the consequences, we were just out at the newspaper with a bunch of our friends, and we all got to talking and laughing and thinking it would be fun to make fun of the dweeb - I mean, everyone knows it doesn't make any difference who the president is. So we all thought ha ha, and did our best to make fun of the dweeb, and we pretended that we like the drunken jock. "Anyway, your Honor, we're real sorry about how the whole country got trashed, it was just kind of a practical joke that got out of hand, you know how it is, when you're hanging out with your friends, they seem more important at the moment than little things like burning down the school.

Kevin Drum with more thoughts on throwing in the towel:

I just can't align myself any longer with the folks who think the rest of the world are "midgets" who should be shoved unceremoniously out of the way whenever we feel like it. As my wife put it at lunch today, "We don't seem to be the America we used to be."

Perhaps that is the difference between the liberal hawks and the liberal hawks but-for-Bush: the latter are those who realized a long time ago that the case for taking out Saddam would be damaged irreparably by the mere identity of the person who was making it. The hawks with-no-qualifiers were willing to look past Bush's faults because the goal was worth it. However, the last few weeks and months have built up such an increasing pile of offal that even they can't ignore the smell anymore. Bush made a lot of noise during he campaign about having a "humble" foreign policy. Like pretty much everything else he has said in his public life, it was a lie.
Would you buy a war from this man?

The list of "liberal hawks" throwing in the towel grows: first Josh, then Kevin, then Sean-Paul. Mathew appears to be the last big fish still sitting on the fence. Some on in the blogosphere are welcoming the conversions. Some are criticizing them for being stupid enough to have sided with Bush in the first place. I can understand all these reactions because I have had them all myself. But I really don't want to beat the liberal hawks over the head for it because, after all, I have said that I am one myself. Albeit, I was never once fooled into believing that Bush was an acceptable leader to pull it off. And that, I think, is the important thing to keep in mind here. While many of us have distrusted Bush from the beginning, with good reason, not all were willing to immediately dismiss him just because of some questionable practices. I don't know if this can be blamed on stupidity as much as, well, the liberal desire to give the benefit of the doubt even to those who have broken their word multiple times. Josh, Kevin, and Sean-Paul are not stupid. They were just worried enough about the danger of Hussein to be willing to look beyond their misgivings about Bush. But even Bush, as is usual for him, has pushed even them past the breaking point. Welcome on board guys. Now the only question is: is it to late?

The Better Rhetor takes on the Bush/Rove Bait-n-Switch technique:

It’s a bait and switch. Rather than continuing to argue for the merits of their position—an argument they have concluded they cannot win—they now want to shift the terms of the debate. They don’t want to talk anymore, in other words, about whether we should invade Iraq. We are supposed to accept the fiction that this has been already settled, and we are now in the "next phase" of discussing what to do in post-war Iraq. That way they can shift the discussion, aided by our feckless media, away from their losing hand and onto another topic—one that presumes the Bushies won the original debate. ... By shifting the terms of the debate from whether to after; by pretending that the question was settled, and that they won. And by counting on the rest of us to believe it. Call it The Rhetoric of Make Believe. It’s vital we remind ourselves: The argument has NOT been settled. The case has not been made And war is not inevitable. Bush is losing this debate. Let's not let him walk away from the table pretending that he won.

The candidate that will beat Bush in 2004 is the one that can force him to keep talking about the current topic and not something six months down the road. Bush does not get to define reality just because he has a special line to God.

Jonathon Alter rips Bush a new one for his failures in his latest column. It's a good one, but it would have been even better if it had been written a year ago. One paragraph really set off all my alarms:

The president’s deeper logical problem relates to the way he uses the bully pulpit to make an argument. His habit—on display again Thursday night—is to simply assert, assert, assert until the message sinks in. It’s as if war supporters believe that if they repeat the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection enough, people will eventually believe it.

Well over half of all Americans, when polled, think that Saddam had something to do with the attacks of 9/11. In other words, war supporters were right. Of course maybe it wouldn't have sunk in if it weren't for that fact that no one in the establishment media loudly criticized them for pushing such a blatant lie. That means people like you Mr. Alter Bush may have lied to us. But you let him lie to us. Shame on you Mr. Alter!

I think John Scalzi puts his finger on it (I just hope he washes it afterward):

The fundamental problem with the Bush Administration is that it appears to be working from the position that being right excuses being incompetent. This presents two problems. First, when it happens that the administration is right, as it is in wanting Saddam removed at the earliest available opportunity, it blunders about being right in such a way that others would prefer to be wrong rather than to be in its company.

This is what I find particularly galling about this administration's incompetence. They are making the world less safe because they are allowing their obsession with Saddam to destroy our close ties with our allies. And, in the end, they may actually make the world safer for Saddam in the process if the growing anti-war movement manages to derail the Bush juggernaut (still possible, though highly unlikely).

I fear for the fact that the Bush administration wants to promote the development of hydrogen engines; if it goes about promoting the program like it's handling Iraq, we'll be stuck sucking oil out of the Arabian peninsula for another three centuries.

Which could, of course, be the whole point. If you can't fight something you don't like, adopt it whole-heartedly, and then destroy it from within. It's kind of the Bill Gates approach to national leadership. It's also how viruses work.

It's never an especially good time to have an incompetent rubbing against the furnishings of the Oval Office and marking it as his territory, but some times are better than others. Warren Harding was a monumentally bad President, but he was also President during a time when he (or his thieving cronies, which is more to the point) couldn't do a tremendous amount of lasting damage. Alas, today is not one of those times, and in any event Dubya and his pals aren't the sort to be content with mere graft. They're not crooks, they're ideologues with a deep and abiding moral clarity, both economic and religious, that's dreadfully inconvenient to those of us who prefer that moral clarity not trim away our budget surpluses or, come to think of it, so many of the basic freedoms afforded to us in the Constitution.

Here I disagree with John. This administration is both incompetent and corrupt (being corrupt involves more than just committing crimes). Which is why it will easily rank as one of the worst in U.S. history. But, when you add in the ideological sense of "we're right and you're wrong and we will screw the pooch if it is necessary in order to prove it", then you reach a level of awfulness that no administration, to my knowledge, has ever reached. Grant may have been corrupt. Buchanan may have been incompetent. But Bush is corrupt, incompetent, and inimical to the very idea of America.

Be that as it may, it is my government. When I agree with it, I want it to succeed. When I disagree with it, I at least want to get the feeling that even if I disagree, some thought went into the government's opposing position. The tragedy of the Bush administration is that it provides neither of these. Its total incompetence means that it fails when it's right, and it fails when it's wrong. The best you can say about Dubya and his people is that at least they're consistent.

One of the issues brought up at the Dean meetup tonight was the urgent need for money. Apparently the next campaign filing is at the end of this month and it is an important one because only those candidates who show significant fundraising activities will be taken seriously by the party leadership (and by the media). This got me to thinking that maybe the MoveOn people could be persuaded to start a donation campaign for Dean. They did a really bangup job of raising large sums of money for no-name candidates during the 2000 and 2002 campaigns. Does anyone have contacts within the MoveOn campaign that we could talk to and get them to help out Dean?

The Worst-Case Scenario Arrives ... The rupture in the Security Council is not just another bump in the road in the showdown with Iraq. It could lead to a serious, possibly fatal, breakdown in the system of collective security that was fashioned in the waning days of World War II, a system that finally seemed to be reaching its potential in the years since the end of the cold war. Whatever comes of the conflict with Iraq, the world will have lost before any fighting begins if the Security Council is ruined as a mechanism for unified international action. ... The French and the Russians are not the only ones who brought us to this point. Mr. Bush and his team laid the groundwork for this mess with their arrogant handling of other nations and dismissive attitude toward international accords. Though they mended their ways to some extent after Sept. 11, and initially tried to work through the Security Council on Iraq, the White House's obvious intention to go to war undermined that effort. There may be a few days more for diplomacy to play out on Iraq, but it is already clear that the great powers on the Security Council, particularly the United States and France, have brought the United Nations to the brink of just the kind of paralysis and powerlessness that they warned would be so damaging to the world.

We see here a prime example of the establishment press' neurotic need to present everything in an objectively balanced fashion. While it is commendable that the New York Times would come out and decry the bungling of the Bush administration, they can't avoid the journalistic necessity to blame both sides equally. Please tell me, exactly how did France bring us to this point? In what way have they been unwilling to compromise or otherwise make deals to resolve the impasse? Exactly what did they do to push the UN into its greatest crisis since its inception? I'd really like to know because, for the life of me, I just can't see it. This is Bush's fault. He has bungled a foreign policy gimme. After 9/11 he could have lead the world in putting pressure on regimes like that in Iraq or North Korea to change their ways. He could have lead a real coalition of the not-just-willing-but-damn-excited-to-do-it. He was presented with a golden opportunity that few world leaders will ever have. But doing so would have required working in cooperation with the allies. It would have meant compromising. It would have meant treating the rest of the world as if they had an equal interest in the outcome and an equal share of wisdom on these matters. But no! Bush is blessed by God! He knows what is best! And anyone who doesn't agree with him can just get stuffed. And, if they squawk... If they complain... If they drag their heels... If the whole process results in the destruction of the entire structure of international diplomacy... Well, it's not Bush's fault! It's the fault of those who wouldn't recognize the greatness of his glorious plan for saving mankind! And it's certainly not the fault of an establishment media! A media that continues to insist that the petulant ranting of a moronic mama's boy is equivalent to the dissension of the rest of the civilized world, at least as far as it comes to doling out the blame for the mess that we are in. Oh no, it's not their fault. How could that possibly be? They are, after all The New York Times. That means something. Well, at least it used to.

I just came back from the local Dean2004 Meetup for Portland (OR) and, for the first time in a long time, I'm actually excited by a Democrat. There were 41 people there, which to my mind is pretty amazing considering that it is so early in the campaign. The excitement of the people in the room was palpable. Several of the people there talked about being frustrated by the passivity of most of the Democratic leadership. Many expressed a desire to find some positive way to express their anger and I think Dean has a real chance of tapping into that reserve. There were even a few Republicans there all of who expressed regret for voting for Bush! There were also a few greenies who said that Dean may be the only Democrat with a decent chance of bringing at least some of the Naderites back into the fold. I've moved the meetup button for Dean2004 higher up on the column on the left. I would encourage all readers to click on it and see if there are similar meetings taking place in your area. You can also check out Dean's website, DeanForAmerica.com (which, btw, is one of the best candidate web site names I have seen). It's nice to be for something instead of just against something.

Really, when you get down to it, the purpose of pre-emptively attacking Iraq is to establish the principle that America, under Bush, can and will attack pre-emptively when it wants to. In other words, its a test case, a beta if you will, for the new foreign policy regime of PNAC. All the rest is just window dressing designed to make it look prettier to those who would balk at such naked aggression. Even the idea of it being a war for oil is only a selling point to the industrialists. The Bush administration is nothing more than a protection racket which has chosen to use Saddam as an example to the rest of the world.

Separated at birth?

Khalid Mohammed

Ron Jeremy

Or has the hedgehog simply fallen on hard times?

Now here is an interesting exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Zbigniew Brzezinski:

BLITZER: Is this about as bad as you've seen the U.S. relationship with some of these NATO allies? BRZEZINSKI: I think Henry [Kissinger] is right in saying that this is very serious, but I think we have to ask ourselves, how have we conducted ourselves? We have in effect said to them, "Line up." We have treated them as if they were the Warsaw Pact. The United States issued orders, and they have to follow.

Whoa! Nice analogy there Zbig! It would go a long way toward explaining why the Eastern European countries have been more willing to sign on. They are used to this kind of treatment from higher powers and don't have a long history of resisting it. Meanwhile, Western Europe went for 50 years resisting exactly the kind of autocratic leadership that the Bush administration is currently peddling. The only thing keeping them from going into open revolt agains us is the long history of friendly relations we have had with them. But even Bush is pushing that to its breaking point.

The Unlikely Rise Of Howard Dean "That said, the compact 54-year-old with graying black hair and piercing blue-gray eyes is more than a single-issue anti-war candidate. He’s a strict fiscal conservative (he consistently balanced Vermont’s budget); he’s a staunch health-care advocate (he made sure the state provided health insurance for all children); he’s a dedicated environmentalist (he protected thousands of acres of open lands); and he’s a social liberal (he signed the controversial legislation permitting same-sex civil unions). In political style, he’s notably candid, and he’s got executive experience-he just stepped down as Vermont’s governor after eleven years in office-no small thing given that four of our last five presidents have been governors. All of this has suddenly vaulted Dean to the political forefront. “I’m hearing great things,” says Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, while stressing that he has no favorite in the race. “Howard’s got a good message, and people are enthusiastic about him.” Dean has also begun to draw opponents’ attention. The Republican National Committee in January put out a seven-page document snarling that Dean is "an ultra-liberal" and "out of the mainstream." Dean’s response: "I've arrived."

Ha! Finally a liberal Democart who actually seems to know how to respond to Republican attacks: don't be apologetic. A very hopeful sign.

Oliver Willis weighs in on the subject of torture:

A few folks are concerned at the news that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will undergo torture since the news stories indicate that his interrogation will be in an "undisclosed foreign country". Count me among the uncaring. This man chose to join a terrorist organization responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9.11, as well as the deaths of hundreds of Kenyans in the embassy bombings, Australians in Bali, and other hotspots around the world. If putting him under the wire for some temporary discomfort is gonna get his little lips flapping, I've got no problem with that. If he didn't have any info to offer, I wouldn't shed a tear over a bullet to his brain, even. Frankly, when we're done picking his little brain I wouldn't hold a grudge against the soldier who stopped him in an escape attempt.

You don't have to have sympathy for the man in order to oppose him being tortured Oliver. Besides all the ethical and moral arguments against tortuer, whether done directly or via a cut-out, there is still the pragmatic problem that torture just isn't a very effective way to gain valuable information. I to would not shed a tear if the man suffers horribly and than dies. But inhumanity to another human being brings the torturer low as well. I do not grieve for Mohammed. I grieve for us.

First Tom Friedman, then Matthew Yglesias, then Kevin Drum, now Sean-Paul. It looks like the "liberal hawk" coalition is at the breaking point as far as their support for Bush's war is concerned. They may all soon be joining my "liberal hawk but for Bush" coalition. As I have said repeatedly, the problem with supporting Bush in his efforts is that what he says he is going to do and what he ends up doing are often diametrically opposed. Thus, even if you support what he say he is going to do you simply can't trust him to actually do it. Thus, supporting him is simply not an option. Matthew's observation that a failed effort to remove Saddam might be politically disastrous to Bush is correct but it is not a dilemma for liberals since there is no reason for a liberal, hawk or not, to support his effort in the first place. Here's hoping Josh Marshal wakes up to this reality as well. Who knows, even Ken Pollack may wake up as well.

I have a question for all you spy types out there. I was re-reading the alleged NSA memo that the Observer published yesterday and was wondering what this particular passage meant:

In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters.

Obviously there is a lot of spook speak in this sentence. My untrained reading of it though focuses particularly on the phrase "efforts against". Does that mean only snooping efforts or something more? What is a "QRC surge effort"? This memo could just be calling for increased vigilance in already existing snooping efforts. But it could also be calling for specific types of information to be gathered, such as information that could be used as leverage against the named countries and their representatives.

TBogg on pro-war demonstrators:

How sad is it when Great White can draw a bigger crowd than a rally to support Operation Inigo Montoya?

Bravo!

Matthew Yglesias has an interesting post up about the travails of being a "liberal hawk". I, personally, am in the liberal-hawk-but-for-Bush camp on this. As in, I could support an effort to put the squeeze on Saddam, maybe even remove him from power, just so long as Bush is not the one in charge. For I firmly believe that, even given the best possible outcome in the short term, Bush WILL blow it and we will end up with a situation far worse than what we have now. I would much rather have to deal with the humiliation of backing down than the consequences of "success". After all, I already think America has been humiliated just by having this asshole in power in the first place, so having to back down won't be much worse for our international image. Indeed, if we manage to reduce Dubya to nothing more than a weak place-holder until 2004 than I think our image in the eyes of the world might actually improve. Them, whoever comes to power after Dubya would have a better chance of rebuilding our international reputation. As it is, we are swimming in a lake of shit and the only thing keeping us from pulling ourselves out is Bush's drive for war. Stop that drive and, at least, we might be able to tread until we can get this idiot out of the way. That's my opinion.