Canadawide

Outsourcing Tora Bora

I was planning to sell anti-bush T-shirts with slogans on them. Alas, shipping costs proved prohibitive. So, I fired off one of the sayings I thought up to the Democrats on a whim. This is what I sent them: “It was a mistake to outsource the job of encircling Bin Laden at Tora Bora to the Northern Alliance. The world’s most powerful army would have done a better job.” Since then, the Democrats http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_18/community_01.html and Kerry http://slate.com/id/2107141/ have mentioned outsourcing Tora Bora a few times. I am not saying they got the idea from me. The idea is a simple one and I am sure more than a few people have had the same thought. However, I am tickled pink at the thought none the less. The phrase Kerry used on September 11 was this: “Instead of using U.S. forces to capture Osama bin Laden… the President outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, who let bin Laden slip away. That was the wrong choice.” http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0924.html

In his most recent article for Slate, Hitchens says that things have gotten so bad for the Democrats that some unnamed Democrats are not only entertaining paranoid fantasies about the Republicans harboring Bin Laden somewhere only to trot him out at the right time, but they are actually hopping, at least “subliminally”, for bad news from Iraq. http://slate.com/id/2107193/

Now, I am sure many people realize that if their boss was to drop dead it would be open the door to a big promotion. However, realizing this and hoping their boss drops dead are two different things.

Besides, one could easily accuse the Republicans of having been guilty of same kind of “subliminal” thinking. For example, it must have dawned on the boys of the Pentagon and Dick Cheney that if Bin Laden were to be caught at, say, Tora Bora, the case war with Iraq would be harder to make. Maybe this explains why they decided to outsource the task of capturing Bin Laden to the Northern Alliance.

All kidding aside, one news organization has claimed that the Bushies were guilty of much more than just a thought crime. According to NBC the administration put the politics of war ahead of the national security. NBC alleges that a few months before the war, the administration had good idea that Zarqawi was in Northern Iraq in a region of Kurdistan controlled by Ansar al Islam. However, rather than striking at Zarqawi the administration decided to postpone an attack until after the war began. The reason being they feared that if the attack was successful, their case tying Al Qaeda to Iraq would be fatally undermined and with that potentially the case for war. http://slate.com/id/2100549

From the Weekly Standard http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/686yfvgm.asp?pg=2 "European governments are steadily beginning to realize that Kerry will ask the Europeans for all kinds of things they will be unwilling or unable to provide. The Democrat has staked his candidacy on getting more international support in Iraq and Afghanistan. He will find it hard to take "Non" for an answer from Paris. That may make for an uncomfortable series of discussions between President Kerry, President Jacques Chirac, and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Given the level of expectations on both sides, Old Europe might think it would be better off dealing with another four years of President Bush, who at least will expect nothing and get nothing from them.

There's another reason the French and the Germans might be quietly rooting for a Bush victory.

The unpopularity of President Bush, and Chirac's and Schröder's aggressive stand against him, is the only thing that gives the French and German leaders any sort of credibility in the eyes of their own people. Both head otherwise unpopular governments pursuing largely failed economic policies at home. In particular, anti-Bush sentiment keeps alive the French dream of uniting Europe in opposition to the United States--Chirac's famous counterweight to the superpower.

They need Bush.

In any case, the French governing elite would surely miss having someone to scorn in Washington. It feeds their innate self-belief and superiority complex. A senior French diplomat was recently overheard bemoaning to a fawning audience of like-minded souls the rising level of anti-French sentiment in America.

'They've stopped eating French fries in the Capitol. Some restaurants in New York no longer sell French wine,' he said. Then, the sarcastic coup de grâce: 'I've even heard that George Bush has stopped reading Proust.'"

The Proust bit had me laughing.

George Bush is the least popular politican in the world hands down. In Canada2 more than a few progressives will be pulling for Bush. With Bush in office Conservative Republican want to be Stephen Harper does not stand a chance.

The fact that the US gets most of oil from sources outside the Middle East is neither here nor there when it comes price. The US is dependent on oil and much of the world's oil production is centered in the Middle East. If oil does not flow freely from that area, the price of oil will skyrocket. If supply dips and demand stays the same, prices will go up. What is more, Saudi Arabia is unique in so far as it has the ability to increase production so as to stem the tide of rising oil prices. This is particularly important for the US interests. Not only do US companies have a sweet heart deal whereby they receive oil at 50 cents below market value from the Saudis (I presume there are limits as to how much they can buy), but the US government is uniquely positioned to influence such Saudi increases in production. As a result, US oil companies are, through the ties to Washington, better able to speculate on world oil markets than other oil companies.

Now, more than a few think there is potential for a revolution in Saudi Arabia. Given this, it was argued that developing Iraq's oil potential would be extremely important. Iraq's oil reserves supposedly rival those of Saudi Arabia and just as important are easily tapped. (This would not could not happen and would not be allowed to happen with Saddam still in power.) What went unsaid was that a US presence in Iraq would help forestall the collapse of the Saudi regime. Indeed, not only would US be strategically placed right next store, but by removing their troops out of Saudi Arabia one of the major sources of instability was gone. Wolfowitz mentioned the importance of the latter in an interview.

Jay Currie http://www.reviewing.blogspot.com/ “Koby, there was rather a lot to gain by Canada supporting the invasion of Iraq, not the least of which was a seat at the table deciding how best to a) invade, b) handle the occupation. The argument that we should not have gone because Quebec was against the invasion essentially concedes to Quebec a veto over Canada's foreign policy. Remember, in WWII Quebec also opposed Canadian involvement. As for terrorist targetting I think the case is not proven. The Madrid cell was in place long before GWII. The Bali attack seems to have been as much an anti-Western as anti-Australian outrage.”

Quebec was not too happy about WW1 either. Anyway, given the strength of the separatists, such feeling have to be taken into consideration. (Notice I said "consideration" not dicate.) As for, “Asymmetrical Federalism” and the welcoming that twit Jean Lapierre into the party, well, let us just say it is horse of different colour and leave it at that.

The most recent bombing in Indonesia seems to be related to the war, but the Bali bombing no. As for the Madrid, it is quite clear that it stemmed from Spain’s involvement in Iraq. In the preceding months there was a lot of “chatter” as how to best affect the election and several well thought out Jihadists papers dealing with that same subject were posted on the internet. These papers together with various internet forums have proved essential in allowing Jihadists to maintain some kind of coherent strategy. Even then, the diffuse nature of Islamic terror today means that such planning could break down if a particular group hits the wrong target. This seems to have been the case in Spain; a second train attack was later foiled. A group claiming responsibility for the failed bombing said it was just a warning. There seems to be two schools of thought on the issue. One was that the group was trying to put a positive spin on a failed attempt and other that the a group not responsible for the attempted bombing was trying to salvage the pre Madrid thinking sketched out in various documents. At any rate it is quite clear that some Jihadists fully understood that if Spain was attacked after it had promised to pull troops out of Iraq that Europe would be driven closer to the US. Whether Bin Laden was on board with such thinking from the outset is not entirely clear (probably), but what was clear is that the letter he released threatening Spain with further attacks if they did not follow through was entire consistent with such thinking. And for that matter, the style in which the letter was done up was obviously aimed at a western audience.

Backing the US war in Iraq would have cost us a lot more economically and politically. Ever consider how security costs and insurance costs for Canadian companies based abroad will come to stack up to American and British firms based abroad in the upcoming years? Anyway, were was I? Besides, overlapping interests trump political grudges every time. Not many historians would argue that Person “pissing” on Johnson’s rug had any noticeable economic or political consequences for Canada and an insignificant backbencher with a big mouth (i.e., Parrish) is not nearly as significant as a Prime Minister giving an anti war speech at a US university. (In 1967 then Prime Minister Lester Person gave a speech critical of US policy in Vietnam at an American university, whose name escapes me. Anyway, on that same trip Person visited Johnson at Camp David. Johnson was none to pleased and a one point grabbed Person by the lapels and warned him not to "piss on my rug". This is not the only indignity Person suffers at the hands of the Johnson administration. While visiting Canada, Person was stooped in the middle of the night by one of Johnson’s body guards. The body guard asked him who he was and what business did he have being in the hallway. Person replied in his typical dead pan way: I am the Prime Minister; I live here and I am on my way to the washroom. Trudeau and Nixon were on even worse terms. Nixon was heard on tape calling Trudeau an “asshole” and “pompous egg head”. When asked to comment, Trudeau said “I have been called worse things by better people.” After his retirement Trudeau delighted in telling the following story: According to Trudeau, Nixon desperately wanted the US to be the first Western nation to recognize Communist China. When, Trudeau beat him to the punch, Nixon allegedly phoned Trudeau and called him an “asshole”. Trudeau said he just laughed.) Those on the right that take the issue seriously should stop hyperventilating and those that do not should stop fearmongering.

Jay Currie: "Canadians are considered to be excellent peace keepers and there are significant sections of Iraq in which peacekeeping would be a good idea."

Why on earth do you want to send a token Canadian force to Iraq to get shredded? Iraq is not Bosnia. It is not even like Kabul. The point at which Canadian peacekeepers would be able to make even a small difference is long since past. Peacekeepers are best equipped to keep two identifiable warring parties apart and are useful in helping MAINTAIN law and order. Law and order has long since broken down in Iraq, the two war parties in Iraq are the coalition and unreliable Iraq force and the insurgents and one of the parities not identifiable. There is good reason why the Poles and the British are scaling back, viz., they are ill-equipped Militarily and politically to fight a growing insurgency.

I supported the US going into Iraq, but I never supported Canada getting involved. (The Bush administration’s gross adminstrative incompetence and political hubris has greatly undermined my belief that going in was the right thing. This worried me before going into Iraq, but I fooled myself into believing that they could not botch both Afghanistan and Iraq.) There was nothing to gain for Canada by supporting the US efforts in Iraq. Nothing. Supporting the war would only have increased the chances of Canadians being attacked by terrorists at home and abroad and needlessly endangered the general well being of Canadians traveling and working abroad. This was especially important because, as the Conservatives never tire of telling us, Canada is not prepared to fend off a terrorist attack. A second reason had to do with Quebec. As the vast majority of Quebecers were against the war and going into the war would have seriously strengthened the sovereigntists. Preventing the breakup of the country may not be important to Stephen Harper, who said before the 1995 referendum that whether Canada survives is less important than reducing the size of government, but to the vast majority of patriotic Canadians such things matter. Third supporting US unilateralism would have undermined Canadian foreign policy. Forcing countries, but in particular the US, to work through international bodies such NATO and the UN serves to magnify Canada’s diplomatic clout and has been our policy for decades. This was France's policy during the whole episode too. France saw it as the best way of constraining the “hyper power”. Most important of all though, the US was going in regardless of what Canada was going to do. Canadian supporters of the war could have our cake and eat it too. Now, Harper might describe such a position as amoral and even unmanly, but “moronic”, “moralist” “macho” not only all start with the letter “m” they are also adjectives that should not describe Canada’s foreign policy.

Mr. Blix argued, as France did, that the Security Council “owned” the resolution 1441 as a collective.

As I said (see previous post), I think Blix is wrong. 1441 stated that if Iraq did not comply with all relevant resolutions, then there would be serious consequences. As 688 was one of the relevant resolutions and America was able to determine when they were in violation of that, it follows from this that America would be able to determine that Iraq was in violation of 1441. Blix may think that “ownership” of the resolutions should rest with the entire Security Council, but as the old saying goes, and ought is not an is.

Needless to say, a second resolution was not needed to put a legal stamp on the war. However, the US decided to pursue one anyway because Blair thought he needed it for political reasons. This was a huge mistake and typical of the Bushies gross diplomatic bungling in the lead up to the war. As Niall Ferguson put it, "by pitching for a second resolution ..., the Bush administration handed the French government a big, baguette like stick with which to beat the United States over the head." Unbeknownst to Ferguson, the French had singled to the US and Britain that they were not going to continue the debate over the "ownership" of 1441 and were let the US and Britain go on its merry conquering way, but for political reasons the two pursued one anyway. As a result France was not able to back down and had no choice to beat the US over the head as it were.

Now, just for the record, let me say this. I hope people’s opinion of the war does not rest on whether they think it was legal.

The word “terrorist” has a long and storied history and its use is highly contested to say the least. Its origins date back to the Terror in France and originally applied to state actors, but since it was applied to Russian anarchists in the last 19th century, it has been used to refer to exclusively to non-state actors who illegally use violence or the threat of violence to further certain political ends. That said, as the old saying goes one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist; in other words, the rightness of a particular cause has been used as a reason not to apply the term to particular groups.

Building on definitions, such as the FBIs, Chomsky and others have applied the term to both state actors and non-state actors. Their efforts to change the meaning of the term have met with limited success and only serve to further confuse people. While it is common enough to see various US and Israeli actions described in some quarters as meeting this or that definition, Iraq’s Anfal campaign, for example, is never so described. Moreover, while Stalin, Saddam and Hitler did bang up job of terrorizing huge numbers of people, it just seems plain odd to say they are the most prominent terrorists of the 20th century.

Jim Elve from blogs Canada: “The U.S.'s pre-emptive war against Iraq was in clear violation of the UN Charter, to which they are a signatory. Article 2(4) and Article 51 prohibit one nation from attacking another except in self-defense or with the authority of the U.N. Last week, Kofi Annan stated that the invasion was illegal - in FBI parlance: ‘the unlawful use of force’.”

Legally speaking the so called second Gulf War was just a continuation of the last war and so was legal and not "pre-emptive". What was signed in 1991 was a cease fire agreement and what was at issue all along was whether two permanent members of the Security Council had the power to decide whether the cease fire was broken and so continue hostilities. France, Russia and China said no. The US and Britain said yes. The problem for the former was that the latter had years of precedent to cite. The US and Britain had since the implementation of the no fly zones, which were derived from a US and British interpretation of 688, frequently decided when Iraq was in violation of a sub section of the seize fire agreement.

BBC reports that some Nadar supporters and Kerry supporters have come to something of a compromise. Nadar supporters in swing states are pairing up with Democrats in solidly red states and promising to support the other person’s candidate. For example, a Nadar support in Florida will promise to vote for Kerry if a Kerry supporter in Texas will vote for Nadar. I like it.

Andrew Sullivan: "I have to say that the risible statement given by CBS News last night finally did it for me. Who do these people think they are? They have failed to find a single expert who will back the authenticity of the memos; their own experts say they warned CBS not to go with the story; Killian's secretary thinks they're fakes ... and yet Rather and Heyward say they stand by their story and will continue to investigate the provenance and dubiousness of the forgeries! This beggars belief. How do I put this to Rather: it doesn't matter if the underlying story is true. All that matters is that CBS's evidence is fake. Get it? End of story. For what it's worth: I believe Bush got into the Guard because of his dad's connections. I believe he probably didn't perform his duties adequately in his final two years. When I first read the CBS story, I thought the docs were "devastating." I'm not backing this president for re-election. But all that is completely beside the frigging point. Journalists are supposed to provide accurate evidence for their claims. CBS didn't. And its response to the critics is to stonewall and try and change the subject. The correct response - the one they'd teach you in kindergarten journalism class - is immediately to check the authenticity of the documents as best you can, and if the doubts persist, to apologize immediately and yank the story. Can you imagine what CBS News would do if a government official found to be peddling fake documents refused to acknowledge it? And kept repeating his story nonetheless? They'd be all over it. But, you see, they are above politicians. They are above criticism. And they are stratospheres above bloggers who caught them red-handed."

Amen

I was wondering one someone in the media was going to discuss the possability, which I raised a few posts back, of the Bushies being behind the forgies.

MAUREEN DOWD NY TIMES: "Here's how bad off the Democrats are: They're cowering behind closed doors, whispering that if it should ever turn out that Republicans are behind this, it would be so exquisitely Machiavellian, so beyond what Democrats are capable of, they should just fold and concede the election now - before the Republicans have to go to the trouble of stealing it again.

There's no evidence - it's just a preposterous, paranoid fantasy at this point. But it speaks to the jitters of the Democrats that they're consumed with speculation about whether Karl Rove, the master of dirty tricks and surrogate sleaze, could have set up CBS in a diabolical pre-emptive strike to undermine damaging revelations about Bush 43's privileged status and vanishing act in the National Guard, and his odd refusal to take his required physical when ordered.

In this vast left-wing conspiracy theory, Mr. Rove takes real evidence on W.'s shirking and transfers it to documents doomed to be exposed as phony (thereby undermining the real goods), then funnels it through third parties to Dan Rather, Bush 41's nemesis on Iran-contra. A perfect bank shot.

The secretary for W.'s squadron commander in the Texas Guard told The Times that the information in the disputed memos is correct - it's just the memos that seem fake.

"It looks like someone may have read the originals and put that together,'' said a lucid 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox, who was flown up to New York yesterday by beleaguered CBS News executives.

She told Mr. Rather that her boss, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, wrote a "cover-your-back file,'' a "personal journal'' to keep a record about the politically connected Bush in his charge. She said the contents of that mirrored the CBS documents, but she said those documents were not on the right forms and contained Army terms rather than Air National Guard argot. She confirmed that young Bush had disobeyed a direct order from Colonel Killian to take a physical. ....

Those who suspect Mr. Rove note that when he was Bill Clements's campaign strategist in a 1986 governor's race in Texas, he was accused of bugging his own office to distract from a debate, according to James Moore and Wayne Slater, authors of "Bush's Brain.'' They said it turned the election because after that, the Democrat could not get any attention."

The majority of people in the States do not believe in evolution and a large number of people hold views similar to Stockwell Day’s position. Does this make views such as his respectable? Of course not. Day’s view is intellectual junk and such views are rightly mocked. However, for purposes of rallying the base, Karl Rove and company have helped create a social-cultural environment were such beliefs are allowed to flourish. Others, such as O’Reily and Coulter, have in the own way rallied their own base, but more for monetary reasons than political ones. They are the new Don Cherrys of politics and are for similar reasons hard to grabble with. Indeed, much of their popularity rests with the own irrationality; in an Alice and Wonderland kind of way, appeals to reason is a sign of weakness; bluster must be met with bluster.

Such tactics have helped propel the Michael Moore’s to the top of the liberal pecking order. One need only read the reviews of 911 to figure out why. http://www.secularislam.org/articles/khawaja20.htm Moore is admittedly good at taking a constructed media image and blowing it to pieces by revealing how it is constructed. However, Moore’s arguments in 911 are meandering conspiratorial nonsense. Strangely this and the movie's popularity make the movie all the more likable. It is great fun to see the bully’s face rubbed in shit. Some even let themselves vicariously live out the moment, saying underneath their breath “how does that make you feel?”

The following review from the New York Review of Books is also worth looking into. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17315

CBS Forgies: Bushies lucky or Devious?

Slate’s Tim Noah “I can say with confidence that I never would have relied on the documents that 60 Minutes relied on, based on how they were described in its broadcast, had they landed in my lap. But before you pat me on the back and say "well done," you should know that I did make the error of racing to comment on the documents before actually reading the 60 Minutes transcript. (I missed the broadcast itself.) The fact that the White House had sent the documents to me and to thousands of other reporters seemed to eliminate any possibility that they were fakes. (It turned out the White House was just passing along docs that it had received from ... 60 Minutes.) The only statement I can make in my defense is that the White House didn't seem to doubt their authenticity, either.”

Noah seems to think that the reason the White House did not question the documents authenticity was that they were already framing a guilty man. In other words, they had no reason to doubt their authenticity. This strikes me as very unlikely. The Bushies have never been one to let the truth stand in the way of anything and they certainly would not send out copies to thousands of reporters if they knew they thought they were legit. It seems to me that the White House did know that they were cheap forgeries and so gladly “sent the documents to me and to thousands of other reporters.” This leaves one of two possibilities open: either the Republicans got lucky or they are the source of the documents.

I find the whole Vietnam thing very annoying. Kerry did not so much enlist as preemptively enlist. He has said a number of times that it was inevitable that he was going to be drafted and by enlisting he gained some flexibility. He never supported the war, even when he enlisted. He did not volunteer for the swift boats because they were dangerous. At the time he signed up for them, it was a relatively safe assignment. As it turned out, once swift boat members began going up river they had a very high rate of causalities. This may account for his getting 3 purple hearts, that and the fact he is bit clumsy. Leaving aside the accusations of men whose credibility the Washington Post and others have torn to sheds, he took advantage of a technicality and left. Smart man. Despite being a reluctant warrior, he served honorably, winning a Bronze Star and a Silver Star. True to his convictions, once he got out of the war, he became an anti-war advocate.

It is thus utterly bizarre that he is now cast as having “defended America as a young man”. He did no such thing; and in 1971 Kerry would have said straight out that N.Vietnam posed no danger to the US. Thankfully, in the interviews I have not until recently seen him play up the notion that he defended America as a young man; indeed, he has on a number of occasions undercut that message. These pronouncements are reserved primarily for speeches. All of this does not show that Kerry is extraordinarily dishonest as it shows that he is probably too honest. He forgets to stay on message. However, it shows more than anything else that his campaign team is a bunch of amateurs getting their ears boxed in by Karl Rove.

That said, my hackles are raised every time someone spits out verbatim what the Republicans are trying to say about Kerry’s war record. What they say is false and repeating verbatim what any political party says strikes me as intellectual laziness. Politicians do not so much as lie as deliberately miss lead and lie by omission. That is the nature of the business, especially now that sound bites have become so important. My hat goes off to Karl Rove. Under his stewardship, the Republicans have perfected the art and taken it to a level never thought imaginable. His motto: lie big or go home.
What particularly annoys me is that while Kerry was allegedly not manly enough to stay in Vietnam and get shot at, Bush was on a two decades long bender. Besides, being a drunk, Bush is probably guilty of insider trading and is arguably the most ignorant president the US has ever had.

As to Kerry’s voting record, I will leave it up to the Slate’s Fred Kaplan to explain.
“The main falsehood, we have gone over before (click here for the details), but it keeps getting repeated, so here we go again: It is the claim that John Kerry, during his 20 years in the Senate, voted to kill the M-1 tank, the Apache helicopter; the F-14, F-16, and F-18 jet fighters; and just about every other weapon system that has kept our nation free and strong.
Here, one more time, is the truth of the matter: Kerry did not vote to kill these weapons, in part because none of these weapons ever came up for a vote, either on the Senate floor or in any of Kerry's committees.

This myth took hold last February in a press release put out by the RNC. Those who bothered to look up the fine-print footnotes discovered that they referred to votes on two defense appropriations bills, one in 1990, the other in 1995. Kerry voted against both bills, as did 15 other senators, including five Republicans. The RNC took those bills, cherry-picked some of the weapons systems contained therein, and implied that Kerry voted against those weapons. By the same logic, they could have claimed that Kerry voted to disband the entire U.S. armed forces; but that would have raised suspicions and thus compelled more reporters to read the document more closely.

What makes this dishonesty not merely a lie, but a damned lie, is that back when Kerry cast these votes, Dick Cheney—who was the secretary of defense for George W. Bush's father—was truly slashing the military budget. Here was Secretary Cheney, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 31, 1992:
Overall, since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend. … And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.
Cheney then lit into the Democratic-controlled Congress for not cutting weapons systems enough:
Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M1s, they know they're lying; it's that they know—or at least Cheney knows—that the same lie could F14s, and F16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.

I'm not accusing Cheney of being a girly man on defense. As he notes, the Cold War had just ended; deficits were spiraling; the nation could afford to cut back. But some pro-Kerry equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Zell Miller could make that charge with as much validity as they—and Cheney—make it against Kerry.

In other words, it's not just that Cheney and those around him are lying; it's not even just that be said about him. That's what makes it a damned lie.” http://slate.com/id/2106119

By comparison, Michael Moore looks like a diligent scholar dedicated only to uncovering the truth.

From what I have read of Kerry, he was probably solidly against going into Iraq. Temperamentally, Kerry is much like Colin Powell, extremely wary of committing the nation to military action. He is also not unlike his dad a liberal internationalist with realist sympathies; Like any good realist he is profoundly skeptical of political grand versions, but utterly lacking Kissinger’s Machiavellian ruthlessness.

There is simply no way Kerry would have undertaken a similar adventure had he been President. No way.

That said, he would have forsaw the bad consequences for the US’s Iraq policy of congress not authorizing the use of force and so voted yes.

However, during the primaries he stradled the fence by adopting Clark’s position and has stuck to that position since. As I have said, his public position was just pure spin.

Now, some people, mostly Republicans, seem to think that the spin originates with Kerry; I profoundly disagree. Democrats everywhere asked themselves what kind of background would the perfect candidate (i.e., a Democratic version of the mythical Republican tough on terrorism president) have and decided that Kerry, on paper at least, came closest to matching this ideal. John Kerry has also tried to conform to that ideal. The problem is the so called ideal candidate was never what inspired them, hatred of Bush did, and John Kerry’s inclinations do not not match his resume. To make matters worse, Democrats are micro managing Kerry to death and in so doing are making an already stiff candidate look even stiffer.

They did this with Gore as well. In the lead up to the debates the Democrats had Gore read out different answers to same question to a focus group. Whatever answers the focus group liked best they went with. More recently such focus group nonsense helped shape the entire Democratic convention, which by the way the pundits loved at the time because they hit on all the “right” points, but which left out the single element that ties the Democrats together, viz., hatred of Bush.

Kerry has said he did not dirctly sanction the Iraq war; so as to strengthen Bush’s hand vis-via Iraq, he merely authorized the use of force. The underlying implication being that he believed, or was misled to believe Saddam needed to be disarmed and like any good American he believed the president would only go to war if dipolmacy had been exhausted. At various times he has said the case for needing to rid Saddam of weapons he never had was overstated. More often, though, he has said that the President did not exhaust dipolmacy; he kicked the weapons inspectors out of Iraq before they were willing to render a final verdict. With these arguments to fall back on when asked by Chris Mathews “Are you one of the anti-war candidates?” KERRY responded by saying “I am -- Yes, in the sense that I don’t believe the president took us to war as he should have, yes, absolutely.” (MSNBC’s “Hardball,” 1/6/04)”

Kerry’s position is pure spin. “Disarming” Iraq through peaceful means was never a live option. There was only ever two options available once Bush took the UN route, either have the sanctions regime and the policy of containment collapse, or regime change. You see, if dipolmacy had been exhausted and the weapons inspectors had pronouced that Saddam had indeed disarmed, then not only would the case for war collapse, so too would the case for continuing sanctions. The US would have been left hanging onto UN resolution 687 paragraph 21, which states that inorder for sanctions to be lifted the Iraqis had to comply with “all relevant UN resolutions” including the Americans and British argued UN resolution 688. The impetus for the creation of Iraqi Kurdistan and the two no fly zones, 688 condemned “the repression of the Iraqi civilian population in many parts of Iraq.” (Ironically, the Bush administration had been very reluctant to pass 688 in the first place, but was pressured into it by the weight of public opinion.) And the Russians, French and Chinese would have hammered them with 687 paragraph 22, which seems to allow for the lifting of sanctions once Iraq has proved to have been rid of WMD.

What Kerry could claim is that Bush/Powell recklessly forced the issue by going the UN route and having the inspectors sent back in. (Although, presented in the press as being the most skeptical of the lot, Powell evidently believed that there was probably something there and the weapons inspectors would not give Saddam a passing grade.) He and others had no choice other than to sanction the use of force, or have the US’s entire Iraq policy collapse.

Kerry

The whole Vietnam strikes me as, well, bizarre, but then again the Vietnam War was over by the time I was born and I am also not American. I am simply not moved by what Kerry is purported to have done in Vietnam and I have never understood why a purple heart being a badge of honor. The other side scored a hit. This is not something to celebrate. Sorry, I just felt like being cheeky. The Silver Star is something to be proud of though. Anyway, where was I?

The Bushies attempt to smear Kerry, on the other hand, is simply without foundation and is a prime example of the intellectual dishonesty that so characterizes the Bush administration. Having their heroes’ entire story shot to pieces on the front page of the Washington Post was still not enough to shut rabble up. And when their heroes reached deep down and seemingly pulled a Cambodian rabbit out of a hat, the rabble could hardly contain their glee. Too bad, it was just more trickery. As Fred Kaplan demonstrates the right has made rabbit stew out of the Cambodian story. http://slate.com/id/2105529

The whole episode is maddening when one compares Bush’s “lost years” to Kerry’s past. To put it bluntly, Bush was a drunk, probably met the technical definition of a deserter, and is probably guilty of insider trading.

The charge of Kerry being a flip flopper (i.e., someone incapable of committing himself to something) is equally ill founded and largely a creation of the Bushies.

What seems certain though is that the confident, articulate, hyper-serious, passionate 26 year old, who testified in 1971 has been replaced by an equally serious 59 year old man whose speaking ability, spontaneity and passion, has been strangled by a perfectionist concern with presentation and the concern of his handlers that he be what the focus groups tell him he should be. Did any body see him on the Daly show? Talk about anal. Seeing him there convinced me that it least one story was true. He really did dive down, rescue the hamster and earnestly give it mouth to mouth, with the hope of having it breath again.

Jean “Poutine” regularly butchered the English language and from what I am led to believe the French language as well. However, even Chrétien is not as fascinating in this regard as George Bush. Here are some classic Bushisms and other related gems.



Bushisms

"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again. "

"I understand small business growth. I was one."

"The White House is in Washington, D.C., it's up East."

"We don't want to discourage the innovators and those who take risks because they're afraid of getting sued by a lawsuit. "

"The senator [McCain] has got to understand if he's going to have—he can't have it both ways. He can't take the high horse and then claim the low road.”

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

'Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.'

'I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family’

"For every fatal shooting, there are roughly three nonfatal shootings. Folks, this is unacceptable in America. We're going to do something about it."

"The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case."

“Border relations between Canada and Mexico have never been better”

"We're making the right decisions to bring the solution to an end."

"We've got a big border in Texas, with Mexico, obviously --and we've got a big border with Canada -- Arizona is affected."

“I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position.''

"I don't know whether I'm going to win or not. I think I am. I do know I'm ready for the job. And, if not, that's just the way it goes.”

“Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods”

"Anyway, I'm so thankful, and so gracious--I'm gracious that my brother Jeb is concerned about the hemisphere as well."

"My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific."

"We've tripled the amount of money — I believe it's from $50 million up to $195 million available."

"I was proud the other day when both Republicans and Democrats stood with me in the Rose Garden to announce their support for a clear statement of purpose: you disarm, or we will."

“The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself.”

“One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end."

“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”

"I want to thank my friend, Sen. Bill Frist, for joining us today. … He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. (Laughter.) Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me."

"Obviously, I pray every day there's less casualty."

To his anti war crowd. “When Iraq is liberated, you will be treated, tried, and persecuted as a war criminal.”

"Over 50 percent of our energy comes from overseas. Fortunately, a lot of it comes from Canada."

“The woman who knew that I had dyslexia--I never interviewed her."

Freudian slips

"I can understand why Senator Kerry is upset with us. I wasn't so pleased with the ads that were run about me. And my call is get rid of them all, now."

"It was just inebriating what Midland was all about then.”

"We need an energy bill that encourages consumption.”


Contributions to the English Language

“analyzation”

“increasify”

“misunderestimated”

“hopefuller”

“Hispanically”

Announcing President Bush's schedule on Thursday, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the president was meeting with religious leaders "to talk about the importance of tolerism, er, tolerance." Later in his morning briefing, Fleischer repeated the nonword, "tolerism" Reporters more accustomed to hearing such malapropos from the president himself could barely stifle their laughter. Fleischer jokingly begged: 'Don't think what you all are thinking! That was MY word. Stop it!'" —Washington Post, 9/20/01

Appalling displays of ignorance

He called Greeks “Grecians”

“Do you have blacks, too?"—To former Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso

"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program."

“The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law."

“I am mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the legislative branch. I assured all four of these leaders that I know the difference, and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute them.”

"Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican."--Declining to answer reporters' questions at the Summit of the Americas, Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001

Meeting 15 year-old Welsh singing sensation Charlotte Church : GWB : "—So what state is Wales in?" Charlotte : "—Erm, it’s a separate country next to England" GWB : "—Oh, OK."

"I'd like to fly down to South America. There is a complicating factor there. The Mexican elections are taking place, and I certainly don't want to get involved with that."

PM Poutine

You decide.

“We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, and we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.”
-- Warsaw, Poland, June 15, 2001

“Vice President mentioned Nigeria is a fledgling democracy. We have to work with Nigeria. That's an important continent.”
-- Presidential debate, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Oct. 11, 2000

Inadvertently or not, the Vancouver Sun has continually run stories and columns that have painted Harper as a moderate. This is the latest from columnist Barbara Yaffe (July 22, 2004 unfortunately you need a subscription.) “An Alberta-based Christian group keen to become more involved in the political process could be the helpers-from-hell for the Conservative party. At a time when Conservatives are hoping to foster a more mainstream image, Concerned Christian Canada Inc. is preparing to step up efforts to make its influence on the national scene. … The prime goal of the group, with 400 members is ‘to insure (sic) that the new Conservative party does not become another mushy middle Liberal party.’ …. His group [( the leader Craig Chandler)] wants action that will strengthen the family, end taxpayer supported abortion and lower taxes for families. Predictably, the group opposes gay marriage and gay adoption as well as Bill C-250 aimed at protecting gays from hate crimes. This has to be the worst news the party has received since MP Randy White’s outrageous diatribe against the courts surfaced before the June 28 election.”

Yaffe may want the Conservatives to foster a more mainstream image and maybe even to become more mainstream, but as Bentham said about “natural rights”, hunger is not bread. Conveniently for Yaffe and the rest of the media though, so long as the Conservative Party supposedly strives to present a more moderate image, the more newsworthy the comments of Conservative’s such as Randy White’s become. Indeed, without the move to the center narrative in place comments such as White’s could be dismissed as more of the same rather than an as MP breaking ranks, in other words news. On the flip side of things, with such a narrative in place, old sins become less relevant. After all, as far as the media is concerned, it is no use Harping on past sins when the guilty parties have implicitly acknowledged their guilt by explicitly trying to Reform.

The Conservatives, of course, oppose Bill C-250 and least two Conservative MPs (Gallant and justice critic Vic Toews) have said that its passing would open the doors to the Bible being banned! Good humor. In all, only 2 Conservative MPs voted for Bill C-250, former torries Peter MacKay, Gerald Keddy. It goes without saying that the CCC and the Conservatives are of like mind when it comes to tax cuts. The same goes for gay marriage. Not one Conservative MP voted in favor of gay marriage. (4 PC MPs did but they did not join the new party.)

The abortion issue is a little trickier. While many Conservatives MPs favor banning abortion, Harper seems to have settled on saying he would not table legislation, but if a private member’s bill came before the house he would allow MPs to vote as they saw fit. (At one point earlier in the campaign, he had said that as a health issue the provinces should be able to decide. However, he said nothing about the subject again and his suggestion for having free votes on private members bills speaks against it.) Needless to say, this is not the type of bellicose rhetoric that warms of the hearts of CCC members. As for the adoption issue, I do not have enough information to make a comparison. May those in the know share their knowledge. All in all, Harper and the CCC are of like minds when it comes to the direction they think the Conservative Party should take.

How do I know? Harper has said so repeatedly, but no more eloquently or explicitly than in June 2003 edition of Report Magazine. (Yaffe would do well to notice that a Christian group reprinted the article.) http://www.ccicinc.org/politicalaffairs/060103.html On December 12 2000 Harper said the following. "Much about the Canadian Alliance is worthy of support, and a large number of Canadians do support it. But the CA will be under considerable pressure to rid itself of any tinge of a Western agenda or Alberta control. This we must fight. If the Alliance is ever to become a party that could be lead by a Paul Martin or a Joe Clark, it must do so without us. We don't need a second Liberal party." He began Rediscovering The Right Agenda by echoing those thoughts. “The Canadian Alliance wrapped up its leadership race a little over one year ago. At the time, the chattering classes told us the race was about the so-called "unity" issue - the question of whether we should have one "conservative" party or two. But I asked the 100,000-plus members of our party a different question: do we actually stand for something, or don't we? I posed this question because what Alliance members feared most was seeing our agenda slipping away. Simply put, our members worried less about having two so-called "conservative parties" than about having no conservative party at all. I believe the majority of members supported my leadership bid for approaching the debate in these terms.” Subsequently he goes on to describe why conservatives of all stripes should embrace social conservatism. As Harper describes it, economic Conservatism has hit something of a bottleneck. “serious conservative parties simply cannot shy away from values questions. On a wide range of public-policy questions, including foreign affairs and defence, criminal justice and corrections, family and child care, and healthcare and social services, social values are increasingly the really big issues. Take taxation, for example. There are real limits to tax-cutting if conservatives cannot dispute anything about how or why a government actually does what it does. If conservatives accept all legislated social liberalism with balanced budgets and corporate grants - as do some in the business community - then there really are no differences between a conservative and a Paul Martin. …. The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values, so conservatives must do the same. … This is not as difficult as it sounds. It does not require a radical redefinition of conservatism, but rather a shifting of the balance between the economic and social conservative sides that have always been there. … we need to rediscover Burkean or social conservatism because a growing body of evidence points to the damage the welfare state is having on our most important institutions, particularly the family.”

Where Harper differs from the CCC and others of their ilk is he wants to take a more gradual approach. “we must realize that real gains are inevitably incremental. This, in my experience, is harder for social conservatives than for economic conservatives. The explicitly moral orientation of social conservatives makes it difficult for many to accept the incremental approach. Yet, in democratic politics, any other approach will certainly fail. We should never accept the standard of just being ‘better than the Liberals’ - people who advocate that standard seldom achieve it - but conservatives should be satisfied if the agenda is moving in the right direction, even if slowly.”

Why Bush is a terrible "War President"

Whatever one thinks about Bush administration’s Wilsonian/ neo-conservative idealism, one thing is certain. The Bushies have badly handled the “War on Terror”.

Troubles arose almost immediately. The administration did not take the Al Qaeda threat as serious as they should have and as a result failed to show leadership in mobilizing the country’s institutions against the terrorist threat and relatedly failed to establish the necessary governmental apparatus for responding to a major terrorist attack. Indeed, although George Tenet ran around most of the summer as if his “hair was on fire”, there were plans to roll back counter terrorism funding just before 911.

Things did not get better after 911. First there was the surreal debate about whether the US should strike Iraq right away instead of Afghanistan. Although, sanity did prevail, the whole debate reinforced just how seriously Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld underestimated the Al Qaeda threat. Certainly, Rumsfeld comment that Afghanistan should not be attacked because it was not a “target rich” environment is certainly one for the ages and proves that despite all his talk about modern army he was still stuck in the Cold War.

The actual Afghanistan campaign, of course, was an unmediated disaster, which was made all the more intolerable by the meek and submissive tone the media took during the entire thing. Various newspapers (e.g., Washington Post, NY Times, and The Christian Science Monitor) did grasp immediate cause of why Tora Bora failed, but they did not go beyond that and hammer the Administration. The goal of the campaign should have been to kill and capture as many Taliban and Al Qaeda as possible. However, this was secondary in Rumsfeld’s mind to proving that a small force of US troops could topple a government whose army only had a few outdated tanks and airplanes. You see, in order for the pie in the sky doctrine of preemption to at least scare people, the political and economic cost of invading a country had to be sharply reduced or in Neo Con speak size of the size of the “footprint” did.

By the summer of 2002, it was clear that it was just a matter of when not if the US would attack Iraq. Initially things looked promising for the administration. Powell was able to convince Bush to go the UN route and Security Council resolution 1441 received unanimous approval. Thereafter things did not go nearly as well. The publication of Britain’s dodgy dossier, the appearance and Niger forgeries, Rumsfeld’s yammerings and the fact that the US made little effort to disguise the fact they were trying to buy the support of allies, such as Turkey, if not outright bullying them, all of this hurt the cause for war. The administration’s attempt to tie the Iraq War with the wider “War on Terror” was tenuous at best and was greeted with a great deal of skepticism in the international arena. The administration, of course, knew this. Hence, not only did Powell play down any supposed connection, but according to NBC the administration put the politics of war ahead of the national security. NBC alleges that a few months before the war, the administration had good idea that Zarqawi was in Northern Iraq in a region of Kurdistan controlled by Ansar al Islam. However, rather than striking at Zarqawi the administration decided to postpone an attack until after the war began. The reason being they feared that if the attack was successful, their case tying Al Qaeda to Iraq would be fatally undermined and with potentially the cause for war. (I hope the Bergs read the story.) http://slate.com/id/2100549

The Administration’s one saving grace was the three audio tapes Colin Powell played for UN on February 5 of last year. Continued Iraqi obstinatance and in retrospect governmental incompetence and corruption also helped immensely.

On March 19th of last year the US invaded Iraq with the express purpose of liberating Iraq from itself. Somehow the Neo Conservatives had been able to convince themselves and the media that what the US was doing was akin to the US kicking the Nazis out of France in 1944. Woolsey and Wolfowitz even named a small group of Iraqi ex pats accompanying the American forces the Free Iraqis and up until his arrest the Neo Cons complained bitterly about the CIA not buying into the notion of Chalabi being the second coming of De Gaulle. The CIA should have given their views more credence. Both De Gaulle and Chalabi proved to be a royal pain. (A more accurate historical comparison along the lines the US envisioned would be to have compare Saddam to his hero Stalin and Iraq to Soviet Union in the wake of the German invasion. Many ethnic Ukrainians did, at least at first, view the Nazis as liberators. The comparison breaks down in two respects though, one historical and one practical. The Ukrainians were more like the Kurds than Iraqi Shia. They simply did not identify themselves with their country the way Iraqi Shia do. The second problem is that the Americans did not want to in anyway compare themselves to the, ahem, the Nazis. Incidentally, Pearl’s predication, which turned out to be correct, about the Bath party’s grip on power collapsing shortly after the invasion seems eerily similar to Hitler’s comment that all the Wehrmacht needed to do was to break down the front door and the whole rotten structure would come crashing down.)

The delusional thinking of the Neo Cons immediately got the Americans in trouble. Because he thought he was liberating the country and not occupying it Rumsfeld again did not make killing and capturing military personnel, especially Republican guard members, a priority. (Hitchens, Woolsey and a few others have made this point, but have used euphemistic language in making it. They have said such things as there was no northern hammer to come down on the a south anvil. Once more a few have blamed Turkey for not letting US forces in. Blaming Turkey for inept planning is at minimum just plain silly and is at worst just plain spin.Woosley incredibly blamed the CIA for blocking the training of more free Iraqis. ) In fact, Rumsfeld said that he preferred the Iraqi forces to just melt away than to have them surrender to US forces. This made the post war situation even worse. As it was, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz vastly underestimated the number of troops needed to “secure the peace” and secure vast weapons stores throughout the country, let alone in a case where vast majority of Iraqi army had survived the war and where most its soldiers where still in possession of their small arms.

The total absence of post war planning is now readily acknowledged by both sides of the ideological divide and this includes the boys at the Weekly Standard. What is really irksome though is that far from stemming the bleeding many of the stop gap measures made things worse. The whole incident with the Iraqi Museum is a good case in point. Naturally enough the Iraqi Museum and the National Library was seen as something the US must protect once the regime fell. The problem was that instructions to that effect where lost in the black hole known as Douglas Feith’s desk. As result, when looting broke out the local commander, having received no orders to protect anything, decided to protect what he thought was important, viz., the Oil Ministry. He could not have picked a worse building to protect. The political optics where terrible; it played right into the no blood for oil crowd’s hands. To add insult to injury, the information in the Oil Ministry was not of great use to the Americans. Meanwhile, an administration, which is already, not without reason, branded by critics as being anti-intellectual and anti expert, got hammered in the international press for what happened to the National Museum and Library.

Despite all of this, all was not lost for the administration at this point. The war had gone better than many opponents had suggested and many reached out to the US. So, what did the US do? Well, the Pentagon made darn sure that Iraq would not be internationalized. Their first order of business was to proclaim that all the reconstruction goodies would be going to the coalition of the willing thank you very much and that was pretty much ended such talk right there.

By summer it was becoming obvious that WMD would not be found. With that, people started raising questions about the State of the Union address and those now infamous 16 words. In what has become a familiar tactic, the Bushies blamed the CIA for what they admitted should not have made it into the SOU. The CIA stuck it to them and relieved that they had gotten taken out of an October 2002 speech and doing so had talked to Stephen Hadley who is Rice deputy. Joe Wilson, who I will get to in a second, mentioned the communications in a letter to the senate committee looking at the WMD issue. It clear from this that the CIA did not mince their words. “On Oct. 6, 2002, the DCI called the deputy national security advisor directly to outline the CIA's concerns. The DCI testified to the SSCI on July 16, 2003, that he told the deputy national security advisor that the ‘President should not be a fact witness on this issue,’ because his analysts had told him the ‘reporting was weak.’ On Oct. 6, 2002, the CIA sent a second fax to the White House that said, ‘More on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British.’” So much for Rice’s claim that only those deep inside the CIA new that information was suspect.

If that was not enough, ex Iraqi ambassador Wilson revealed that he had been sent to Niger by the CIA to check out allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase yellow cake from them, but had found nothing. Even though the CIA sent Wilson at Cheney’s behest, Cheney outrageously claimed that Wilson’s finding had not been reported to him. Good humor. In order to get back at Wilson, one of the Bushies ruined the career of Wilson’s wife by outing her as an undercover agent of the CIA. As such an act is potentially illegal, the CIA had the Justice Department launch a criminal investigation.

Meanwhile the insurgency got progressively worse in Iraq and this all but ended the slim possibility that the international community would send more troops. It did something else as well. As the insurgency worsened it became apparent to one and all that America did not have the wherewithal to overthrow other despots and assume control of those countries. The US was having more than a tough enough time in Iraq; the idea of attacking, say, Iran looked like so much pie in the sky. This should have been readily apparent everyone all along, but it was not. Chomsky, for one, droned about how Iraq was just first of many countries that the US would take out. Having grasped America’s weakness and not believing for a second the administration’s rhetoric over Libya, Iranian hardliners have acted and continue to act boldly. They have more or less openly helped to arm and organize Shia militiamen in Iraq; they have cracked down hard and reformers inside Iran; they have been standoffish towards the International Atomic Energy commission and just recently they seized British soldier’s patrolling in Iraqi waters. Oh yeah, American actions against Sadr and the mess Iraq is in has strengthened the hardliners. (There are two things that should be said about Libya. First negotiations had begun well before the Iraq war. Second, a large shipment of nuclear material headed for Libya was seized well after the War! That is right. The Libyans, knowing the Bushies were in bind, had no qualms about pushing the envelope and trying to get their hands on nuclear material. All that talk about Libya being scared into surrendering their weapons programs is just so much Republican hot air.) http://slate.com/id/2103989

By late summer, Rumsfeld wanted the US to get tougher. Part of this involved a plan to extract more intelligence about insurgents from Iraqi prisoners. Rumsfeld sent Miller from Guantanamo Bay to “Gitmotize” Abu Ghraib. Under Miller’s command the US has been much better at extracting information from Al Qaeda prisoners. What Miller did precisely is not exactly clear. What is clear is that after he left, Abu Ghraib was even more of a mess than it had been before. What appears to have happened is this: private contractors and low ranking intelligence officials, were given more freedom by higher ups, as to how they could handle prisoners. This, coupled with the fact that there was no clear command structure at Abu Ghraib, was taken as sign by the these people that they had carte blanche to do what they wanted with the prisoners. The intelligence guys and private contractors quickly recruited a unit of former traffic cops with no training whatsoever to help soften up prisoners.

Now, although, some members of the media made it out to be a systematic effort by the US to extract information from former insurgency, it is clear now that this was overstating things. The prisoners that where tortured, or if you prefer Rumsfeld’s wording “abused”, were not considered in anyway big fish, nor for that matter were they all insurgents. It has come out recently, that the guy standing on the box was just a common thief.

The way the story broke is just homely. Apparently a whistle blower informed the brass back in January. This prompted an investigation which in turn led to several low ranking privates being brought up for Court Marshall. An uncle of one of these men was angered his nephew had been singled out and that his nephew’s superiors were not going to face justice too. Armed with a bunch of incriminating pictures, this guy’s uncle tired to get the attention of various Senators and Congressman. He failed and so released the pictures to 60 minutes – I guess he must have seen the Insider. (Thanks to the work of his uncle, the private in question, who was probably facing little or no jail time, will no face the full force of the law.)

So, what did the US do to clean up the mess at Abu Ghraib? Well, they sent Miller back in, of course. Needless to say, the optics of such a move are terrible as was all the hype they gave to their decision to tear down Abu Ghraib in the near future. It amazes me how the US took great efforts to remove pictures of Saddam and statues of Saddam, but decided to leave up and worse use one of the places most associated with his rule, viz., Abu Ghraib prison.

Then in May things really took a surreal turn. “Toward the end of a "Meet the Press" interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell in Jordan, the camera suddenly moved off Powell to a shot of trees in front of the water. "You're off," State Department press aide Emily Miller was heard saying. "I am not off," Powell insisted. "No, they can't use it, they're editing it," Miller said. "He's still asking the questions," Powell said. Miller, a onetime NBC staffer who recently worked for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, also told Powell: "He was going to go for another five minutes." Undeterred, Russert complained from Washington: "I would hope they would put you back on camera. I don't know who did that." He later said, "I think that was one of your staff, Mr. Secretary. I don't think that's appropriate." As the delay dragged on, Powell ordered: "Emily, get out of the way. Bring the camera back please." Powell's image returned to the screen, and Russert asked his last question. What happened was that both NBC and Fox News were using Jordanian television facilities for back-to-back Powell interviews. Russert was allotted 10 minutes and was asked to wrap when he went over by about two minutes. He said "Finally, Mr. Secretary," but abruptly lost his guest. Russert was still puzzled afterward. "A taxpayer-paid employee interrupted an interview," he said. "Not in the United States of America, that's not supposed to go on. This is attempted news management gone berserk. Secretary Powell was really stand-up. He was a general and took charge." Powell later called the NBC anchor from his plane to apologize for the glitch. State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside disputed Russert's characterization, saying that NBC "went considerably beyond the agreed end time. Other networks were waiting for their interviews and had satellite time booked, and we didn't want to keep them waiting." Asked why he simply didn't edit out the awkward interlude from the taped interview, Russert said: "It's part of the story."

I am no conspiracy theorist, but I have to agree with Russert’s meek characterization of what happened as “news management gone berserk”. Not only did Emily try muzzle/censor the Sectary of Defense she was obviously watching over Powell on the behest of someone quite powerful. Guppies do not attack sharks without the protection of another shark (most likely from the Pentagon, but more on that below.)

Whoever it was, they had reason to want Powell muzzled. Picking up on an earlier quote, indicating that Powell thought that the information he presented before UN was false, Russert asked Powell about the his earlier statement. This is what Powell said. “When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully; we looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate. And so I'm deeply disappointed. But I'm also comfortable that at the time that I made the presentation, it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it.”

Now, some members of the press have speculated that the reason that Powell did this was to sure up his legacy that was so damaged by his UN speech. Perhaps. However, I do not think that Powell is so selfish as to put his own legacy ahead of the interests of the country. I think Powell’s original comments and the last sentence quoted above is just one more saga in the continuing war between the Pentagon and State Department and the CIA over the reliability of the INC. Powell essentially called INC a bunch of liars. As for that long running war, pace those people who have all but written Powell off, the arrest of some of INC people, the leaked stories about the INC being suspect for some time and decision to no longer fund them is a sure sign that the INC battle is at last over and surprise the State Department and the CIA have all but won. What has happened since, in terms of the take over, Allawi coming to power and Chalabi’s marginalization, seems to further confirm this.