“Division and Accusation”

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Howard Fineman made some interesting remarks last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Yeah, I know, it’s Howard Fineman, but he did make some points. Really! Check out this truncated bit of the transcript, with obligatory “Democrats are just as bad” content removed:

OLBERMANN: Is it possible that we‘re overstating how bad those poll numbers are for the president? Is there some silver lining in there that we have overlooked?

FINEMAN: I don‘t think so. I was talking to a Republican today, a top strategist, who said, you know, he hasn‘t seen numbers like this since he‘s been in the game, which is quite some time. … what‘s happened to the president is that his numbers for honesty, honesty have crumbled, and just as important, his backing by the core Republican Party has begun to crumble as well.

So without the reputation for personal honesty and character, and without the hardcore support of his own Republicans, he‘s in deep trouble, probably is glad he‘s getting out of the country for a while.

OLBERMANN: The effort to get himself out of the deep trouble began, obviously, on Veterans Day, on Friday, in Pennsylvania, where Mr. Bush began this campaign to rehab his image by essentially accusing anybody who was critical of the war in Iraq or of how it started, or perhaps of even looking, investigating this question of prewar intelligence, of being deeply irresponsible.

We just heard tonight, in Alaska, he did exactly the same thing, used exactly the same analogies. Is there any indication yet that the strategy is working for him, either within his own party or within the public as a whole?

FINEMAN: No, I don‘t think so. And the numbers are so bad now that they‘re not going to be turned around by that kind of thing.

But he has two additional problems. First of all, he accepted bipartisanship when the war was gearing up. But he didn‘t really seek it out. He didn‘t really make bipartisanship, the notion of politics ending at the water‘s edge, the hallmark of his policy. It was sort of my way or the highway. And, you know, a majority of the Democrats, not all Democrats, but a majority of the Democrats in the Senate went along.

The other part of the problem he‘s got is, what he‘s really implicitly saying is, We went to war for the wrong reason. But the Democrats made the same mistake I made.

So it‘s a negative argument, not a positive argument. Not to mention the fact that he‘s essentially accusing Democrats practically of disloyalty when he says that they are sending, quote, “mixed signals” to the troops. That‘s one stop short of saying that they‘re undercutting the war effort.

OLBERMANN: That other key element to the strategy, the—well, the Democrats also believed this. He even invoked John Kerry‘s name last week, which makes Iraq sound not like Vietnam but like the Spanish-American War, Remember the “Maine,” and damn the torpedoes, and we‘ll find out later if they really attacked us.

Is it smart to be debating your election opponent a year after you have won the election?

FINEMAN: … I think a better strategy for George W. Bush, rather than to pick a fight when he‘s in this bad of a political position, is to look for some common ground.

But George Bush has never operated as a political leader, nor has his strategist, Karl Rove, by the search for common ground. Instead, they‘ve operated by division and accusation. And that is really going to, I think, dig them in deeper here. But that seems to be the policy they‘re pursuing.

OLBERMANN: Confound your enemies and entertain your friends by (INAUDIBLE), try to, trying to breach some sort of peace with the other side. It would be at least a novel approach.

I honestly believe that if Bush could get out of his “Oh, yeah? Well, you stink worse” mode and try to work with Congress, including Democratic members, to create a real exit strategy with authentic bipartisan support, I think Bush’s poll numbers might stop falling. They might even go back up a tad. I think lots of fallen-away Bush supporters would rally to him if he could show he is bringing order out of chaos. I emphasize that for this to work he’s got to produce tangible results that people can see, particularly a substantial reduction in violence.

But instead what we get with Bush are glib phrases (e.g., as they stand up we’ll stand down) and empty promises that after (Saddam is captured; sovereignty is transferred; elections are held) everything will get better.

The benchmarks pass, and it’s not getting better.

Instead Bush’s Iraq policy is just drifting along, directionless, and I think people are realizing that. (This is something I want to write about in more detail in a future post, but for examples I recommend “Why Iraq Has No Army” by James Fallows in the current edition of Atlantic Monthly. Unfortunately if you are not a subscriber you’ll probably have to buy a copy. But Fallows’s latest entry at The Huffington Post is really good, too, and you can read that online.)

Congress is stepping into the leadership void that Bush refuses to fill. For example, Bloomberg reports:

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Senate opened debate today on measures that would put the chamber on record for the first time asking President George W. Bush to set limits for keeping American troops in Iraq.

The Bush administration “needs to explain to Congress and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the mission,” say resolutions introduced separately by both Republicans and Democrats.

Both parties also would require that Iraq’s rival political factions be told they must make the compromises necessary to achieve a stable government, united against the insurgency, which will allow U.S. troops to leave.

[Update: for today’s developments, click here.]

Bush probably doesn’t like Congress stepping on what he sees as his turf. But if he would step up, I ‘spect Congress would step down.

Instead we get division and accusation, because that’s all we ever get from Bush. And apparently he doesn’t know any other way to “lead.”

For more of Bush’s “my way or the highway” mode, see today’s E.J. Dionne column.

Update: See also today’s Dan Froomkin column.

Inspect This

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George W. Bush did something brilliant in 2002 that he doesn’t talk about now. In fact, he and his supporters try to pretend it never happened.

The “something” was getting UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq. As a result of George W. Bush’s saber rattling, in September 2002 Saddam Hussein had agreed to allow inspections for the first time since 1998. In August 1998 Saddam Hussein suspended cooperation with the weapons inspection teams. The inspectors left the country in December 1998 hours before the United States and United Kingdom began three days of air strikes.

In our current argument about whether “everybody was wrong” about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, there’s hardly ever a mention of the weapons inspections. Considering that the UN inspectors were the ones with the most up-to-date information at the time of the invasion in March 2003, I think it’s important to look at what the UN believed in the run-up to the war..

And the fact is that the UN didn’t agree with Bush at all. Continue reading →

The Empire Strikes Back

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The White House posted a rebuttal to yesterday’s Washington Post article, “Asterisks Dot White House’s Iraq Argument” by Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus.

It’s late and I’m not up to deconstructing the White House effort at this hour. I see Stirling Newberry, Matthew Yglesias, and World o’ Crap have already done the job, fortunately.

But I’m pleased the Bushies are responding directly and openly, if not factually, to criticism instead of just spreading rumors that Dana Milbank is a cross-dresser. Karl Rove must still be preoccupied.

Not Like Vietnam

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The U.S. military broadened its offensive in western Iraq on Monday, launching a major attack on insurgent positions in the town of Ubaydi near the Syrian border and killing about 50 insurgents in precision airstrikes and house-to-house street fighting, according to news reports and the U.S. military.

U.S. and Iraqi troops reportedly faced stiff resistance from machine-gun and small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. — John Ward Anderson, Washington Post

See? Not like Vietnam. We used to call this “escalation,” not “broadening.”

A New New Low

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On CNN, Wolf Blitzer is talking about new approval poll numbers for President Bush that are even lower than last week’s. Details when I find them online.

Update: Here we are; just posted.

Beset with an unpopular war and an American public increasingly less trusting, President Bush faces the lowest approval rating of his presidency, according to a national poll released Monday.

Bush’s 37 percent overall approval rating was two percentage points below his ranking in an October survey. Both polls had a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Sixty percent of the 1,006 adult Americans interviewed by telephone Friday through Sunday said they disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president.

… For the first time, less than half — 48 percent — of those surveyed said they approved of how the president was handling the war on terror. Forty-nine percent said they disapprove.

In November 2001, Bush had an 87 percent overall approval mark and an 86 percent rating on terrorism.

Sixty percent said it was not worth going to war in Iraq, while 38 percent said it was worthwhile. The question was asked of about half of those surveyed and had a margin of error of five percentage points. The results marked a decline in support of seven percentage points from two months earlier….

When asked about his abilities, 49 percent of those surveyed said he was a strong president and 49 percent said he was a weak leader.

About 50 percent of people polled said they disliked Bush, with 6 percent claiming to hate the president.

Oh, my goodness, it gets better …

When asked in the new poll if they trust Bush more than they had Clinton, 48 percent of respondents said they trusted Bush less [than Clinton], while 36 percent said they trusted him more and 15 percent said they trusted Bush the same as Clinton.

For the first time, more than half of the public thinks Bush is not honest and trustworthy — 52 percent to 46 percent. …

…In the poll, 56 percent of registered voters said they would be likely to vote against a local candidate supported by Bush, while 34 percent said the opposite.

Only 9 percent said their first choice in next year’s elections would be a Republican who supports Bush on almost every major issue.

Forty-six percent said the country would be better off if Congress were controlled by Democrats, while 34 percent backed a GOP majority.

Update update: Steve Soto says, “Drink a beer to the next cultist GOP incumbent you see on Fox who swears loyalty to Bush and his agenda, because that sorry bastard will be out of a job next year.” Heh.

Help Lorie Byrd

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Lorie Byrd of the rightie blog PoliPundit writes,

Chris Matthews spent the last few minutes of the program talking about how important it is to find out whether or not the President and Vice President lied about pre-war intelligence and how important it is that the Senate investigate this. He said that the administration promised us that there would be WMD found, that Saddam had a nuclear weapons program, that we would be greeted as liberators, that the war would cost nothing because it would be paid for entirely by Iraqi war revenue and that if we invaded Iraq we would have cheap gas. Then he went on to declare that nothing we were promised was true.

I am sorry but I missed those “promises.”

This is the sort of thing I love to plunge into, but I’ve got a lot of chores scheduled for today and I’m already into the planning phase of another post. But if some of you readers want to help, pick one or more of the promises and find a link that documents where Bush and/or Cheney made the promise. Thanks much!

Update: See “So you want details about who lied” by retired Air Force major James Bruner in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Update update: PoliPundit Readers: I know you are all eager to explain to me that Bill Clinton believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs in 1998. Please note that (1) only a flaming idiot starts a war in 2003 based on what somebody thought in 1998; and (2) in February 2003, a month before the invasion, UN weapons inspectors in Iraq were publicly stating that US intelligence on Iraq WMDs was “garbage.”

Yes, they said “garbage.” They said other things too, I understand, that couldn’t be printed. You can read about this here.

We Have Met the Enemy …

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M. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks, professors of law and bioethics, write in today’s New York Times that U.S. interrogators have adopted methods once used in Communist countries to obtain “confessions.”

The Pentagon effectively signed off on a strategy that mimics Red Army methods. But those tactics were not only inhumane, they were ineffective. For Communist interrogators, truth was beside the point: their aim was to force compliance to the point of false confession.

Fearful of future terrorist attacks and frustrated by the slow progress of intelligence-gathering from prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Pentagon officials turned to the closest thing on their organizational charts to a school for torture. That was a classified program at Fort Bragg, N.C., known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Based on studies of North Korean and Vietnamese efforts to break American prisoners, SERE was intended to train American soldiers to resist the abuse they might face in enemy custody.

The Pentagon appears to have flipped SERE’s teachings on their head, mining the program not for resistance techniques but for interrogation methods. At a June 2004 briefing, the chief of the United States Southern Command, Gen. James T. Hill, said a team from Guantánamo went “up to our SERE school and developed a list of techniques” for “high-profile, high-value” detainees. General Hill had sent this list – which included prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical assault and the exploitation of detainees’ phobias – to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who approved most of the tactics in December 2002.

Continue reading →

“Pure Hate”

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Must read opinion piece in today’s Washington Post — “Facing The Reality Of Choice” by Marie Myung-Ok Lee.

The author–40, married, one child–suffered from “blighted ovum,” a type of miscarriage that develops when a fertilized egg implants in the uturus but does not develop. “Instead,” the author writes, “there was no one home inside my womb, only an empty gestational sac and hormones, somehow tricked, careening inside me.”

Instead of waiting weeks to be admitted to a hospital, Mrs. Lee decided to go to a Planned Parenthood clinic to have the contents of her uturus removed.

But, while politically pro-choice, I didn’t think that my situation had anything to do with the whole abortion debate, and so I put it out of my mind, so much so that when my husband and I drove to Planned Parenthood the morning of the procedure and found our car immediately surrounded by gesturing people, we both thought, “How nice of the Planned Parenthood people to make sure we knew where to park.”

As I exited the car like some kind of odd celebrity, I wasn’t prepared for the older woman who shoved her face an inch from mine and screamed that I was murdering my baby. I wasn’t prepared for the looks of pure hate, no, the looks that could kill. I seem to vaguely recall being warned not to make eye contact, but I did, and I saw what I thought was someone who would gladly murder me to keep me from entering the clinic.

“What baby?” I blurted. Then a real Planned Parenthood escort took my arm, told me not to talk to them and led me inside. The two minutes had felt like a siege.

The article is somewhat marred by the obligatory “balance”–

Both sides of the debate are so heavily sunk into their bunkers. On one side, it seems monstrous that a handful of people, mostly men, decide on a procedure that involves, criminalizes and punishes women, and I know there are conservative, Republican, so-called pro-life women who feel they sit on the morally superior side but then end up having an abortion for the same reasons we pro-choice women are driven to it. But pro-choice people must also acknowledge somewhere in their hearts that this procedure is not the moral equivalent of merely surgically removing tissue.

I believe most pro-choice people, especially those who are parents, do acknowledge somewhere in their hearts that this procedure is not the moral equivalent of merely surgically removing tissue. But short of going around in sackcloth and ashes, exactly how are we supposed to communicate to the world that, yes, it’s not just surgically removing tissue. We understand. But if we say it’s a personal choice, then it’s a personal choice, and unlike the haters outside the clinics we don’t go about butting into other people’s personal choices.

That said, I think it would be wonderful if we could be open and honest about our choices. Mrs. Lee mentions that in Japan there are shrines for aborted and miscarried children, and mothers can go there to openly express their grief without being judged or condemned. That could never happen here. If the Fetus People were to catch wind of a shrine like that, by the next day they’d have it surrounded so they could harrass anyone who showed up to mourn.

Justice Goes the Way of FEMA

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Dan Eggen writes in today’s Washington Post:

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which has enforced the nation’s anti-discrimination laws for nearly half a century, is in the midst of an upheaval that has driven away dozens of veteran lawyers and has damaged morale for many of those who remain, according to former and current career employees.

Nearly 20 percent of the division’s lawyers left in fiscal 2005, in part because of a buyout program that some lawyers believe was aimed at pushing out those who did not share the administration’s conservative views on civil rights laws. Longtime litigators complain that political appointees have cut them out of hiring and major policy decisions, including approvals of controversial GOP redistricting plans in Mississippi and Texas.

None of us alive today will live long enough to see all the damage corrected that the Bushies have done.

At the same time, prosecutions for the kinds of racial and gender discrimination crimes traditionally handled by the division have declined 40 percent over the past five years, according to department statistics. Dozens of lawyers find themselves handling appeals of deportation orders and other immigration matters instead of civil rights cases.

Get this:

The Bush administration has filed only three lawsuits — all of them this year — under the section of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits discrimination against minority voters, and none of them involves discrimination against blacks. The initial case was the Justice Department’s first reverse-discrimination lawsuit, accusing a majority-black county in Mississippi of discriminating against white voters.

Why are we not surprised?

Steve Soto:

This is your Bush Justice Department at work, five years along now, ignoring votings rights and race, age, and sex discrimination cases against employers in favor of directing its Civil Rights Division staff towards deportation cases. In other words, Bush is turning a blind eye to the original mission of the division, and pleasing his corporate check-writers in the process, by having newly hired and more ideological attorneys pursue politically-driven immigration and deportation cases. These cases don’t deal with the civil rights of our citizens, and should be handled by attorneys elsewhere in the federal government. …

The administration’s defense is that each administration gets to do what it wants, as it reflects the voters’ preferences. Really? I don’t remember voters telling us that they support letting Big Business dump older white workers to be replaced with younger cheaper staff. I don’t remember voters telling us that they want the concerns of women and minority workers ignored. And I don’t remember voters telling us that they want voting rights cases ignored either. Yet that is what the Ashcroft and Abu Gonzales Justice Departments have been doing

DemFromCT says,

We hurt ourselves when we give up the moral high ground. It’s a theme that you can’t repeat enough. We see it in arguments about terror and torture, about Abu Ghraib and “tough treatment” (e.g. waterboarding). We’ve begun to see it in arguments about immigration (think Minutemen). And this administration, led by Cheney and his new chief of staff, have led us down (not up) in these last five years.

To a rightie, “moral high ground” is “whatever I feel like doing must be right, ’cause Jesus loves me.”

The only saving grace is that the incompetence of many of the Bush appointees prevents the complete control of the levers, but (alas) this seems to be the one thing they’re actually good at. And the trust issue at some under the surface level is wrapped up with this as well. If you don’t hold the moral high ground, how can you trust the President in wartime or disaster time or at any time?

Just Don’t Call It Torture

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And we know for a fact that information wrung from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others has helped prevent further attacks on U.S. soil.

The quote above is from an editorial in Opinion Journal defending torture. Like most rightie “facts,” this fact was born from faith rather than from evidence. Let’s look at what we actually do know.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in March 2003. It is alleged that KSM is being held in a “ghost” prison, possibly in Jordan, so that CIA interrogators can use “interrogation methods that are banned by US law.”

Sounds like he might have been tortured, yes. On the other hand, our President says we do not torture. Is the Opinion Journal editorial writer assuming that Bush lies? (Snort)

So, we don’t know for a fact that KSM was tortured, but for argument’s sake let’s assume he was. Did torturing KSM really provide information that “helped prevent further attacks on U.S. soil?” According to the White House’s own reckoning, one terrorist plot has been foiled on U.S. soil since KSM was captured, which was “to attack targets on the East Coast of the United States using hijacked commercial airplanes.” We have no way to know if “interrogating” KSM provided any information about that one plot. And we have no way to know if that one plot really was a plot and not a figment of John Ashcroft’s overheated imagination.

To give credit where credit is due, according to this Washington Post article KSM was behind a thwarted attempt to bomb London’s Heathrow Airport in mid-2003. And below the White House list of ten “plots” is a list of five “casings and infiltrations,” one of which (#2, collecting information on U.S. gas stations) involved KSM, according to WaPo. But we have no way to know from information made public so far how these “plots” or “casings” were uncovered, and we have to take on faith these were serious plots (or “casings,” as the case may be).

But the White House’s claims of attacks prevented on U.S. soil are a tad sketchy, and even if we assume these were all real plots that really were prevented, we don’t know for a fact where the intelligence came from that helped stop them. It could just as easily have come from standard law-enforcement type practices (e.g., wiretaps etc.) as from “interrogations.” Continue reading →