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June 30, 2006

Nobody's Home....

Not today. Talk among yourselves---and try to keep it civil.

Posted by David Corn at 05:53 PM

June 29, 2006

The Gitmo Decision

Today's Supreme Court decision blocking Bush's military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees was a harsh swipe at the Bush administration claim that the president--when it comes to waging the war on terrorism--can generally do whatever is necessary. That is, whatever he deems necessary. Since 9/11, the Bush administration has argued that Bush's obligations as commander in chief trump all. Its a stark reading of the Constitution and a rejection of the bedrock principle of checks and balances. Fans of an all-powerful executive maintain that a strong president is needed to combat terrorist and that no restraints should be placed upon the chief executive, for limits might hamper the prosecution of the war at hand.

But in an opinion that will rank as one of his most important, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the five-member majority, declared:

Even assuming that Hamdan is a dangerous individual who would cause great harm or death to innocent civilians given the opportunity, the executive nevertheless must comply with the prevailing rule of law in undertaking to try him.

Stevens was reminding the president--and the rest of us--that the rule of law does come with costs. After all, a dictator might more effectively deal with terrorists than a president who has to worry about congressional oversight and due process. But the costs--so far--have been worth paying. And they define our nation. I won't throw at you the usual cliches about the precarious balance between liberty and security. But as Bush himself has said, we are different from our enemies. We do have to engage in this conflict in ways that are fundamentally different from the means our foes employ. That may, at times, afford the enemy an advantage. It's the price of doing business as a society that deserves to win the battle. Stevens and the four concurring justices have helped the war on terrorism.

Posted by David Corn at 01:50 PM

June 28, 2006

Hatch's Rationale

In yesterday's entry, I asked--as did others--why it was a wise use of the Senate's precious time to deal with flag desecration. After all, when was the last time you were on your way to the a gas station to fill up and were blocked by a mob of flag-burners?

But Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican and lead sponsor of the constitutional amendment banning flag desecration, was not about to concede that his effort was not important. I heard him say that he had heard critics griping that protecting the flag from being torn in anger ain't a vital matter. And he had a response: it is a vital matter. Why? Because it was necessary to "send a message" to the Supreme Court. And what's the message? "You cannot usurp the power of the Congress of the United States."

I see. This is not really about safeguarding the Stars and Stripes. This is a spite match. Congress several years ago passed legislation to ban flag burning. The Supreme Court ruled, you can't do that (because that would infringe on free speech rights). So now Congress had to strike back. It's personal, Hatch was saying--and it's more about preserving the appropriate balance of power within the federal government than locking up folks who spray-paint "peace" (or "war") on the flag.

But if that's true, then why does Congress (and Hatch) not seek to pass a constitutional amendment every time the Court overturns a law? The GOP effort to win congressional approval of this proposed constitutional amendment--months before an election-seems related to issues other than ensuring the right checks and balances. Care to guess what they are?

Posted by David Corn at 07:21 PM

June 27, 2006

Flag's On--UPDATED

Iraq still a mess. Millions of Americans in poverty. Many citizens without health care. The immigration conflict here unresolved. Trillions of dollars in a rising national debt. Gas prices high--and energy consumption rising. Global warming under way.

So naturally it's time for Congress to deal with a more pressing issue than all of this: flag burning.

The Senate is once again debating legislation to establish a constitutional amendment outlawing desecrating Ol' Glory.

Constitutional amendment needs to garner 67 votes in the Senate. Some Democrats will vote for this, and sponsors of the bill say there are close to the needed vote count. And one of those Dems is Dianne Feinstein of California. Today she gave a big speech on the subject that began:

I rise as the main Democratic sponsor of this amendment. I have given this a lot of thought for a long time. I believe what we have before us is language that is essentially content neutral. It is on conduct--not speech.

In other words, if a rightwing anti-immigration activist or a leftwing antiwar protester holds up an American flag with a big question mark painted on it, that's not "speech" but "conduct." And such conduct, in DiFi's view, can be criminalized. (But these citizens would be free to chant, "Down with the flag.")

Congress has previously tried to pass laws--as opposed to a constitutional amendment--to ban flag-burning. (What if you doused a flag in water to protest the use of water-boarding? Would the be desecration? Could you argue you were cleaning the flag?) And the Supreme Court has ruled that such laws were unconstitutional infringements on free speech. Regarding this point, Feinstein said,

[In] United States v. Eichman, the Supreme Court, by another 5 to 4 vote, held that although the federal statute prohibiting flag desecration did not limit speech based on content, which had been found unconstitutional in Johnson, the statute still violated the First Amendment because Congress’ intent in passing the statute was “related to the suppression of free expression.” The Supreme Court has spoken, and I do not wish to quarrel with its decisions.

But that's exactly what she is doing. Covering a flag with fake (or real) blood to make a point is "conduct," not "speech." And conduct can be regulated--and outlawed.

Given that Feinstein has a darn safe seat in California, she must actually believe her argument makes sense. And that's frightening. Hillary Clinton's position, for example, is far less worrisome because it is far more cynical. She favors passing a law to ban flag-burning (knowing it will be overturned by the Supreme Court) but opposes passing a constitutional amendment.

If a legislator is going to take the time to deal with flag-burning, he or she should only do so for crass political purposes. Truly believing that the desecration of the Stars and Stripes is a problem that demands the attention of Congress--let alone the amendment of the Constitution--is an insult to the citizenry, which needs lawmakers who can focus on real, not imagined, problems.

UPDATE: On Tuesday, the constitutional amendment sought by DiFi received 66 votes in the Senate. It needed 67 for approval. A win for liberty and free speech? Or a troubling sign that almost two-thirds of the body's lawmakers believe that a veteran who cuts a flag into pieces to oppose the Iraq war ought to be thrown into jail?

Posted by David Corn at 06:21 PM

June 26, 2006

Senate takes on Prewar WMD Controversy--Sort Of

From my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

Representative Walter Jones was out of place when he sat down at the dais in a committee room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Monday. He had come to participate in an unofficial hearing being held by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. And Jones is neither a Senator nor a Democrat. He is a hawkish Republican from North Carolina. But he asked one of the most poignant questions of the afternoon.

Before him were a panel of veterans of the intelligence wars that had raged before the invasion of Iraq: retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell; Paul Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia; Carl Ford, former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research; and Wayne White, a former Iraq analyst at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Each man had offered an explanation of what had gone wrong with the prewar intelligence, and generally they excoriated the Bush administration. Wilkerson noted that "our national leaders had used intelligence in a careless manner and that there should be "some kind of accountability" for that. Pillar accused the Bush White House of having turned the "textbook model of intelligence-policy relations...upside down." He explained: "Instead of intelligence being used to inform policy, it was used primarily to justify a decision already made." Ford blasted the entire intelligence community for turning out lousy analysis. He maintained that "we" got the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMD "wrong because we aren't very good at analysis....Unfortunately it represents one of our better analytical efforts." And White said that policymakers--including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice--routinely "turned a blind eye to intelligence inconsistent with their Middle East agenda."

The witnesses went over many of the known horror stories of the prewar intelligence battles: the aluminum tubes cited by the White House as proof Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons (which actually were for rocket launchers); the mobile biological weapons labs (which actually were for producing hydrogen for weather balloons); Saddam's alleged training of al Qaeda in biological and chemical weapons (which was sourced to an al Qaeda commander who recanted his story).

So after all this, Representative Jones, who had voted to grant Bush the authority to invade Iraq, had a question. He noted that "my heart has ached ever since I found out that the intelligence...was flawed and possibly manipulated." He said that he had written letters to relatives of every American soldier who has died in Iraq--8000 letters so far. "What perplexes me," he said, "is how in the world could [intelligence] professionals see what was happening and nobody speak out?"

It was an important question. Within the intelligence community, there were professionals who knew that critical parts of the Bush administration's case for war--which relied primarily on the argument that Saddam posed a direct WMD threat to the United States--had serious holes. Those who dissented internally did not go public--they worked within the system. But the system did not work. The White House made certain not to pay attention to any of the dissents, and it did not share the disputes with the voters. Why had the entire intelligence community allowed Bush and his aides to get away with this?

The panelists did not get a chance to respond to Jones, for he kept on talking--right over that query--and he segued to another subject, asking how it could be that the neoconservative hawks in the Bush administration gained so much power and had more influence than "you, the professionals."

Wilkerson fielded the question, first noting that as a Republican he was "embarrassed" that Jones was the only GOPer to attend the hearing (which was open to legislators of both parties). Then Wilkerson replied, "I'll answer you with three words: the vice president." That seemed to satisfy Jones. Neither he nor Wilkerson mentioned the two-word answer: the president.

The hearing--chaired by Senator Byron Dorgan--was the Senate Democrats' effort to examine an issue that the Republican-controlled Congress has so far ignored: how the White House handled and represented the prewar intelligence. The House and Senate intelligence committees did investigate the quality of the prewar intelligence and slammed the intelligence community for botching much of it. But they have not yet confronted how Bush officials characterized the intelligence and used it to promote a war. The Senate intelligence committee was supposed to probe this topic and release a report, but it has dragged its heels and watered down its investigation by tacking on an examination of statements made by Democrats about Iraq and WMDs going back to the early 1990s. The Republicans' obvious gotcha goal is to show that Democrats, just like Bush and his advisers, had, at various times, said that they believed that Iraq had WMDs. But no Democrat launched a war on such assertions.

The Bush administration overstated the overstated intelligence--on Iraq's WMDs and its supposed ties to al Qaeda. Yet every investigation to date has ducked the issue. The Senate Democrats cannot conduct a full-fledged investigation on their own. For instance, they could not compel administration officials to attend this hearing. They could not subpoena records. The most they could do is invite those willing to appear and make a point.

The points were sharply made. Wilkerson called Powell's now-infamous presentation to the UN Security Council--in which practically everything Powell asserted was wrong--"the lowest point of my professional life." Pillar noted that the intelligence community "never judged that there was anything close to an alliance" between Iraq and al Qaeda. Ford bemoaned that his own analysts at the State Department failed to persuade Powell not to use the aluminum tubes charge in his UN speech.

There were revealing moments at the event. But the press attendance was not great. After all, the session could be dismissed as not a real hearing. Only three Democratic senators were there for most of it (Dorgan, Jeff Bingaman, and Dianne Feinstein). And it is three years too late. The war happened. And now the White House and its allies dismiss talk of how the war started as unproductive given the present-day challenges. But as Wilkerson noted, accountability still awaits those who called it wrong--and those who misused the intelligence.

Posted by David Corn at 06:29 PM

June 23, 2006

Cheney's Lousy Numbers

Last night, CNN aired an interview that John King conducted with Dick Cheney. Here are two excerpts and two rejoinders. Talking about all the progress under way in Iraq, Cheney said,

We've got a quarter of a million Iraqis now in uniform, equipped, trained, in the fight. So there has been significant progress made with respect to what's going on in Iraq.

A quarter of a million? Ready to roll? In the fight? That is far, far above any of the rosy estimates previously released of Iraqi troops able to engage the enemy. And if there are that many Iraqi soldiers "in the fight," why is there still a need for American troops?

Cheney's number cannot be factchecked because the Pentagon has stopped releasing the number of Iraqi army units able to battle Iraqi insurgents. Just a few days ago, the Detroit Free Press reported:

The Pentagon has stopped releasing its assessment of the number of Iraqi army units deemed capable of battling insurgents without U.S. military help.

U.S. officials had been releasing a tally every three months of Iraqi military units that were sufficiently trained to operate by themselves, without the aid of U.S. firepower, logistics or transportation.

The decision to stop making the information public came after reports showed a steady decline in the number of qualified Iraqi units. That number now is classified, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Victor Renuart, director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In a way, Cheney told King the exact opposite of what is true. The trend has been downward, not upward. The report continues:

Last June, the Pentagon said three Iraqi battalions were ready to fight by themselves. By last fall, that number had dropped to one. By February, that number had fallen to zero, meaning there were no Iraqi units capable of taking on the insurgency without help.

When the downward trend became known, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, and other members of Congress expressed disappointment about the lack of progress.

Collins said it "contributes to a loss of public confidence in how the war is going."

The Pentagon then decided to stop releasing those reports.

Asked why the information now is classified when it had been previously made public, Peter Rodman, assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, said the figure "was always supposed to be" classified, even though military officials had routinely released it....

The total number of Iraqi military and police personnel now in training -- including all levels of capability from novices to the well-trained -- is at 263,400, up more than 30,000 from three months ago.

So here's what Cheney did: he took the total number of soldiers and police who are in training and said it represented the number of Iraqi troops ready to fight--even as recent Pentagon reports noted that the number of battle-ready Iraqi units was declining. Does this sound like a course worth staying?

Cheney also said to King:

I think one of the reasons we have not been struck again in five years -- and nobody can promise we won't -- but is because we've taken the fight to them. And if Jack Murtha is successful in persuading the country that somehow we should withdraw now from Iraq, then you have to ask what happens to all of those people who've signed up with the United States, who are on our side in this fight against these radical, extremist Islamic types of bin Laden and al Qaeda. What happens to the 12 million Iraqis who went to the polls last December and voted in spite of the attacks and the car bombs? What happens to the quarter of a million Iraqis who have gotten into the fight to take on the terrorists?

That is, Cheney portrayed the conflict in Iraq as a fight between average Iraqis and al Qaeda. He said noting about the rising sectarian violence. He didn't acknowledge that the jihadists in Iraq make up a small slice--perhaps 5 percent--of the insurgency. He's still selling the war in Iraq as a continuation of 9/11. That way he can accuse Democrats calling for disengagement in Iraq (either sooner or later) of being quitters in the fight against Osama bin Laden. It's a cynical ploy. But it's the bedrock of the White House's 2006 campaign plan. I wonder if the voters will go for it. But I'm sure we'll hear it again a few more times between now and November.

Posted by David Corn at 04:08 PM

June 22, 2006

Building the Perfect Stonewall

In case you missed it, here is my latest TomPaine.com column. I had taken a leave from writing the column for a few months, but now I am back.

The Perfect Stonewall
David Corn
June 21, 2006
www.tompaine.com

Future presidents and press secretaries will owe much to George W. Bush and Scott McClellan--that is, if they ever want to mount a cover up. A week after Karl Rove's lawyer announced he was no longer under investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case, it's rather clear that Rove and the White House pulled perfected the art of stonewalling. They--and this caper--will be an inspiration to spinners everywhere.

In July 2003, when columnist Bob Novak (first) and Time magazine (second) published stories disclosing that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer—and cited administration officials as their sources--the White House responded with a simple denial. McClellan, who had just inherited the White House press secretary position from Ari Fleischer, said of this leak, "That is not the way this president or this White House operates." There was no wiggle room in that statement.

Months later, once the news broke that the Justice Department--acting in response to a CIA request--would be investigating the leak, the White House got more specific. Scott McClellan stated that any White House aide who leaked information on Valerie Wilson would be dismissed, and he asserted that neither Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby had been involved in the leak. Months after that, Bush reaffirmed that the leaker--if discovered--would be booted from his White House.

This was all unambiguous. It ain't us. It ain't Rove. It ain't Libby. And if we knew who had done this, he'd be run out of town. This straight talk got the White House all the way through the 2004 elections.

Eventually the strategy shifted—because it had to. In July 2005, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff revealed an e-mail written by Time correspondent Matt Cooper that showed (with no doubt) that Rove--on "double super secret background"--had told Cooper that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA and had "authorized" the 2002 trip her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had taken to Niger to check out the allegation that Saddam Hussein had been uranium-shopping there. The e-mail was incontrovertible proof that Rove had leaked--that he had passed to a reporter classified information (for Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA was indeed classified, as special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald would later confirm), while the White House was trying to discredit a White House critic.

This e-mail was out of sync with the White House's clear-cut denials. And the disclosure of this e-mail raised a question: would Bush stick to his promise to fire the leaker? The answer was not long in coming: no. But there was more. Now that Rove was clearly pegged as a leaker, the White House came up with a new response: it could not say anything while the investigation was under way. Forget that it had done so repeatedly--that was before it had been caught fibbing about the president's chief strategist.

Those disciplined folks at the White House then clung to its we-cannot-comment lifeline for months. Whenever Bush or McClellan were asked about the leak, the reply was the same: while the investigation is going on, we can't say. And that stance came in handy when Scooter Libby was indicted last fall.

McClellan claimed that Fitzgerald had asked the White House to refrain from commenting on the case, but the press secretary refused to explain anything about that request (even the date that it had been made). At one White House press briefing, I asked McClellan if he would acknowledge that--despite whatever Fitzgerald had requested of the White House--the president was free to take action on his own to deal with the leak. After all, evidence in the public record now indicated a leaker (Rove) was in the highest circles in the White House. Still, McClellan stuck to the script: We cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.

Then last week--after Rove was cut loose by Fitzgerald--Bush said, "I've made the comments I'm going to make about this incident, and I'm going to put this part of the situation behind us and move forward." Wait a minute. Before the investigation was over, Bush and the White House had said they couldn't say anything until the investigation was over. Now that the Rove investigation was over, Bush was saying he had already addressed the matter and it was time to move on.

That was a pretty transparent dodge--duck the issue, duck the issue, duck the issue, then say the issue has already been dealt with and now is old news. But it worked. The media mash did move on to other stories. This was quite an accomplishment for the Bush White House. It had been faced with a smoking-gun piece of evidence proving that the president's most important aide had leaked and that the White House had misled the public about this, and the political price it had to pay was essentially nothing.

Compare this with Bill Clinton's travails. When he was first confronted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he went into automatic denial mode. ("I did not have sex with that woman.") But when he came face to face with a stained dress bearing his DNA, he admitted that he had an inappropriate relationship with the intern. He had tried to hold out as long as he could, but he couldn't deny reality. The Bush White House just did exactly that. The evidence about Rove? Sorry, we can't talk about it.

Theses two scandals are hardly parallel case studies. It just may be--for some reason--harder for a politician to get away with a lie about sex than a lie about a possible violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. But the point is that the Bush gang stonewalled exquisitely. Democrats have reason to be frustrated that Rove--the fellow they despise as the evil genius responsible for many of their woes--escaped the clutches of Patrick Fitzgerald. Worse, though, is that Rove and the Bush White House have set an example for others to follow.

Posted by David Corn at 01:11 PM

June 21, 2006

Oversight?

Finally some oversight?

The House judiciary committee--led by Republican Representative James Sensenbrenner--voted on Wednesday to approve a measure requesting that President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales provide Congress detailed information on the NSA domestic phone collection program. This is not the warrantless wiretapping of Americans citizens and residents exposed last year by James Risen in The New York Times, but the gathering of phone records of millions of Americans for the purpose of analyzing call patterns to find suspected wrongdoers.

What's going on here? The resolution was introduced by Democratic Representative Robert Wexler. And Sensenbrenner went along with it. Could it be that a House Republican chairman was taking his oversight responsibilities seriously? The GOP-controlled House has ignored waste and abuse in Iraq, the handling of the prewar intelligence, the Enron scandal, the White House's secretive energy task force-- and much more--as it has persistently declined to investigate any matter that might inconvenience the White House (with the exception of Hurricane Katrina). But now--after USA Today revealed that the NSA had assembled data on your phone calls (well, it could be you)--Sensenbrenner is in favor of asking questions. Let's see how the White House responds and whether the top GOP leaders of the House back up Sensenbrenner on this. I doubt the NSA will be FedExing the committee the material tomorrow.
******
FUN FACT? Congress is debating a military appropriations bill for next year that tops over $500 billion. Most of the fuss is over resolutions--nonbinding resolutions--about the Iraq war. But let's look at the overall figure. Anyone care to guess what percentage of global military spending the Pentagon budget makes up? It's more than half. According to the Worldwatch Institute, world military expenditures in 2004 totaled $1.024 trillion dollars. And what the United States is spending on the Iraq war almost equals the combined military spending of every other nation on the planet. Which means if the United States could just about buy the military of every other country in the world. Now that would truly mark the triumph of capitalism.

Posted by David Corn at 11:47 PM

Coming Soon....

Or some time in the future, a new post. But for now, I'm running around doing other things. Fret among yourselves.

Posted by David Corn at 05:28 PM

June 20, 2006

Cheney and Throes; Policy and Unlawful Killings; Oysters, FEMA and Global Warming

Some bits and pieces today. Did you see the explanation that Dick Cheney gave yesterday for having said a year ago that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes"? Here it is in full:

I do. What I was referring to was the series of events that took place in 1995 [sic]. I think the key turning point, when we get back 10 years from now, say, and look back on this period of time, and with respect to the campaign in Iraq, will be that series of events when the Iraqis increasingly took over responsibility for their own affairs. And there I point to the election in January of '05, when we set up the interim government; the drafting of the constitution in the summer of '05; the national referendum in the fall of '05, when the Iraqis overwhelmingly approved that constitution; and then the vote last December, when some 12 million Iraqis, in defiance of the car bombers and the terrorists went to the polls and voted in overwhelming numbers to set up a new government under that constitution, and that process of course has been completed recently with the appointment by Prime Minister Maliki of ministers to fill those jobs.

What's amazing--or not--is that politicians always believe they can get away with spin. But, I suppose, they do keep getting away with it. The question was about the insurgency, not political developments in Iraq that occurred in 2005. On May 31, 2005, he said, ""The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." He was hardly talking about events--like the election and the drafting of the constitution--that had not happened yet. And the insurgency--a year later--has not declined. Some military folks say it has intensified. Why couldn't Cheney have said yesterday, "I was a bit too optimistic"? Instead, he has to proclaim he was 100 percent right then--when the opposite was true. His inability to acknowledge that he got that observation wrong is not reassuring.

******
ONE OUT OF THREE AIN'T BAD. On NPR's Diane Rehm Show today, retired General Barry McCaffery, just back from a trip to Guantanamo, said,

I think it's likely that a third of these guys are international jihadists. They tell us day to day "that you let me go I'm going to kill Americans"

Does that mean that two-thirds of them are not international terrorists? If not, what are they?

And there was this interesting exchange:

Rehm: You had said to me during the break that a great many people had been unlawfully killed and abused.

McCaffery: Yeah, first of all I'd like to say that the early part of the war, the first year or two, that there was some inadequate and possibly illegal use of detainees. There have been many prosecutions, either ongoing or completed at lower levels There was a policy dimension, I try to make objective and clear-cut in my views. I've now looked at the detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo, and they are humane and in accordance with our military values.

A "policy dimension" to abuse and perhaps unlawful executions? That's a subject that could use more examination.
*****
SAVE THE OYSTERS. Earlier today, I was perusing the offerings at a fish market--I don't know why, but I like to look at fish stalls--and struck up a conversation with the proprietor about oysters. He explained that the month-with-an-R rule is not hard and fast. The key thing is water temperature. The water has to be below 47 degrees to harvest oysters. He was carrying Prince Edward Island oysters because the waters up there are that cool. The local waters would not become that chilly until September--thus, the wait for a month-with-an-R.

I mentioned that I had heard a report about oyster farmers in Alaska. They were complaining that rising water temperatures were threatening their business. And that reminded him of a conversation he had recently with a customer who works at FEMA. She told him that she had been in several meetings recently where the subject was warming waters off the coast of Africa. This was getting FEMA into a state. Warming waters, they assumed, would lead to more and stronger hurricanes this season. So his customer and her colleagues have been worrying up a storm as they wait for this year's crops of hurricanes. What's bad for oysters is bad for FEMA. But, no doubt, FEMA is well prepared and ready to do a heckuva job.

Posted by David Corn at 09:14 PM

June 19, 2006

Where Are the Hookers?

I'm still waiting for the CIA/hookers/contract-rigging scandal to kick in. Remember how close it seemed merely a few weeks ago? A contractor who bribed Duke Cunningham claimed he had provided the disgraced GOP congressman with prostitutes, and his confession prompted suspicions about another contractor who allegedly bribed Cunningham and who had gotten contracts at the CIA--contracts that were overseen by a buddy of his. And there were tales of poker parties involving lobbyists, contractors, CIA officials and members of Congress--which raised eyebrows. (With or without female escorts?) This all came out shortly before Porter Goss suddenly resigned as CIA chief--a move that fueled the fires of suspicion. Yet there's not been a lot of news--though the FBI does seem to be investigating "Dusty" Foggo, the CIA officer accused of steering contracts to the Cunnigham-connected contractor. The jury is still out on whether any of this will explode into a real scandal. In the meantime, I spotted this interesting item in Secrecy News:

GAO SAYS IT WILL FOREGO OVERSIGHT OF INTELLIGENCE

One way to supplement and improve intelligence oversight would be to employ the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an investigative arm of Congress, to perform routine audits of key intelligence functions.

Yet this potentially valuable oversight tool lies dormant due to opposition from the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

The GAO will not even attempt to conduct oversight of intelligence unless it is specifically tasked to do so by the
Congressional intelligence committees, a GAO official said last week.

"For us to undertake such work would require the sponsorship of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence or the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence."

"While we have the authority to do such work, we lack the cooperation we need to get our job done in that area. As a
result, unless and until we receive such cooperation, and given GAO's limited recourse, we will continue our long-standing
policy of not doing work that relates directly to intelligence matters unless requested to do so by one of the select
intelligence committees."

The statement appeared in a June 14 letter report to Congress on security clearance policy (footnote 1). See:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/gao/gao-06-693r.pdf

This places responsibility on the intelligence committees to fully utilize the tools at their disposal, including the GAO.

"Every committee member up for re-election in 2006 and 2008...should be required to commit publicly to applying the full
weight of the GAO, with added resources, to intelligence matters," urged Robert Steele of Open Source Solutions (www.oss.net).

In 2001 testimony, a GAO official outlined his agency's authority to conduct intelligence oversight and described the
history of GAO access to intelligence information.

"We have not actively audited the CIA since the early 1960s, when we discontinued such work because the CIA was not
providing us with sufficient access to information to perform our mission," said Harry L. Hinton, Jr.

I doubt that GAO oversight of the CIA will become a campaign issue--especially since the last time the GAO audited the agency was in the early 1960s. But do the congressional intelligence committees truly audit the CIA and its programs? Given that the intelligence community has a $40 billion budget, that would be a lot of auditing to do. Sure, the CIA has its own inspector general. Yet a fundamental premise of our government is that every branch is checked by another. It certainly doesn't always work that way. But can it even be possible that the spy services are adequately audited? Let's see what the Dusty Foggo investigation reveals--if anything.

Posted by David Corn at 08:21 PM

Out to Work....Again

So talk among yourselves for a little bit....Or you can anxiously await the next posting from truthout.org on the Rove case. I hear one is coming soon.

Posted by David Corn at 04:25 PM

June 16, 2006

The Bush Bounce

This weekend the story on the chat shows will be Is Bush Back? The media relishes Big Pronouncement stories. Bush Is Gone! Or, the President Lives Again! It sells. It's easy to talk--or debate--about. Everyone likes to ID a trend. And somehow the pundits often ID the same trend at the same time. One colleague was heading to a TV show to discuss the latest Bush bounce--Rove unindicted, Zarqawi dead, a surprise trip to Baghdad, a slight tick-up in his approval ratings--and asked my advice on how to counter the latest conventional wisdom.

I quickly came up with a list of talking points--which was useful since I have to discuss the very same subject on a show being taped today. So in case any of you are being cornered by Republican relatives or friends chortling over the Return of Bush, here are some one-liners. And, please, add your own in the comments section.

* There's always some bounce when you hit bottom.

* People in the media are getting really, really tired of the Bush-sucks story.

* Hey, Bush didn't screw up a major disaster this week, so that's something.

* He's the president; at least 37 percent of the public SHOULD like him.

* Well, it certainly is a great week when you chief strategist is NOT indicted.

* Check back with us next week.

CALL THE JUDICIAL ACTIVISM POLICE! So where are all the complaints from the conservatives who decry judicial activism? In yesterday's Supreme Court decision ruling that prosecutors can use evidence obtained by cops who do not abide by the "knock and announce" rule, Justice Antonin Scalia engaged in an act of judicial activism. He tossed aside the punishment that has existed for decades: that such evidence has to be excluded. And for what reason did Scalia trash precedent? Scalia noted that today's police are more professional than 45 years ago (when the Supreme Court first imposed an exclusionary rule). In essence, this was his argument: because I believe police are better today than they were years ago, we no longer need to exclude evidence obtained by cops who do not follow the rules. Isn't it possible that cops behave better these daysbecause of the exclusionary rule? But the real issue for decriers of activism is this, Scalia is changing precedent because he thinks it is now better to err on the side of the cops than on the side of protecting rights. The "social cost" was too high, he wrote. Well, under what principle of judicial humility does he get to make that determination? I await the cries of outrage from the right.

Posted by David Corn at 11:50 AM

June 15, 2006

Looking for One Conservative (Who Believes the White House was Wrong To Mislead the Public)

I heard my ol' debating partner, Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review, on the radio today, poking fun at liberals disappointed by Karl Rove's escape from the clutches of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Lowry argued that lefties fueled by "hatred"--not rational disgust--had replaced their advocacy of policy concerns (universal health care, smaller class sizes) with the politics of personal destruction. He did concede that that they were replicating what conservatives did in the Clinton era, when rightwingers anxiously awaited the indictment of Hillary Clinton. But he chided anyone for caring much about the Valerie Wilson case and dismissed the episode as one big nothing. Please, he urged, let's go back to calling political foes wrong or, even, evil--but not criminal. And, he pleaded, let's take the word "indictment" out of politics.

There are a few holes in his reasoning. One is Scooter Libby. Lowry didn't mention him. But he was indicted--and is heading toward a trial. And he was indicted not by any Democrat. The CIA asked the Justice Department to investigate the Plame leak. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself, and James Comey, the deputy attorney general, selected Fitzpatrick a nonpartisan prosecutor. No doubt, Democrats were happy to see this transpire. But it was hardly their doing. If a high-level aide to the most influential vice president in decades--if not the nation's entire history--is indicted, should that be ignored by politics?

And does Lowry countenance the hardball tactics adopted by the White House to undermine the policy criticism that had been leveled by Joe Wilson? Valerie Wilson was outed--in part thanks to Rove confirming the leak for columnist Bob Novak--as the White House mounted a behind-the-scenes effort to undercut Joe Wilson. In Lowry's book, was that all fine and well? Put another way, I don't seem to recall Lowry previously saying forget the indictment but let's have a thorough congressional investigation of the matter.

But--finally--here's my real point. The president and the White House misled the public about the leak. They said that Rove and Libby were not involved in it. They also said that anyone who was involved would be booted from the administration. It turns out that not only were these two senior aides involved; they were at the center of it. The White House has refused to address this--let alone correct its previous false statements. Nor has Bush kept the promise to dismiss the leakers. Rove still guides Bush's ship from a White House office.

So rather than make fun of Bush critics who were hoping to see Rove get his comeuppance, why doesn't Lowry address the more significant issue of integrity at 1600 Pennsylvania? I've yet come across any conservative who has expressed serious concern about the (successful) White House effort to hide behind a stonewall of no-comments and, worse, false denials. Perhaps I've missed a rightwinger scolding the White House for not telling the truth about Rove's and Libby's dissemination of classified information to discredit a critic? But I doubt it. Now why is that?

Posted by David Corn at 08:15 PM

June 14, 2006

Bush, Rove and Nothing

On July 13, 2005--days after Newsweek disclosed an email showing that Karl Rove had leaked information on Valerie Wilson's CIA employment to Matt Cooper two years earlier--the following exchanges happened at the White House:

Q: Can I ask you if you have spoken with your Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove about the Valerie Plame matter? And do you think he acted improperly in talking about it with reporters?

THE PRESIDENT: Mark, I have instructed every member of my staff to fully cooperate in this investigation. I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports. We're in the midst of an ongoing investigation, and I will be more than happy to comment further once the investigation is completed. Elaine.

Q Mr. President, on that front, though, has Mr. Rove come to you and discussed -- when did he discuss the fact that he had conversations with reporters about Valerie Plame? And based on that, do you feel as though it was appropriate in 2003 for your spokesman to say definitively that Karl Rove had nothing to do with the Valerie Plame incident?

THE PRESIDENT: We're in the midst of an ongoing investigation, and this is a serious investigation. And it is very important for people not to prejudge the investigation based on media reports. And again, I will be more than happy to comment on this matter once the investigation is complete.

Today--a day after the news broke that Karl Rove will not be prosecuted in the leak case--Bush was asked to comment on Rove and the leak. Here's what he said:

I think that -- first of all, the decision by the prosecutor speaks for itself. He had a full investigation. Karl Rove went in front of the grand jury like -- I don't -- a lot of times. More times than -- they took a hard look at his role....[T]here's an ongoing trial, it's a serious business. And I've made the comments I'm going to make about this incident, and I'm going to put this part of the situation behind us and move forward.

How's that for a Texas two-step? When there was an investigation under way, Bush said he couldn't comment because there was an inestigation underway--but that he would be "happy" to discuss the matter after the investigation is done.

Now that the Rove investigation is done, Bush says that he already has said what he has to say (which was nothing) and that he's going to move on.

You do the math. Nothing (during the investigation) plus nothing (after the investigation) equals...nothing.

Posted by David Corn at 09:22 PM

Out to Work

Trying to finish a chapter today. Will be posting later. Talk among yourselves. Be polite.

Posted by David Corn at 05:18 PM

June 13, 2006

Rove Escapes

From my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

Early this morning, Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's lawyers, told reporters that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald had sent him a letter stating that Rove would not be indicted in the CIA leak case. In a statement, Luskin declared, "We believe that the Special Counsel's decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove's conduct."

Bush administration (and Rove) advocates will spin this news as vindication for the mastermind of George W. Bush's presidential campaigns. But there is no need for baseless speculation to conclude that Rove was involved in the leak and that the White House misled the public about his participation and broke a pledge to fire anyone who had leaked information about Valerie Wilson, the CIA officer married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration.

Here is what is known about Rove and the leak.

On July 9, 2003--three days after Joe Wilson published a New York Times op-ed piece disclosing that he had been sent to Niger by the CIA to check out the allegation that Iraq had been seeking to purchase uranium there and had reported back that such a transaction was highly unlikely--Rove confirmed to columnist Robert Novak that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. By this point in time, the White House--particularly Dick Cheney's office and Scooter Libby--had been gathering information on Wilson, his wife, and his trip for weeks. (In May and June, stories had appeared in the media quoting an unnamed ambassador who had gone to Niger and found nothing to substantiate the uranium-buying charge, which Bush had alleged in his 2003 State of the Union address.) And when Rove spoke to Novak--who had first heard about Valerie Wilson from another administration official--the White House was engaged in an effort to discredit Wilson. Cheney and others believed that if Wilson's mission to Niger could be depicted as a junket or boondoggle arranged by Wilson's wife, Wilson and his findings would be undermined. Spending a week in one of the poorest countries in the world for no pay would hardly qualify as a junket, but the White House was trying to use whatever they could.

Two days after Rove spoke to Novak and gave the columnist the confirmation he needed to proceed with a piece that would out Valerie Wilson as an undercover CIA officer working on weapons of mass destruction, Rove spoke to Matt Cooper of Time. According to an email Cooper wrote immediately after this conversation, Rove told him that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and had sent Wilson to Niger. This conversation occurred three days before the Novak article appeared.

So Rove spoke to two reporters about Valerie Wilson. Her employment status at the CIA was classified. Rove was not merely gossiping, he was disseminating secret information, whether he realized it or not.

After the leak appeared in Novak's column on July 14, 2003, Scott McClellan, who had just taken over as White House press secretary, said of the leak, "That is not the way this President or this White House operates."

He was wrong. It was precisely how the White House had operated. Scooter Libby--according to Fitzgerald's legal filings, Cooper's account, and the account of New York Times reporter Judy Miller--had also discussed Valerie Wilson's CIA connection with Cooper and Miller before the Novak column was published.

After the news broke in late September 2003 that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation of the leak, McClellan declared that he had spoken to Rove and that "he was not involved" in the leak. McClellan also asserted that the vice president's office had not leaked the information about Valerie Wilson. He noted, "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." Bush affirmed that Rove was uninvolved and said, "If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."

Rove--with or without the knowledge of the president and other White House aides--kept his leading role in the leak a secret for almost two years. In the summer of 2005, Newsweek revealed the Cooper email. And Fitzgerald's indictment of Libby months later disclosed that Rove had told Libby that he had spoken to Novak about Joe Wilson's wife.

The White House responded to these revelations by stonewalling, claiming that it could not answer any questions about Rove and the leak while a criminal investigation was underway. And it maintained that it could not even explain its previous--and false--statements about Rove and Libby.

McClellan's promise--made on behalf of the president--that anyone involved in the leak would be booted from the administration--was not honored. Nor was Bush's statement that action would be taken against anyone who leaked classified information. The evidence was clear. Rove had conveyed classified information about Valerie Wilson to two reporters as part of a White House effort to undercut Joe Wilson.

Fitzgerald had a high burden of proof in the Rove case. To win a prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act--which makes it a felony to disclose identifying information about a covert officer--Fitzgerald would have had to prove that Rove definitely knew that Valerie Wilson was not just a CIA employee but an undercover CIA employee. If Rove could raise doubt about his state of knowledge on that point, he would be able to mount an effective defense. Fitzgerald had kept Rove in the crosshairs for so long because he suspected that Rove had lied to FBI agents and his grand jury when Rove said at first that he had not spoken with Cooper about Valerie Wilson. It was only after a Rove email emerged--under somewhat puzzling circumstances--that noted that he had talked to Cooper that Rove acknowledged that he had a conversation with Cooper (though he still said he did not recall it).

Fitzgerald spent over a year-and-a-half trying to determine if he could prosecute Rove for perjury or obstruction of justice, as Rove's lawyer tried mightily to explain the delay in producing that one email. In the end, Fitzgerald concluded his case was not strong enough. Given his pursuit of Libby and the time he kept Rove hanging, it's reasonable to assume that Fitzgerald rendered a good-faith judgment based on the law and the facts he had in hand.

Which brings us back to the Democrats' early mistake. From the start, they called for a special counsel--as if that would get to the bottom of the controversy. But Fitzgerald's mission was to investigate possible crimes and then mount prosecutions if he had the evidence to do so. His job was not to be a fact-finder for the public. He is not compelled to release any report detailing what he discovered about the leak and the White House role. Independent counsels in the past were required to write public reports. But the law establishing independent counsels expired years ago, with the consent of Democrats angry at Kenneth Starr. A special counsel has no obligation to report on what he or she discovered. Congress was the body that should have investigated the leak--not as a criminal matter but as an issue of White House conduct--and it did not. Senior congressional Democrats did not push that point when they had the chance.

That means now that the whole story of the leak has yet to be disclosed. And it may never be--in an official sense. (Stay tuned for a book I am writing that will be out in the fall.) But several essentials are well-established: Rove leaked classified information that may have harmed national security; the White House said he hadn't and that leakers would be fired; Rove remains at the president's side today.

Not all wrongdoing--not all lying--in Washington is illegal. Rove escaped prosecution. But the episode has revealed the way the Bush White House really operates.

Posted by David Corn at 12:10 PM

June 12, 2006

Libby, Greenberg and Bush

I went to a hearing today for the Scooter Libby case. Patrick Fitzgerald and Libby's lawyers went over bookkeeping matters for about fifteen minutes. Then it was done. No news. The few reporters who were there were disappointed. Then Fitzgerald left the courtroom without saying a word to any of us--as usual. Not all prosecutors are like that. Many pal around with reporters or, at least, entertain basic and not-too-penetrating questions. Fitzgerald avoids reporters like ebola. At a previous hearing, a television producer who has been covering legal affairs for twenty years tried to ask Fitzgerald a simple question about something that he had said a few minutes earlier in a public court session. He refused to say anything. Couldn't he just clarify his remark, she asked, so she could be sure she had understood what he had said and would not report anything in error? No, he said, looking rather uncomfortable: "I don't do that." No, he doesn't. And he doesn't play the leak game. Boy, is this White House--and Karl Rove, in particular--lucky in that regard.

So we got no news today. Which means I have no news for you.

But I did see pollster Stan Greenberg at the Take Back America conference this morning, the big liberal activist get-together (which is not the YearlyKos gathering). He had some good and bad news for the attendees. The good news: Republicans, according to the polls (or his polls) are in freefall. The bad news: Democrats are not on the ascent. "We have watched their collapse," he said. "We have not watched our rise."

The conservative worldview, he maintained, is not popular these days. "That would be an immense opportunity for us," he remarked, "if anyone had any idea of what Democrats stood for." Can Dems define themselves by November? That does seem a tall task. And conservatives do have an all-season weapon at the ready. Despite what people say about the issues, they still identify the term "conservative" more favorably than the identification "liberal." (Thirty-seven percent, according to a Greenberg poll, have a positive reaction to "conservative," while only 24 percent feel warm and fuzzy about "liberal.") Which means that the right can try to thwart an attack by branding the attacker a "liberal." So expect lots of name-calling in the fall.

On another subject: I heard George W. Bush today say that "Iraq's neighbors ought to do more to help" with reconstruction in that battered nation. Sure, he's right. But given that he failed to enlist these neighbors for the invasion, initially told countries that were not part of the war to get lost when it came to reconstruction contracts, didn't put enough troops into Iraq to secure the country, didn't consult with other nations before proceeding with the dissolution of the army and de-Baathification, and recently chose not to ask Congress for any more reconstruction funds, he has a lot of nerve telling others to do more. How do you say chutzpah in Arabic?

Posted by David Corn at 09:19 PM

June 09, 2006

Of Zarqawi and Context

An easy defense for one under attack is to claim that his or her words were taken out of context. Usually this is a dodge resorted to when one cannot bear to apologize or admit error. But in today's lesson, students, let me present a true example of a conservative commentator who engaged in reckless abandonment of context. It just so happens to involve me.

Ben Johnson, the managing editor of right-wing David Horowitz's FrontPage.com, was peeved by yesterday's posting below regarding the demise of Abu Musab Zarqawi. He wrote,

David Corn at The Nation charges President Bush with inventing Zarqawi threat--and insists Bush played into al-Qaeda's hands by killing him. "[T]he two people most satisfied by Zarqawi's death," he writes, "are Osama bin Laden and his number-two Ayman al-Zawahiri, for now they have been spared a competitor for attention and handed a martyr." He surmised Zarqawi's "death is welcomed--but it remains part of a larger and tragic story of miscalculation." He then lays out the Left's current wisdom on the bombing:

"Bush did not mention that it was his invasion of Iraq that fully allied Zarqawi with al-Qaeda. Prior to the war, terrorism experts considered Zarqawi more of a rival than a partner. And he did not mention that four years ago--before Zarqawi had become a major terrorist figure and before he had become responsible for the deaths of hundreds (if not thousands)--the Bush White House chose not to take him out when it could [in summer 2002]....The administration put off attacking Zarqawi because it wanted to invade Iraq."

Corn makes two mutually exclusive arguments: that Zarqawi was not "fully allied" with Osama bin Laden before the Iraq invasion...and that the president needlessly allowed him to inflict "hundreds (if not thousands)" of deaths on innocent Iraqis, and Americans, to secure an American occupation.

If only I spoke for the Left. But--actually--neither I nor the Left want that. But notice the sly hand at work above. In discussing what the Zarqawi death might mean to al Qaeda, I was quoting Bruce Hoffman, a well-known terrorism expert at the Rand Corporation (hardly a bastion of the Left). But to have noted that would have diluted Johnson's point about Lefty wackiness.

And when I mentioned that the White House had thrice turned down Pentagon plans to bomb Zarqawi's camp in 2002, I was quoting (and linking to) an NBC News report from 2004. Johnson left that out as well. If he has a problem, it's with NBC News. Is the report wrong? Were NBC News' military sources speaking inaccurately when they said that the White House turned down their request to strike Zarqawi because it would interfere with its plans to promote a war with Iraq?

Johnson does write:

It is true the White House turned down plans to bomb Ansar in the summer of 2002--because State Department officials long drew no connection between Zarqawi and al-Qaeda. Like the Left (including Corn), Foggy Bottom analysts concluded the two were unaffiliated parties. By the time they connected the dots, a strike would have been too risky and virtually impossible to secure diplomatically.

How odd. Bush failed to act because of those namby-pamby Foggy Bottom dwellers in 2002. But then the president disregarded their concerns when it came to an invasion of Iraq? By the way, after Colin Powell pointed to Zarqawi as evidence of the "sinister nexus" between al Qaeda and Baghdad in his speech to the UN Security Council in February 2003, terrorism experts noted that this assertion was far from proven. But, as I wrote at the time, Powell had made a good case for bombing Zarqawi (because Zarqawi seemed a danger on his own)--not for invading Iraq. Yet, as the NBC News report noted, Bush put invading Iraq ahead of taking out Zarqawi. And what happened after that is no secret. I did not charge that Bush "invented" the Zarqawi threat. I noted that Bush had ignored it in pursuit of a war in Iraq. That should not be too hard a context for the Horowitzers to grasp.
******
MORE LEFTY WACKINESS? While we're discussing context and honesty, let's take a look at excerpts from an interview that Council on Foreign Relations consultant Bernard Gwetzman conducted recently with Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who gave the Pentagon's recent report to Congress on the war in Iraq a grade of F and called it a document close to "deception." Here are some portions:

You've been quite critical of the latest quarterly report by the Defense Department to Congress on the situation in Iraq. Why so?

We are seeing a pattern in which we have never had realistic reporting to Congress. But this quarterly report has really failed to address the issues in ways which border on deception.

Can you summarize your criticism?

I think everybody needs to understand we are talking about a sixty-page document. Parts of it deal with the president's strategy, and there is some useful material mixed in with problems that range from sloppy editing to massive omissions and conceptual failures.

But essentially, you can break down its failures into four parts. The first is political. The report argues that there is political success because there have been elections, and the Iraqis have finally been able to agree on a government. It does not address any of the political problems with any realism, it does not talk about the fact that the elections showed that Iraq was polarized along ethnic or sectarian lines, or seriously address the risk of a major civil war.

The second is economic. The report provides an analysis of the economy that does not track with other U.S. estimates. It makes no sense in basic econometric terms, provides a misleading picture of "success" in a country with 20 to 40 percent unemployment, and does not address any of the massive problems in the U.S. aid effort and the U.S. use of Iraqi funds. It essentially talks about an economy in Iraq which does not exist.

The third is analysis of the threat. There are some useful aspects of the analysis, dealing with trends in the insurgency. But the report so badly downplays the growing risk of sectarian and ethnic conflict that it produces a totally misleading picture of the threat, and this is compounded by a use of poll data which it does not explain or validate. It uses cherry-picked polling results, some of which contradict each other in terms of other tables or text.

Finally, there is the analysis of progress in developing Iraqi forces. The report does provide some useful data on Iraqi force development, and there has been progress. But the report exaggerates this progress. It does not provide any picture of the level of continued U.S. support necessary to bring this program to success. Finally, at a time when the militias, the police, and the various protection services have reached a crisis point, and where there is truly a major question of whether Iraq is moving toward civil war, the report dodges around all of the problems and simply does not give either Congress or the American people anything approaching a realistic picture....

So you're saying the situation is deteriorating in Iraq?

One of the great problems here is that the police and the security services, the militias, crime, local security forces, and action forces all have divided along sectarian and ethnic lines. They are, in general, corrupt, and they lack the kind of leadership and training that is needed. There is nothing convincing to say things are getting better, and it is very possible that the political situation could become paralyzed or divided, and if so, then this deterioration along sectarian and ethic lines, coupled to problems with the police and militias, could confront us with something far worse than exists today. I do not want to be pessimistic about this. I think the fact is, however, we need to assess these risks, and we need to assess them honestly if we are going to organize the kind of U.S. effort that has the highest possibility of preventing civil conflict and that kind of victory for the insurgency....

An obvious conclusion would be that the Pentagon report was done for political reasons to try to make things look better than they are in Iraq with elections coming up in November for Congress.

One wonders. It certainly spins things in a very favorable way in many areas. But the truth of the matter is that it is simply incompetent. It shows a lack of concern for detail, for the facts, [for] addressing the issues that really need to be addressed. That is one of the most discouraging aspects of it. This is a highly partisan environment. There are really bitter and increasingly polarized debates in Congress, among the American people, and in the media over what is happening there. People really need to know the facts, they need to know the risks, and they need to know what level of commitment is needed. It simply is a failure in basic analytic integrity.

I look forward to the Horowitz gang accusing CSIS of spreading the misguided criticism of the Left.

Posted by David Corn at 11:55 AM

June 08, 2006

The Death of Zarqawi

From my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

It's good news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. Any member of the civilized world ought to cheer the demise of a terrorist who killed civilians with bombings and beheadings.

But his death--brought about by a US air strike that was apparently ordered after a captured Zarqawi lieutenant disclosed Zarqawi's favorite hiding places--may not mean much in terms of bringing peace, democracy and stability to Iraq. His al Qaeda in Iraq--which was estimated to number no more than several hundred fighters--made up the smallest slice of the insurgency. His departure will not have much impact on the forces fueling the fighting and chaos in Iraq. The Sunni-based insurgency draws on the 300,000 or so former members of the Iraq army that was disbanded in May 2003. And the Shiite militias have thousands of armed loyalists. Though Zarqawi was an evil leader responsible for the most dramatic acts of terrorism, he was something of a sideshow. Recently, an Iraqi intelligence officer told me that the most pressing problem in Iraq was not Zarqawi and his jihadists but the infiltration of the military and security forces by the various militias. These groups are responsible for the death squad-like activities (kidnappings, murders) that have terrorized Iraqis. They will not be given much pause by the successful attack on Zarqawi. (And Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Rand, notes that after George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the two people most satisfied by Zarqawi's death are Osama bin Laden and his number-two Ayman al-Zawahiri, for now they have been spared a competitor for attention and handed a martyr.)

Given that Saddam Hussein's capture did not become the turning point that some commentators claimed it would be--"the beginning of the end," former CIA director James Woolsey said at the time--the White House did not insist that Zarqawi's death would lead to progress in Iraq. Bush was reasonably realistic when he spoke about the successful strike: "Zarqawi is dead, but the difficult and necessary mission in Iraq continues. We can expect the terrorists and insurgents to carry on without him. We can expect the sectarian violence to continue."

He did add, "Zarqawi's death is a severe blow to al Qaeda. It's a victory in the global war on terror." But Bush did not mention that it was his invasion of Iraq that fully allied Zarqawi with al Qaeda. Prior to the war, terrorism experts considered Zarqawi more of a rival than a partner. And he did not mention that four years ago--before Zarqawi had become a major terrorist figure and before he had become responsible for the deaths of hundreds (if not thousands)--the Bush White House chose not to take him out when it could.

In March 2004, NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski reported that the White House had three times in 2002 turned down a Pentagon request to attack Zarqawi, who then was believed to be running a weapons lab in northern Iraq--in territory not controlled by Saddam Hussein's government. Miklaszewski wrote that "the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam." That is, the Bush White House let Zarqawi alone so it would have an easier time selling the war in Iraq.

Here are some excerpts from the Miklaszewski article:

NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself--but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002...[t]he Pentagon...drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council....

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

"People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of preemption against terrorists," according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey....

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late--Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone.

The administration put off attacking Zarqawi because it wanted to invade Iraq. That invasion made Zarqawi a more important target--and a more powerful killer. His death is welcomed--but it remains part of a larger and tragic story of miscalculation.

Posted by David Corn at 11:51 AM

June 07, 2006

A GOP Issue that Works?

I just posted the below in my "Capital Games" column at www.thenation.com....

Nancy Pelosi, put away that tape measure! That seems to be the conventional wisdom the day after a key congressional election in San Diego. And it may even be correct--that is, Pelosi should not assume she will be picking out new curtains for the House Speaker's office following this fall's elections. In felonious Duke Cunningham's district, another Republican, former Representative Brian Bilbray, was able to hold the seat for the GOP, beating back the Democrat 49 to 45 percent. If the Ds cannot pick up a seat when an R is nabbed on bribery charges and tossed into prison, that's a sign that the "culture of corruption" charge (see Jack Abramoff) they are campaigning upon may not do the trick in November. (Representative William Jefferson, a Democrat accused of taking $100,000 bribe, is sure not helping on this front.) Cunningham's district was a Republican area. But to regain the House, the Dems need to do well in heretofore GOP districts.

Without reading too much into the results of one race, there is good reason for Democrats to worry: illegal immigration. Bilbray hyped his support for tough border enforcement, siding with the House Republicans' keep-'em-out/toss-'em-out approach and attacking the Bush-favored Senate compromise position that blends a (convoluted) path-to-citizenship with steps to beef up the border. And that might have won him the race. During the campaign, Bilbray called for building a fence "from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico." Celebrating his victory, Bilbray said, "The president proposing amnesty was absolutely a big problem. In fact, it wasn't until I was able to highlight the fact that I did not agree with my friends in the Senate or my friend in the White House on amnesty that you really saw the polls start supporting me strongly."

Now nervous-Nelly Republicans have a test-case to apply to their own races. If it's a good fit for the district, Republican candidates will surely sound the illegal immigrant alarm to drive base-voters to the voting booth. Many were probably planning to do this already. Bilbray is proof it works.

When Latinos were out in the streets weeks ago to protest the House Republicans' harsh immigration bill, there was talk among commentators about the rising political clout of Hispanic-American voters. But rallies do not make voting patterns. And that clout may not arrive quick enough to help Democrats in five months. Historically, it takes a long time for new voting blocs to vote. Over the years, the greatest predictor of whether someone will vote in an election has been whether they voted in the previous one. Even if Americans of Latin American origin are enraged by conservative Republicans, that anger may not register at the polls (particularly in an off-year election) for some time.

On the other mano, conservative voters pissed off about the trumped-up crisis of illegal immigration are already accustomed to expressing their outrage on election day. It may well be that it is not to the GOP's advantage to make illegal immigration a national issue in the election. (The Wall-only approach divides the party, puts off business supporters, and might alienate moderate voters.) But in many a district, bashing illegal immigrants will serve the party well. In these spots, if the choice of targets for voter are either a corrupt party controlling Congress or illegal immigrants sneaking into America to steal jobs, commit crimes, alter the culture, and perhaps engage in terrorist acts, guess who wins.

This week, Senate Republicans tried to play the gay-marriage card--and they failed to defeat a Democrat-led filibuster. But they did throw a chewed-up bone to their social conservative supporters. Congressional Republicans also intend to wave the flag-burning issue soon. It's possible these hot-button wedge issues don't juice up Republican-leaning voters as much as they used to. But illegal immigrants may trump gays and flag-burners as Enemy No. 1 for the GOPers this year. In some districts--maybe critical districts--Jack Abramoff will be no match for that.

Posted by David Corn at 02:42 PM

June 06, 2006

Selling the Farm

Can't the Bush administration and congressional Republicans throw a big fat bone to the well-to-do and just be honest about it? Silly question. With the economy supposedly booming but war costs still running high, isn't now the perfect time to provide "relief" to wealthier Americans? Well, that's the argument that Bush and GOPers are pushing as they call for extending the estate tax cut. When they first passed this cut in Bush's first administration, the White House disingenuously claimed it was needed to protect family farms. But no one--not even the groups lobbying for the measure--could provide an example of a single family farm that had been lost due to estate taxes. (Basic estate planning prevents such tragedies.) Nevertheless, the cut was passed, as Bush sobbed about beleaguered farming families that did not exist.

These days, it seems, the Republicans are not even bothering with such phony justifications. But they are pushing misleading numbers. As usual, the numbers-crunchers at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have this nailed. The group notes that the ten-year cost figure the White House is using--$369 billion--covers a stretch that includes years in which the full cost of the tax cut will not be experienced. Once it really kicks in, this tax cut will cost about $1 trillion, from 2011 to 2021. Look at this chart:

The CBPP reports:

Making permanent the repeal of the estate tax after 2010--as proposed by the President and as passed by the House last year--would add nearly $1 trillion to the deficit between fiscal years 2012 and 2021, the first ten years in which the full costs of extending repeal would be reflected in the budget. This cost includes $776 billion of lost revenues and $213 billion of higher interest payments on the national debt. Each year of repeal would cost roughly the same, in today's terms, as everything the federal government now spends on homeland security, and more than it now spends on education.

The revenue-loss projection is based on official Joint Committee on Taxation estimates of the cost of repeal, which show lost revenues of $369 billion between 2007 and 2016, including a $79 billion revenue loss in 2016 alone. (The Treasury Department estimate is similar: a $339 billion ten-year cost for repeal.) These estimates understate the full fiscal impact of estate tax repeal, however, because the ten-year period covered by the official estimates includes only five years in which the costs of making repeal permanent would be fully felt.

So add this trillion dollars in debt to the other trillions of dollars in debt that Bush has accrued. In future years, Americans may well have to sell the farm to cover this.

Posted by David Corn at 01:38 PM

June 05, 2006

The Anti-Gay Marriage: An Early Summer Rerun

Don't they get tired of the cynical posturing? I know I do. I'm speaking of the Bush White House's latest effort to play the gay-marriage card. Bush made a mighty big deal of his support for a constitutional amendment banning man-on-man (or woman-on-woman) marriage during the last election--for obvious reasons. Yet once he was reelected, he had little to say about this supposedly crucial matter. And he said little for almost two years. But now with that next election rolling around--this time only for members of the House and Senate--Bush, quite suddenly, has rediscovered gay marriage as a pressing issue of the day. He delivered a radio address on the subject this past weekend, and he gave a little speech on it today. (Which means he has said more in public about gay marriage than the war in Iraq in recent days.) When it comes to pandering, this is about as transparent as it gets.

It's also boring. Now that it's time to rev up the religious right base, Bush trots out all the same rhetoric he deployed before. Heterosexual marriage, he said today, is "critical to the health of society." (Tell Neil Bush that.) Gay marriage, he said, would "undermine the family structure." But how? If all those same-sex couples with kids are not permitted to marry, how does that bolster the "family structure." Man-woman marriage, he noted, is one of the "enduring institutions" of American society. Well, so is prostitution. (And no doubt, slave-owners argued that slavery was an "enduring institution.") It's all the same blather--and no true argument. This is not about "protecting" marriage. It's about slamming homosexuality. And if Bush is going to regurgitate the same soundbites for this new round, I'm going to just repost below what I wrote two years ago (for TomPaine.com) on the subject. Why bother coming up with new analysis of an old trick? So here it is....

How Bush Helped My Marriage
by David Corn
www.tompaine.com
March 1, 2004

My marriage has been experiencing some difficulty lately. My wife and I have been bickering, and there's been more conflict than usual in our household. For weeks I wasn't sure why this was happening. True, I've been working quite hard lately. And she has gallantly picked up the slack at home, while trying to keep her own career alive, and tended to our two pre-K daughters, who still insist on testing our abilities to function without sleep. At the same time, family finances have been tight, and we've had several stress-inducing issues to confront, including to which schools to send our girls. Were we to blame for the small but noticeable cracks in our marriage? Were we unable to handle the normal pressures of modern life? I was concerned I was inadequate; I worried I might be a failure.

But I was wrong to fret. Who told me so? The president of the United States. While feeling guilty about my less-than-perfect marriage a few days ago, I happened to turn on C-SPAN radio. And there was George W. Bush speaking from the Roosevelt Room. I listened to him, and I realized our recent difficulties were not my fault, or my wife's. The problem was much bigger than us. The problem was that thousands miles away from us, 3,200 gay and lesbian couples had married. Those people were undermining what Bush called "the institution of marriage." That meant that our marriage was merely one of many under assault. My wife and I--we were victims.

Bush criticized the city of San Francisco's decision to hand out marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He noted that the decisions of "a few judges and local authorities...have created confusion on an issue that requires clarity." No wonder I was feeling doubtful about my marriage. Some "local authorities" had swiped my clarity. And there must be many other people in the same situation as me: feeling confused about their marriages and also confused as to why they are feeling confused. But now, thanks to Bush, we can see who is responsible for all this confusion--those activist judges.

Bush talked about the need to "protect marriage." I agreed; my marriage could use a little protection. At first, I thought it needed protection from our own petty flaws, such as one of us--I'm not saying who--complaining about receiving socks as a birthday present. Now I saw that our marriage had to be defended against outside forces. This was quite reassuring. Everyone knows that a common enemy creates and strengthens bonds between people.

"Marriage," Bush said, "cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society." I wasn't certain what he meant by that. But I got the drift: if same-sex marriages were allowed to occur, then Marriage: The Institution would be weaker. The main threat my wife and I faced was not divorce. Everyone who gets married these days realizes its (literally) a 50-50 proposition. No, the danger was coming from another direction. Our problems clearly had more to do with this tradition-destroying tsunami than, say, the fact that one of us--again, I'm not saying who--did not notice when the other came home with highlighted hair.

As Bush spoke, my confusion did turn to clarity. After all, how could our marriage survive and thrive if the very definition of marriage was iffy? Two weeks ago when I woke up in the morning, looked at my wife and thought, "I'm married to this woman," I knew exactly what that meant. But these days, when I do the same, I encounter an unsettling feeling. Am I married to her the way Dad was married to Mom? Or am I married to her the way Roger is now married to Roger? I never bargained for this kind of uncertainty when I said, "I do."

"The union of a man and woman," Bush declared, "is the most enduring human institution." And that made me proud to be married. (In general, I'm not part of too many enduring human institutions.) Why fiddle with endurance? Moreover, if gay marriage advocates get their way and any adult can marry any other adult, won't participation in the "most enduring human institution" become a little less special? I understood Bush's point: keeping people out of the "most enduring institution" would strengthen it. If the borders of marriage are expanded, the worth of my own marriage will be diluted. Think of what happens when too many people discover your favorite vacation hideaway.

Bush made me understand that all these gay marriages occurring elsewhere were generating pressures that different-sex married couples could not be expected to bear. People like us needed help, and Bush had the answer: a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. How else can we enhance the value of marriage than by restricting its supply? (The Federal Reserve does this all the time with money to boost the value of the dollar.) I put aside thoughts of seeing a marriage counselor. Bush convinced me that would be of no use. My wife and I must simply hold on until a two-thirds majority of the House and the Senate and three-quarters of the state legislatures come to our rescue. And I say to them: please hurry, our kids are getting tired of hearing us quarrel when one of us--once more, I won't say who--forgets to take out the trash.

Posted by David Corn at 02:10 PM

June 02, 2006

Drop that Laptop and Hit the Lab

No posting today. Too busy rewriting a chapter. I also had to speak at a conference for student journalists at the Center for American Progress. (It aired on C-SPAN 2.)

I was the day's curmudgeon. I told the students to think long and hard before entering the journalism field. The industry is in decline--even as the media world expands. The Washington Post, for example, this week announced that dozens of its veterans reporters are taking buyouts. Some of these people were essentially told by Post management to beat it, sources connected to the paper tell me. One Postie being given the heave-ho is Tom Edsall, one of the paper's best political reporters. His departure will be a loss for the institution--and all of us who benefit from reading his work.

The problem is, I told the students, that people their age do not want to pay for information. So the long-term question for them is, who's gonna pay you to be a journalist in the years ahead? If people are not willing to buy information, it will be hard to earn money providing information.

Oh, I noted that being a journalist is great. It gives you license to be a busybody and call people up and ask all sorts of questions. And it's a jazz to find out stuff before other people and disseminate it. But I do believe that for all the wonderfulness of the Internet, it has also allowed bad (and cheap) information to compete more efficiently with good (and expensive to produce) information. That's a dynamic that may not shift for a while and that has severe ramifications for those who want to produce good journalism and those who want to read it. Which is why my only concrete advice to the students was this: study biotech and Chinese.

Well, I suppose this might count as a post. You be the judge.

Posted by David Corn at 05:08 PM

June 01, 2006

Last Throes of Credibility

I'm on the run today, but I did spot the following story on Bloomberg written by friend (and superb defense writer) Tony Capaccio:

Iraq Insurgency Likely to Stay Strong Into 2007, Pentagon Says

May 30 (Bloomberg) -- Sunni and Shiite insurgents will remain strong and capable of attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces until at least next year and some hardliners have joined forces with al-Qaeda, the U.S. Defense Department reported today.

"The Sunni Arab insurgents have effective and collaborative leadership, resiliency and links with the Sunni Arab political leadership," the report states. Al-Qaeda "remains intent on instigating civil war.

...Other assessments have suggested the progress toward President George W. Bush's goals in Iraq has faltered. The Pentagon's inspector general for Iraq reconstruction reported May 1 that the U.S. effort to rebuild the country is running out of time and money as the year-end deadline approaches for handing most of the work off to the Iraqis.

....The insurgents' "strength will likely remain steady throughout 2006 but their appeal and motivation for continued violent action will begin to wane in early 2007," [the new Pentagon report] said. At the same time it warns that some of those groups are aligning with al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters.

The report also says that public opinion and the fact that most of the attacks are concentrated in four provinces, including Baghdad and Anbar, suggest the risk of full-scale civil war is low.

Let's be glad that after more than three years of war, Iraq is not yet on the verge of complete civil war. How's that for a cakewalk?

One obvious response to the Pentagon report is that it was almost exactly a year ago that Dick Cheney said that the Iraqi insurgency was in "the last throes." It's easy to make fun of the vice president for getting that wrong. But there is a serious question: when is it fair to say to someone, "you don't know what you're talking about, so keep it zipped"? Cheney has been wrong on the WMDs, the greeted-as-liberators claim, and the Mohammed-Atta-met-with-Iraqi-intelligence allegation. So why should anyone pay attention to Cheney's pronouncements? If a CEO muffed such big calls, he'd be out on his keister (with, of course, a severance package worth hundreds of millions of dollars). Yeah, I know. This guy still is vice president. But don't track records count? By the way, that's a rhetorical question.

Posted by David Corn at 05:21 PM