NOTE TO READERS:

In the two posts below, we gave them the title "Can you smell the fear?", which was our reaction to hearing both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Unlike their usual, confident demeanor, they seemed to us to be frantic when discussing the Plame scandal. Unfortunately, that excitable tone is not easy to pick up when reading the transcripts. But it's there (especially for Hannity).

posted by Quiddity at 9/30/2003 08:17:00 PM

Can you smell the fear? (part 2)

This was a call in Limbaugh's 3^rd hour: (there were several times when crosstalk made it difficult to hear what was said)

LIMBAUGH: Before moving on let me get this call from Amityville, New York. It's Frank. Welcome Frank, I'm glad you held on through the break.

FRANK: Yeah Rush, I want to say something. I object to the fact that you're treating the act of outing the cover of a CIA spy as a nothing. I think it was a dastardly act. The person who did it put the woman and her informants in danger. It was obviously used to threaten anyone who might disagree with the administration. You say the investigation would take a year or more. Why?

LIMBAUGH: Wait, wait, wait. Hold it. Wait a minute. Just a second. I did not say - I am the one starting yesterday Frank -

FRANK: You said it would take the prosecutor a year. I just heard you.

LIMBAUGH: Will you let me finish. I'm the one who knows where my sentences are going. I said yesterday and today that it is serious and that Bush had better treat it as such or else conservatives will be upset with him for the law has been broken here. I am not treating this as something unserious and trying to sweep it under the rug. What I am saying is that the guy who got all this started, Robert Novak, has now come out and said he didn't get the leak from the White House. It didn't come from the Bush administration. Where ever it came from, it's not there. The Democrats are paying no attention to that and they are focusing on the White House and on Bush and now they want an independent prosecutor, council, to find out. There is really no story beyond that.

FRANK: Well, somebody's got to be caught doing this. It was a terrible thing that was done. And it must have been done by somebody very highly -

LIMBAUGH: I just had a story. It happens fifty times a year.

FRANK: (unintelligible)

LIMBAUGH: Yes, the Justice Department is asked by the CIA fifty times a year to investigate such leaks.

FRANK: But this was obviously to threaten Wilson and anyone else who would do it.

LIMBAUGH: His own biography mentions his wife's name. It wasn't Novak that divulged anything that wasn't already known. By the way, you said this was a dastardly deed. A dastardly act. And listen to this quote from New York senator Chuck Shumer. "There is a clear conflict of interest for the Justice Department. What's gone on in this case is one of the most dastardly, despicable things I've seen in my more than twenty years in Washington, and speaks to the lengths that some will go to stifle dissent." Holy smoley! So this is the worst that he's seen? One of the most dastardly, despicable things? Frank, is that where you got the word "dastardly" because you heard Chuck Shumer use it?

FRANK: No, I came up with it myself. I didn't hear Chuck Shumer say that.

LIMBAUGH: I don't believe you.

FRANK: You may not but (unintelligible)

LIMBAUGH: Well who would come up with this word? This is not a word that the normal, average person would (unintelligible)

FRANK: (unintelligible)

LIMBAUGH: No, you heard Shumer say this. I can tell.

FRANK: No, I can see why he used it. That's exactly what it came to me. How dastardly could it be?

LIMBAUGH: It's not dastardly, that's why.

FRANK: Risking a person's life?

LIMBAUGH: This doesn't approach Watergate. This doesn't go beyond Watergate. This happens fifty times a year. This doesn't approach the level of seriousness you think it is.

FRANK: No, it's not Watergate, it's (unintelligible) all his buddies.

LIMBAUGH: This does not rise to the level of dastardly.

FRANK: (laughs)

LIMBAUGH: It simply doesn't. You know, you guys, you're just dying out there. You're just hoping it becomes this, but it's not.

FRANK: Why was it done? Answer me that Rush.

LIMBAUGH: I don't know yet why it was done. You think it was done to put her life in danger?

FRANK: Rushie, you can tell us (unintelligible)

LIMBAUGH: If you want me to guess? I'll be happy to guess. But you tell me, why do you think it was done? You think it was done to put this woman's life in danger?

FRANK: I think it was done to show that if you mess with this administration and disagree with it, you're going to pay the price.

LIMBAUGH: The administration didn't leak it.

FRANK: I didn't say the White House did. Someone who is very well connected had to. It wasn't something that came (unintelligible)

[crosstalk]

LIMBAUGH: It could have come from the CIA, Frank.

FRANK: Then why did they ask them to investigate it?

LIMBAUGH: I'm just saying it could have come from the CIA. In fact, it might have. It may well have come from the CIA.

FRANK: Well then the FBI better get on it and find out.

LIMBAUGH: The FBI, Interpol, and Independent Council Inspector Clouseau, let's get everybody on this.

FRANK: Well, it's quite easy if six reporters were contacted, you just go ask them. I mean it's not -

LIMBAUGH: Why won't Wilson tell us who those reporters are?

FRANK: Well, go to the Washington Post, they weem to know it.

LIMBAUGH: So why won't anybody tell us who they are? What's the need to keep them secret?

FRANK: Well, if this act has been done, and it's breaking the law, the FBI should investigate it. Maybe it is the CIA. That makes the CIA in charge of a cover-up (unintelligible)

LIMBAUGH: Yeah, people would love that if the CIA (unintelligible)

FRANK: I think it's a dastardly act, that's all.

LIMBAUGH: It's a dastardly act. It's devilishly dastardly. It's horrible. It's rotten. It's the worst thing that's ever happened in Washington. We've got to get to the bottom of it, otherwise our democracy might not survive.

And Frank's gone. Hello? Hello? Testing, Frank. Hello?

He hung up.

He said dastardly on the way out.

Some real dastardly dastards. They're on the prowl out there.

You want to talk about dastardly? How about advising and consenting on judges? How about dastardly being filibustering judicial nominees, Frankie? How about dastardly being the shredding of the Constitution. Everybody knows that it is a simple majority vote that confirms judicial nominees to courts. In the appellate court, the district court, the Supreme Court. And yet the Democrats filibustered. Miguel Estrada was confirmed to the D.C. court of appeals by - By less than four times he got well over fifty-one, but he's not on the court because they filibustered and he needed sixty. Not in the Constitution. Rather dastardly.

Accusing the president of fraud. That's sort of dastardly, don't you think? Let's have an independent council investigation into Chappaquiddick. Let's have an investigation here of Ted Kennedy who'se accusing this president of making it all up in Texas. The whole war with Iraq was a fraud. Nothing more than a political tool. So says Ted Kennedy. That's pretty dastardly if you ask me. Calling the president a miserable failure in the midst of a war where American soldiers are dying. I'd say that's pretty dastardly, Frank.

Saying "Don't question my patriotism". When you bash the president on the war. You spent three years bashing the president for everything else. You're trying to redefine patriotism so that it is not what it genuinely is. You want patriotism to be redefined as nothing more than the attacking of the president during war. That's pretty dastardly to me, Frank.

And Hillary holding up the cover of the New York Post on the floor of the Senate - that cover said "Bush knew" that 9/11 was going to happen in advance. And Hillary Clinton saying "What did he know and when did he know it?" That's pretty dastardly, Frank. The Democrats in this country accusing George Bush of knowing the 9/11 attack was going to happen beforehand and letting it happen. That's pretty dastardly, folks.

I can give you ongoing lists of true dastardly things by a bunch of genuine dastards. And not one of them would include a leak of the name of a woman whose name was already in the public domain.

Why was it in the public domain? Because her name was on her husband's biography.

It's not dastardly. You people are grasping at straws. You're reaching.

And I know this is just the first phase of this. There's going to be more to come.

And how about refusing three times when the Sudanese offered Osama bin Laden to the Clinton administration? The Clinton administration turned down that invitation, that offer, three times. Osama bin Laden could have been in one of our jails, but no, he was free to roam the plains, the hills, the caves, of wherever, to plot what happened on 9/11. Pretty dastardly, Frank.

And let's see, who was it that was actually sanctioned and kicked off the Senate Intelligence Committee for leaking information about our administration and country to Lybia. Or to somebody ti the press about Lybia. None other than Patrick Leahy. Pretty dastardly, Frank. And as we've documented already today, the Torch - Bob Toricelli, leaking information that was classified. Pretty dastardly. What do the Democrats do in those cases? Just ignore it. Try to say it was no big deal. And by the way, folks, can I remind you of this. When the Kenneth Starr Independent Councsel, Lewinsky, Whitewater and all that, was all wrapped up, remember the Democrats and the Republicans - but the Democrats talking how they aren't going to renew the Independent Counsel law. They're not going to do it. And both parties agreed, no more Independent Counsel. Things got out of hand.

Guess they changed their mind overnight. Guess they changed their minds over the weekend 'cause they're out there demanding an Independent Counsel, after just two or three years ago, essentially saying they wanted no part anymore of Independent Counsels.

Why, there's a lot of pretty dastardly stuff going on out there, Frank.

But it ain't this leak.

Dastardly? Bit of a stretch.

NOTE: To reassure readers that the transcript above is accurate, we make the audio available for a limited time (about one week) here. It is a 5.8 meg .wav file (8bit, 8KHz sample rate, mono).

UPDATE: This exchange is featured on Rush Limbaugh's website, on a page entitled Want Some Examples Of Dastardly, Frankie?

posted by Quiddity at 9/30/2003 06:39:00 PM

Can you smell the fear?

This was the opening ten-minute monologue by Sean Hannity at the beginning of his 2^nd hour: (no emphasis added, even though he was strident throughout)

Hello. How are you. Welcome aboard. Thank you for tuning in. Glad you're with us. Write down our toll-free telephone number. By the way Tom McClintock was going to be on today but had to get on a plane. He's going to be on tomorrow. And we look forward to that. 800-941-SEAN if you want to be part of the program.

We've got to deal with this last caller.

I'm telling you what's going on here is Democrats and they're lying and saying oh I'm a conservative, I'm a Reagan guy. Every time I hear that I want to puke 'cause I know it's a lie. I just don't believe these people.

But with all that said and done, it doesn't matter. Robert Novak could not have been more clear in what it was that he was trying to say. "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this."

Let me just repeat, "Nobody in the Bush administration". Here he is, a reporter, in that statement he is denying it was the White House. He does say, "I was interviewing a senior administration official". "Administration" being the entire government of George W. Bush, but not the White House. He was crystal clear in saying that it was not the White House.

The allegation about the White House is absolutely, fundamentally inaccurate. Not true. The executive branch. And he's clear in what he's saying when he's saying it wasn't that, in other words. And on the other side of this he's not going to give up his sources. This guy's been a reporter now for forty-plus years. He's not going to go out there and give up his sources and say who told him what.

Now look, if Andrea Mitchell is one of the quote "six reporters" Joe Wilson keeps telling us about, if there are five others that he can name, well let's get on with it. Because this can all be resolved in five minutes. All they have to do is come out and say who the person was that called them. There's no confidential source there. If somebody is peddling some type of story or some type of smear campaign - if in fact that were true - we'll let's get it on the record. All they have to do is go on the record and say who it was that called them from the White House and the issue is going to be solved. But I'm telling you, I don't think they'll be able to do it, because it's that simple and if they could do it they would do it. And if it was Karl Rove, it would have been out by now.

It's not Karl Rove in spite of the allegations by Joe Wilson and everybody.

Folks, if you sense frustration in my voice, this is cumulative for me. And we have now been bombarded with months of this nonstop Hate-George-W-Bush-campaign. I am sick of him being called a gang leader. I'm sick of him being called a liar. I am sick of being told that he intentionally lied to the American people. I am sick of them saying that somehow we have failed in Iraq. I'm sick of them saying we've failed in Afghanistan. I am sick of them saying this country is in an economic mess when in fact the numbers keep reinforcing the aspect that we're going to have unprecedented growth in the final quarter of this year and into next year. I am just sick and tired of what you are witnessing here is a non-stop political campaign. And sadly, there are some people out there - probably not in this audience - the weak minded among us that whenever the propaganda gets retched up into whatever extent, they want to buy into the big lie.

You are looking at a non story.

The person responsible for breaking the story has confirmed it has not come from the White House. What part of that does not the media and the liberals in the Congress and in the Senate understand?

They're trying to score political points, just like Ted Kennedy is trying to score political points when he comes up with a big black helicopters theory that, in fact, "This war was concocted in Texas because the administration wanted to score political points". How does he get away with that madness? That is insanity. And the fact that he himself has talked in the past about the nature of the threat of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein.

The fact that these guys are so concerned about leaks from the White House and smear campaigns - they were silent when they went after Paula Jones and released her tax returns; Linda Tripp, when they released her personnel file; Kathleen Wiley when they released her personal correspondence to the president. None of those things mattered in the least to those people.

Yet now this has taken on a significance and importance that we need independent council after independent council.

Do you not see how transparent this is? Do you not see what it is at work here? Do you not see the campaign that has been orchestrated here? Do you not concede there has been a propaganda assault against this president because they cannot stand him. They've underestimated him. He has beaten them at every turn. The economy is turning around. He's won two wars in record time. Their predictions at every single level, every single step of the way, have been as wrong as they ever have been. And they don't want to admit they are on the wrong side of history, so this is all we've got left. This is all this party has left. Do you understand there is hardly a single substantive idea that we ever hear from these guys anymore.

How are they going to deal in a post-9/11 world, with the threat of radical Islam. The threat of fundamentalism. The threat of terrorism. What is their plan? If all they have is criticism for this president, what would they do differently? What are they going to do better on the economy besides take back your tax cut?

It is ... and I'm going to tell ya, before it is said and done, folks, there is so much at stake in this election it is only going to get worse and this is just the beginning. It's just the beginning.

And I'm going to have to find a way to reach down deep inside me and gather a little bit more patience, 'cause I've frankly had it.

We're at a point in our history where we ought to be united. We're at a point in our history where you'd like to think people understand what it is that's at stake here. We're at a point in history where - by golly - two years ago the nation came under fire in a way we never dreamed possible. And they weren't attacking liberals or conservatives, Republicans or Democrats, white, black, Hispanic. They were attacking Americans. And the idea that we don't unite even after that attack is just one sad reality, that after the president did what he had to do to combat this. He is under fire for the steps and the measures taken. That is a sad thing.

How does any American president deal with future threats, knowing what is waiting for him politically on the other side - even if he's successful. Forget about if he failed. I mean there were great risks associated with the attack against Iraq. Everything could have gone wrong. Thousands could have been dead. Chemical weapons could have been used. Perhaps even a nuke could have been dropped. Who knows? But none of that happened. We did it in record time with a minimum of casualties. We're still cleaning up the mess but life is getting back to normal - slowly but surely. And people have been freed.

But people won't recognize and give the president credit even on this. "Well, where's Osama? We didn't get Osama so he can't be successful. Saddam isn't dead, he can't be successful."

You know, what are we going to do? How does the president take further risks? What are we going to do now that Iran is now clearly building a nuclear bomb? What are we going to do? Is the president going to lay all his political capital on the line again so that he can be called a liar? So he'll be accused of concocting this in Texas? So he can bribe other nations? So he could do all these things? How do we expect him to deal with the nature of the threat when all he's going to get as a result is one political attack after another, and watch the American people's support wither away. Because clearly, there's a percentage of people in this country influenced by the non-stop haranguing and harping and demonization and propaganda and misinformation put out by liberals. It is beyond frustrating. It is sad because the risk of inaction here folks, means that our way of life is put in further jeopardy. Do you know what this does to embolden terrorists around the world, knowing that they can divide this country as strongly as they see us presently divided? Knowing that there is a battle and a struggle about whether of not we're going to confront them? Whether or not we have the will and the desire to defeat them?

It is clear in this country we do not have - there is a party, there is a group of people that do not deserve to be in power. They must be defeated politically, because if they are not it is our entire way of life that is ultimately put in jeopardy. Do you not see that? It's frustrating. I'm going to build up my patience. I have the capacity, I've done it before. Every once in a while it hits a breaking point with me and I just can't take it any more.

800-941-SEAN is our toll-free telephone number if you want to be a part of the program.

NOTE: To reassure readers that the transcript above is accurate, we make the audio available for a limited time (about one week) here. It is a 4.6 meg .wav file (8bit, 8KHz sample rate, mono).

posted by Quiddity at 9/30/2003 05:17:00 PM

Mosh pit:

There are plenty of arrows flying this way and that over the Plame scandal, and things are moving fast so it's hard to keep up to date. But you should check out Mark A. R. Kleiman's post about the muted response by the right. He's debating bloggers Instapundit and Yousefzadeh, and evaluating Clifford May's article.

Also, don't miss Sully Watch's critical review of Sullivan on the same topic.

And of course, Calpundit has a good post on the various arguments being used by conservatives to minimize the scandal, and observes that in many instances what is being argued about (by conservatives) "doesn't matter anymore".

N.B.: It is a scandal, not an affair.

posted by Quiddity at 9/30/2003 05:37:00 AM

Limbaugh on the Plame scandal:

Rush on Monday (from his website): (excerpts, emphasis added)

The media, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others are salivating over the manufactured story about the supposed leaking of former ambassador Joe Wilson's wife's name by the White House. Yet Wilson is not objective. He's an anti-Bush member of the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute, which wanted to end the no-fly zones allowing Saddam to slaughter the Kurds and Shiites - and it was known his wife worked for the CIA!

Despite the previously manufactured charge that this White House is "secretive," nothing in this administration's performance indicates it hides anything.

Manufactured story?   Supposed leaking?   How will Limbaugh be able to defend that claim after reading this in tomorrow's Washington Post:

Another journalist yesterday confirmed receiving a call from an administration official providing the same information about Wilson's wife before the Novak column appeared on July 14 in The Post and other newspapers.

The journalist, who asked not to be identified because of possible legal ramifications, said that the information was provided as part of an effort to discredit Wilson, but that the CIA information was not treated as especially sensitive. "The official I spoke with thought this was a part of Wilson's story that wasn't known and cast doubt on his whole mission," the person said, declining to identify the official he spoke with. "They thought Wilson was having a good ride and this was part of Wilson's story."

And for fans of The Paranoid Style in American Politics, check this out from another Limbaugh commentary: (excerpts, emphasis added)

Joe Wilson ... has fed this conspiracy theory that the White House leaked his CIA operative wife's name to discredit him and endanger her.

Don't jump to conclusions on this Wilson thing, because I think some of you are going to be very surprised when we get to the bottom of it. What do I mean by that? Well, we know that there are a number of Clinton administration holdovers in the Bush administration - particularly in the State Department. Bush has not cleaned them out.

posted by Quiddity at 9/29/2003 09:34:00 PM

Think about it:

posted by Quiddity at 9/29/2003 02:26:00 AM

Good news?

This was said on the Chris Matthew's Show a couple of days ago:

BYRON YORK: There are reports coming out of Iraq that things are getting better.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let's let this poll make your point. A recent poll done in Baghdad by the Gallup organization has two-thirds of the Iraqi people who were interviewed saying it was good to get rid of Saddam despite all the carnage since.

Yes folks, it's good news that only 30% of the Iraqis surveyed think it was a bad idea to get rid of Saddam. Thirty percent of 24,683,313 is 7.4 million. That's a lot of people who - apparently - don't like the changes the U.S. is responsible for. And not a few are willing to fight back.

NOTE: The poll is clearly one that has to be taken with several grains of salt. Some people, intimidated by the U.S. presence, might be inclined to say it's good Saddam is gone. Some people, worried about Saddam loyalists, might be inclined to say it's bad Saddam is gone. And the poll was taken in Baghdad. But thirty percent is a pretty big number. Even if it is reduced to 5%, you've got a lot of unhappy Iraqis out there (one million). This seems obvious, but Matthews looks past that to focus on the 62% that are happy about regime change.

UPDATE: It's worse than we suspected. From the Washington Post, Data Reveal Inaccuracies in Portrayal of Iraqis: (excerpt, emphasis added)

    ... in testimony before Congress, L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz both cited a recent Gallup Poll that found that almost two-thirds of those polled in Baghdad said it was worth the hardships suffered since the U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein.< Bremer also told Congress that 67 percent thought that in five years they would be better off, and only 11 percent thought they would be worse off.
    That same poll, however, found that, countrywide, only 33 percent thought they were better off than they were before the invasion and 47 percent said they were worse off. And 94 percent said that Baghdad was a more dangerous place for them to live, a finding the administration officials did not discuss.
    The poll also found that 29 percent of Baghdad residents had a favorable view of the United States, while 44 percent had a negative view. By comparison, 55 percent had a favorable view of France.
    Similarly, half of Baghdad residents had a negative view of President Bush, while 29 percent had a favorable view of him. In contrast, French President Jacques Chirac drew a 42 percent favorable rating.

posted by Quiddity at 9/29/2003 02:22:00 AM

On Fox News Sunday we heard a familiar refrain:

UPDATE: To save you time opening and reading the Fox webpage, here is the key exchange:

HUME: Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was asked to inquire in Africa about what Saddam Hussein might have been doing there in terms of acquiring nuclear materials, ended up with his wife's name in the paper as a CIA person. There are now suggestions that the name and her identity and her CIA work had been revealed by the White House. What do you know about that?

RICE: I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate.

FURTHER UPDATE: From the Meet the Press transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent over to Niger by the CIA to look into this whole matter of selling uranium to Iraq. He came back with a report which was given to the administration. Then there was an article by columnist Robert Novak which cited two administration sources and identified Ambassador Wilson’s wife by name. She was an undercover agent at the CIA. There is now an investigation. The CIA has requested the Justice Department to look into this. It’s a crime to identify an undercover agent. And in this article in today’s Washington Post, a senior administration official said that White House officials called six reporters to identify, to out, if you will, Joe Wilson’s wife. What can you tell us about that?

DR. RICE: Tim, I know nothing about any such calls, and I do know that the president of the United States would not expect his White House to behave in that way.

posted by Quiddity at 9/28/2003 06:27:00 PM

Memories ...

From Condoleezza Rice's appearance on Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: How’d [the uranium from Niger claim] get back in [the State of the Union address]?

DR. RICE: It’s not a matter of getting back in. It’s a matter, Tim, that three-plus months later, people didn’t remember that George Tenet had asked that it be taken out of the Cincinnati speech and then it was cleared by the agency. I didn’t remember. Steve Hadley didn’t remember. We are trying to put now in place methods so you don’t have to be dependent on people’s memories for something like that.

MR. RUSSERT: Did you ever read the memo that I referenced?

DR. RICE: I don’t remember the memo.

posted by Quiddity at 9/28/2003 09:20:00 AM

The words Dr. Krauthammer uses to describe Democrats:

From Friday's Op Ed

unhinged losing it derangement

regional prejudice absurd disgraceful

unhinged from reality blinding Bush-hatred passage ... to pathology

posted by Quiddity at 9/26/2003 02:28:00 PM

Bush the businessman:

From two Salon articles (Joe Conason's Big Lies excerpt, and Molly Ivins' and Lou Dubose's Bushwhacked! excerpt), we created two diagrams:







What did we learn from this exercise?

1. Failed businessman Bush was rescued multiple times because he was the son of a politically powerful father.
2. How Bush got rich:

   • He was invited to be a part owner of the Texas Rangers because his last name was Bush.
   • He was able to secure his partnership in the team through the questionable sale of Harken stock.
   • The Rangers got government to pay for, and confiscate, assets that enriched the team.
   • Bush assisted in the effort to get government financial and legal support for the Rangers, and was rewarded with additional shares in the team.
   • When governor, his support of Hicks management of state university finances was a factor in Hicks later paying handsomely for the Rangers.

posted by Quiddity at 9/25/2003 04:40:00 AM

The day after:



posted by Quiddity at 9/24/2003 01:03:00 PM

Catching up on some old business:

Bill O'Reilly was on Good Morning America this week to promote his new book. The topic of Al Franken came up and O'Reilly was scathing in his comments about the comedian, which was to be expected.

In any event, we were thinking again about the Bill and Al spat at the Los Angeles Book Expo earlier this year. In particular, remarks by Al Franiken about the right-wing coverage of the Paul Wellstone memorial: (58min, 10 meg MP3 audio, from this website) (at the 20 minute mark)

They distorted that memorial so badly.

I wish Tucker were here today, for Tucker the next day said that Republican senators who had come, friends of Wellstone, were shouted down by people, by the crowd, when they were trying to speak. When they tried to speak.

That wasn't the format of the memorial.

There was lie after lie.

Weekly Standard - Christopher Caldwell did the most vicious thing on that, on the Wellstone memorial, did not see it. All he saw, I think, were some clips on Fox, that Mr. Hannity had put together.

We meant to track down the Caldwell story in the Weekly Standard back in June, but never got around to it ... until now. The article, Mourning in America, is available on-line, and includes these words: (excerpts, emphasis added)

It is in this context that the nationwide outrage over last week's "memorial service" for Wellstone at Williams Arena in Minneapolis is best understood. Millions of Americans--and 55 percent of Minnesota households--tuned in on television to watch a solemn commemoration and found a rally devoted to a politics that was twisted, pagan, childish, inhumane, and even totalitarian beyond their worst nightmares. The crowd of 20,000 booed a succession of people who had come to pay their respects to a dead colleague: Senate minority leader Trent Lott, Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, and former Minnesota senators Rod Grams and Rudy Boschwitz. Vice President Dick Cheney was disinvited from the affair. Former president Bill Clinton appeared on the Jumbo-Tron yuk-yukking and giving thumbs-up signs, looking happier than he had since . . . well, since Ron Brown's funeral. And most bizarrely, Wellstone's treasurer and friend Rick Kahn staged a confrontation with Republican representative Jim Ramstad and three senators (Domenici of New Mexico, Brownback of Kansas, and DeWine of Ohio) that was reminiscent of a Maoist reeducation camp. With the help of the mob, Kahn sought to bully and shame these Republicans into abandoning their party and supporting Walter Mondale, taunting: "We can redeem the sacrifice of his life, if you help us win this election for Paul Wellstone." And if they don't help. . . ? Small wonder Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd was said to have apologized afterwards to his Senate colleague Domenici. It was a sinister incident, unexampled in recent American politics.

Most of those who watched this spectacle felt a disgust bordering on shame. Lott and Ventura walked out of the service, and Ventura announced he had changed his mind about appointing a Democrat to hold Wellstone's seat for the next two months. But such feelings arose from decency, not partisanship. Minnesota's Republicans, after all, have every reason to be delighted with the political fallout from this "memorial service." The Democrats' beyond-the-pale politicization of Wellstone's death opened the way for Republican Norm Coleman to begin campaigning again, his only chance of making up an 8-point poll deficit against Wellstone's replacement, former vice president Walter Mondale. Television stations were flooded with angry calls, and the GOP received $150,000 in spontaneously generated phone contributions since the service. GOP leader Ron Eibensteiner asked for equal air time, on the grounds that Minnesota's Democrats had exploited their colleague's death to bamboozle networks into running a three-and-a-half-hour campaign ad--and hardly anyone thought that was going too far. One journalist at WCCO in Minneapolis-St. Paul said his station felt "hoodwinked and embarrassed."

The real sin was not against Wellstone's political foes (or the people his "mourners" cast as his foes) but against Wellstone himself. As has often been remarked in the days since, one clip in the video portion of the event showed Wellstone saying, "Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives." The service blew a gigantic raspberry at that worldview. The late senator was treated as little more than one broken egg in a great get-out-the-vote omelet. The pilots and aides who died with him were barely treated at all. This Machiavellian glibness in the face of death was what left viewers most uneasy. One of our major political parties, or at least a sizable wing of it, appeared to be dancing a jig on the grave of a particularly beloved fallen comrade. What must they think of the rest of us?

Remember, the Weeky Standard is the baby of the "respectable" William Kristol, who gets on This Week, Fox News Sunday, and the Charlie Rose Show.

NOTE: Al Franken covers the reportage of the Wellstone funeral in his latest book, Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them - A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, which we learn from a review at Common Dreams.

posted by Quiddity at 9/24/2003 08:42:00 AM

Bush at the United Nations:

We should have guessed, since Bush mentioned it in his recent interview with Brit Hume on Fox, that "sex slavery" would be on the agenda. From a word count of the speech:

TOTAL WORDS: 2,845
WORDS ABOUT SEX SLAVERY: 408
That's 14% - or 1/7^th of the speech.
Iraq, the ostensible reason for the speech was 992 words, or 34% (essentially 1/3^rd)

posted by Quiddity at 9/23/2003 10:22:00 AM

Supply-sider logic:

Via Tapped, we learn the following:

ANALOGIZE THIS. NRO seems to have given Donald Luskin a day off, so Bruce Bartlett takes a crack at Paul Krugman, while defending supply-side economists from the charge that they lack academic credentials:

Under the circumstances [of the 1970s], there was no time to write articles for obscure academic journals that might take years to get into print, organize scholarly conferences, and do all the things necessary to get the grudging respect of people like Paul Krugman. Supply-siders went directly to policymakers and the media with their ideas, bypassing the academics the same way Gen. Douglas MacArthur went around Japanese strongholds in the Pacific, leaving them isolated and ineffective.

Tapped would find the analogy more plausible if MacArthur had run out of troops halfway to Japan and found himself beating a hasty retreat back to California in much the same way that Ronald Reagan eventually discovered that his policies were bankrupting the country and he needed to turn around and raise taxes to prevent a fiscal disaster. [...]

We'd prefer to put it this way:

Under the circumstances [of the 1930s], there was no time to write articles for obscure academic journals that might take years to get into print, organize scholarly conferences, and do all the things necessary to get the grudging respect of people like Vavilov. Proponents of vernalization, such as Lysenko, went directly to Stalin and the media with their ideas, bypassing the academics, leaving them isolated and ineffective.

posted by Quiddity at 9/23/2003 08:57:00 AM

Bush at the United Nations:

Our review in one word: soporific

posted by Quiddity at 9/23/2003 08:18:00 AM

Religion and politics:

From the Washington Post: (excerpts)

Bush Presses 'Faith-Based' Agenda

     President Bush repealed and proposed several regulations yesterday to make it easier for religious charities to receive federal money, including allowing such groups to make hiring decisions based on job candidates' faith.
     The announcements were the most significant steps so far in Bush's plan to pursue his "faith-based" initiative through administrative power after encountering congressional resistance to doing so through legislation.
     "In any employment decision, there's discrimination," said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. "Universities hire smart people."
     Bush finalized four changes he had proposed earlier, including delineating the boundary for religious content of federally funded social-service programs. The administration bars federal money from use for "inherently religious activity such as worship, religious instruction or proselytization."
     Ira C. Lupu, an authority on religion and the Constitution at George Washington University Law School, said the regulations could make it easier for charities to push the boundary of how much religious content is allowed. "These regulations might not preclude funding for a substance-abuse program that includes religious inspiration for its participants," Lupu said. "They might say you want to motivate them with lessons from the Bible."
     Bush also proposed changing six rules, including a Justice Department regulation in a way that would allow religious entities to receive forfeited assets, most crucially real estate, under the same restrictions that apply to secular groups.

First of all, the fact that "universities hire smart people", and thus discriminate, is no justification for discrimination on other grounds - in this case on religious grounds. Or are we now free to discriminate based on race and gender?

Second. What's this about forfeited assets? Are religious groups stepping up to get a drug-runner's plane or boat? We'd like to know more about this aspect of the story.

UPDATE: The White House has a full page on this topic, with comments from three cabinet members

And it appears from this White House 'fact sheet' that the forfeited assets rule is not pernicious.

posted by Quiddity at 9/23/2003 07:59:00 AM

Brit Hume interview with Bush breakdown: (for those interested, the transcript is available here)

		Elapsed time		Color code
		3:20		family matters
		7:30		routine at the office, White House life
		4:20		faith
		3:50		terrorism
		6:50		Iraq
		8:40		foreign policy
		4:20		economics
		2:15		domestic politics
		2:15		other
		2:50		intro / exit tease / credits
		13:10		commercials / network promotions
Time		Elapsed time		Topic		Bush quotes
00:00		0:40		Fox graphics, clips of Bush
00:40		0:20		Hume intro
01:00		2:15		How often talk to dad, Jeb
03:15		2:00		Running track, bad knee, exercise, south grounds, putting green, golf
05:15		1:00		South lawn		"getting away" from the office
06:15		0:45		Prayer and faith: daily, all kinds of places		"a lot"
06:50		1:10		Iraq and faith, god, Bush prays for families		"I am a lowly sinner", "people pray for me"
08:00		0:45		Iraq, faith		"progress is being made in Iraq"
08:45		0:15		Hume exit tease
09:00		2:30		commercials / network promotions
11:30		2:00		Oval Office, threat matrix, mail, schedule: A.Card, Tenet, Cheney, Rice, et al
13:30		1:20		JFK desk, different presidential seals, rug designed by Laura
14:55		1:15		Other presidents: Lincoln, uniting the country		I "set big goals"
16:10		1:40		western-themed painting: A Charge to Keep, from family friends (O'Neill), painting is based on Methodist hymn (A Charge to Keep I have)		"really old picture" "painting is reminder it's important to serve something greater than ourself"
17:50		0:15		Hume exit tease
18:15		3:35		commercials / network promotions
21:50		2:40		Iraq, "Bring 'em on" remark (was really taking to the troops: we're pretty tough) Better to fight in Iraq than Yemen or mountains of Afghanistan		"I'm a man of peace", "stay on the offense"
24:30		1:25		Q: What did Saddam to with WMD? A: Hid or disbursed. The truth will out. David Kay.
25:55		1:20		United Nations. Message tomorrow: Let's work together. The U.N. has a chance ...		"Let's fight AIDS and hunger, deal with slavery, like sex slavery, proliferation" "I made the right decision"
27:15		0:50		Germany / Schroeder - now helping
28:05		2:10		France / Chirac		"I'll continue to remind him ... America is a good nation"
30:15		1:55		Q: Will we get another resolution? A: Yes, U.N.: write constitution, oversee elections. Larger role for member states of the U.N. (e.g. Poland, Great Britain)
32:10		1:45		Q: More troops? A: Training money (for Iraqi police) was 'stripped out' of latest supplemental.
33:55		1:00		Q: What about Americans who thought the war was already won? USS Abraham Lincoln statement reviewed. Bush said he said it would be a challenge going forward. Groups like Ansar al-Islam would stay active.		"They were active during Saddam's period"
35:30		1:35		Syria
36:20		1:30		Arafat, Palestinians, Israel
37:50		0:20		Hume exit tease
38:10		3:30		commercials / network promotions
41:40		2:30		Economy, jobless recovery, [Bush] doesn't know when jobs will be added
43:10		0:20		Cut taxes, must make permanent
43:30		1:00		Conservative critics charge Bush is spending too much money
44:30		0:30		Nation is at war
45:00		1:50		Never forget the lessons of 9/11		"freedom equals peace", "A free Iraq will be a significant dynamic in changing attitudes in the Middle East", "Free societies are peaceful societies"
46:50		1:25		No attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, attacks elsewhere
48:15		0:35		Finding Saddam, Osama bin Laden		"hidden"
48:50		0:45		FCC rule changes
49:35		0:15		Hume exit tease
49:50		3:35		commercials / network promotions
53:25		2:15		Democratic presidental field Kennedy		"not paying attention to it", "I've got a job to do" "I'm disappointed in the tone of senior statesmen"
55:40		1:05		Criticism of Bush vs. his dad
56:45		0:15				"I believe I've done the right thing"
57:00		1:10		Q: How do you get your news? A: Get briefed by A. Card, C. Rice.		"I have great respect for our media"
58:10		0:45		credits
58:55				end

posted by Quiddity at 9/23/2003 01:32:00 AM

The U.N. is responsible for Bush misleading the American public (according to Andrew Sullivan):

Heard on the Chris Matthews Show, Saturday, 21 September 2003 (most recent transcripts not available, from our transcript of our audio clip - 310kb, which will be deleted after September):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: If the president made the statement he made this week, before we went to war, had said there's no actual connection - any evidence - between what happened to us 9/11 in 2001 and this war with Iraq - no actual particular connection. Would he have been still able to sell the war? Michael.
MICHAEL TOMASKY: Probably, but it would have been a whole lot harder, a whole lot harder, and it would have taken a whole lot longer. And there would've been a lot more debate about it.
HOWARD FEINMAN: I think he would have been able to, and I think he should have done it that way, rather than make it just one on a menu he's now featuring.
BBC REPORTER KATTY KAY: I think he would have been able to sell it, because along side it was a lot of intelligence being put out - a lot of information being put out - which now, in retrospect, has not been corroborated.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: He wanted to sell it that way but the U.N. demanded that he didn't.

ADDENDUM: SullyWatch also weighs in on Andy's appearance, and includes a sartorial suggestion for Sully.

AFTERTHOUGHT: We're pretty sure Sullivan was responding to Matthews' "Would Bush have been able to sell the war if he also said there was no Saddam-9/11 connection?" However, it's possible that Sullivan's "He wanted to sell it that way" was informed by the preceding comment that "there was a lot of information being put out". Being charitable to Andy, one might argue that Sullivan claimed Bush wanted to "sell it" using such information, but the U.N. was averse to that approach. But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. So, after thinking through all the possibilities, we return to our original perspective: Sullivan said Bush wanted to make the case for invading Iraq without invoking "connections" between Saddam and 9/11, but the U.N. demanded that he not do so.

posted by Quiddity at 9/21/2003 10:30:00 PM

Don't blame me, blame that guy behind the tree:

Heard during the panel discussion on Fox News Sunday (transcript link unavailable, this is from our transcription of our audio clip - 254kb, which will be deleted after September ):

RAGARDING BUSH'S UPCOMING VISIT TO THE UNITED NATIONS

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Generally speaking, obviously the White House is now really trying to make its case. The president made a speech Monday night. They put people out - Secretary Powell was on our show Sunday. Vice President Cheny was out. He's got to continue making the case that we're in for rough times here in Iraq. I think we'll be okay, but we have to suck it up, spend some money, take some casualties, maybe send some more troops, and so this will be part of his general case. The case he has to make is why this is so important. This wasn't just sort of discretionary war. It wasn't a mistake. It wasn't just a kinda crazy idea a few neoconservatives had. That this was fundamental to our security. He's got to make that case.

THIS JUST IN: Looks like Bush will piss off the General Assembly on Tuesday. From the Washington Post:

Bush to Tell U.N. He Made 'Right Decision' on Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Sunday he would tell the United Nations he made the right decision to go to war in Iraq despite his failure to obtain Security Council backing for the conflict.

"I will make it clear that I made the right decision and that the others that joined us made the right decision," Bush said in an interview with Fox News Channel's Brit Hume.

Expect some booing of Bush at the U.N. (Mostly because of Iraq, but also because of the recent General Assembly vote on Arafat.)

posted by Quiddity at 9/21/2003 04:57:00 PM

Reason to turn off your TV:

On Sunday's Dateline on NBC: (7pm, 6-Central)

TV-show host Bill O'Reilly talks about raising children, the lawsuit against Al Franken and his new book, "Who's Looking Out for You''

posted by Quiddity at 9/21/2003 12:17:00 PM

Ugly:

On Sunday's Meet the Press, we note the following:

MR. RUSSERT (to ALBRIGHT): There’s a debate which is waged in political and diplomatic circles about September 11. Could more have been done by the Clinton administration prior to September 11—and you write about some of that in your book. Another book called “Losing Bin Laden” is out and it talks about, the Clinton administration, you specifically. Let me go through that and give you a chance to respond. In October 12, 2002, the USS Cole was blown up. “An American warship had been attacked without warning in a ‘friendly’ harbor—and, at the time, no one knew if the ship’s pumps could keep it afloat for the night. Now, they had to decide what to do about it.
     “[Clinton administration counter-terrorism czar Richard] Clarke had no doubts whom to punish. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had compiled thick binders of bin Laden and Taliban targets in Afghanistan, complete with satellite photographs and GPS bomb coordinates...The detailed plan was ‘to level’ every bin Laden training camp and compound in Afghanistan as well as key Taliban buildings in Kabul and Kandahar. ‘Let’s blow them up,’ Clarke said. ...
     “Around the table, Clarke head only objections—not a mandate for action...
“Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was also against a counterstrike—but for diplomatic reasons.
     ‘We’re desperately trying to halt the fighting that has broken out between Israel and the Palestinians,’ Albright said. Clarke recalls her saying, ‘bombing Muslims wouldn’t be helpful at this time.’...
     “Albright urged continued diplomatic efforts to persuade the Taliban to turn over bin Laden. Those efforts had been going on for more than two years and had gone nowhere. It was unlikely that the Taliban would every voluntarily turn over its strongest internal ally.”
And nine months later, after that discussion, September 11.

In case you were wondering, Russert took the time (one minute 20 seconds) to read 208 words of Albright-trashing from the book “Losing Bin Laden”, a product of Regenry Publishing.

Also, what's this about "nine months later ... September 11"? We don't have the book in question, but if the meeting took place nine months before September 11, it would have been in the very last days of the Clinton administration, and in such circumstances it's usually a good idea not to saddle the incoming president (of the opposite party!) with an operation he didn't approve.

MR. RUSSERT: That uncertainty has certainly spilled over into the American political debate, Bill Safire. I showed Secretary Albright Ted Kennedy’s comments about the war being a fraud. Senator Kennedy also offered this. ”[Sen. Ted] Kennedy said the administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believed that much of the unaccounted money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops,” which prompted this response from Tom DeLay, Republican leader in the House, “It’s disturbing that Democrats have spewed more hateful rhetoric at President Bush than they ever did at Saddam Hussein.” How big of a political issue has the Iraq war become?

MR. WILLIAM SAFIRE: Do you suppose we could bribe Jacques Chirac? I don’t think so. That’s not the right approach.

Maybe not Chirac, but how about Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan?

MR. RUSSERT: I’m going to get to Wes Clark in just a second. But, first, there was an interesting development within the administration this last week. Vice President Cheney was on this program last week and let me show you the question I asked him and his answer.

“The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?”
Cheney answered.

“VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.
QUESTION: But is there a connection?
VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: We don’t know.”

George Bush, the president, this week, came out, a few days later, and said this: “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th.”
What happened?

MR. SAFIRE: I thought Cheney was terrific on this show last week. Better than us, even.

Cheney was a terrific liar.

MR. SAFIRE: I’ve always believed the Czech intelligence that said Mohamed Atta met in Prague four months before the September 11 attack with Saddam Hussein’s top intelligence agent in Europe. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m right. Nobody has definitively answered that. So that when Cheney was asked, he said, I think quite properly, “We don’t know.”

This is the refuge of "absolute proof", a common technique used by Holocaust Deniers.

MR. RUSSERT: Then why did the president say something different [from Cheney]?MR. SAFIRE: The president abandoned that position and said, “We have no evidence on it.”
MR. RUSSERT: Why?
MR. SAFIRE: I don’t know.

Worst ... lie ... ever.     Of course he knows. Cheney lied his ass off. (By the way, there are currently 1000 stories on Google news for "Bush Saddam connection".)

ABOUT WESLEY CLARK AND HILLARY'S PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS

MR. SAFIRE: I see a delicious Machiavellian dynamic underneath this.
[...]
MR. SAFIRE: There was a party, a dinner party, in the Clintons’ home. The conversation was leaked by a close Clinton friend, probably with Bill Clinton’s enthusiastic endorsement. That former President Clinton said there are two stars in the Democratic Party: Hillary and Wes Clark. Now, of course, he meant there were eight stars.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
MR. SAFIRE: Now, why is Bill Clinton pushing Wes Clark? The Clinton people are climbing on the Clark bandwagon. This is the way to stop Howard Dean. Now, why does Clinton want to stop Howard Dean? Could it be that he wants to wait and see and perhaps Hillary will get into this with General Clark as her vice president? Will he prefer to let someone else run and lose and, thereby, have a clear field for Hillary Clinton to run in 2008? What’s going on underneath the coverage? It’s just terrific.
MR. RUSSERT: Well, let us add a few logs to this Safire conspiracy fire...
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: ...because Bill Clinton went to California this past week, to the Panetta Institute, the home of his former chief of staff, and this is the news account from The New York Sun. “President Clinton stoked speculation that his wife, Senator Clinton, will run for president in 2004. Asked by his former chief of staff, Leon Panetta, where there was ‘a chance’ that Mrs. Clinton would run for president next year, Mr. Clinton left the door open. ‘That’s really a decision for her to make,’ he said at a public forum [in California]. The former president also said he believed many New Yorkers would have no objection to her breaking her pledge to serve a full six years in the Senate. ‘I was impressed at the state fair in New York, which is in Republican country in upstate New York, at how many New Yorkers came up and said they would release her from her commitment if she wanted to do it,’ Mr. Clinton said. ‘But she said...she doesn’t understand how to walk away from that. So I just have to take her for where she is right now.’”

Apparently, Meet the Press is now the appropriate forum for Safire to speculate wildly in order to score points. (We expect the Howler to address thiis aspect of professional journalism.) When will Noam Chomsky get the same opportunity?

Very nice of Russert to cite the conservative New York Sun for a portrait of leading Democratic figures.

Even though today's Meet the Press didn't have any truly outstanding outrageous moments, it was a good example of how slanted it is: Two strongly conservative commentators out of four. A couple of citations by Russert from partisan sources. And speculation and conspiracy theories.

What really bothered us was Safire not knowing for sure that Mohammed Atta didn't meet with Iraqi agents, or why Bush disavowed a connection between Saddam and 9/11 - Safire insists on a high standard before rendering a judgement - yet when it comes to sundry Democrats, any hunch will do.

It was ugly.

posted by Quiddity at 9/21/2003 11:38:00 AM

Tom has gone bonkers:

Tom Friedman writes a column in the New York Times today entitled Our War With France. Let's look at some of what he says:

FRIEDMAN: What I have no doubts about, though, is that there is no coherent, legitimate Iraqi authority able to assume power in the near term, and trying to force one now would lead to a dangerous internal struggle and delay the building of the democratic institutions Iraq so badly needs. Iraqis know this. France knows this, which is why its original proposal (which it now seems to be backtracking on a bit) could only be malicious.

OBSERVATION: Sometimes quicker is better. Winston Churchill said this about India in 1947: "A fourteen-month time interval is fatal to an orderly transfer of power" since it gives extremists on both sides time to organize.

---

FRIEDMAN: France seems to have given no thought as to how this would affect France.

BUT A FEW SENTENCES EARLIER HE WROTE: France wants America to sink in a quagmire there in the crazy hope that a weakened U.S. will pave the way for France to assume its "rightful" place as America's equal, if not superior, in shaping world affairs.

So there is some thought about how this would affect France. Or maybe not. Or something.

---

FRIEDMAN: ... France has never been interested in promoting democracy in the modern Arab world, which is why its pose as the new protector of Iraqi representative government — after being so content with Saddam's one-man rule — is so patently cynical.

OBSERVATION: Unlike the United States' pose as the new protector of Iraqi representative government - after being so content with Sadam's one-man rule (in the 1980's).

posted by Quiddity at 9/18/2003 07:13:00 AM

Are you ready for this?

From Newsday - Syria, Libya Listed as 'Rogue States' (excerpts, emphasis added)

The Bush administration named Syria and Libya yesterday as "rogue states" whose weapons of mass destruction must not just be controlled but must be eliminated by whatever means necessary.

In what Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Jamaica Estates) called "the axis of evil plus," Bolton testified that Syria and Libya had weapons of mass destruction programs that must be "rolled back" and eliminated. Two years ago, President George W. Bush named North Korea, Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein as the "axis of evil."

Bolton said diplomacy is the administration's preferred approach but that "every tool in our nonproliferation toolbox" was an option. Bolton refused to rule out "regime change" as an administration option in Syria.

We are puzzled by this. According to Sy Hersh, Syria was very cooperative in the wake of 9/11.

From the Middle East Information Center: (excerpt, emphasis added)

... after September 11th the Syrian leader, Bashar Assad, initiated the delivery of Syrian intelligence to the United States. The Syrians had compiled hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, including dossiers on the men who participated—and others who wanted to participate—in the September 11th attacks. Syria also penetrated Al Qaeda cells throughout the Middle East and in Arab exile communities throughout Europe. That data began flowing to C.I.A. and F.B.I. operatives.

Within weeks of the September 11th attacks, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A, with Syria’s permission, began intelligence-gathering operations in Aleppo, near the Turkish border. Aleppo was the subject of Mohammed Atta’s dissertation on urban planning, and he travelled there twice in the mid-nineties. “At every stage in Atta’s journey is the Muslim Brotherhood,” a former C.I.A. officer who served undercover in Damascus told me. “He went through Spain in touch with the Brotherhood in Hamburg.”

Syria also provided the United States with intelligence about future Al Qaeda plans. In one instance, the Syrians learned that Al Qaeda had penetrated the security services of Bahrain and had arranged for a glider loaded with explosives to be flown into a building at the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters there. Flynt Leverett, a former C.I.A. analyst who served until early this year on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, told me that Syria’s help “let us thwart an operation that, if carried out, would have killed a lot of Americans.” The Syrians also helped the United States avert a suspected plot against an American target in Ottawa.

Syria’s efforts to help seemed to confound the Bush Administration, which was fixated on Iraq. According to many officials I spoke to, the Administration was ill prepared to take advantage of the situation and unwilling to reassess its relationship with Assad’s government. Leverett told me that “the quality and quantity of information from Syria exceeded the Agency’s expectations.” But, he said, "from the Syrians’ perspective they got little in return for it.”

That's for damn sure.


posted by Quiddity at 9/17/2003 03:16:00 PM

It might as well have been this:

posted by Quiddity at 9/17/2003 01:30:00 PM

Remember this:

Via Atrios/Eschaton we were directed to a harsh editorial by the Star Tribune about Cheney's lies - specifically on Meet the Press last Sunday. (apparently requires registration to read)

We agree about Cheney's mendacity, but would also like to point out that Tim Russert let him get away with it.

And another thing. Why did Cheney make assertions that were so easy to refute? Why not hint that some top-secret sigint suggested links between Hussein and various projects and bad guys? Was Cheney's performance designed to be an "in your face" posture of contempt for journalists, the public, and world governments? Surely no leaders in Moscow, Tokyo, Paris, Cairo, or anywhere else are buying Cheney's arguments (as presented on Meet the Press).

posted by Quiddity at 9/17/2003 10:51:00 AM

Political Rx:

Poison: William Saletan's article in Slate asserting that Democrats are just as conniving and dishonest as Republicans.

Antidote: Digby.

posted by Quiddity at 9/16/2003 07:32:00 PM

Tom Friedman metaphor watch:

Friedman was on the Charlie Rose Show this Monday (15 Sep 2003). Here are some metaphors that should be appearing in upcoming columns:

• We have "dropped the ball" in terms of providing resources for Iraq reconstruction.
• Re Rumsfeld saying we have enough troops: We have entered the "Twilight Zone".
• "We defeated the Flintstones". (Iraq was actually a poor country.)
• Baghdad is "Bedrock". (Another Flintstones metaphor.)
• We have found ourselves in a "Black Hole". (Messy situation in Iraq.)
• The Iraqi population is like "a dog that's been kicked too many times".
• Rebuilding Iraq: Friedman is worried about "too many chefs in the kitchen". (Too many competing interests: U.S., U.N., et al)

posted by Quiddity at 9/16/2003 01:01:00 PM

Checking Cheney:

In his Meet the Press interview, Dick Cheney said:

We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.

Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact.

Cheney is referring to Abdul Rahman Yasin.

According to a segment in today's Democracy Now program:

• Yasin is an American citizen, born in Bloomington, Indiana.
• After the Feb. 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000, Yasin was one of the men picked up for questioning by investigators. He was eventually released, however, because of insufficient evidence to charge him at that time.
• When Yasin left the United States he went to Iraq where he lived for a year before being arrested by Iraqi intelligence agents in 1994.
• Former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz (in a 60 Minutes interview) said that twice Iraq attempted to hand Yasin to the United States. Once in '94 under Clinton, and again, after the attacks on September 11.
• Aziz said in October of 2001 the Iraqi government sent word to the CIA through an Egyptian government emissary that Yasin was in custody in Iraq and that Baghdad wanted to hand him over. [That offer should be checkable by examining CIA records.] Aziz said that the only condition was that the U.S. sign a receipt saying that Iraq had handed him over. The U.S. rejected the offer saying that the Iraqis were placing too many demands on Washington for the return of Yasin.

posted by Quiddity at 9/16/2003 12:09:00 PM

Even the New York Post:

Seems Richard Grasso's big payday was too much for the business-friendly tabloid, as we read in the editorial GRASSO'S GOT TO GO.

posted by Quiddity at 9/16/2003 10:26:00 AM

9/11 - many questions, few answers:

For those interested in reviewing the administration's response to 9/11, we suggest you take a look at the Philadelphia Daily News' WHY DON'T WE HAVE ANSWERS TO THESE 9/11 QUESTIONS? which lists 20 questions (link via Rittenhouse Review). We're most interested in those concerning the actions taken on 9/11 (which the first 8 address).

The story gives a link to a webpage: AN INTERESTING DAY: GEORGE BUSH JR. ON 9/11 which goes into detail about the timeline of events that day.

Why are we interested in this? Recent developments regarding the situation in Iraq and in Israel have reinforced our view that that Bush is a weak executive. It seems more and more that Cheney is really in charge (a view echoed by Gail Sheehy). Looking back on Bush's actions that morning in September - his sitting around in an elementry school classroom for 15 minutes after having been told "America is under attack" - we conclude that Bush's Primary Directive was (and still is) 'Don't act until you've checked with the Vice President'.

posted by Quiddity at 9/16/2003 09:45:00 AM

A good report:

The Washington Post has an article that reviews Cheney's appearance on Meet the Press. It covers some more topics than our quick analysis (below). Highly recommended. It catches some remarks that we overlooked, e.g.:

Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. "I don't want to speculate," he said, adding that Sept. 11 is "over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us."

Put it behind us? If only it was that easy for Bush.

ADDENDUM: Josh Marshall of TPM has some sharp comments about Cheney bringing up Mohammad Atta yet again - and not squelching the belief that Saddam is connected to 9/11.

CORRECTION:

We agree with Demagogue that the quote (above) in the Washington Post was misleading and unfair to Cheney.

posted by Quiddity at 9/14/2003 11:28:00 PM

In case you missed it:

Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times Magazine, The Tax-Cut Con.

Nothing new, but a concise summary of the situation, plus some historical observations (last 40 years or so).

posted by Quiddity at 9/14/2003 07:07:00 PM

Depressing but worth reading:

New Terror Laws Used Vs. Common Criminals

Excerpts:

    In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained fresh powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells but on people charged with common crimes.
    Federal prosecutors used the act in June to file a charge of "terrorism using a weapon of mass destruction" against a California man after a pipe bomb exploded in his lap, wounding him as he sat in his car.
    A North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine lab with breaking a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons. If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get 12 years to life in prison for a crime that usually brings about six months.
    Prosecutor Jerry Wilson says he isn't abusing the law, which defines chemical weapons of mass destruction as "any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.

And while we're at it, this story: Bush Seeks to Expand Access to Private Data

Excerpts:

    ... in a plan announced this week to expand counterterrorism powers, President Bush adopted a very different tack. In a three-point presidential plan that critics are already dubbing Patriot Act II, Mr. Bush is seeking broad new authority to allow federal agents without the approval of a judge or even a federal prosecutor to demand private records and compel testimony.

---

    In announcing his plan on Wednesday, Mr. Bush said one way to give authorities stronger tools to fight terrorists was to let agents demand records through what are known as administrative subpoenas, in order to move more quickly without waiting for a judge.
    The president noted that the government already had the power to use such subpoenas without a judge's consent to catch "crooked doctors" in health care fraud cases and other investigations.
    The analogy was accurate as far as it went, but what Mr. Bush did not mention, legal experts said, was that administrative subpoenas are authorized in health care investigations because they often begin as civil cases, where grand jury subpoenas cannot be issued.

We looked, and couldn't find any details about the compelling of testimony, but it sure sounds bad.

posted by Quiddity at 9/14/2003 06:42:00 PM

Total B.S.

From the Meet the Press transcript of the interview of Dick Cheney:

Transcript		Our comments
MR. RUSSERT: Has this nation recovered from September 11, 2001? VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I think in many respects, recovered, yes. On the other hand, there are some things that’ll never be the same. [...]        And I’m not sure everybody has made that transition yet. I think there are a number of people out there who hope we can go back to pre-9/11 days and that somehow 9/11 was an aberration. It happened one time; it’ll never happen again. But the president and I don’t have that luxury.		We hold the view that something like 9/11 is extremely unlikely. While we think al-Qaeda is a meanace, all that it has is the ability to detonate truck and car bombs. They do not have any weapons other than rifles and RPGs. The destruction of the World Trade Towers was a fluke.
MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that? VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection. MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection? VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know. You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn’t have any evidence of that. Subsequent to that, we’ve learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization.        We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.        Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact. With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.		Training: Some, but not 9/11 related One of the '93 bombers was Iraqi: Meaningless Atta in Prague: Highly suspect, and should not be mentioned by senior officials unless it is near-certain.
MR. RUSSERT: We could establish a direct link between the hijackers of September 11 and Saudi Arabia. VICE PRES. CHENEY: We know that many of the attackers were Saudi. There was also an Egyptian in the bunch. It doesn’t mean those governments had anything to do with that attack.		Yet seconds earlier Cheney noted that one of the '93 bombers was an Iraqi.
MR. RUSSERT: There are reports that the investigation Congress did does show a link between the Saudi government and the hijackers but that it will not be released to the public. VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t know want to speculate on that, Tim, partly because I was involved in reviewing those pages. It was the judgment of our senior intelligence officials, both CIA and FBI that that material needed to remain classified. At some point, we may be able to declassify it, but there are ongoing investigations that might be affected by that release, and for that reason, we kept it classified.		Might be?
MR. RUSSERT: Vanity Fair magazine reports that about 140 Saudis were allowed to leave the United States the day after the 11th, allowed to leave our airspace and were never investigated by the FBI and that departure was approved by high-level administration figures. Do you know anything about that? VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t, but a lot of folks from that part of the world left in the aftermath of 9/11 because they were worried about public reaction here in the United States or that somehow they might be discriminated against.		Liar. Letting the bin Laden family out of the U.S. because they were worried they might be discriminated against? Who believes that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: ... So we have had, especially since the attacks of Riyadh in May of this year from the Saudi government, great support and cooperation in going after terrorists, especially al-Qaeda. [...] And the Saudis have been, as I say in the last several months, very good partners in helping us go after the people in the al-Qaeda organization.		Some friends. They didn't do squat until they were attacked.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the situation in Iraq. [...] We had lost 138 soldiers before May 1, and 685 wounded, injured. Since that time, since the president came on the carrier and said major combat was over, we’ve lost 158, and 856 wounded and injured. Those numbers are pretty troubling. VICE PRES. CHENEY: [...] Remember, we lost 3,000 people here on 9/11.		Conflating 9/11 with Iraq.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: [...] We’ve got Iraqis now in charge of each ministry in the government. We’ve got 90 percent—over 90 percent of the cities and towns and villages of Iraq are now governed by democratically elected or appointed local councils.		Appointed by whom?
MR. RUSSERT: [...] In a report that underscores the stress being place on the military by the occupation of Iraq, the CBO said the Army’s goals of keeping the same number of troops in Iraq and limiting tours of duty there to a year while maintaining its current presence elsewhere in the world were impossible to sustain without activating more National Guard or Reserve units.”        Can we keep 150,000 troops beyond next spring without, in effect, breaking the Army? VICE PRES. CHENEY: Tim, we can do what we have to do to prevail in this conflict. Failure’s not an option. And go back again and think about what’s involved here. This is not just about Iraq or just about the difficulties we might encounter in any one part of the country in terms of restoring security and stability. This is about a continuing operation on the war on terror. [...] If we’re successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it’s not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it’s not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.		Does that mean a draft in our future? More conflating 9/11 with Iraq. Iraq was not the geographic base of the terrorists. Afghanistan was.
MR. RUSSERT: So the resistance in Iraq is coming from those who were responsible for 9/11? VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, I was careful not to say that. With respect to 9/11, 9/11, as I said at the beginning of the show, changed everything. [...] America’s going to be safer and more secure in the years ahead when we complete the task in Iraq successfully, and we will complete it successfully. And whatever the cost is, in terms of casualties or financial resources, it’s a whale of a lot less than trying to recover from the next attack in the United States.		We doubt that the cost of being in Iraq will be "a whale of a lot less" than an attack in the United States - which we think is extremely unlikely. As noted above, al-Qaeda has limited capabilities.
MR. RUSSERT: You also told me, Mr. Vice President, in March that you thought Saddam would be captured or killed, turned in by his own people. Why hasn’t that happened if they view us as liberators? VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, we’re working on it, and we’ll continue to work on it. His sons were turned in by the Iraqi people.		Wasn't it just one guy?
MR. RUSSERT: Now, Ambassador Joe Wilson, a year before that, was sent over by the CIA because you raised the question about uranium from Africa. He says he came back from Niger and said that, in fact, he could not find any documentation that, in fact, Niger had sent uranium to Iraq or engaged in that activity and reported it back to the proper channels. Were you briefed on his findings in February, March of 2002? VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson.		The Wilson mission was triggered by a request from the Vice President's office.
MR. RUSSERT: If [the intelligence agencies] were wrong, Mr. Vice President, shouldn’t we have a wholesale investigation into the intelligence failure that they predicted... VICE PRES. CHENEY: What failure? MR. RUSSERT: That Saddam had biological, chemical and is developing a nuclear program. VICE PRES. CHENEY: My guess is in the end, they’ll be proven right, Tim.		How long does one have to wait? One year? Five years? To say that "in the end" we will be proven right is a way of postponing any judgement on any policy.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: [...] How do you explain why Saddam Hussein, if he had no program, wouldn’t come clean and say, “I haven’t got a program. Come look”? Then he would have sanctions lifted.		False. The U.S. government position was not to lift sanctions unless Saddam was removed from power.
MR. RUSSERT: If you froze the tax cut for the top 1 percent of Americans, it would generate enough money to pay for the $87 billion for the war, if you did it for just one year. Would you consider that? VICE PRES. CHENEY: I think it’d be a mistake, because you can’t look at that without considering what its impact would be on the economy. An awful lot of the returns in that top bracket are small businesses, and they provide an awful lot of the job growth in this economy.		If they are in the top bracket, then it's not a small business anymore. And anyway, we suspect that an overwhelming majority of top earners are executives at big companies. (And what does an "awful lot" mean anyway? Absolute numbers? Percentage?)
MR. RUSSERT: What happened to Dick Cheney, deficit hawk. VICE PRES. CHENEY: [...] I am a deficit hawk. So is the president.		Has Bush said anything that would make us think he's a deficit hawk? We can't recall any instance.
MR. RUSSERT: But we see deficits for the next 10 years, big ones. How do you deal with that, when you have Social Security, Medicare, coming up? VICE PRES. CHENEY: We anticipate even with the added spending that we’ve asked for now we’ll cut the deficit roughly in half from where it’ll be next year over the next five years. So we’ll be moving in the right direction.		So now it's the direction that matters, not the actual numbers. Try telling that to your bank or credit card company ("I'm short this month, but here's a small payment in the right direction.")
MR. RUSSERT: What do you think of the Democratic field? VICE PRES. CHENEY: Haven’t really, frankly, paid a hell of a lot of attention to it, Tim. I’m awful busy with my normal day job.		Incredible.

posted by Quiddity at 9/14/2003 12:35:00 PM