Josh Marshall noted that an earlier Washington Post report which featured James Baker III prominently in a story about reconstructing Iraq was changed seven hour later to a milder report on a general overhaul of the postwar Iraq administration. (both have the same URL). We happened to have the original still around (cached), but are currently unable to reproduce the page properly (formatting, images, even the text itself). Until that's solved (which may not be possible for technical reasons), we can only display the the text:
UPDATE: We figured it out. (Or at least part of it.) Here is the shapshot of the original story
UPDATE #2: Calpundit has some thoughts about why Baker was chosen (at least when the original story first came out)
The original story
The replacement
White House Wants Baker to Head Iraq Reconstruction Unresolved Whether Baker or Bremer Would Have Final Word
By Mike Allen and Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, July 25, 2003; 12:20 PM
The White House hopes to persuade former secretary of state James A. Baker III to take charge of the physical and economic reconstruction of Iraq as part of a broad restructuring of post-war efforts, administration sources said today.
Under the plan, L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, would focus on rebuilding the country's political system. The new structure is still in the discussion stages, and a source close to Baker said he has not accepted the job.
The sources said one hurdle is determining whether Baker or Bremer would have the final word, and they said that question is unresolved. The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University referred questions to Baker's law firm, Baker Botts LLP in Houston. Baker did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.
The negotiations reflect a growing realization within the administration that the post-war plan was inadequate and that simple patience, the White House's initial prescription, will not do. Bremer said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that progress has been made in restoring services and creating a government, but he said the effort could last for years.
The assignment also would be the latest of a series of high-profile missions that Baker, 73, has undertaken for President Bush and his father. Baker headed Bush's Florida recount effort after the disputed election of 2000. Against his wishes, he agreed to manage President George H.W. Bush's reelection campaign in 1992. Baker was secretary of state in the first Bush administration, and treasury secretary and White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan.
Baker is well-known in the Middle East from his travels as secretary of state. Administration officials said he would add stability to a process that has been much more chaotic than the administration had hoped, with U.S. troops continuing to suffer casualties from guerrilla attacks. Baker's stature with foreign governments also could help the administration enlist more help in paying for the reconstruction.
Bremer was part of an earlier overhaul that dismayed some native Iraqi leaders. Bremer, who appeared with Bush on Wednesday as part of a Washington visit, arrived in Baghdad on May 12 to take over for retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner.
In another augmentation of the post-war structure, the administration plans to name Reuben Jeffrey III as Washington-based coordinator for the Iraq reconstruction effort.
Jeffrey, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who now is coordinating the federal aid aimed to help reconstruct lower Manhattan, would become the administration's public face for Bremer's operation in Baghdad, including dealing with lawmakers and managing the interagency process. Officials said the White House concluded that, given the distance between Baghdad and Washington, Bremer needed someone senior in Washington who could navigate the bureaucracy and deal with Capitol Hill.
Bush named Jeffrey special adviser for lower Manhattan development in March 2002. Jeffery had worked at Goldman for 18 years, living and working in Paris, London and New York and specializing in the financial services sector. He previously practiced corporate law at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York.
Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report.
Bush Considers New Overhaul of Postwar Iraq Administration White House Aims to Address Concerns as Cost, Casualties Mount
By Mike Allen and Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, July 25, 2003; 7:05 PM
President Bush is contemplating the second overhaul in three months of his post-war administration of Iraq, as the White House faces up to the enormity of the task and the need to demonstrate progress to maintain political support for the effort, administration officials said today.
A series of polls has show U.S. voters becoming increasingly impatient at the prospects of large number of troops remaining in Iraq indefinitely, as the cost rises and guerrilla attacks continue inflicting military casualties long past the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.
"We're confident of long-term success," a Bush aide said. "We need to show short-term success."
L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, lobbied the Pentagon and Congress for more funds and personnel during a visit to Washington this week, officials said.
As part of an effort to beef up the reconstruction, the White House is considering asking several major figures, including former secretary of state James A. Baker III, to help with specific tasks like seeking funds from other countries or helping restructure Iraq's debt.
"A lot of different things are being discussed," a senior administration official said. "Nothing has happened yet."
A senior official said Bush was very pleased with Bremer and that changes in the post-war administration, known as the coalition provisional authority, would be made only with his support. "This is a Bremer-driven process," the official said.
An aide said Baker is on vacation, and he did not immediately return messages left at his law firm, Baker Botts LLP in Houston. Several administration officials predicted that Baker would not become involved, but said the White House might still seek "a Baker-like figure" to share duties with Bremer.
The discussions reflect a growing realization within the administration that the post-war plan was inadequate and that simple patience, the White House's initial prescription, is not the answer. Bremer, who was saluted by Bush in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that progress has been made in restoring services and creating a government. But he said the effort could last for years.
Bremer said privately during his meetings in Washington that the administration might need to appoint a high-level official to focus solely on restructuring Iraq's debt, a senior official said.
In another augmentation of the post-war structure, the administration plans to name Reuben Jeffrey III, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who is now coordinating the federal aid aimed to help reconstruct lower Manhattan, as Washington-based coordinator for the Iraq reconstruction effort.
One administration official said a division of duties for the administration of Iraq had been contemplated as far back as the contingency planning phases of the war. "We knew it would be difficult, but ground truth has given us a lot more to think about," the official said.
If Bush called on Baker, 73, the assignment also would be the latest of a series of high-profile missions he has undertaken for the Bush family. Baker headed the Republican team during the Florida recount litigation after the disputed election of 2000. Against Baker's wishes, he agreed to manage President George H.W. Bush's reelection campaign in 1992. Baker was secretary of state in the first Bush administration, and treasury secretary and White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan.
Baker is well-known in the Middle East from his travels as secretary of state. Administration officials said he would add stability to a process that has been much more chaotic than the administration had hoped. Baker's stature with foreign governments also could help the administration enlist more help in paying for the reconstruction.
Bremer, although he was a career diplomat before becoming a private business consultant, lacks experience in the Arab world. Some administration officials said another figure might be better suited to selling neighboring countries on the U.S. approach to rebuilding Iraq.
Bremer took charge as part of an abrupt overhaul in May that dismayed some native Iraqi leaders. Just a month after U.S. troops ended three decades of Baath Party rule, Bremer was sent to Baghdad to take over for Jay M. Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general who has been in charge of the reconstruction effort.
Jeffrey, who is to become the Washington-based coordinator of the reconstruction effort, will become the administration's public face for the operation in Baghdad, including dealing with lawmakers and managing dealings with other party of the government. Officials said the White House concluded that, given the distance between Baghdad and Washington, Bremer needed someone senior in Washington who could navigate the bureaucracy and deal with Capitol Hill.
Bush named Jeffrey special adviser for lower Manhattan development in March 2002. Jeffery had worked at Goldman for 18 years, living and working in Paris, London and New York and specializing in the financial services sector. He previously practiced corporate law at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York.
Staff writers Vernon Loeb and Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this report.
NOTE: We do not like to make full copies of stories, but feel that it's meritied in this situation. When, as we expect, Josh gets his own copy for the TPM document collection, we will take down this post.
OBSERVATIONS: They are a diverse lot, but why so many from Colorado? What's with that? We expected all of them to be Republicans, but to our surprise there were some Democrats in there as well. It isn't clear why these representatives voted the way they did (except for libertarian Ron Paul), but it is ominous that two chairmen of important committees (Oxley, Tauzin) are in the list.
Despite the deletions demanded by the administration, the report contains evidence indicating the Saudis may have been linked to supporters of the September 11 hijackers. It focuses on Omar al-Bayoumi, who some in the FBI believed to be a Saudi intelligence agent. The Saudi government has denied the allegation.
Mr Bayoumi played a vital role in establishing Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two of the hijackers, when they arrived in the US. US intelligence agencies knew as early as 1999 that the two were linked with al-Qaeda and had attended a CIA-monitored meeting of the terror network in Malaysia in 2000. Mr Bayoumi met the pair in Los Angeles after leaving a meeting at the Saudi consulate.
This is not exactly new. We posted comments about that back on November 24, 2002. We even diagrammed the money trail. Here it is (again):
And we wrote at the time, "... this flap should spur a proper investigation about Saudi connections to al Qaeda."
Why the renewed interest? Perhaps the attention to those 16 words, along with the finger-pointing by the CIA and White House, have caused the entire situaiton (terrorism, 9-11, Iraq war) to be viewed with fresh eyes.
Eric Alterman discovers an eerie parallel with two statements, one by William Kristol, and another from years ago by Irving Kristol. Here is the breakdown:
William Kristol today
Irving Kristol during the McCarthy era
But
For there is one thing that
the American people,
the American people
whatever their doubts about aspects of Bush’s foreign policy,
know
know
that
about
Bush
Senator McCarthy
;he, like them,
is
is
serious about fighting terrorists and terrorist states that mean America harm.
unequivocally anti-Communist.
About
About
Bush’s Democratic critics,
the spokesmen for American liberalism,
they feel
they know no such thing.
they know no such thing.
Alterman writes,
"This is truly amazing. It explicitly links the Neocons’ exploitation of the threat of terrorism to that no-good drunken bum, Joe McCarthy, and his use of the charge of “Commie” to ruin lives on a whim through a deliberately stoked mass hysteria. I think there is a great deal of this going on right now, but even I would have been reluctant to go so far. But there it is."
We went to the California Secretary of State's website to see how many people voted [PDF] in 2002 for governor, in order to compare that figure with the number who signed the petition to recall Gray Davis. (Note to egomaniacs: you can get listed with only 6 write-in votes, so in the next election, convince your friends to do you a favor and you'll be in the history books.) Here are the results:
Gray Davis, DEM
3,533,490
47.30%
Bill Simon, REP
3,169,801
42.40%
Reinhold Gulke, AI
128,035
1.70%
Peter Miguel Camejo, GRN
393,036
5.30%
Gary David Copeland, LIB
161,203
2.20%
Iris Adam, NL
88,415
1.10%
Anselmo A. Chavez (w/i)
37
0.00%
Will B. King (w/i)
13
0.00%
James F. Stewart (w/i)
327
0.00%
Nick Jesson (w/i)
46
0.00%
Rob Marinko (w/i)
1,789
0.00%
Debbie Jo Terzoli (w/i)
30
0.00%
F. Nan Bailey (w/i)
28
0.00%
Jim Mallon (w/i)
55
0.00%
Nick Hoogoian (w/i)
6
0.00%
Votes Not Cast
262,470
3.39%
TOTAL
7,738,781
Davis recall signatures
1,300,000
% of 2002 gubernatorial vote
17.00%
17%, or about one in six. Is that a large enough fraction? Not if the signatures came from the losing party (which got 43% in 2002). Yes, if they came from the winning party.
It would seem to us that in cases of recall for political reasons only (i.e. no malfeasance), it might be reasonable to require that the recall be initiated, and signatures gathered, by the party of the sitting governor.
TECHNICAL NOTE: Only 897,158 signatures are required by law, or 11% of the number who voted in 2002.
Dennis Miller was the first guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno this Wednesday and his appearance was less than thrilling. Not only did he have to prep his audience with the fact that Robert Byrd had been in the KKK so that he could then recite his lame "burning the cross at both ends" joke, but he went on to opine about the political scene:
IRAQ: "Am I the only one who could care less about weapons of mass destruction?".
ON THE DEFICIT: "If we owe somebody, just don't pay it."
JERRY SPRINGER RUNNING FOR OFFICE: "The gene pool is so shallow, we don't need a lifeguard on duty."
SPORTS: "Tour de Fra..., Tour de Spineless Greasy-haired Wusses."
In any event, we were struck by Miller's body language, which for most of the interview consisted of him being in the "defensive pose" of arms folded, as shown in the screenshots below:
We suspect that Miller knows he's losing half his audience, and that he's strayed from being a mainstream comedian.
Also, as we've noted before, what's Leno doing bringing a parade of conservative boors on his show (e.g. Miller, O'Reilly, Shepard Smith) ?
Calpundit posted a picture of Paul Krugman while he was on vacation in France (from Krugman's website), and remarks, "Doesn't he look relaxed?"
But Kevin should take a closer look. Who is sitting at the table behind Krugman? Yes, it's Karl Rove - keeping an eye on one of the biggest threats to the Bush presidency.
There have been a number of high-profile characters peddling this nonsense*, including Caspar Weinberger, William Safire, and Clifford May. Busy, busy, busy has the quotes.
* - that failure to find WMD doesn't mean they never existed, because something that once existed (Saddam, Osama, Judge Crater) cannot be found at the moment.
Busy, busy, busy distills Safire's essay down to a single ("shorter®") sentence.
Our take is that Safire is completely unreliable. But more than that, he continues to push notions that nobody else in the intelligence community believes. E.g. from his latest: (emphasis added)
A series of murders of "collaborators" would continue to intimidate Iraqi scientists and officers who know about W.M.D. and links to Al Qaeda ...
Pardon our French, but we think this guy has gotten away with fiscal-policy murder. Fortunately, for those who want to know the truth, the Washington Post has an article that reviews Greenspan's actions over the last several years as they relate to the passage of the Bush tax cuts. Don't be fooled, this fellow has probably done more damage than any single Republican senator or congressperson. Here are some excerpts (with our comments) from the Post's article, As Budget Deficit Grows, Greenspan Speaks Softly
In January 2001, as President Bush began his term after the disputed election and even allies were saying his proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut was too large, Greenspan unambiguously flashed a green light to Congress to push it through.
Now some members of Congress complain that the Fed chairman flashed no clear red lights as the country's fiscal fortunes changed. Instead, they say, he has equivocated on further tax cuts. Greenspan's stand is all the more striking, they say, because he has always loudly implored policymakers to fight deficits and prepare for the retirement of the Baby Boom generation.
Yup, he's vocal for tax cuts, but says nada when they should be postponed or repealed.
[In January 2001,] the government was projected to be running a $5.6 trillion surplus over the next decade. Greenspan worried that the government would quickly pay its debt and begin accumulating a cash surplus, which it would then have to invest in private-sector stocks and bonds. To Greenspan, the government ran the risk of dangerously distorting the market.
"In today's context, where tax reduction appears required in any event over the next several years, . . . starting that process sooner rather than later likely would help smooth the transition to longer-term fiscal balance," Greenspan said.
That is total nonsense. It was obvious that the surpluses were the result of a stock-market bubble, and any projections going forward that expected the same large tax revenues was bogus. Yet Greenspan allowed the "no bubble here" estimates to be used to determine policy.
[In] November [2002], Greenspan told a Joint Economic Committee hearing that he thought it would be "unwise" to eliminate or postpone portions of the 2001 tax cut that had not yet taken effect, because businesses had already built the changes into their long-term plans.
What an incredibly weak argument. Not only that, but it has the character of a "one way ratchet" which means one can never raise taxes.
... opponents noted that Greenspan repeatedly expressed concern about a growing deficit and said any new tax cut should be offset by spending cuts or equivalent tax increases. ... Greenspan knew that his statements would be politically ineffectual, Corzine charged, since neither party had any intention of raising taxes or cutting spending to offset a $350 billion hit to the Treasury.
"With this idea of saying it all needed to be revenue neutral, he was indicating a level of political naiveté that he does not possess," Corzine said.
He's a four-flusher, all right.
... Greenspan is a conservative Republican, a believer in small government and low taxes. His passion for those views led him to believe in the projected surpluses and see a chance to put his political beliefs into practice. "He wanted the tax cut for ideological reasons," [Barney] Frank said. "He didn't want all that money lying around for government to spend."
We totally agree.
On Wednesday [last week before Congress], after the tax cuts had been enacted, Greenspan dwelled on the danger of large and rising deficits, which he said eventually would cause long-term interest rates to rise and damage economic growth.
"There is no question that if you run substantial and excessive deficits over time, you are draining savings from the private sector, and other things equal, you do clearly undercut the growth rate of the economy," he told the Senate Banking Committee.
Leach said such comments are too late. "Congress has acted," he said. "Whether or not he thinks Congress took the right step, it is not helpful for him to now say this was the wrong way to go. How does that help the economy?"
