Why They Fight

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Life must be bleak for Andrew Sullivan these days.

One thing has struck me these past few years about the right in America. As it has slowly abandoned its own principles – limited government, individual freedom, balanced budgets, federalism – it has been forced to resort to three fundamental issues to keep itself alive. The first was the war on terror, the second fundamentalist Christianity, and the third, hatred of the left. The first has waned somewhat, not because we aren’t still at war and in great peril, but because it is manifestly obvious that this administration is stunningly incompetent in its execution of the war. There’s only so much you can do to defend it at this point. The evangelical base whose support for Bush is entirely for religious rather than political reasons – the theocratic heart of the GOP – will never stop believing, as long as the Supreme Leader refuses to show any doubt and keeps preventing vaccines from being developed, puts pro-lifers on the Court, and keeps up the pressure on gays. But the rest – and they’re critical – are motivated entirely by being anti-left.

The most depressing aspect of this was the vile “Swift Boat” attack on John Kerry in the last election campaign. But you only have to watch O’Reilly or read Powerline or listen to Sean Hannity or David Horowitz to know that the only thing that really gets them fired up any more is loathing of liberals.

This has been obvious for a long time, at least to everyone but the Right. Righties like to think they’re the ones with the “ideas.” Can anyone remember what those “ideas” might be? Oh, yeah … cut taxes, shrink government, cut taxes, promote corporate welfare, cut taxes, cut social programs, cut taxes, praise Jesus. And cut taxes. The same zombie ideas they’ve been dragging around since Goldwater. Even neoconservative foreign policies are leftovers from the Cold War.

From yesterday’s Liberal Oasis:

Republicans Have No Ideas

Only Enemies

According to top Republicans, what agenda item will motivate their supporters to the polls this year?

More tax cuts for the rich? More drilling in environmentally sensitive areas? Less help for the poor?

Trick question.

Since Republicans in Washington aren’t really into passing legislation anymore (when was the last time they passed something?), there’s no issue for their supporters to get excited about.

So what do Republicans have left? From the NY Times:

    “Impeachment, coming your way if there are changes in who controls the House eight months from now,” Paul Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer, declared last month in an e-mail newsletter.

    The threat of impeachment, Mr. Weyrich suggested, was one of the only factors that could inspire the Republican Party’s demoralized base to go to the polls.

    With “impeachment on the horizon,” he wrote, “maybe, just maybe, conservatives would not stay at home after all.”

Tim Grieve at Salon:

We’re hearing a lot about Democrats these days — from Republicans. Democrats are going to run Hillary Clinton as their presidential nominee in 2008. Democrats are going to try to impeach George W. Bush if they win control of Congress in 2006. It’s enough to send the Republican base into panic — which is, of course, exactly the point.

For the last four years, the Bush White House has kept the American public in line by warning that the terrorists are everywhere and fixing to “hit us” again at any minute. That argument isn’t working anymore, at least not to the president’s benefit. The public has begun to disapprove of the way that George W. Bush is handling national security; only 30 percent still think that Bush’s “central front” in the war on terror — the war of choice he launched in Iraq — is actually making Americans safer.

But when all you’ve got is fear, you’d better hope that everything looks like a monster: So if Osama bin Laden isn’t scaring Americans into the president’s camp these days, the Republicans have to hope that Russ Feingold will.

Got that? We’re the new Osama.

Junk Intelligence

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I want to revisit the last post, because I have realized a couple of things since I wrote it that change the emphasis, so to speak. There is something way screwy going on that is way screwy even by Bush Administration standards.

The story thus far: This week the Office of the Director of National Intelligence began to release documents it says were captured in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard writes about this here. He and Michael Barone have been hyping these documents for the past several weeks as the potential “proof” of an Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein link.

Yesterday John Hinderacker of Power Line published a post called “In Saddam’s Archives” in which he links to and discusses one of these documents, posted on the Foreign Military Studies Office web site as “CMPC-2003-006430.” And here is that document as posted on the FMSO site [PDF].

Now here’s where it gets screwy. This document consists of a page of what looks like Arabic script (I don’t know Arabic from Parsi from whatever). This is followed by a seven-page document from the Federation of American Scientists about the Iraqi Intelligence Service, with information gleaned from various unclassified sources. This same document is still on the FAS web site, here, and was last updated in 1997, it says. Not exactly super-secret, in other words, and not from Iraq. What it contains is information floating around in the West as of 1997.

Note that Hinderacker doesn’t misrepresent this; he says plainly in his post that “The English portion of the document is a description of the Mukhabarat by the Federation of American Scientists. The Arabic portion apparently hasn’t been translated.” But then he goes on to quote the FAS document under the “In Saddam’s Archives” title, which would leave the uncareful reader with the impression that the FAS document is a translation. For all I know the Arabic portion is a laundry list.

However, Investor’s Business Daily isn’t so careful. Here is an article that quotes this same FAS document as if it were something captured in Iraq after the invasion. IBD trumpets the FAS document as “a manual for Saddam’s spy service” and proof of Saddam Hussein-terrorist connections. IBD says,

In the early stages of the war that began three years ago, the U.S. captured thousands of documents from Saddam and his spy agency, the Mukhabarat. It’s been widely thought the documents could shed light on why Saddam behaved as he did and how much of a threat his evil regime represented.

Yet, until this week, the documents lay molding in boxes in a government warehouse. Now the first batch is out, and though few in number, they’re loaded with information.

Among the enduring myths of those who oppose the war is that Saddam, though murderous when it came to his own people, had no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorist designs outside his own country. Both claims now lie in tatters.

As we’ve reported several times, a number of former top military officials in Saddam’s regime have come forward to admit that, yes, Saddam had WMD, hid them and shipped them out of the country so they couldn’t be detected. And he had plans to make more.

Now come more revelations that leave little doubt about Saddam’s terrorist intentions. Most intriguing from a document dump Wednesday night is a manual for Saddam’s spy service, innocuously listed as CMPC-2003-006430. It makes for interesting reading.

Yep, good ol’ CMPC-2003-006430.pdf. The problem is that the English language part of the document, which IBD goes on to quote, is not from Saddam’s archives. It is from the Federation of American Scientists.

As I predicted earlier, rightie bloggers are gleefully linking to the IBD article as “proof” that we liberals were wrong about Saddam Hussein. These bloggers include Glenn Reynolds, Lorie Byrd, and Cold Fury (upon which I commented and received a nice round of insults for my trouble), among others.

I’d like to point out, before I forget, that the FAS is an independent organization that compiles a lot of information on national security issues. The document being quoted probably is the best information available … in 1997. In the West. From nonclassified sources.

John Aravosis posted about the Negroponte document dump yesterday:

The new documents, released today by the Bush administration, are maybe, but maybe not, real Iraqi government documents that we found in Iraq. The Bush administration can’t vouch for the documents’ authenticity or the accuracy of the translations from Arabic, but they’re releasing them anyway in the hopes that – get this – right-wing blogs can help them prove their case that Saddam had WMD and ties to Al Qaeda.

Yes, it’s come to that. Bush is now relying on Michelle Malkin’s keen intelligence skills to prove the case for war in Iraq.

I think that’s exactly the plan. The documents released so far are mostly junk. But it’s carefully selected junk. And the righties are all too eager to “discover” the wondrous things in them that will justify their support of the war. Glenn Reynolds says “It’s funny that these documents are getting so little attention from the press.” Not funny at all; part of the plan. The last thing the Bushies want is for news reporters, who are sometimes slightly less gullible than your average rightie blogger, to start scrutinizing this stuff closely. (See also this AMERICAblog post for more.)

By dumping a truckload of phony “intelligence,” the Bushies figure they can keep what’s left of the “base” in line.

Yesterday I wrote about why another document actually “revealed” nothing at all that wasn’t already well known, but which a number of righties believed was new information proving that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (not). That’s pretty much the point of the AMERICAblog posts linked above. See also upyernoz.

And notice how well the document dump is timed to Bush’s reaffirmation of the “Bush Doctrine” and the escalation of saber-rattling over Iran. Hmmm.

Update: See also “White House White House caught fixing intelligence again?”

Update update: Sadly, No figured all this stuff out way before I did.

Blarney

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Quick follow-up to the last post, in which I expressed frustration (cough) at cognitively challenged righties who think newly released Iraqi documents contain evidence of an al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein connection —

John H. at Power Line hypes an undated document that describes the function and duties of the Iraqi intelligence service. The document lists such activities as developing and testing weapons, poisons, and explosives; providing training in “terrorist techniques”; and conducting operations of sabotage and assassination outside Iraq. [Update: I realized after I had posted that the previously “secret” document had been pulled off the web site of the Federation of American Scientists.]

It will not occur to the righties that without knowing how long these documents have been sitting around in a filing cabinet somewhere they don’t exactly prove anything. Righties have a weak grasp of linear time. You’ll remember, for example, how the gassing of the Kurds in 1988 (which the Right and the Reagan-Bush I administrations pretty much ignored in 1988) was repeatedly thrown in our faces as a reason to invade Iraq in 2003 — fifteen years later.

Another example: The 2003 State of the Union Address — Home of the Sixteen Words — also contained this little gem:

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb

Strictly speaking, the sentence is true. This IAEA fact sheet on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program shows that Iraq was working hard to enrich uranium to make a bomb — before the 1991 Gulf War.

However, if you’ll scroll down the fact sheet page you’ll learn that “As of 16 December 1998” the Iraqi nuclear weapons program was defunct and not going anywhere. You can read an IAEA report (PDF) dated 1999 that says (on page 7): “These verification activities have revealed no indication that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons or any meaningful amounts of weapon-usable nuclear material, or that Iraq has retained any practical capability (facilities or hardware) for the production of such material.”

And, of course, at the time Bush delivered the 2003 SOTU, IAEA inspectors had had a few weeks to visit the old Iraqi nuclear weapons sites, and they confirmed that the equipment and stores of yellowcake uranium were sitting unused, the IAEA inspection seals from 1998 still intact.

So, while the IAEA had confirmed that before the Gulf War Saddam had a nuclear weapons program, they also confirmed “All known indigenous facilities capable of producing uranium compounds useful to a nuclear programme were destroyed during the Gulf War.”

Bush left that part out of the 2003 SOTU. It still amazes me this little oversight hasn’t gotten as much attention as the Sixteen Words, since it is a more bare-assed and easily refuted misrepresentation than the African uranium story. The IAEA posts their inspection reports and findings on their bleeping web site. In English. I bet even Douglas Feith could have found them.

(In July 2003, when people were starting to wonder where the WMDs were, it was pointed out to Condi Rice that a lot of their “intelligence” about WMDs was, um, old. And this is what she said:

Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, said Saturday that the question of new evidence vs. old was beside the point. “The question of what is new after 1998 is not an interesting question,” she said. [James Risen, David Sanger, and Thom Shanker, “In Sketchy Data, White House Sought Clues to Gauge Threat,” The New York Times, July 20, 2003]

Perhaps the Bushies should have been a little more … interested.)

I hadn’t meant to ramble on so about the old news. But to get back to the Iraq Intelligence Service documents that J.H. finds so interesting — a document that (for all we know) was drawn up before the Gulf War doesn’t tell us anything about what Saddam Hussein was up to in 2003. [Update: I see a note at the end of the document that says “Maintained by John Pike Updated Wednesday, November 26, 1997.” It was on the web site of the Federation of American Scientists. This is just weird.]

And a document that talks about what the IIS was supposed to be doing doesn’t tell us if they were doing it. Which takes us to another bit of news, reported by Shmuel Rosner of Haaretz.

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein pretended to have chemical weapons because, among other reasons, he feared that Israel might attack if it discovered he did not. This is revealed in a recently declassified internal report by the American military.

The report was compiled from many dozens of interviews with senior Iraqi officials and hundreds of documents captured by the American forces during and after the war. …

… “According to Chemical Ali, Hussein was asked about the weapons during a meeting with members of the Revolutionary Command Council. He replied that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) but flatly rejected a suggestion that the regime remove all doubts to the contrary,” the report states. Ali explained that such a declaration could encourage Israel to attack, the report says.

The 100-page report has not been released yet, but some 9,000 words of it are to appear in the next edition of Foreign Affairs Magazine.

A lot of people have speculated that’s what Saddam Hussein was up to, but I don’t know that there’s been anything in the way of corroboration before now. But this I’ve heard before:

Senior Iraqi officials told their interrogators that Hussein had no idea what the true state of the country’s weapons was, because everyone lied to him and refrained from giving him bad news for fear of being executed.

Hussein’s deputy Tariq Aziz told interrogators, “The people in the military industrial commission were liars. They lied to you, and they lied to Hussein. They were always saying they were producing special weapons.”

“A captured military industrial commission annual report of investments from 2002 showed more than 170 research projects. When Hussein asked for updates on the nonexistent projects, they simply faked plans and designs to show progress,” the report says.

I don’t remember where I read that before and I’m not going to take time to hunt around for a link, but I’m sure at least one Iraqi weapons scientist pretty much said the same thing when he was interviewed after the invasion. Perhaps it was the same guy who had the remains of the Iraqi nuclear centrifuge buried in his flower garden.

Update to the Update: As I said in the first update, what might seem to be a translation of an Arabic document said to have been seized in post-invasion Iraq is actually an old report taken from the web site of the Federation of American Scientists. Information in the report appears to have been gleaned from various unclassified sources. It was last updated in 1997. John Hinkeracker of Power Line states in his post that the document was from the FAS, so I can’t accuse him of misrepresenting it — even though he published quotes from FAS under the heading “In Saddam’s Archives.”

However, Investor’s Business Daily is not so careful. In this articled titled “Declassified Truth” IBD quotes from the 1997 FAS document as if it were something discovered in Saddam’s archives. IBD says the FAS document refutes the claim that Saddam “had no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorist designs outside his own country.” I’m sure a big chunk of the Right Blogosphere will link to this article before the day is over.

These document were released per the direction of John Negroponte, note.

Jeez, Righties Are So Gullible

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Last night the Bush Administration began release of some Iraqi documents seized by U.S. intelligence after the invasion. John Solomon reports for the Associated Press:

The documents, the first of thousands expected to be declassified over the next several months, were released via a Pentagon Web site at the direction of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

Many were in Arabic _ with no English translation _ including one the administration said showed that Iraqi intelligence officials suspected al-Qaida members were inside Iraq in 2002.

The Pentagon Web site described that document this way: “2002 Iraqi Intelligence Correspondence concerning the presence of al-Qaida Members in Iraq. Correspondence between IRS members on a suspicion, later confirmed, of the presence of an Al-Qaeda terrorist group. Moreover, it includes photos and names.”

Various rightie pundits like Michael Barone and Stephen Hayes have been hyping these documents in recent weeks. Barone, for example, wrote ten days ago,

Light on the Saddam regime’s collaboration with terrorists will almost certainly be shed by analysis of some 2 million documents captured in Iraq. But, as the intrepid Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard has pointed out, almost none of those documents has been translated or released either to the public or to the congressional intelligence committees. It appears that career professionals and, perhaps, political appointees have been blocking release of these documents.

Oooo, the dreaded career professionals.

Why do their superiors not order them released? Many Americans cling with religious intensity to the notion that somehow Saddam had no terrorist ties — a notion used to delegitimize our war effort. We should bring the truth, or as much of it as is available, out into the open.

I commented on this Barone screed here.

Looking back, the recent hyping of and now the release of these documents seems just a little too … coordinated. Especially since it seems timed to the beginning of an air war against North Viet Nam insurgent strongholds in Iraq.

And it was also timed to the release today of a Bush foreign policy document that restates the “Bush Doctrine” — the right to pre-empt threats, e.g. invade anybody we damn well like — and which also states “We face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.”

We know where this is going, don’t we?

But the real knee-slapper is this … the usual tools are hyping the Saddam-al Qaeda connection with a vengeance. Al Qaeda was in Iraq before the invasion! This guy writes (under the headline “Saddam Tied to al Qaeda”) “Consider this the final nail in the coffin of the liberal fantasy about Al Qaeda ties to Iraq.” Another found a photo of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the documents!

Do these people have fewer than three functioning brain cells apiece? Or were they not paying attention?

OF COURSE Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Iraq before the invasion. And he was running terrorist training camps in Iraq before the invasion. This is not a secret. Everybody knows this. I’ve even written about it myself several times.

But here is the part the bleepheads of the Right never get through their impenetrable skulls: Zarqawi was operating in Iraqi KURDISTAN, an area of northern Iraq that had become a safe haven for Kurds. He was in a part of Iraq over which Saddam Hussein had no control. He was, in fact, in part of Iraq controlled by our buddies, the Kurds. Kurdish autonomy had been shielded by U.S. air power since the end of the 1991 war.

Now, here is the juicy part. Fred Kaplan wrote in Slate, April 14, 2004 (righties, this is for you, so pay attention):

Apparently, Bush had three opportunities, long before the war, to destroy a terrorist camp in northern Iraq run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaida associate who recently cut off the head of Nicholas Berg. But the White House decided not to carry out the attack because, as the [NBC News] story puts it:

    [T]he administration feared [that] destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The implications of this are more shocking, in their way, than the news from Abu Ghraib. Bush promoted the invasion of Iraq as a vital battle in the war on terrorism, a continuation of our response to 9/11. Here was a chance to wipe out a high-ranking terrorist. And Bush didn’t take advantage of it because doing so might also wipe out a rationale for invasion.

I’ll pause to let that sink in. Kaplan continued,

As far back as June 2002, U.S. intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon drew up an attack plan involving cruise missiles and smart bombs. The White House turned it down. In October 2002, intelligence reported that Zarqawi was preparing to use his bio-weapons in Europe. The Pentagon drew up another attack plan. The White House again demurred. In January 2003, police in London arrested terrorist suspects connected to the camp. The Pentagon devised another attack plan. Again, the White House killed the plan, not Zarqawi.

When the war finally started in March, the camp was attacked early on. But by that time, Zarqawi and his followers had departed.

This camp was in the Kurdish enclave of Iraq. The U.S. military had been mounting airstrikes against various targets throughout Iraq—mainly air-defense sites—for the previous few years. It would not have been a major escalation to destroy this camp, especially after the war against al-Qaida in Afghanistan. The Kurds, whose autonomy had been shielded by U.S. air power since the end of the 1991 war, wouldn’t have minded and could even have helped.

But the problem, from Bush’s perspective, was that this was the only tangible evidence of terrorists in Iraq. Colin Powell even showed the location of the camp on a map during his famous Feb. 5 briefing at the U.N. Security Council. The camp was in an area of Iraq that Saddam didn’t control. But never mind, it was something. To wipe it out ahead of time might lead some people—in Congress, the United Nations, and the American public—to conclude that Saddam’s links to terrorists were finished, that maybe the war wasn’t necessary. So Bush let it be.

Also in Slate, Daniel Benjamin wrote (October, 2004):

Why didn’t the Bush administration kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi when it had the chance?

That it had opportunities to take out the Jordanian-born jihadist has been clear since Secretary of State Colin Powell devoted a long section of his February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council. In those remarks, which were given to underscore the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, Powell dwelt at length on the terrorist camp in Khurmal, in the pre-invasion Kurdish enclave. It was at that camp that Zarqawi, other jihadists who had fled Afghanistan, and Kurdish radicals were training and producing the poison ricin and cyanide.

Neither the Khurmal camp nor the surrounding area were under Saddam’s control, but Powell provided much detail purporting to show Zarqawi’s ties to the Baghdad regime. His arguments have since been largely discredited by the intelligence community. Many of us who have worked in counterterrorism wondered at the time about Powell’s claims. If we knew where the camp of a leading jihadist was and knew that his followers were working on unconventional weapons, why weren’t we bombing it or sending in special operations forces—especially since this was a relatively “permissive” environment?

Benjamin’s answer boils down to “because Bushies are idiots,” as opposed to Kaplan’s theory that the Bushies left Zarqawi alone deliberately because his presence in Iraq was one of their excuses for invading it.

But today, once again, Zarqawi is dangled in front of the mouth-breathers and throwbacks of the Right to show them that, see, Saddam Hussein did too have ties to terrorism. And they, dumb beasts that they are, take the bait.

‘Scuse me while I pound my head on the floor and scream.

What’s Wrong With This Party?

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David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times warns us that the Feingold censure motion is rallying Bush’s base.

There’s like, what, 12 of ’em left? Oooo, I’m so scared.

Yesterday the Pew Research Center put Bush’s approval rate at 33 percent, noting that the word most often used to describe the President these days is incompetent, followed closely by idiot and liar. Words appearing on the Pew one-word description of President Bush list for the first time include ass, jerk, and untrustworthy.

According to a SurveyUSA poll out this week, Bush’s approval numbers are above 50 percent in only three states — Utah, Wyoming and Alabama.

Yet at the mere mention of the dreaded Bush “base,” nearly the entire Democratic Party dashes for the bomb shelters.

Usually words come easily to me, but today I am nearly speechless with disgust at the spineless wonders in Washington. I hardly know where to begin. So I’m just going to link to a lot of other good commentary. Drop back by later and maybe I will be done sputtering in frustration.

Unclaimed Territory — “A Tale of Two Scandals,” “Cornered Rats,” “A stirring defense of indecision and inaction”

Eschaton — “So Simple the Idiots at the Note Can Understand?” and “When Conservatives Give Advice.”

Hullabaloo — “Our Best Interests” and “Planning Ahead”

AMERICAblog — “The Lesson, My Friends“

The Left Is Right on Health Care

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Awhile back I wrote about rightie obliviousness on the national health care issue —

… the Canadian Model is a bugaboo of the Right. Try to discuss national health care with a rightie, and the first sentence out of his mouth will be, “You mean like in Canada?” Then he will go off on a tirade about the problems with the Canadian system. (Unless you remind them of the underfunded British system, which is the other good “bad” example of a system with problems.)

Here’s a juicy example, although to be fair the rightie discusses the British system first and then switches to Canada. And then he throws in Cuba and comments,

The three socialized systems cited above are the cream of the crop when it comes to government controlled medical care. Clearly, your best bet is not to get sick.

Actually, they are not the “cream of the crop.” The British system has big problems, in large part because Tony Blair’s government is trying to get by on the cheap (see this PDF document, Figure One). The Canadian system also has some problems, which I discussed in the earlier post linked above. But there are several dozen countries with national health care; it isn’t just Britain, Canada, and Cuba. In fact, the only industrialized democracy in the world without national health care is the United States. In fact, just about every place on the planet where the average person owns a microwave has national health care, except the United States.

To righties, all of these systems are just one system, called “socialized medicine,” and they’re all bad, and they’re all just like Hillarycare. But in fact there are huge, whopping, substantial differences among the several systems.

There are some systems, like Britain’s, in which the government employs doctors and runs hospitals and acts as a “gatekeeper.” To use the National Health Service you go to NHS doctors, and since the Brits have very tight cost control some feel the “gate” can be a tad too narrow, as it were. Other nations have a mix of public and private systems. In France, for example, most of the doctors and hospitals are private sector. The government pays for health insurance that a citizen can take to the doctor of his choice to get basic care, and if he wants he can purchase private supplemental insurance to pay for first class treatment.

Righties seem to think that “national health care” means the British system, where you have to literally go to the government for treatment when you get sick. I personally would prefer something like the French system, in which the government doesn’t get involved in health care except to pay bills.

Last year Bradford Plumer wrote,

… the health care debate in America is never going to get very far so long as the conventional wisdom is that health care alternatives in other countries suck. Good point! But it’s also worth asking why this is the conventional wisdom. To some extent, it’s because conservatives, spearheaded by the insurance industry, have bamboozled us into thinking it’s so. … [But] Media coverage of national health care systems in other countries is dismal. … And, as a result, few Americans have even the vaguest idea of what French health care, or Canadian health care, or Swedish health care, is really like.

Recently at TPM Cafe, Matt Yglesias wrote that one reason we get nowhere in our health care debates is that the options presented to us are too limited and narrow.

Arguments against single-payer health care here seem to be two-fold. One, the idea is old and the debate about it therefore “stultified.” Two, the idea represents one pole of the debate and the name of the game is to find third way ideas. The first objection is obviously silly — that an idea is old has no bearing on its merits. The second objection, meanwhile, is easily met. Simply define the “left” pole in the debate as not something like the French or Canadian system, but something like the even more statist system they have in the United Kingdom. The “right” pole continues to be “veneration of free markets.” Ergo, the “center” position is now one in which the public sector provides health insurance but the private sector provides health care and we reject the “false choices” of those who insist we must choose between the NHS and and pure laissez faire.

Alternatively, you can define as your left pole a system like Canada’s where the government provides everyone with insurance and bans private health insurance, leaving the centrist alternative a system like France’s where the government provides everyone with insurance and then lets you buy additional insurance on top of the baseline from the private sector. Everyone can play this game.

France seems to fall between the poles either way.

“Hillarycare,” btw, was based on the German system according to Ezra Klein. It sounds way complicated.

Until we get a progressive majority in Washington ’twill all be but a dream. But in the meantime, just remember that it’s possible for a rightie to see the light and realize the U.S. system isn’t that great, after all. All it takes is for the rightie to lose his health insurance.

Iraq Shellac

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We learned yesterday from Insight, a Moonie Times publication, that for some time President Bush has cleared his plate of all issues except Iraq and the 2006 midterm elections. Everything else is entirely delegated. This is why, Insight reports, that Bush didn’t know anything about the Dubai ports deal until it hit the news.

Considering that his involvement with Iraq consists mostly of denying reality, and that most of his party thinks he is dragging down their midterm election chances, this pretty much means he’s not doing anything substantive at all. We don’t have a functioning president in the White House. ‘Course, we haven’t had one since January 2001; what else is new?

Speaking of presidential voids and Iraq — behind the NY Times subscription firewall today is a powerhouse of an article by David C. Unger. So far I haven’t found an alternative source for this article so that non-subscribers can read it, but I’ll keep looking. In the meantime, I’ll quote from it substantially —

If America had taken the trouble to learn more about Iraq before invading it in 2003, a lot of the problems we face there today could have been avoided. In fact, had the right questions been asked and answered accurately, the invasion might have been canceled before it began. For example, if the Bush administration had spent more time poring over the actual findings of American intelligence agencies, they might have realized then what almost everyone acknowledges today — that Iraq’s most dangerous weapons programs had been effectively shut down by sanctions and inspections, and that Baghdad was not helping Al Qaeda and had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.

But … but … but … (the righties blubber), everybody thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. So if Bush was wrong, he can’t be blamed because everybody else was wrong too.

Matthew Barganier (hat tip to Avedon) argues that “The whole WMD construct was a fraud” and that anyone who argued that Saddam Hussein might not have had WMD was in the position of having to prove a negative. On the other hand, before the invasion the Bushies (under the direction of Dick the Dick) were working on the assumption that there were WMDs, so any evidence to the contrary was self-evidently wrong. In fact, by the time of the invasion it was pretty much universally accepted (except by American righties) that Saddam had no nuclear program, and most of the world (except for American righties) was far from certain he had anything else.

[Update: See also Murray Waas, “What Bush Was Told About Iraq.”)

If the United States had not invaded, Saddam Hussein would still be a headache for American policymakers and a nightmare for the Iraqi people. But in many ways, things would be much better. The United States would not have the bulk of its ground forces tied down in a stalemated counter-insurgency war. Iraq would not be teetering on the brink of a civil war that could ignite much of the Middle East. And Iran, which has emerged as the most worrisome threat in the region, would not have the benefit of client Shiite fundamentalist parties tightening their grip over Iraq oilfields and providing Tehran with the added security insurance of a friendly western frontier.

Lots of other people knowledgeable about terrorism have made this same argument. Michael Scheuer, for example, went so far as to say that “Without a doubt, in the war against al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein was one of our best allies.” Saddam had no intention of helping the U.S. in any way, but the fact is that al Qaeda could not operate freely in area Saddam controlled, because Saddam didn’t trust them. In furthering his own interests he furthered ours. That is, until we deposed him and left a nice power vacuum for al Qaeda to help fill.

Unger goes on to “10 Questions That Should Have Been Asked Before the Invasion,” which he lists and discusses. I’m going to list the questions but skip the discussions–

1. What would Iraq look like without Saddam Hussein?
2. Regime change or nation-building?
3. How many American troops would be needed, and for how long?
4. What about safeguarding Iraqi weapons arsenals?
5. And what about sealing the borders?
6. Would Iraq hold together as a unified state?
7. What could the British experience teach us?
8. How do we get and keep the Iraqi people on our side?
9. Once a post-Baathist Iraq took shape, how would it fit into the map of the Middle East?
10. More specifically, would invading Iraq make Iran more or less of a regional threat?

As I said, Unger provides three or four paragraphs answering each question, but if you’ve been paying much attention at all to Iraq you already know what most of the answers are.

Then he goes on to “10 Questions That Should Have Been Asked Since the Invasion.”

1. Where were the flowers?
2. Where were the Chalabi voters?
3. What can stop the looting (and the erosion of American credibility that accompanied it)?
4. Once the original game plan for political transition collapsed amid the looting and growing Iraqi ill-will , what might have been a more realistic Plan B?
5. What’s more important, on-time elections or inclusive elections?
6. Who are America’s natural allies in Iraq?
7. What would it take to get more international support?
8. What could be done to minimize the damage from the Abu Ghraib torture scandal?
9. What kind of Iraqi security forces should we be building?
10. Again — how many United States troops will be needed, and for how long?

Again, Unger provides discussion with each question; I am just listing the questions. The overall point here is that the Bush Administration either never honestly confronted these question or did so months too late to do anything constructive about them.

Finally Unger gets to “5 Questions That Should Be Asked Now.” This time he doesn’t give answers, but throws these questions at readers. Sometime in the future the NY Times will publish a selection of the answers.

1. Where should the United States draw the line on giving full military support to an Iraqi government that insists on being sectarian, vengeful and non-inclusive?

2. What can Washington to do to mitigate the advantages it is handing Iran by aligning itself with Iraq’s most pro-Iranian parties?

3. Should Washington give up on the idea of holding Iraq together as a single nation and accept an equitable partition of territory and resources as the best remaining hope for avoiding civil war?

4. If civil war cannot be avoided, should American troops stay in Iraq and risk getting caught in the crossfire in the hope of limiting the carnage, the regional repercussions and the effects on world oil markets?

5. In the long run, would the United States be better off holding out for something it can call “peace with honor” or would it be better to cut our losses by announcing an exit strategy and brokering the best deal we can?

These are hard questions, and you know that the President is not considering these questions at all. You can see that if you read the transcript of his most recent Iraq speech. He’s not even close to forming these questions, never mind answering them.

In other Iraq news, Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder reports that “American forces have dramatically increased airstrikes in Iraq during the past five months.” This is something Seymour Hersh predicted would happen awhile back. Tim Grieve at Salon looks at poll numbers that show Americans no longer believe what Bush says about Iraq.

And do not miss this Dan Froomkin column —

Yesterday brought two strong signs that even as Bush is trying — and failing — to placate the public about Iraq, he’s increasingly keen to focus attention on a new villain: Iran. …

… But if Bush’s ability to govern, in either Iraq or his own country, has been overestimated at times, the same cannot be said for his ability to campaign and stoke a nation to war.

A Bush who appears embattled, defensive and quite possibly overwhelmed inevitably leads to lower and lower public approval ratings.

But White House aides are abundantly aware that there’s something about the image of a fearless American president boldly kicking butt that seems to fill the public with an enthusiasm that transcends even the issue of whose butt it may be.

Democrats

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Today’s headlines — “Democrats Beat Quick Retreat on Call to Censure President“; “Feingold Draws Little Support for Censure“; “Democratic leaders shy away from censure plan” — tell the familiar story of one brave Dem sticking his neck out — for truth, justice, and the American Way — followed by the rest of the party running for the bomb shelters.

ReddHedd at firedoglake (which is having technical problems today, but it’s on this archive page somewhere) quoted this quote from Donna Brazile in today’s Roll Call (Subscription required):

The message from the left-leaning blogosphere is clear: Democrats should understand the real issue. The point is not censure or impeachment; it is Congress’s lack of oversight and its failure to hold anyone accountable for major mistakes or missteps. And especially, it’s about clearly misleading the American public. From faulty pre-war intelligence to the negligent response to Hurricane Katrina and the unjustified cost for Medicare prescription drug benefits, there has been no meaningful oversight by the GOP-controlled Congress. It is doubtful whether they would be willing to hear evidence against the president. While the Feingold resolution is not going anywhere given the full Republican control of Washington, D.C., a change in leadership in the fall would make this a ripe item for conversation and action in 2007 and beyond…. Oversight is a fundamental responsibility of Congress, which until the Republicans took over was a coequal branch of government. It’s long past time for the Republican Congress — and in particular the House and Senate Intelligence committees — to stop protecting the administration and start doing more to protect the American people. The 2006 political campaign season, which is under way across America, will truly come down to a test of wills. If my party’s leaders, whom I admire and respect, cannot figure out three things this electoral season that the GOP will use as wedge issues to distract and divide — Iraq, the war on terror and national security, and cultural issues like abortion and same-sex marriage — then my party finally will have earned its minority status.

A few days ago a commenter to Mahablog said, in effect, that reading about the awfulness of the Bush Administration is entertaining, but when are you going to do something to get rid of him? Well, here’s something we can do. We can support Russ Feingold by sending him our thanks. We can let our Democratic senators know we expect them to support Russ Feingold. We can send our senators the Donna Brazile quote by fax and email and carrier pigeon. We can promise them we have long memories.

And while you’re at it, help send Joe Lieberman into retirement and send a campaign contribution to Ned Lamont.

SOS II

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It’s happened again; another fragment broken loose from the brackish depths of secrecy has floated to the surface, and there for all the world to see is more proof that The Mess We’re In is not the fault of terrorists or biased news reporting or insurgents or France or Hillary Clinton’s anger and/or ambitions or playing blame games or bad message discipline or Democratic obstructionism or Michael Brown. It’s not the fault of polls or Iran or the UN or some freaky thing like the orbit of Earth around the Sun that no one could have anticipated. And you can’t blame Canada or the governor of Louisiana or Hollywood or gay marriage. Or sleep deprivation, for that matter.

This time what’s washed to shore are memos from a senior British diplomat named John Sawers, envoy to Baghdad in May and June 2003, who wrote his prime minister that the US administration of Iraq was “an unbelievable mess.”

“No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis,” Mr. Sawer said.

Sawer and others tried to warn the prime minister, but there’s a rule in Britain about not pissing in the Atlantic. Just like so many of us wrote truckloads of letters to our senators in October 2002 — don’t pass that resolution — but there’s a rule among Washington Democrats about not pissing on the rose garden.

So everybody says yes, Mr. President, and then they go home and close their eyes and get plastered. Because what comes next is too painful to watch. It’s always too painful to watch.