Serendipity

This afternoon I was listening to Air America and a caller mentioned a speech Joe Biden gave on Sept. 10th, 2001 in which he was deeply critical of the Bush administration's obsession with national missile defense. Tonight Josh Marshal also mentions that same speech, which included this eerie quote:

Sure, we'll do all we can to defend ourselves against any threat, nobody denies that, but even the Joint Chiefs says that a strategic nuclear attack is less likely than a regional conflict, a major theater war, terrorist attacks at home or abroad, or any number of other real issues. We'll have diverted all that money to address the least likely threat, while the real threat comes to this country in the hold of a ship, the belly of a plane, or smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vial in a backpack.

(emphasis mine)

This is relevant because of the recent revelation that Condoleeza Rice was scheduled to give a speech the next day on national security that barely even mentioned the threat of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda. Josh reveals that Condi's speech was apparently meant to be the rebuttal to Biden's speech and that both speeches were part of a intense, behind-the-scenes battle in Washington over the issue of missile defense and asymmetric threats.

This is particularly important to me because I saw Biden's speech repeated on C-SPAN the night of September 10th and I have often thought of it since then. Little did I realize how significant a speech it was until now, otherwise I might have brought it up earlier. Read the speech if you want to appreciate what is probably the last bit of public discussion of national security that will not be tainted by 9/11.

You know you were thinking it...

Did I ever mention that I consider Tom Toles to be a national treasure?

What the question is

This analysis by David Paul Kuhn is interesting for many reasons, not the least being the indication that conventional wisdom is shifting enough that it is no longer consider out-of-bounds to publicly suggest that 9/11 could have been prevented.

Of course 9/11 could have been prevented! However, the mere suggestion of that, up until now, would almost assuredly have gotten you labeled a conspiracy kook. But there is nothing conspiratorial about it at all. You don't have to believe that Bush people knew the 9/11 attacks were coming in order to believe that there was sufficient evidence out there that could have been pieced together given a more diligent national security team.

It has always been a question of competence, not malice. It has always been a question of ability, not intentions. The American people owe it to themselves to ask whether a more competent team at the top could have picked up on the hints and prevented a disaster. They owe it to themselves to understand that asking this question does not require you to believe that the Bushies are bad people.

They just aren't very good at their job.

Score one for Nancy!

I agree with Kos. Nancy Pelosi puts just the right spin on this:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says it's baffling and embarrassing that President Bush is appearing before the Sept. 11 commission with Vice President Dick Cheney at his side instead of by himself.

"I think it speaks to the lack of confidence that the administration has in the president going forth alone, period," Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday. "It's embarrassing to the president of the United States that they won't let him go in without holding the hand of the vice president of the United States."

"I think it reinforces the idea that the president cannot go it alone," she said. "The president should stand tall, walk in the room himself and answer the questions."

In other words: why should we trust Bush to lead the country when even his own people don't trust him to face the 9/11 commission on its own?

Think back to the morning of 9/11. Bush was sitting in that Florida classroom, listening to those kids going through their reading lesson, knowing that a plan has already hit one of the WTC towers and knowing (I hope) that there was a good chance that it was a terrorist attack. Andrew Card enters the room and whispers in his ear, "The second tower has been hit. America is under attack."

I don't know about you but I would hope that if I were president I would immediately get up and leave and see what needs to be done to protect America in its moment of need.

Bush just sat there for another 7 minutes!

Furthermore, his people didn't pull him out either!

All the evidence is right there before us: Bush is so incompetent at the job of Presidenting that even his own people don't trust him to do it right.

To every season, spin spin spin

Zachary Roth brings us this fascinating account of Karl Rove's attempt to spin CNN's interpretation of new polls showing Bush taking the lead in swing states. CNN was initially reporting Kerry's slump vs. Bush to be a result of the Bush campaign's negative ad assault in those states (duh!). Apparently Karl Rove called up CNN to assert that it was Bush's positive ads about himself that were making the difference and that Kerry's fall was purely his own fault.

Now, we understand that the White House would prefer that people think Kerry's declining numbers are the result of voters getting more familiar with him, rather than attack ads from his opponent. After all, as anchor Candy Crowley put it to Schneider, "attack ads sound bad."

But something tells us that Karl Rove doesn't much care one way or the other. As long as CNN is "analyzing" why Kerry's hit the skids, it's putting out a storyline the White House likes. That's why Rove called Schneider -- he was trying to milk another day's coverage out of Tuesday's poll results. And Schneider, eager to share with the world the "news" that Karl Rove had called him in person, duly obliged.

Sometimes it's depressing to report how easily the news media gets duped.

While I agree that "Kerry's hit the skids" is a story Rove would like the news to run with, I disagree with Zachary that Rove is unconcerned with what gets the blame for the skid. I believe that Rove has come to the conscious conclusion that Bush doesn't have much to run on. So, in order to beat Kerry, Rove has to make him look like a really bad alternative. However, doing this can have an unfortunate side-effect of bringing down Bush's favorables  as well (the "attack ads sound bad" problem).

What Bush has to do is bring down Kerry's favorables at a rate that is higher than doing so will bring down Bush's. One way to do that is to put out the spin that any positive benefit they are seeing in the polls is because of Bush's positive message and that the attack adsvoter education programs are really just a minor component of the overall campaign.

In the coming months we can expect to see millions of dollars spent to make Kerry look like a steaming pile of crap while, at the same time, Bushies insisting that attack adsvoter education programs really don't mean all that much and that it is the positive message that wins the election.

The Dean Diaspora: an early report

Micah Sifry does some initial examination in this Nation article of what I call the "Dean Diaspora" (remember, you heard it here first!)

As Micah points out, a lot of past grassroots political efforts faded back into the woodwork because they relied heavily on a central organizer that either didn't care enough to keep it going (John Anderson, Jerry Brown) or choked it off by being to controlling (Jesse Jackson, Ross Perot). The Dean Diaspora could be different because it began as a loosely organized collection of individuals and organizations and never really lost that initial structure (I leave the question open as to whether a failure to evolve beyond that structure may have ultimately done Dean in). As such, the energy that was tapped by the Dean campaign could continue to effect change long after the Dean campaign is nothing but a fond (or painful) memory.

One positive sign

At least she didn't describe her abductor as a black guy.

A uniter, not a divider

I read this item (courtesy Sean-Paul again) and I couldn't help but think that Sharon is unifying the Palestinians in much the same way that Bush is unifying the Democrats.

Sell!

Sean-Paul posts this fascinating bulletin from Stratfor:

We anticipate an intensifying political crisis in the United States. The Bush administration's inability to provide a coherent explanation for its decision to invade Iraq is now haunting the White House. A year after the end of major combat operations, the Bush team still seems incapable of clearly explaining its rationale for invading Iraq. As a result, the Democrats have put the administration on the defensive. This quarter will determine whether Bush can recover and take the offensive as well. We have said that the election is Bush's to lose -- and at this moment, he is doing what he can to lose it. This moment may pass, but the second quarter will give us the first indication of whether the president can regroup. We suspect he can, but we no longer are certain.

In the financial world I think that would be called a downgrade.

God bless John McCain

John McCain is the most bi-partisan respected politician in America today. He has achieved that position because he doesn't stoop to disparaging the values of his political opponents in order to score political points.  I don't agree with many of his positions, but I would be proud to call him president and I think a lot of Americans would agree with me. When you think in terms of Bush's ability to divide this country against itself, McCain's ability to speak for both sides makes him the true anti-Bush.

That is why criticism of the GOP, coming from the John McCain, is so significant. He speaks for the disenfranchised Republicans as well as Independents and Democrats who dream of a day when politicians don't put party over country.

Note that McCain is not the Republican version of Zell Miller. McCain, unlike Miller, does not openly campaign against his parties nominees even when they fundamentally disagree with their leadership. He criticizes for the purpose of strengthening his party whereas Zell criticizes in order to tout his own moral superiority.

John McCain tells Republicans the hard truths they don't want to hear.

John McCain is the Republican Howard Dean.

Imagine if this election were between McCain and Dean? I'd be in heaven.

Update: Looks like McCain likes Howard Dean:

McCain praised the efforts of former Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean for his efforts to raise funds from grassroots organizations while using non-traditional methods, such as e-mail for recruiting supporters. "I thought it was excellent, the most impressive display of Democratic involvement," McCain said of Dean's campaign funding. "That's what we want, small contributions from a multitude of people that all participate in the process."

Kerry 3, Bush 2

Smackdown, week 5

• Condoleeza Rice will testify in public under oath (AP)
• Kerry faults Bush for soaring gas prices (AP)
• Bush releases new ad decrying Kerry position on gas taxes (Knight-Ridder)
• Bush's attacks on Kerry having an impact on Kerry's ratings (Washington Post)
• Kerry raises a record $43 million in Q1 (Washington Post)
• Prosecutors in Plame investigation expand inquiry to include possible lying by administration officials (NY Times)
• Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 308,000 in March (BLS)

Due to work schedule I kind of slacked off on following campaign related news for part of the week, so this list of news stories is a bit truncated (I essentially missed out on the whole Falujah mess)..

This week proves a bit of a test for my "who would I rather be" test. Being Bush meant both highs (the shifting poll numbers, improved job numbers) and lows (caving in on Rice testifying and the chaos in Falujah). Being Kerry meant pretty much dropping off the media radar and going in for surgery on your shoulder (with one positive note being the impressive fundraising numbers). Now, seeing as how I personally believe that political momentum lives and breathes on media attention, I would have to say that even Bush's negative attention was better than Kerry's non-attention. Thus, I have to award the week to Bush (by a nose).

(last weeks smackdown)

Is Rove a crook?

When the story came out a couple of weeks back that Karl Rove had admitted to investigators in the Plame Affair that he disseminated "damaging information" about Valerie Plame to reporters after her identity as a CIA operative had been blown, I remember thinking that the question of whether Rove did this before or after the initial leak should be irrelevant since confirming the leak (assuming that was part of Rove's "damaging information") was essentially just as bad as the initial leak.

Josh Marshal has the scoop on a legal memo (which "fell from the sky") that apparently concurs with that opinion:

The essential argument is that the law, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, does more than simply prohibit a governmental official with access to classified information from divulging the identities of covert operatives. The interpretation of the law contained in the memo holds that a government insider, with access to classified information, such as Rove is also prohibited from confirming or further disseminating the identity of a covert agent even after someone else has leaked it.

Josh asserts that the memo was not the product of either the investigation or any political campaign or organization. Yet Josh is mum on just exactly who did write this memo and how he came into its possession. My best guess would be that it was written by a lawyer or lawyers who don't want their names revealed because to do so might threaten their future professional viability in Washington. I just hope the question of who wrote this memo doesn't interfere with the bigger issues it brings up.

Namely: is George W. Bush's leading political advisor a filthy dirty rotten crook!

Here's the memo (pdf).

Make your news colorful!

Check out Newsmap.

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

It certainly looks cool. Not sure if the utility matches up with the look. I'll have to try it out for a while.

Iraq and John Nash

publius makes an intriguing use of the Nash Equilibrium to explain why, even if going into Iraq was a bad move, pulling out now would just make it worse.

[...] The best move, by far, would have been staying the hell out of Iraq. Dick Clarke’s book makes a very strong case for why it was such a horrible, tragic decision. And you won’t find anyone who opposed invading Iraq more strongly than I did – for a whole number of reasons, many of which are yet to come. But we no longer have the luxury of deciding whether to invade. We did invade. Circumstances have changed irrevocably. Given our current position on the chess board, our Nash equilibrium requires us to stay in, not to pull out or get weak-in-the-knees (though I find it distasteful to talk about willpower when it’s not my ass in the Sunni Triangle crossfire). That’s why Kucinich’s argument that if-it’s-wrong-to-go-in-it’s-wrong-to-stay-in is just not correct. He failed to factor new circumstances into the equation.

publius admits that even this "best choice" option is not all that great of a choice, but he is at a loss to think of anything better.

If the war on terror is a game of chess, Bush lost our queen to a pawn. And it’s friggin’ hard to win without a queen.

Of course, this assumes that "winning the on terror" is the name of the game being played. There are actors in this drama for whom the "best choice" might be to get out of Iraq as soon as possible because they are playing a different game. Namely, George W. Bush, whose current game is "win re-election".

What game the political players are playing will go a long way toward dictating what actions they will take. If the game is to win the election then staying in Iraq may be a losing choice. But if the game is to protect America from threat than staying in Iraq may be the best choice. This is where the true character of a leader is tested: are they willing to sacrifice their political future for the sake of their country's future? Are they willing to throw themselves on the hand grenade of public opinion in order to protect the very people who might throw them out of power?

I think I know which choice Dubya would make.

Losing Broder?

David Broder, "The Dean of the Washington Press Corps", has always been a good soldier when it comes to protecting the image of America. If that means jettisoning the principals of America that is okay, just so long as America as some kind of entity continues to proceed forward in as non-chaotic a fashion as is possible. Thus, after the 2000 election, Broder was a leading example of the idea that it was better for Bush to become President than Gore for the simple reason that Republicans would be more likely to riot in the street if they didn't get their way.

Via Atrios we get the latest column from "The Dean of the Washington Press Corps" in which Broder comes as close as he has ever come to realizing that Bush may be the biggest threat to his precious image of America:

At a time when the American people -- and the world -- desperately need reassurance that the government was not asleep at the switch, Bush has clenched his jaw and said nothing that would ease those concerns. Instead, he has arranged that when he answers the commission's questions in a yet-to-be-scheduled private session, he will not face it alone. He and Vice President Cheney will appear together. It will be interesting to learn who furnishes most of the answers.

Bush was on sound constitutional ground in rejecting calls for Rice's testimony. The right of a president to receive candid advice from his staff members -- and to shield them from being second-guessed by officials of the legislative branch or their designees -- is fundamental. Cabinet members, because they are confirmed by the Senate and their departments are financed by Congress, do have a responsibility to respond to such inquiries. But the president's men and women have only one obligation: to give him their best judgment. Some quit and go public, as Clarke did, when they no longer can support his policies.

I guess "The Dean of the Washington Press Corps" would have been fine if Bush had continued to stonewall the 9/11 commission on Rice. But it is his stonewalling with respect to his own testimony that may be the thing that finally puts "The Dean of the Washington Press Corps" over the edge.

We can but hope.

What role did the threat to Israel play in the decision to go to war?

Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 commission and former member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, apparently told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, that Iraq was more of a threat to Israel than it was to the United States:

”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.

”And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow.

Emphasis mine.

Unfortunately, while Zelikow was undoubtedly correct that selling the American people on a war in Iraq to protect Israel would be "unpopular", it will also probably be "unpopular" to suggest that protecting Israel played a significant role in the decision to march on Baghdad. It's a topic that a lot of people would rather not talk about, even critics of the Bush administration, because it opens up a whole can of very nasty worms.

Of course, the lack of a clear justification for going into Iraq is a natural breeding ground for all kinds of speculation:

”They (the administration) made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to search for a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and because of the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something into it,” said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University and an expert on the Middle East.

But he downplayed the Israel link. ”In terms of securing Israel, it doesn't make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about Iran than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat,” he said.

Still, Brown says Zelikow's words carried weight.

”Certainly his position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise about the thinking of the Bush administration, but it doesn't strike me that he is any more authoritative than Wolfowitz, or Rice or Powell or anybody else. All of them were sort of fishing about for justification for a decision that has already been made,” Brown said.

(link courtesy The Agonist)

Tired of the real Bush?

Why not check out the AIBush instead? Found via The Chatterbox Challenge.

(And no snarky comments about Artificial Intelligence (because I've already thought of them))

Political dynamics

Ezra points out this comment from Garance Franke-Ruta:

Now, I happen to think that, seven months before the election, there's a little too much attention paid to the day-to-day fluctuations in the polls -- especially with a candidate in the field like Kerry, who is a strong closer but tends to appear weaker than he is before the end of a race. Six weeks before Kerry's 1996 re-election, Republican Massachusetts Gov. William Weld was happily leading in the polls in his race for Kerry's senate seat, and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean looked like a sure bet to win the Democratic nomination as close as one month before the 2004 Iowa caucuses. Nonetheless, the Bush campaign is working on a long-term project to undermine Kerry that could pay massive dividends later this year by framing Kerry now in such a way that whatever he does come autumn is viewed through the Bush campaign's narrative about him.

Meanwhile, Kerry's effort to define himself has been hampered by his lack of funds and by his need for a vacation. Kerry, as has been well-documented, has not thus far been the kind of candidate who has reached out and grabbed the nation with his powerful oratory, compelling personality, or innovative domestic agenda. But he has been viewed, at the very least, as a credible -- and sometimes even strong -- alternative to Bush by the Democratic party base and some percentage of swing voters. The upcoming election may well be defined in wholly negative terms -- that is, neither candidate can really win it, but one of them can be made to lose. Right now, it looks like Bush is winning the war to make Kerry lose, and winning it in the states that will matter.

This is similar to thoughts I have had that this race may come down to a question of which candidate least pisses off the electorate. I think that Karl Rove understands this dynamic and has decided that risking the damage to Bush's reputation as a good guy is worth the risk that comes from going negative hard and early against Kerry. The basic calculus is this: Bush's negatives are going up and are likely to continue to go up by November. So, the only way to win is to make Kerry's negatives go up higher and faster.

I just hope that the Kerry campaign understands that this is what is going on.

That's a big 10-4!

I find it interesting that Air America will be launching tomorrow on XM. I find it interesting because XM and other satellite radio services occupy prominent display spots in many truck stop convenience stores. Does that mean one of the largest initial audiences for the new liberal talk radio will be truck drivers?

Snerk

Oval Office Space -- The Director's Cut

SCENE 1:
INT. WEST WING OFFICE — DAY
RICHARD CLARKE is working at an anonymous cubicle deep within the bowels of the West Wing, poring over papers, when his boss, GEORGE W. BUSH, stops by, cup of coffee in hand.

BUSH: Heeeey Clarke. Whaaaat’s happening.

CLARKE: Uh, hi, Mr. President.

BUSH: We need to talk about your WMD reports. Yeeeeah…we’re really trying to punch up our Iraq intelligence. Did you get a copy of that memo?

CLARKE: Uh, yeah, I got it, right here. I’m sorry. I was going over all the intelligence and I just couldn’t find anything indicating that Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction…but I promise I’ll do better next time.

BUSH: Yeeeeah. It’s just that we’re really trying to make it clear that the U.S. was in imminent danger from Saddam Hussein and everything, and he might have had a connection to al-Qaeda...so if you could just start putting that in your WMD reports, that’d be great.

CLARKE: But I don't think that —

BUSH: And I’ll make sure you get another copy of that memo, m’kay? Thanks a bunch.