Bob Herbert Rocks

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More on why Hillary Clinton must not be nominated in 2008:

After more than three years of fighting and more than 2,400 American deaths, you still need a magnifying glass to locate the differences between Mrs. Clinton and the Bush administration on the war. It’s true, as the senator argues, that she has been a frequent and sometimes harsh critic of the way the war has been conducted. In a letter to constituents last fall she wrote, “I have continually raised doubts about the president’s claims, lack of planning and execution of the war, while standing firmly in support of our troops.”

But in terms of overall policy, she seems to be right there with Bush, Cheney, Condi et al. She does not regret her vote to authorize the invasion, and still believes the war can be won. Her view of the ultimate goal in Iraq, as her staffers reiterated last week, is the establishment of a viable government capable of handling its own security, thus enabling the U.S. to reduce its military presence and eventually leave.

That sounds pretty much the same as President Bush’s mantra: “Our strategy in Iraq is that as the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down.”

With disapproval of the way Bush is running the war at 64 percent, can somebody explain to me why sounding just like Bush is “smart politics”?

Democrats are still paranoid about being perceived as soft on national security.

With superhawk Republicans like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani making their way toward the starting gate for the 2008 White House run, the terminally timid Democrats continue to obsess about what they ought to be saying, neurotically analyzing every syllable they hesitantly utter, as opposed to simply saying what they really believe.

See also Brilliant at Breakfast.

The Beast That Won’t Starve

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Sebastian Mallaby has questions; I have answers.

In today’s Washington Post, Mallaby points to two foundational rightie myths: (1) Tax cuts pay for themselves; and (2) Cutting taxes forces the government to cut spending. Of the first, he says, “It’s been a long time since honest believers argued that tax cuts pay for themselves.” I’m glad Mallaby added that qualifier honest, as it saves me the trouble of ranting about what planet he lives on.

Of the second, Mallaby cites a study conducted by William Niskanen, an economist who worked in the Reagan White House and now chairs the Cato Institute.

Niskanen has crunched the numbers between 1981 and 2005, testing for a relationship between tax cuts and government spending, and controlling for levels of unemployment, since these affect spending and taxes independently. Niskanen’s result punctures his own party’s dogma. Tax cuts are associated with increases in government spending. The best strategy for forcing cuts in government is actually to raise taxes.

(Mallaby doesn’t say if the study breaks down taxing and spending behavior by party. I wandered over to the Cato Institute but couldn’t find the Niskanen study online. I did, however, find a cool “white paper” called “Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush” that looks like a good read, but off topic for this post. You can read more about the Niskanen study in the June issue of Atlantic Monthly. Or, rather, I can read more since I’m a subscriber. Sometimes there are subscription firewalls at Atlantic Monthly, so good luck reading the article.)

Mallaby has two questions. His first question is, why would this be true? Niskanen and Mallaby speculate that cutting taxes makes legislators feel that they’ve done something to make government cheaper, so buying stuff with government money seems like a bargain. It’s like finding tube socks on sale; tube socks may not have been on your shopping list but you are compelled to toss a few into the cart because they’re such a good buy. But if you don’t exercise some restraint you might end up with a garage full of tube socks and not enough money to pay the mortgage.

Is he saying that legislators are stupid? Because that seems like, y’know, a real stupid way to run a government. Stupidity would explain a lot about Congress, certainly. But it also seems like self-deception. It’s like ordering a diet soft drink with the super-size burger and fries, or sticking to the meal plan all day long and then rewarding yourself with a big piece of cheesecake. You’re not being honest with yourself about how many calories you’re really consuming. (This is an example I can relate to, and I don’t think I am stupid. Righties will, of course, disagree.) Or maybe it’s like the alcoholic who persuades himself that just one little drink won’t matter. Or a shop-a-holic with a new credit card.

An editorial in today’s New York Times provides an example of self-deceptive spending pathology, and not just in Congress.

President Bush is trying to score unearned points for fiscal rectitude by railing against the Senate’s outsize $109 billion supplemental spending package, which includes money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as hurricane relief. But the real scandal is Mr. Bush’s own preference for financing much of the cost of the Iraq war outside the normal budget process. That is convenient for the administration, which does not have to count the money when it is pretending to balance the budget. But Iraq is not some kind of unexpected emergency, like Hurricane Katrina. It is a highly predictable cost, now amounting to about $100 billion a year, or just under 20 percent of total military spending.

Moving the war’s financing off budget is no mere technical distinction. For one thing, it subjects the military’s spending requests to less careful Congressional committee scrutiny than they would receive during the usual budget process. More important, this fiscal sleight of hand makes it that much easier for the Pentagon to duck the hard choices it desperately needs to be making between optional and costly futuristic weapons and pressing real-world needs.

Entire libraries could be filled by the commentaries on Bush v. reality. I’m not going to add any more to that volume of literature today. I’m just saying that we seem to be electing people to Congress who exhibit dissociative thinking patterns. Maybe we should screen candidates with personality tests.

Back to Mallaby and the second question:

But the really interesting question isn’t why the starve-the-beast theory is 180 degrees wrong. It’s how Republicans will react to this finding.

Oh, that’s easy. They’ll ignore it. And if forced to acknowledge it, righties will just trot out their universal, sure-fire, one-size-fits-all rebuttal to challenges — Niskanen must be a liberal. Therefore, what Niskanen says is self-evidently false.

Friends and Enemies

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Today righties are linking to this London Times story about the murder of Iraqi television journalist Atwar Bahjat. She was killed in an unspeakably cruel manner; you may wish not to read about it. [Update 5/8: It is reported the video is a hoax.]

Here’s a typical Right Blogosphere response to the story at RedState.org.

There are those who will respond with disgust to the details of Bahjat’s murder, but temper that disgust with a feeling that she somehow brought this on herself through her provocative journalism–and, by extension, conclude that the United States is ultimately culpable for her death for going into Iraq in the first place. This line of reasoning is utterly false. The people responsible for her death are the monsters who sawed at her neck and stomped on her stomach. Such people would not be peacefully sipping tea in Samarra had we not deposed Saddam Hussein. It is not their way. And if they could do this to Atwar Bahjat, what could they do to any of us if given the chance? Bahjat’s death is a tragic illustration of the fanatical and vicious violence that we fight and which, for her sake–for all our sakes–we must keep fighting.

The problem with this reaction (beside the straw man “There are those who will respond with disgust to the details of Bahjat’s murder, but temper that disgust with a feeling that she somehow brought this on herself through her provocative journalism….”) is that it’s not at all clear who the murderers are and which side they are on. The murderers appeared to be wearing Iraqi National Guard uniforms, but of course the uniforms could have been stolen. The Sunni insurgency supplied the video but claimed they found it on a cell phone captured by from the Shi’ite Badr Brigade.

But there is no evidence the Iranian-backed Badr militia was responsible. Indeed, there are conflicting indications. The drill is said to be a popular tool of torture with the Badr Brigade. But beheading is a hallmark of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by the Sunni Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

According to a report that was circulating after Bahjat’s murder, she had enraged the Shi’ite militias during her coverage of the bombing of the Samarra shrine by filming the interior minister, Bayan Jabr, ordering police to release two Iranians they had arrested.

There is no confirmation of this and the Badr Brigade, with which she maintained good relations, protected her family after her funeral came under attack in Baghdad from a bomber and then from a gunman. Three people died that day.

Bahjat’s reporting of terrorist attacks and denunciations of violence to a wide audience across the Middle East made her plenty of enemies among both Shi’ite and Sunni gunmen. Death threats from Sunnis drove her away to Qatar for a spell but she believed her place was in Iraq and she returned to frontline reporting despite the risks.

Anything is possible. They may have been Sunni insurgents or even al Qaeda. But they just as easily could have been from one of the Shi’ite militias — groups our little maladministration in Iraq unleashed. The Shi’ites and Kurds are the people our troops liberated from the Sunni Saddam-supporting Baathists, and the Shi’ites dominate the new government George W. Bush is so proud of.

Last month Tom Lasseter reported for Knight-Ridder that, after ignoring the growth of the militias for two years, U.S. officials are finally admitting the Shi’ite militias are responsible for “more civilian deaths than the Sunni Muslim-based insurgency.”

Among U.S. officials’ missteps:

_White House and Pentagon officials ignored a stream of warnings from American intelligence agencies about the mounting danger posed by two Shiite militias, the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army. The Badr Organization is the armed wing of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the most powerful Shiite political faction in the country; the Mahdi Army is loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

_A group of high-ranking Iraqis appointed in 2004 to persuade militia leaders to disband their groups received no funding and was allowed to wither away.

_U.S. diplomats in Baghdad were slow to recognize that the majority Shiite population’s ascent to political power would expand rather than diminish militia activity. Many believed that the groups’ members would retire or would be integrated into the security forces without significant problems.

_Acting against the Shiite militias would have undercut the administration’s arguments that foreign terrorists and holdovers from Saddam Hussein’s regime were the problem in Iraq. It also would have raised doubts about the administration’s reliance on training largely Shiite security forces to replace U.S. troops in Iraq.

The American military’s inability to curb the Sunni insurgency, in part because U.S. troops are spread thin in Iraq, also played a role. As the insurgency continued to kill Shiite civilians, Shiites came to see the militias as their only reliable means of protection.

In the weeks since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine in the town of Samarra, the militias and their allies in the Interior Ministry are thought to have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis, who’ve been shot, hanged or tortured.

The London Times reported “The drill is said to be a popular tool of torture with the Badr Brigade.” Even if the murderers who used a drill to torment Atwar Bahjat were Sunni, the Shi’ite militias have perpetrated the same cruelty on others.

Last November, Robert Dreyfuss reported that the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior was also into drilling:

So far, it appears that the facts are these: that Iraq’s interior ministry, whose top officials, strike forces and police commando units (including the so-called Wolf Brigade) are controlled by paramilitary units from Shiite militias, maintained a medieval torture chamber; that inside that facility, hundreds of mostly Sunni Arab men were bestialized, with electric drills skewering their bones, with their skins flayed off, and more; that roving units of death-squad commandos are killing countless other Sunni Arab men in order to terrorize the Iraqi opposition. Even the Washington Post, that last-ditch defender of America’s illegal and unprovoked assault on Iraq, says:

    Scandal over the secret prison has forced the seven-month-old Shiite-led government to confront growing charges of mass illegal detentions, torture and killings of Sunni men. Members of the Sunni minority, locked in a struggle with the Shiite majority over the division of power in Iraq, say men dressed in Interior Ministry uniforms have repeatedly rounded up Sunni men from neighborhoods and towns. Bodies of scores of them have been found dumped by roadsides or in gullies.

By way of arguing his guys really aren’t so bad, the Iraqi interior minister noted that nobody was beheaded.

Righties want the Iraqi conflict to be divided up neatly between good guys versus bad guys. It doesn’t seem the conflict is cooperating.

Coming Attractions

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The Republican chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, opposes the appointment of Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Hayden to head the CIA. Bloomberg reports:

“I’ve got a lot of respect for Mike Hayden, and he’s done a good job, but I do believe he’s the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said U.S. Representative Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican. “We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time.”

Tension between Defense Department and civilian intelligence agencies is high now in the wake of spying failures before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. and during the run- up to the Iraq war, Hoekstra said. Hayden’s nomination would imply that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has too much power over intelligence, the chairman said.

“Putting a general in charge, regardless of how good Mike is, is going to send the wrong signal through the agency here in Washington and also to our agents around the world,” he said.

Time was when a Republican like Hoekstra left the reservation and publicly opposed some White House policy, within a few hours (and after being called to the White House for a chat) he’d be back in front of cameras claiming he was misquoted. He’s just fine with Policy X after all. It will be interesting to see if Hoekstra will be persuaded to back down.

If not, Hayden’s nomination hearings might be fun.

Nedra Pickler reports for the AP:

If Hayden were to get the nomination, military officers would run the major spy agencies in the United States, from the ultra-secret National Security Agency to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Pentagon already controls more than 80 percent of the intelligence budget.

“You can’t have the military control most of the major aspects of intelligence,” said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The CIA “is a civilian agency and is meant to be a civilian agency,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”

A second committee member, GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, added, “I think the fact that he is a part of the military today would be the major problem.”

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., mentioned fears the CIA would “just be gobbled up by the Defense Department” if Hayden were to take over.

Stock up on popcorn:

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee [that would be Arlen Specter] said he would view a Hayden nomination as a way to get information from the Bush administration about its secretive domestic surveillance program, undertaken by the NSA when Hayden led that agency.

Brian Knowlton of the NY Times/International Herald Tribune quotes Nancy Pelosi:

“There’s a power struggle going on between the Department of Defense and the entire rest of the intelligence community,” she said, “so I don’t see how you have a four-star general heading up the C.I.A.” She said that she had “serious concerns” about General Hayden, at least in this position.

One Republican senator, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, said he believed that even were General Hayden to resign his military commission, serious conflicts would remain.

“I think the fact that he is part of the military today would be the major problem,” Mr. Chambliss said on ABC-TV. “Now, just resigning commission and moving on, putting on a striped suit, a pinstriped suit versus an air force uniform, I don’t think makes much difference.”

The last military man to head the Central Intelligence Agency was Adm. Stansfield Turner, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Christy Harden Smith reports at firedoglake that “George Stephanopolous just announced on ABC’s This Week that Gen. Michael Hayden will definitely be named President Bush’s nominee to succeed Porter Goss as the DCI for the CIA.”

The hearings could be more entertaining than “Mission Impossible III.”

Regarding Hillary

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Eleanor Clift suggests that, maybe, Hillary Clinton can be for the Dems in 2008 what Ronald Reagan was for the Republicans in 1980.

When was the last time we had such a dominant front runner this early who raises such anxiety about electability? The answer is Ronald Reagan. It took a leap of imagination to believe an aging grade-B movie actor with orange hair could win the presidency.

I hadn’t remembered he had orange hair. But Clift misunderstands the essential problem with Hillary Clinton. Clift writes that “Democrats want to win so badly that they are leery of experimenting” with a woman candidate. And she spoke with Paul Begala, who dismissed the polarization factor.

“It says to me we don’t believe in ourselves anymore. Anybody who runs from either party will have negatives of 40 to 45 percent before it’s over. She may have them the week she files,” he conceded, “but what more can the Republicans do to her? They’ve exhausted their supply of scandalous revelations. “

And maybe, Begala says, if the Republicans are really mean, Hillary will benefit from a sympathy backlash.

Oh, please …

First off, like him or not, Reagan didn’t gain a following from a sympathy backlash. He gained a following by taking firm positions on a number of issues conservatives cared about. But see also this bit from Wikipedia (emphasis added):

Reagan’s first attempt to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 was unsuccessful. He tried again in 1976 against incumbent Gerald Ford, but again met defeat at the Republican National Convention by a few votes.

The 1976 campaign was a critical moment for Ronald Reagan’s political development. Gerald Ford was largely a symbol of the “old guard” of the Republican Party. Reagan’s success was remarkable considering Ford’s status as an incumbent President. At the convention in 1976, Reagan gave a stirring speech in which he discussed the dangers of nuclear war and the moral threat of the Soviet Union. After that speech, many at the convention said they felt like “they had voted for the wrong man.”

I submit that Hillary is our Gerald Ford, not our Ronald Reagan. She represents the old guard. She is at the core of the inside-the-beltway Democratic culture that has left the party without direction or passion and sometimes, it seems, without purpose.

And I believe — I hope, anyway — that in 2008 the electorate will be done with the old guard of both parties.

Kos Moulitsas has an op ed in tomorrow’s Washington Post:

Moving into 2008, Republicans will be fighting to shake off the legacy of the Bush years: the jobless recovery, the foreign misadventures, the nightmarish fiscal mismanagement, the Katrina mess, unimaginable corruption and an imperial presidency with little regard for the Constitution or the rule of law. Every Democratic contender will be offering change, but activists will be demanding the sort of change that can come only from outside the Beltway.

Hillary Clinton leads her Democratic rivals in the polls and in fundraising. Unfortunately, however, the New York senator is part of a failed Democratic Party establishment — led by her husband — that enabled the George W. Bush presidency and the Republican majorities, and all the havoc they have wreaked at home and abroad. …

… She epitomizes the “insider” label of the early crowd of 2008 Democratic contenders. She’s part of the Clinton machine that decimated the national Democratic Party. And she remains surrounded by many of the old consultants who counsel meekness and caution. James Carville, the famed longtime adviser to the Clintons, told Newsweek last week, “The American people are going to be ready for an era of realism. They’ve seen the consequences of having too many ‘big ideas.’ “

In other words, her message is, “elect me, and I promise not to do much”?

Bill Clinton found a political strategy that worked for him in the 1980s and 1990s, when right-wing extremism was on the ascendancy. He combined his preternatural charm with cautious positioning on issues — the famous “triangulation.” Clinton moved to the right to appeal to the broadest possible swatch of the electorate, but in doing so sold out core progressive values. As a result the upper levels of the Democratic party became disconnected from the liberal-progressive base. And to many Americans Brand Democrat became Brand X — the bland, generic alternative to Republicans.

It may be that by 2008 voters will be so disgusted with the name brand that they’ll choose Brand X, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Fact is, it’s the Republicans who are having to walk away from their big ideas, which either didn’t sell (e.g., Social Security reform) or didn’t work as advertised (e.g., Medicare drug coverage; the Iraq War). They’re retreating into “junk” issues like criminalizing abortion and preventing gay marriage. Or, as E.J. Dionne suggests, they’re trying to sound more progressive, suddenly developing concern for the environment and/or the poor.

The current reaction is not simply to President Bush’s low poll numbers. It’s also a response to the failure of conservative policies and to the declining appeal of conservative rhetoric. Conservatives are trying to save themselves by offering progressive-sounding criticisms of the status quo, much as liberals offered ersatz conservative critiques two decades ago.

If Rick Santorum wants you to look at his record in a way that makes him a paladin for the poor and if Dennis Hastert wants you to know that he’s suspicious of the oil companies, the political weather is changing. When one side starts making the other side’s argument, you don’t need to be a pollster to know which belief system is in the ascendancy.

This is not the time for hyper-cautious Hillary Clinton, tip-toeing around issues so as to not be caught taking a stand on one. This is the time for Democrats to stand up and offer a real alternative to what the Republicans have to offer. Let the wingnuts wring their hands over the poor innocent stem cells and the war on Christmas. We have real problems — stagnant wages, eroding financial security, growing numbers of Americans without health insurance, snail’s-pace progress rebuilding the Gulf Coast. And can we say, gas prices? And the foreign policy from hell?

It’s going to take some big ideas to solve these problems. It’s going to take leadership and vision and the ability to persuade voters that government can work for them again.

The last thing voters will want to hear is, don’t worry; we won’t rock the boat.

Was It About Karl?

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Something’s not adding up, Laura Rozen says.

So, the verdict is in. According to the WP, the NYT, the LAT, Time, etc. Goss was forced out yesterday after months of tension between him and John Negroponte over the CIA’s reduced turf, and that President Bush lost confidence in Goss “almost from the beginning” (WP).

So then he was forced out on very short notice? No notification to the House Intelligence committee? Not a single newspaper report in the past few months about the tension between Goss and Negroponte? (Indeed check out the recent coverage about Congressional raised eyebrows over the empire Negroponte is building, and his alleged visits to a fancy DC club for swim and cigar breaks). On the contrary, can anyone remember a single article about Goss fighting for his folks at the Agency? …

… Negroponte has President Bush’s ear every single day when he delivers the President’s daily intel brief. If he had been lobbying to get rid of Goss, and the President was inclined to support that decision, there were a hundred ways to do it in a way that would project stability, confidence, normalcy. There was hardly a show of that yesterday. They could have named a successor. There could have been a leak to the press about Goss being tired (remember all the foreshadowing in the press about how tired Andy Card was after all those 20 hour days that preceded his departure?) and wanting to spend more time with his family, or that Bush was unhappy with him. There was none of that. It was a surprise move. What happened this week that Negroponte and Bush acted so swiftly?

Does the way it happened resemble the slo-mo, warm and fuzzy way Andy Card and Scott McClellan were retired? Or does it rather have more in common with the swiftly announced departures of Claude Allen and David Safavian from their posts, a few days before we hear of federal investigations?

Before we all get too excited over Hookergate … according to Larry Johnson, the rumor mill inside the CIA says Goss is probably not directly involved.

A former CIA buddy tells me that Porter’s main problem, however, is a key staffer who is linked to both Brent Wilkes and the CIA’s Executive Director, Dusty Foggo. My friend also said that it is highly likely that the Goss staffer did participate in the hooker extravaganza. Goss, politician that he is, probably recognized that even though he did not participate in the sexual escapades and poker games, his staffer’s participation created a huge problem for him that would be difficult to escape.

All we know for sure is that we don’t know for sure why Goss resigned. If the only reason for the resignation is Goss’s poor job performance — which is not usually a firing offense among the Bushies — why so abrupt?

The two reasons Bushies lose their jobs is (1) they’ve become — or are about to become — a political liability, or (2) they spoke out against the White House Official Version of Reality. We have to assume Goss was about to become a political liability and had to be bounced asap.

One other possibility is that Negroponte wants something from the CIA he wasn’t getting, And it’s something he wants right now. Time is of the essence. Here’s a wild card thought — could this something have to do with building a legal defense for Karl Rove’s role in Plamegate? Conventional wisdom says that if Rove’s going to be indicted, it’s going to happen within the next week or two. That’s just seat-of-the-pants speculation, of course. But Dick Cheney’s running battle with the CIA is at the heart of the Plame mess, and part of Goss’s mission was to bring the agency to heel.

NSA director General Michael Hayden is expected to be named as Goss’s replacement. Steve Soto writes that “Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld gain direct control of the CIA with Hayden’s ascension.” On the other hand, Hayden’s confirmation hearings will give Democrats lots of opportunity to grill Hayden over his creative application of the Fourth Amendment at the NSA.

Steve also touches on one of my favorite themes — Bush’s management “style.”

But in reading the Post’s accounts (one with Pincus, and one by Dana Priest) of the damage that Goss did to the Agency in a short period of time, one can see how awful of a manager Bush is. First, he selects and installs a man into the job who had no business there in the first place. Then, he finds that he isn’t happy with the guy he just selected. He then sits by while Goss and his former staff aides set about to destroy the Agency by running out or forcing into retirement many high-level and experienced staff. Instead of dealing with that problem, he installs another dark and immoral man as a buffer between him and Goss (Negroponte), instead of dealing with the problem itself. And then, after becoming unhappy with how Goss has made the Agency dysfunctional and handled several major problems, he uses Josh Bolten’s ascension as the cover to finally make a move, but again, by picking someone who will cause just as many problems because of his own inadequacies and ties to those who got Bush into this problem in the first place (Cheney and Rummy).

Bush is inept, and an incompetent manager, someone who would never have lasted in many major corporations or even in state government, let alone as leader of the free world.

Pinching Myself

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John Tierney wrote a good column. This is rare. This is almost as rare as the President being honest. Well, not quite that rare, but close.

Like Limbaugh, Richard Paey suffers from back pain, which in his case is so severe that he’s confined to a wheelchair. Also like Limbaugh, he was accused of illegally obtaining large quantities of painkillers. Although there was no evidence that either man sold drugs illegally, the authorities in Florida zealously pursued each of them for years.

Unlike Limbaugh, Paey went to prison. Now 47 years old, he’s serving the third year of a 25-year term. His wife told me that when he heard how Limbaugh settled his case last week — by agreeing to pay $30,000 and submit to drug tests — Paey offered a simple explanation: “The wealthy and influential go to rehab, while the poor and powerless go to prison.”

He has a point, although I don’t think that’s the crucial distinction between the cases. Paey stood up for his belief that patients in pain should be able to get the medicine they need. Limbaugh so far hasn’t stood up for any consistent principle except his right to stay out of jail.

He has portrayed himself as the victim of a politically opportunistic prosecutor determined to bag a high-profile trophy, which is probably true. But that’s standard operating procedure in the drug war supported by Limbaugh and his fellow conservatives.

See what I mean? Maybe the real Tierney was abducted by aliens, and this column was written by an impostor.

… The drug war costs $35 billion per year and has yet to demonstrate any clear long-term benefits. … Yet conservatives go on giving more money and more power to the drug cops. …

… Limbaugh objected when prosecutors, unable to come up with enough evidence against him, demanded to be allowed to go through his medical records in the hope of finding something.

He managed to stop them in court, but other defendants can’t afford long legal battles to protect their privacy.

Drug agents and prosecutors go on fishing expeditions to seize doctors’ records and force pharmacists to divulge what they’re selling to whom. With the help of new federal funds, states are compiling databases of the prescriptions being filled at pharmacies. Once their trolling finds something they deem suspicious, the authorities can threaten doctors, pharmacists and patients with financially crippling investigations and long jail sentences unless they cooperate by testifying against others or copping a plea. …

Tierney reminds us that Bush has defended the more objectionable parts of the Patriot Act by saying the same powers were being used against drug dealers.

I wasn’t aware the feds were doing this. How is that different from prosecutors combing through medical records looking for women who might have terminated a pregnancy?

… Even if Limbaugh believes that drugs like OxyContin are a menace to himself, he ought to recognize that most patients are in Richard Paey’s category. Their problem isn’t abusing painkillers, but finding doctors to prescribe enough of them. And that gets harder every year because of the drug war promoted by conservatives like Limbaugh.

***

Speaking of drugs, there’s something about the Patrick Kennedy case that’s not making sense to me. He says he was zoned out on a combination of Ambien (sleeping pill) and Phenergan (anti-nausea pill). This USA Today article says that combination really could account for Kennedy’s driving behaviors. But several articles have also said Kennedy has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Was he not also taking meds for that? And if not, why not?

And, for the record, I don’t think Patrick Kennedy should get special treatment, à la Rush Limbaugh. The cops should have given Kennedy a field-sobriety test, for example. There’s no question there are pieces missing from the official account of what happened last Thursday morning. It might be best for the Democratic party if Kennedy resigned now so that another Dem has time to get a campaign for his House seat up and running.

One other thing — so far I haven’t seen any leftie bloggers making excuses for Kennedy. See, for example, Billmon, Atrios, and this Kos diarist. One can’t say the same about righties and Limbaugh.

See, for example, this April 29 post on RedState.org.

Personally, I wish the best for Rush and his family. Any Hollywood personality who confessed to drug addiction and checked themselves into a rehabiliation clinic would be lauded as a saint for getting their lives together, and left completely alone by the police. Rush Limbaugh, for his political views, has faced a dogged prosecution determined to use any means necessary to pin a charge on him. Already, liberals without a shred of moral decency are shrieking in gleeful hysteria over this. It’s easy to call “hypocrite” when one has no moral standards of one’s own to possibly violate. But all of this is beside the point.

RedState’s take (from a different blogger) on the Kennedy episode was less sympathetic. Funny how that works.

Check out Expose the Left —

On Limbaugh: “Rush ‘Arrested’, Media Obsessed With Non-Story”

But the media wasn’t hard enough on Kennedy —

“Aww Factor: CNN’s Bash Apologist For Kennedy’s Family Drinking Problem (VIDEO)”

This guy is outraged that a CNN reporter would make excuses for Kennedy, like saying he got addicted to pills he was taking for health problems.

Unlike Rush, who … oh, wait …

Update: Mustang Bobby says the difference between Rush and the Hindenburg is that one’s a flaming Nazi gasbag and the other’s a dirigible.

Well, Well …

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Porter Goss just resigned as director of the CIA. That was unexpected. Hadn’t he just delivered Mary McCarthy to be burned at the stake? Isn’t he Dick’s boy?

The Associated Press reports,

CIA Director Porter Goss resigned unexpectedly Friday, leaving behind a spy agency still battling to recover from the scars of intelligence failures before America’s worst terrorist attack and faulty information that formed the U.S. rationale for invading Iraq.

Hmmm, does this mean investigators had tied Goss to the Cunningham scandal? Think Progress connects the dots. See also Peter Daou.

William Branigan of the Washington Post reports that neither Bush nor Goss gave a reason for the sudden departure. Early news stories implied that Goss’s resignation was part of the second-term shakeup. That doesn’t wash, I say; Goss wasn’t on the White House staff and had only been CIA director for two years. Plus, it seems he’s been zealously doing the White House’s bidding by using polygraphs to sniff out leakers at the agency — a high priority among Bushies.

When Goss became CIA director two years ago he was charged with the job of “reforming” the agency, which meant transforming the CIA from an intelligence agency to part of the White House’s political support team. It’s possible the Bushies didn’t believe the transformation was happening fast enough. Maybe they want to replace Goss with an even bigger toady. But the righties seem dumbstruck. Even Bill Kristol was caught off guard.

Bill Kristol, executive director of The Weekly Standard, told Fox News Channel that there had been “no rumblings” of such a departure.

“I don’t think the White House was expecting this,” Kristol said. “It comes as a total surprise. I may be overly suspicious here, but this one just has a real element of surprise and suddenness that makes me wonder if something popped in the last few days that led to this announcement.”

Back in July 2004, Ray McGovern (you might remember Ray McGovern from yesterday’s “Quiz Rummy!” episode) called Goss “Cheney’s Cat’s-Paw.”

He has long shown himself to be under the spell of Vice President Dick Cheney, and would likely report primarily to him and to White House political adviser Karl Rove rather than to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. …

… Appointing Goss would administer the coup de grâce to intelligence analysts trying to survive while still speaking truth without fear or favor. The only saving grace for them would be the likelihood that they would be spared “multiple visits” by Cheney to the inner sanctum where it used to be possible to produce unvarnished analysis without vice presidents and other policy makers looking over their shoulders to ensure they “had thought of everything.” Goss, who has a long history of subservience to Cheney, could be counted upon to play the Cheney/Gingrich/et al. role himself.

Larry Johnson says he doesn’t believe Goss’s resignation is part of the White House shakeup; it’s more likely Goss is in trouble.

This could get juicy.

Braying of Hounds

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Those outraged because Zacarias Moussaoui got off easy with a life sentence can take comfort that he faces a fate worse than death. Dan Eggan writes in today’s Washington Post about the Administrative Maximum United States Penitentiary, or Admax, in Florence, Colorado:

Dubbed the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” by prison experts — and “The Tombs” by many prisoners and their lawyers — the 12-year-old “supermax” facility houses about 400 of the most dangerous and infamous prisoners in the federal system, from “Unabomber” Theodore J. Kaczynski to Ramzi Yousef, architect of the 1993 World Trade center bombing. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons transferred most, if not all, of its terrorism-related inmates to the prison.

But Moussaoui is unlikely to meet, or even glimpse, Yousef or any other fellow jihadists at the Florence facility anytime soon, according to federal officials, lawyers and others familiar with operations there.

In the most tightly monitored part of the facility, known as the “control unit,” inmates are kept in segregation at all times — living, sleeping and eating in individual cells poured from concrete that measure approximately 7 feet by 11 feet. They are designed to ensure that inmates cannot speak to or make eye contact with each other, according to defense lawyers, human rights advocates and others who have had access to the facility. Some prisoners are monitored 24 hours a day by surveillance cameras in their cells, as Moussaoui has been during his years in the Alexandria jail. …

… Some inmates are allowed a handful of visitors and phone calls each month, but many of those incarcerated for terrorism-related crimes have no visitors other than their attorneys and the guards who shackle them whenever they are removed from their cells, according to defense attorneys and court testimony.

Ramzi Yousef, for example, often spends days at a time not leaving his cell, because using his daily one-hour exercise time requires submitting to body cavity searches. The only person allowed to visit him is his lawyer, whose offices and practice are in New York.

Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian adds the detail that “Religious services of numerous denominations are piped in from a small chapel.”

I keep thinking of a calf confined in a veal crate. They usually go mad.

Richard Serrano at the Los Angeles Times says that prisoners at Admax experience a slow rot.

They exist alone in soundproof cells as small as 7 feet by 12 feet, with a concrete-poured desk, bed and stool, a small shower and sink, and a TV that offers religious and anger-management programs.

They are locked down 23 hours a day.

Larry Homenick, a former U.S. marshal who has taken prisoners to Supermax, said that there was a small triangular recreation area, known as “the dog run,” where solitary Supermax prisoners could occasionally get a glimpse of sky.

He said it was chilling to walk down the cellblocks and glance through the plexiglass “sally port” chambers into the cells and see the faces inside.

Life there is harsh. Food is delivered through a slit in the cell door. Prisoners don’t leave their cells to see a lawyer, a doctor or a prison official; those visitors must go to the cell.

Prison expert James E. Aiken told the jury what Moussaoui’s life would be like at Admax.

In his trial testimony, Aiken said the whole point of Supermax was not just punishment, but “incapacitation.”

There is no pretense that the prison is preparing the inmate for a return to society. Like the cellmate of the count of Monte Cristo who died an old, tired convict, Aiken said, “Moussaoui will deteriorate.” …

… Christopher Boyce, a convicted spy who was incarcerated at Supermax, left the prison about 100 miles south of Denver with no regret. “You’re slowly hung,” he once told The Times. “You’re ground down. You can barely keep your sanity.” …

… Ron Kuby, another New York defense lawyer, has handled several East Coast “revolutionaries” who went on a killing spree, and a radical fundamentalist who killed a rabbi in 1990. All were brought to Supermax.

He thought Aiken’s description that prisoners rot inside its walls was too kind.

“It’s beyond rotting,” he said. “Rotting at least implies a slow, gradual disintegration.”

He said there were a lot of prisons where inmates rot, where the staff “plants you in front of your TV in your cell and you just grow there like a mushroom.”

“But Supermax is worse,” he said. “It’s not just the hothouse for the mushrooms. It’s designed in the end to break you down.”

I’ll leave it to others to decide if this is justice. I’m more concerned about what David Cole says in today’s WaPo. Cole calls Moussaoui’s prosecution an “object lesson in how the government’s overreaching has undermined our security.”

Four years ago Moussaoui was on the verge of pleading guilty to offenses that would have resulted in a life sentence. But he was unwilling to accept the government’s insistence that he admit to being the 20th hijacker of Sept. 11, 2001 — an allegation the government has long since dropped.

For almost two years, the case was stalled as the government sought Moussaoui’s execution while denying him access to witnesses in its control who had testimony establishing that he was not involved in the Sept. 11 plot at all. Due process has long required the government to turn over such “exculpatory” evidence, but the government, citing national security, refused to afford Moussaoui access to this evidence. In October 2003 the trial court offered a reasonable solution: Allow the trial to proceed but eliminate the death penalty, because that’s what the government’s exculpatory evidence related to. The government refused that solution and spent several more years trying Moussaoui. The case ended where it began — with Moussaoui facing life in prison.

Your tax dollars at work.

Meanwhile, at a secret CIA “black site” prison, the United States is holding the alleged mastermind of Sept. 11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. And at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it has Mohamed al-Qahtani, who the government now claims is the real would-be 20th hijacker. But the administration can’t try either of these men, because any such proceeding would turn into a trial of the United States’ own tactics in the war on terrorism. The CIA has reportedly water-boarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed — a practice in which the suspect is made to fear that he is drowning in order to encourage him to talk. And Army logs report that interrogators threatened Qahtani with dogs, made him strip naked and wear women’s underwear, put him on a leash and made him bark like a dog, injected him with intravenous fluids and barred him from the bathroom so that he urinated on himself. With these shortsighted and inhumane tactics, the administration essentially immunized the real culprits, so it was left seeking the execution of a man who was not involved in Sept. 11.

As a PR tactic it seems to have worked pretty well with Bush’s Bitter Ender base, who don’t seem to have noticed that Moussaoui was a bit player, if that, in the 9/11 atrocity. They enjoyed a two-day virtual rampage over the verdict. You’d have thought Moussaoui was Osama bin Laden’s best bud and piloted one of the hijacked planes himself. I’m sure they’d still be at it except for the allegations that Patrick Kennedy was caught driving drunk and got special treatment from DC cops. No rightie will pass up an opportunity to wallow in the depravity of the Kennedys; they dropped Moussaoui and went after ol’ Patrick like hounds catching scent of a raccoon.

(I know hounds chase foxes in civilized places, but it’s raccoons where I come from.)

The Moussaoui case is emblematic of the administration’s approach to fighting terrorism. It has repeatedly overreached and sought symbolic victories, adopting tactics that have undermined its ability to achieve real security while disregarding less flashy but more effective means of protecting us. In the early days after Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft sought to reassure us with repeated announcements of the detention of large numbers of “terror suspects” — ultimately the government admitted to detaining 5,000 foreign nationals in the first two years after Sept. 11. Yet to this day not one of them stands convicted of a terrorist offense. Similarly, the administration launched a nationwide ethnic profiling campaign, calling in 8,000 young men for FBI interviews and 80,000 more for registration, fingerprinting and photographing by immigration authorities, simply because they came from Arab and Muslim countries. Not one of those 88,000 has been convicted of terrorism.

Come to think of it, some good ol’, coon dogs might do a better job.

Cole goes on to note that only 8 percent of the Guantanamo detainees are even accused of being fighters for al Qaeda. “The majority are not accused of engaging in any hostile acts against the United States.” Jose Padilla was stripped of his rights as a citizen and held in military custody for being “a marginal player in a hazy conspiracy to support terrorism. His indictment cites no terrorist acts or terrorist groups that were actually supported.”

While the government rounded up Arabs and Muslims with no ties to terrorism and authorized torture and disappearances, several of its highest-profile cases fell short, and it failed to carry out the more mundane work that might actually make us safer. In December the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission gave the administration a disastrous report card on its progress in implementing a series of practical security recommendations — such as better screening of cargo on airlines and containers coming into ports, securing of nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union to keep them out of terrorists’ hands, and protection of vulnerable targets such as chemical plants.

Tough talk in news conferences, overheated charges that evaporate under scrutiny and executions for symbolic purposes will not make us safer. The administration needs to turn away from symbolism and toward substance if it is to have any hope of protecting us from the next attack.

One of the many peculiarities of righties is that for them, symbolism is as good as substance. For them, image is character and rhetoric is accomplishment. Boasting is victory. Ideology is the only reality. Truly, the Bushies could just snatch random Muslims off the streets (which of course they’ve alrady done) and hang them publicly without evidence or trial, and a large part of the righties would accept this without question. They’d probably find a way to defend it as a bold antiterrorist initiative.

Finally, from the site Homeland Security Watch, we find a list of the people in U.S. custody that played a much larger role than Moussaoui in the 9/11 attacks. They are:

  • Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of the plot;
  • Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, a member of the Hamburg cell and the key facilitator of the plot;
  • Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a financier of the 9/11 attacks;
  • Ammar al-Baluchi, a travel and financial facilitator for the plot;
  • Walid Muhammad Salih Bin al-Attash, a key deputy to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed;
  • Mohammed Manea Ahmad al-Qahtani, the real “twentieth hijacker” whose entry into the United States was denied at Orlando airport.

    • Strangely, the Bitter Enders seem unconcerned about prosecuting these guys. It seems they’re too busy blogswarming Patrick Kennedy. Gotta keep those priorities straight.

    Why We Blog

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    I peek in on Hardball from time to time in spite of the fact that Chris Matthews is an ass. Yesterday Kristin Breitweiser, widowed on 9/11, was on with Richard Ben Viniste, Joe Biden, and Michael Isikoff, among others. She reminded me of why I got into blogging to begin with. Crooks and Liars has a video. I think it’s important everyone hear what she had to say, so I’m posting just her part of the programs out of the transcript.

    This is from the 5 o’clock EST program:

    MATTHEWS: Let’s go right now to a wife of one of the people who was killed on 9/11 by the kind of terrorism that is being prosecuted and apparently going to be punished for a long time in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui. Kristin Breitweiser. Kristen, thank you for joining us. I’m anxious to hear your reaction to the verdict.

    KRISTIN BREITWEISER, 9/11 WIDOW: Obviously I’m grateful to the jury for the work that they did. As a lawyer, I have to respectfully disagree with former mayor Giuliani. I happen to think that the case against Moussaoui was not that strong and I think that the jury is probably appropriate in the way that they came down with the case.

    I think that we have other people in our own custody that certainly knew more than Moussaoui, namely Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, Tawfiq bin Atash and Ramsey Binalshibh. And I think that they had a more direct connection to 9/11 and more appropriately should be being prosecuted by our Justice Department more so than Moussaoui, who was in jail on the day of 9/11.

    MATTHEWS: Why do you think that’s the case?

    BREITWEISER: You know, obviously I’m not stupid. I understand that there are much talk or rumor that we have tortured them or are unable to prosecute them. I think that needs to be debated amongst the American people. If we are going to say that we successfully prosecute terrorists, then we should actually do that.

    With the case of Moussaoui I hope it motivates our government to prosecute those people that we have in our custody that certainly had a more direct connection than Moussaoui did. And I hope it sends a message that in some cases torture is going to bar our ability to hold people accountable.

    Matthews talks to Moussaoui ‘s defense attorney for awhile, and then brings in Senator Joe Biden for a bit before he goes back to Breitweiser

    MATTHEWS: OK, hold on Senator, if you don’t mind. I know you’ve agreed to stick around just for a minute.

    I want to go back to one of the well-known victims of the people–of the person killed, a person killed on 9/11 itself at the World Trade Center, that’s Kristin Breitweiser. Do you have a comment on what you’ve been just listening to, Kristin?

    BREITWEISER: Yes, I have to say two things really. No. 1, now that the Moussaoui penalty phase is over, I certainly hope that the information will be flowing freely to the American people. For four years, I and many other 9/11 family members have fought very hard to have information released go the public, information about governmental failures. We were always told that we couldn’t have that information because it would harm Moussaoui’s right to a fair trial.

    Having said that, I would appreciate someone asking either Senator Biden or former Mayor Giuliani, if their standard for death is withholding information from the FBI that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks–how then are we excusing FBI agents Maltbie and Frasca, who were accused, or allegedly accused in the Moussaoui penalty phase itself, of being criminally negligent with regard to giving a FISA warrant.

    How would you explain George Tenet, who withheld information about two of the 9/11 hijackers for 18 months from the FBI–information that certainly would have gone a long way into preventing those attacks. And I’d like to know, where are we drawing the line here, what is the threshold, and why are we not holding those types of people in our own government accountable?

    And I think they’re going to have a long of explaining to do in Congress and at the White House when that information flows to the American people and the American people start asking similar questions.

    Matthews talks to Biden for a while, then returns to Breitweiser.

    BREITWEISER: Listen, all I would have to say with regard to the mens rea, throwing out a legal term, I’m a lawyer, but I don’t practice law, is that after 17 sailors died on the USS Cole and two of those hijackers that Tenet had under surveillance were inside this country, I would say that if you’re the DCI, you should know to bring those gentlemen in. You should know to bring the FBI in the loop.

    Having said that, with regard to the 9/11 Commission recommendations, without doubt. I mean, you are talking about the city of New York still not having radios for the firemen. You’re talking about the Hurricane Katrina, where our evacuation protocols were abysmal.

    We are almost five years out from 9/11. We have not paid any attention, we have not learned any lessons and the truth of the matter is, we are not any safer. If anything we are less safe.

    And it breaks my heart. We–the 9/11 family members fought very, very hard to get those recommendations put in place. We fought hard for the commission. I don’t know what more it is going to take and I would ask Senator Biden to keep fighting down in Washington.

    And we’d like to see some action and I would tell all the American people listening that the election is coming up, the midterm elections. Hold your elected officials accountable, because we are almost five years out from 9/11 and we are no safer.

    Snips.

    MATTHEWS: Thank you very much Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. Thank you very much sir for joining us tonight. I want to ask Kristin, while you’re staying here–Kristin, what’s your emotional attitude towards Moussaoui yourself?

    BREITWEISER: Clearly I am happy that he’s behind bars and he’s not able to wreak havoc and terrorize our cities.

    MATTHEWS: Do you hate him?

    BREITWEISER: You know, Chris, I really don’t hate him. I don’t know him personally. What I can tell you is that in the breakdown of the murder of my husband, Moussaoui is further down on the nexus link than other people, name Osama bin Laden, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, Kalad Benetash (ph).

    Those are the people that if you’re going to use the death penalty, I would like to see the death penalty used on. They had more of a direct connection than Moussaoui. You know, I am grateful that Moussaoui will be in jail. I am grateful that we can now have information flowing to the American people and hopefully that will energize the American people to force our Congress and our White House to start making changes so that we are safer.

    MATTHEWS: You might have in your head, Kristin, whether you do or not, some bad news about the way we handled as a country, 9/11 before and after. What is it? What is your worst case thought about what’s being not made available to you now? The information you want to get. What do you think is in there?

    BREITWEISER: You know what, I don’t know what’s in there. Obviously it is classified, but what I can tell you is we’d certainly like to have access to the CIA inspector general’s report. We’d like to have the full FBI inspector general’s report released. And we’d also like to have the WMD part two report released. All of those reports we were personally promised by members of Congress, the Intel committees and Porter Goss himself, the DCI–the current DCI, that they would be given to the American people.

    I don’t know what to tell you. We’ve tried. We write letters, we do press releases. They’re not releasing that information. All I can tell you is it seems like they’re trying to hide something. And if it means that it will leak damning information to the American people about the failures on behalf of the government, I hope that that information will finally motivate our elected officials to do something, to learn lessons, and to make us safer, because on the day of the next attack, I genuinely do not know how our elected officials–everyone, White House, Congress, everyone across the board will be able to rest their head on their pillow and know that they did everything possible to save lives on the day of the next attack.

    Michael Isikoff came on and talked for a while.

    MATTHEWS: Bottom line, are you saying the government, based upon your reporting, is covering up for top officials all the way up to the vice president and that is preventing them from prosecuting these bad guys who were involved with 9/11?

    ISIKOFF: I’m saying there are really difficult decisions about what you do, about how you handle this, but we haven’t had a discussion. There hasn’t been a Congressional inquiry into this, there hasn’t been a full public debate about this really naughty question of what we’re going to do with the people who were responsible for the worst crime in American history.

    MATTHEWS: Kristin, I’m going to ask you because they’re the same three names you mentioned, starting with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11. What is your reaction to what Michael just said about the motivation that is keeping us from a trial for these people, the real perpetrators of 9/11?

    BREITWEISER: Listen, I–more than anything, I’m pleased that Mike confirmed. This is a debate that needs to be discussed, and I hope people like you and Mike will question members of the administration and members of Congress who have condoned this.

    And the questions you need to ask are, you know, did we garner valuable information that literally, truthfully prevented attacks? Have we harmed our CIA covert ops’ abilities to infiltrate behind enemy lines without having the Geneva Conventions in their back pocket? What did we really learn from these interrogation techniques? Did it really benefit us? Because–and also how did it harm us in the world community? How is the rest of the world looking at us right now?

    We’re supposed to be a free, democratic, fair and just society. When you look at the cost benefit and you balance all of the facts surrounding the interrogation techniques that flowed with or without the White House’s approval, I think we’re going to learn that it is not the answer.

    And I think we also going to learn that it has barred our ability, particularly the 9/11 families’ abilities, to hold anyone accountable when it comes to holding the actual al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks. And I think that that is a true travesty of justice

    Snips

    ISIKOFF: Because when they indicted Moussaoui, I think there was a legitimate belief that he might have been the 20th hijacker, and therefore and he certainly was an al Qaeda guy. He certainly came here with the intention of killing as many Americans as he could. There was no question that, you know, we had a bad guy who deserved to be put on trial.

    But the connection to 9/11 was pretty tenuous. And, you know–and it became more tenuous as we learned more, as we got Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, they were able to tell, their interrogators, that look, we never–this guy wasn’t a part of the plot. He wasn’t a guy who we ever intended to use. He was kind of a little bit unable, and we had our doubts about him. We didn’t want to use him for such a sensitive operation.

    That was part of the information they were getting from these guys, so all of that combined made it less trial make it less–you know, it made this trial make less and less sense. And as time went on, the question is, OK, if he wasn’t the guy who did it, what are we going to do with the people who did?

    MATTHEWS: What is interesting Kristin and Michael, is that the president issued a statement tonight followed the verdict, the life imprisonment for Zacarias Moussaoui. And the interesting thing is, he doesn’t mention anything like what you’re talking about. He doesn’t say there’s three more big, bad guys out there involved in the actual perpetration …

    ISIKOFF: More than three by the way. It’s probably about a half a dozen.

    MATTHEWS: Well, the big names you both mentioned. He doesn’t precede it like we’ve got three more to go at least. He makes it sound like this is the end of the effort to punish those involved in 9/11.

    Kristin, your reaction to that?

    BREITWEISER: You know, first of all, I’d just like to clarify that Ramzi Binalshibh made a self-admission on Al-Jazeera that he participated in the 9/11 attacks. So it’s not even like it would be a difficult trial. It’s not like there’s a tenuous connection there. He made a self-admission, and yet we’re not prosecuting him. I think that speaks for itself in how we are failing to prosecute terrorists.

    And with regard to the president’s comments, I think that it shows that he is clearly not in touch with what it takes to prosecute terrorists. I think for him to say that we’re all said and done, you know, game over, is ridiculous.

    MATTHEWS: You seem–Kristin, I have known you–I was spending a lot of time with you back in the days just after 9/11, and not for awhile now. What has been your reflection on 9/11 and the loss of your husband at the World Trade Center in the months previous to today? Have you felt more angry at this administration or have you learned more? What’s your sort of state of mind right now?

    BREITWEISER: I think, frankly, I’m scared. I’m scared with the ineptitude and the lack of understanding, the lack of, you know, depth to look longer than today. You know, you are talking about–just speaking specifically with the terror interrogation protocols, you are talking about a bunch of people that sat in a room and weren’t thinking, “What are we are going to do with these guys a year down the line? What are we going to do with these guys two years down the line?”

    All they cared about was the next 10 days. And I think that shows that this administration is very short sighted. They are not looking longer term, they’re not planning. They’re not being even introspective.

    And I think that’s what scares me the most because I know we have done so little to make this nation safer. We have not learned any lessons. And more than anything, my husband is dead. We have not held one person accountable. In fact, we have actually promoted people within our own government who failed to protect people like my husband that day. And to me, I find that scary, just flat out scary.

    This is from the 7 o’clock EST program.

    MATTHEWS: We’re back with Richard Ben Veniste who served as a 9/11 commissioner, and we’re joined right now by Kristin Breitweiser, who lost her husband in the 9/11 attacks.

    Kristin, thank you for hanging on tonight. In our earlier edition tonight in HARDBALL, you raised an issue which grabbed a lot of attention from Michael Isikoff, the investigative reporter. It’s something I didn’t know. We have in our detection, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh. Tell me about those two men and what role you believe they played in 9/11.

    KRISTIN BREITWEISER, 9/11 WIDOW: Firstly, I would like to say three people, three individuals, that had a more direct connection to the 9/11 certainly than Zacarias Moussaoui, they are Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Khaled Benatash.

    One of them, Binalshibh, actually made a self-admission on Al-Jazeera television that he was, you know, connected to planning the attacks and carrying through those attacks. We have him in our custody somewhere in the world. And most likely, because of what we have done during the interrogation of those individuals, we are unable to prosecute them.

    And I just want to say one thing. I’m hearing a lot of talk about being in awe of the American judicial system. I’m hearing talk about America winning here. The reality is–and I don’t want to detract from the work that the jury did and I’m very grateful. I certainly would not have wanted to be in their shoes.

    But the reality here is that we prosecuted the wrong guy. The people that should have been prosecuted by our Justice Department with regard to 9/11 are the people in our custody right now, Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Khalad Benatash. And we, the American people, need to start asking some very pointed questions to the administration why we are not prosecuting them.

    MATTHEWS: Richard Ben Veniste, why are we not prosecuting them?

    BEN VENISTE: well, I think there are probably a few reasons, one of which is the methods that were used to extract the information, as far as know, from Khalid.

    MATTHEWS: Who approved those uses, those methods?

    BEN VENISTE: I think that was from the top of the government. And one can argue about that. And we don‘t know today how much useful information was obtained. We know some information that was corroborated. Of information that we had, some new information, some information that conflicts. That’s between Shaikh Mohammed and Binalshibh.

    The one person who I think there is no ambiguity about is the man who is still at large, Osama bin Laden. And in listening to the horrifying stories of individuals like Kristin who have come forward and testified and been our friends and our companions in this fight to get all this information out over the years, Osama bin Laden is at the top of the food chain. He remains at large, taunted us to this day. And that is part of where we need to go to get to closure

    MATTHEWS: But how do we get to bin Laden? He’s in somewhere in Pakistan, up in Malakand somewhere right now, We don’t know where he is, do we?

    BEN VENISTE: Well we have diverted a very significant part of our armed forces, our capability, our treasure elsewhere following 9/11. And so Osama still remains the person most responsible for this attack.

    Number two is the person in our custody, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. So those individuals, rather than Moussaoui, who was at the most, a marginalized bit player here to do damage and to take lives, but not trusted by the others and not privy as far as I know to any information that would have allowed him to know the time, the individuals who were involved for such an attack.

    MATTHEWS: Kristin, who holds the secret to the rest of the 9/11 investigation? Who was the one person you’d like to get to turn him or her to really make it happen, to get the full story?

    BREITWEISER: You know, clearly I think we have the information in our own governmental files. Whether you want to talk about the 28 pages from the Congress’s report that deals with terrorist funding from certain foreign governments.

    Whether you want to talk about the CIA inspector general‘s report that is being withheld from the American people, the full FBI inspector general’s report with regard to 9/11 still being withheld.

    Whether you want to talk about Richard Clark. He did a post mortem in the days after 9/11 at the request of President Bush and apparently even Commissioner Ben Veniste and the rest of the commissioners were not privy to that report. It’s been admitted to that the report was done. It apparently, no one can seem to find that report. And I think the American people could clearly benefit from it.

    MATTHEWS: Have you been to see the president?

    BREITWEISER: Me?

    MATTHEWS: Yes.

    BREITWEISER: I’ve never been invited, no.

    MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much, Richard Ben Veniste and Kristin Breitweiser. Up next, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. And later, reaction from U.S. Congressman Peter King of the Homeland Security Committee. He is also from New York. You’re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.

    Update: See also Will Bunch, David Savage of the LA Times, Taylor Marsh, Booman, Dahlia Lithwick.