Category Archives: Bush Administration

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The insanity among the Clintonistas continues.

See Benjamin Wallace-Wells for more on how the death of Martin Luther King devastated liberalism.

Tibetans are not the only minority group facing brutal oppression by the government of China. Charles Cummings writes on the treatment of the mostly Muslim Uighur people of Xinjiang:

Uighurs have been jailed for reading newspapers sympathetic to the cause of independence. Others have been detained merely for listening to Radio Free Asia, an English-language station funded by the US Congress. Even to discuss separatism in public is to risk a lengthy jail sentence, with no prospect of habeas corpus, effective legal representation or a fair trial. About 100 Uighurs were arrested in Khotan recently after several hundred demonstrated in the marketplace of the town, which lies on the Silk Road.

And what happens to these innocent Uighur men and women once they land up in one of Xinjiang’s notorious “black prisons”? Amnesty International has reported numerous incidents of torture, from cigarette burns on the skin to submersion in water or raw sewage. Prisoners have had toenails extracted by pliers, been attacked by dogs and burned with electric batons, even
cattle prods.

In Typhoon, I relate the terrifying true story of a prisoner in Xinjiang who had horse hair inserted into the tip of his penis. Throughout this diabolical torture, the victim was forced to wear a metal helmet on his head. Why? Because a previous inmate had been so traumatised by his treatment in the prison that he had beaten his own head against a radiator in an attempt to take his own life.

This is the reality of life in modern Xinjiang. Quite what the Chinese hope to gain from their inhumane behaviour remains unclear. According to Corinna-Barbara Francis, a researcher with Amnesty’s East Asia team, “the intensified repression of Uighurs by the Chinese authorities is in danger of contributing to the very outcome that China claims it is warding against – the radicalisation of the population and the adoption of violent responses to the repression.”

The government of China commits hideous atrocities on anyone it decides it doesn’t like. Of course, we’re hardly in a position to claim the moral high ground any more.

But ethnic minorities in China’s outlying areas, like the Uighurs and the Tibetans, are treated particularly harshly. As I said in “Rebellion in Tibet,” the Chinese are making every mistake every imperial power ever made.

That’s why it stuns me when some online publication that claims to be for “peace and social justice” publishes apologies for China such as this. Unbelievable.

Tantrums

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David Usborne of The Independent reports that a record number of Americans are now on food stamps. Predictably, right-wing bloggers panned the article as an example of liberal media bias.

One can argue that the headline of the article — “The Great Depression” — is over-the-top, since we’re not in an economic depression and our situation is not nearly as dire as the real Great Depression. Yet. Also, the accompanying photo is more than two years old. You can count on righties to pick the headline and photo apart and ignore the article, which presents a sobering picture of economic life in America. If the data presented are true, we should be concerned.

BTW, David Jolly reports for the New York Times:

UBS, the largest Swiss bank, said on Tuesday that it would write down another $19 billion related to “U.S. real estate and related structured credit positions” and said Marcel Ospel, its chairman, would step down.

UBS said the write-down would result in a first-quarter loss of about 12 billion Swiss francs, or $12 billion, and that it would seek new capital of about $15 billion, in the second time it has announced plans to raise new funds since the credit crisis began. The bank’s board proposed that Peter Kurer, currently general counsel for the bank, take over as chairman, pending shareholders’ approval at a meeting on April 23.

The news came as Deutsche Bank, the biggest German lender, said Tuesday that it expected a first-quarter loss of about $3.9 billion on write-downs of United States real estate loans and assets. Global banks have now written down more than $200 billion of soured loans in the market debacle that began last summer with the implosion of the American subprime mortgage market.

On the plus side, Bush’s chief of Housing and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson, resigned yesterday. Jackson is under investigation for allegedly giving lucrative housing contracts to friends.

Irrelevant in Iraq

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As usual, Juan Cole provides a succinct explanation of what’s going on in Iraq. Here’s the most critical bit about the fighting in Basra:

The southern parties have essentially defied al-Maliki and Bush to make a separate peace.

The entire episode underlines how powerful Iran has become in Iraq.

Way to go, Bushies.

Iraq in Meltdown?

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It’s CNN’s headline, folks — “Al-Sadr in trouble, Iraq headed for meltdown.” The Independent has another alarming headline — “Iraq implodes as Shia fights Shia.” And if you need further alarming, read Juan Cole.

Professor Cole says that violence is breaking out in many parts of Iraq, including Baghdad and Najaf, the latter of which is often mentioned in President Bush’s Iraq success myths.

But even though Iraq is either melting down or imploding, or both, the warbloggers are curiously not on top of this so far. In fact, the only thing worrying the gang at the Weekly Standard site is a trip taken to Iraq in 2002 by some Dem senators that was bankrolled by Saddam Hussein’s government. Nothing going on in Iraq now is, apparently, interesting to them.

In other news, this morning about 30 monks disrupted a carefully controlled tour of Lhasa being conducted by the Chinese government for foreign tourists. The resistance is not completely crushed, it seems. You can read about it on the other blog.

How Romantic

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Erica Goode reports for the New York Times:

BAGHDAD — The shelling started just before 6 a.m., mortar fire shaking buildings and sending early risers in the Green Zone here running for shelter. Sirens went off, and loudspeakers blared, “Duck and cover! Duck and cover!” A thick column of gray smoke rose above the embassies and government buildings in the area.

The early morning onslaught on Sunday was one of the fiercest and most sustained attacks on the Green Zone in the past year, and it ushered in a day of violence that claimed the lives of at least 51 Iraqi civilians and soldiers, including two children.

How ’bout that surge, huh? And what was it the President said the other day about how romantic war is?

Nicolas Kristof writes,

The Iraq war is now going better than expected, for a change. Most critics of the war, myself included, blew it: we didn’t anticipate the improvements in security that are partly the result of last year’s “surge.”

The improvement is real but fragile and limited. Here’s what it amounts to: We’ve cut our casualty rates to the unacceptable levels that plagued us back in 2005, and we still don’t have any exit plan for years to come — all for a bill that is accumulating at the rate of almost $5,000 every second!

Why did we invade Iraq, again? Something about aluminum tubes?

Another Resignation

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Lost in the news about resignations is news about another resignation. Admiral William Fallon, chief of the United States Central Command, resigned Tuesday. It is widely believed he was forced to resign because he opposed military action against Iran.

The resignation may have been triggered by an Esquire interview of Fallon by Thomas P.M. Barnett. Barnett wrote,

If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it’ll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it’ll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him “Fox,” which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago. Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule over America’s two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command and now United States Central Command, it’s impossible to make this guy–as he likes to say–“nervous in the service.”

And the moral is, weenies like Dubya and Dick don’t like real men who stand up to them.

There also may have been a clash between Fallon and Gen. Petraeus. From today’s Los Angeles Times:

The inside story of the battle between Adm. William J. Fallon, former head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, may be studied by military historians years hence. The animosity between the two top military men was personal (Petraeus reportedly thought Fallon was trying to micromanage him). It was political (Petraeus is President Bush’s favorite general, while Fallon’s views put him increasingly at odds with the administration). And it was strategic (Petraeus’ mission is to win in Iraq, while Fallon feared an extended heavy presence there would sap U.S. strength needed to deal with other global challenges). …

… The timing of Fallon’s resignation is provocative. In less than a month, Petraeus will testify again before Congress. The troop surge he recommended is coming to an end in July, as scheduled, because even with extended 15-month deployments, the Army has no more troops to send. The U.S. will be back to its pre-surge troop strength of 130,000, although many military analysts believe that it can sustain a deployment of only 80,000 to 90,000 without breakingthe back of the Army. Nevertheless, Petraeus is expected to ask for a “strategic pause” in further troop withdrawals in order not to jeopardize the much-improved security climate in Iraq. Petraeus will be grilled on whether the less than impressive Iraqi political progress justifies an extended U.S. troop presence.

David Ignatius (yeah, I know, it’s David Ignatius) wrote,

In a May 15 piece from Baghdad, I quoted an upbeat Petraeus: “How long does reconciliation take? That’s the long pole in the tent.” I asked Fallon if he had an assessment of his own, and he said, specifically rebutting Petraeus: “We’re chipping away at the problem. But we don’t have the time to chip away. Reconciliation isn’t likely in the time we have available, but some form of accommodation is a must.”

By last fall, it was clear to Fallon that the key issue was the pace of U.S. withdrawal. If the surge strategy was “conditions-based,” and the surge was going well, Fallon wondered, why weren’t we pressing the advantage and moving for a faster timetable?

From today’s Boston Globe:

IT IS a worrisome sign that Defense Secretary Robert Gates had to accept the obviously forced resignation of Admiral William Fallon, chief of the United States Central Command. Even if Gates was right to say, as he did Tuesday, that it would be “ridiculous” to take Fallon’s departure as an augury of war with Iran, the fate of the outspoken admiral suggests that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have learned nothing about the value of letting uniformed military chiefs speak their minds, particularly when they disagree with questionable administration doctrines.

Dan Froomkin:

The abrupt resignation yesterday of the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Admiral William J. “Fox” Fallon, has sparked a new round of speculation that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have some sort of plan in the works to attack Iran before their time is up.

Fallon’s resignation — or firing — was apparently precipitated in part by a recent Esquire profile that depicted him as brazenly pushing back against the White House hawks eager to launch another war.

Now it turns out that what Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former Naval War College professor, wrote in that profile was eerily prescient: “How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?

“The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.

“Just as Fallon took over Centcom last spring, the White House was putting itself on a war footing with Iran. Almost instantly, Fallon began to calmly push back against what he saw as an ill-advised action. Over the course of 2007, Fallon’s statements in the press grew increasingly dismissive of the possibility of war, creating serious friction with the White House.

“Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon’s caution was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don’t want a commander standing in their way.

“And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he’s doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn’t do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He’s standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.”

As Sean-Paul Kelly says,

This comes as a serious blow to any sane policy in the Mid-East.

Resignations

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Years ago, Geraldine Ferraro really was a heroine of feminism. I can remember being thrilled when she was named to be on Walter Mondale’s ticket in 1984.

Geraldine — I wished you’d STFU’d. First Eliot Spitzer, now you. Leave me with a couple of illusions, OK?

Keith Olbermann ripped the Clinton campaign a new one in his special comments tonight. Here are the highlights. I hope to be able to embed a video soon.

Via Nicole Belle, here is the Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, who puts former heroine Ferraro in her place.

Update: Here’s the video.

Update 2: If the video doesn’t work, as it doesn’t seem to at the moment, you can see it here.

Stung

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This doesn’t exonerate Gov. Spitzer, but Scott Horton suggests that Spitzer was “stung” because of a Justice Department investigation targeting him. In other words, he didn’t just happen to get caught because of an investigation of a prostitution ring. Rather, the investigation of Spitzer led to his involvement with the prostitution ring.

Quoting ABC:

The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials. It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined that Spitzer wasn’t hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperors Club. …

The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought in the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad. “We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it,” said one Justice Department official.

As I said, this doesn’t exonerate Spitzer. This episode also brings up the point that just because someone’s been in the public eye for years, as Spitzer has been in New York, doesn’t mean you know him.

Too Close to Call

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I’m not staying up to see results for Ohio and Texas. I guess you’ve heard that Clinton won Rhode Island and Obama won Vermont, which was expected. And it appears McCain officially has the GOP nomination.

See Jeff Greenfield, “Bugs Bunny vs. Daffy Duck.” I’ve always felt the secret to Bill Clinton’s success is that he was Bugs and the GOP in Washington alternated between being Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd. Well, let’s face it — Obama, not Clinton, is Bugs Bunny in the Dem race.

Jonathan Alter explains that Clinton very likely cannot make up the delegate hole she’s in, even if she wins Ohio and Texas tonight. See also Hilzoy.