MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: January 7, 2007

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January 12, 2007

Will Terror Alert Hit Red Following Greek Tragedy?

That breaking news about the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Athens? Turns out the only damage was "minor damage to an upper-floor window and a room that gets infrequent use." The embassy was empty at the time—before 6 a.m. In fact, the Washington Post reports that "[n]o one was in the area of the building at the time." Except the bombers, that is, who launched their potent missile from just across the street. Color me cynical, but how convenient to have an, err, terrorist attack just as President Bush is calling for more people's kids to go die in Iraq. The U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Charles P. Ries, is totally on board with the distraction game plan, calling the broken window "a senseless act of violence," which he promises to treat as "a serious attack." Supposedly (WaPo reports that Bloomberg reports that Greek officials say), the Greek leftist group Revolutionary Struggle has claimed responsibility. What's next, war with Greece? Giddy up!

Troops See Evidence on the Ground that Makes Surge Look Silly

The Washington Post carries an article today that is an example of what really great embedded reporting can look like. It's hard to give a sample, because there is so much good material, but basically a reporter went out into Baghdad with a squad of American troops as they tried to use Iraqi forces and Iraqi-provided intelligence to unearth some weapons.

The result, predictably, is a sad failure. All of the troops return to base safe, but the president's claim that the 21,500 new troops shipping to Iraq will assist Iraqi forces, instead of lead them, ends up in tatters. Read it for yourself.

The Time (To Maximize Our Losses) Is Now. Bush Deserves Another Chance

Well, so the president thought it all over, and decided to make things worse.

Making a very convincing case that there was no choice, he explained why, as bad as things have gone so far, we would be missing an incredible opportunity if we didn't immediately take the disaster to the next level.

This time, he assured, things would be different, in that there would be absolutely no possibility of improving the situation. With virtually no support from any of the parties involved, including his supporters, and ignoring the defeats suffered to date as evidence for radically changing course, the president deftly argued for seizing the chance to engage in unprecedented folly.

Not only that, but in a stunning show of accountability, the president publicly claimed responsibility for any mistakes that might have been made on his watch, yet remained steadfastly committed to not admitting any. For the first time since the last time he addressed the nation, the president's disarmingly lucid oratory met all expectations. With no end of
unsubstantiated facts to substantiate his renewed commitment to the end times, he stood firm to protect his mission, his legacy, his vision of a world in total harmony with apocalyptic ideals.

Cut our losses? Never. To what end have we come all this way if we fail to fail completely? Staring soberly into the camera, he brushed aside all speculation of backing down, of giving in, of listening to anyone who would dare suggest the leader of so great a nation might ever doubt his own ignorance. His logic is airtight. We can¹t afford not to screw this up totally. And to his detractors who cry out like sissies at a bar fight that it can't get any worse, the president shot back a reassuring, "you ain't seen nothin' yet."

Such resolve to bankrupt a nation economically and morally in the service of international turmoil and suffering, and to unburden us of any hope for peace in our lifetime, warrants a respect and admiration reserved for few. He gave it to us straight, as we tuned in breathlessly and came to the obvious conclusion.

The guy makes sense.

-- Bill Santiago, billsantiago.com, myspace.com/billsantiagocomedy

House Armed Services Committee 1, Robert Gates 0

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates went before Congress Thursday to defend the President's escalation of the Iraq War. He probably wishes he had some of his testimony back.

Trying to downplay the risk that Bush's decision will prolong the war, Gates said, "I think most of us, in our minds, are thinking of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or two years." This, of course, is a haunting echo of many statements made by Bush and Co. before the war. Examples from the Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline:

"Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." -- Donald Rumsfeld, November 14, 2002

"It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." -- Donald Rumsfeld, February 7, 2003

"We're going to stand up an interim government, hand power over to them, and get out of there in three to four months." -- Lawrence Di Rita, April 2003

Gates took a beating at the hearing, attacked by both Republicans and Democrats over the war in Iraq. At one point, under intense questioning, Gates actually said, "I would confess I'm no expert on Iraq." (I would confess, from the looks of things, no one in the Bush Administration is.) Later, when asked about the balance between American and Iraqi troops, Gates provided what might be the greatest soundbite from a Secretary of Defense ever.

He told the panel he was "no expert on military matters."

Clearly, this is the most qualified man in America to run the Armed Forces at this trying time.

The Toxic Body of Evidence

In exchange for 14 vials of blood, science writer David Ewing Duncan had his body tested for no fewer than 320 different chemicals. Duncan wrote about the experience and about the nature of trace chemicals in the body for article in National Geographic and is on a speaking tour sharing fascinating tidbits:

-As a kid in Kansas, he rode his bike through clouds of DDT. Surprise, surprise, he still has a high "body burden" of its byproduct DDE, about 40 years later.

-His level of one particularly toxic PBDE, a flame-retardant, is 10 times the American average and 200 times the Swedish average. He attributes that to flying 200,000 miles last year; planes are "drenched in the stuff."

In his article and subsequent speeches Duncan has steered clear of regulatory issues, instead calling for more research. But research often comes long after the damage is done. Take the history of lead:

In 1921, General Motors invented lead additives to gas, paving the way for modern high-power engines. Leaded fuel earned a nickname fast—"loony gas." But it wasn't until the 70s that the EPA started regulating it. And over the next decade, through 1986, the EPA dropped the threshold for lead content in gas by 98%. Uranium, CFCs, DDT—same story.

Shockingly, only a quarter of the 82,000 chemicals in use in the U.S. have ever been tested for toxicity, according to Duncan. How long will it take for us to trace the cause of modern epidemics? From the early 1970s through the mid-1990s, one type of leukemia was up 62%, male birth defects doubled, and childhood brain cancer was up 40%, he writes.

Only in the past few years have we developed machines precise enough to test the presence of some of these chemicals in the body, in parts per million, per billion, and even per trillion. It's like detecting a teaspoon of dye in an Olympic swimming pool, Duncan said, and some of the machines that do it cost a million dollars. Usually as many tests as Duncan had would cost $30,000. (For only $25 you can send a lock of hair in for a mercury test.)

That makes it hard to broadly survey the dangers of chemicals. And nearly impossible to prove in court that they have caused any illness.

In Europe, on the other hand, a new law "radically revises how companies must evaluate potential dangers." From now on there, new chemicals will not be presumed safe until proven dangerous, but must be proved safe before sale. With the new Congress, can we follow their lead?

—April Rabkin

January 11, 2007

Song Suggestions for the Dodd Pod

We mentioned earlier that Connecticut senator and new presidential hopeful Chris Dodd is taking song suggestions for his "Dodd Pod." Wonkette considered "Born to Lose" by The Heartbreakers, which brings to mind "Lost Cause" by Beck and "Running Down a Dream" by Tom Petty. But scratch your head for snarky ideas no longer! The May/June 2006 issue of Mother Jones has a whole list of suggestions we can make in honor of Dodd's colleagues in Washington. A sampling:

"Been Caught Stealing," by Jane's Addiction
Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.)

"Girlfriend in a Coma," by The Smiths
Former Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn)

"Road to Nowhere," by Talking Heads
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska)

"Bridge Over Troubled Water," by Simon & Garfunkel
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)

"Don't Fence Me In," by Cole Porter
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.)

"Carolina on My Mind," by James Taylor
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

"Stuck in the Middle With You," by Stealers Wheel
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.)

"Kickstart My Heart," by Mötley Crüe
Vice-President Dick Cheney

Two Really Good Examples of Bush Being Full of Hot Air

Two simple points about Bush's speech last night are making their way around the web.

1. If we are really cracking down on Maliki and insisting that he ends the sway of the militias, then we must be prepared to leave if he doesn't, with our dreams of "victory" dashed. But Bush said yesterday that failure is not acceptable, implying that we aren't leaving any time soon. So will there be accountability, or won't there?

2. Why would Maliki crack down on al-Sadr when al-Sadr's influence provides the votes that keep Maliki in power?

Read more at Talking Points Memo, who traces the thinking to Andrew Sullivan and John Derbyshire.

(One additional note: Bush said yesterday, as part of his murky explanation of why things will be different THIS time around, that Iraqi police will be increased in numbers and will start patroling the streets to better protect the local populace. Specifically, he said they will be "conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents." Honest to god, if I was a citizen of Baghdad, I'd be scared to death. Iraqi police already operate checkpoints and go door-to-door. That's how they kill people.)

FYI - Christopher Dodd is Running for President

Adjust your voting plans accordingly. So you know, Dodd is Connecticut's senior senator, and may be running now because, at 64, he is reaching the generally-accepted outer age limit for a presidential candidate (hint hint, Mr. McCain). You can learn more about Dodd at his campaign website or suggest music for him to listen to on his "DoddPod" here.

King David Returns

If Bush was serious last night, America’s destiny in Iraq is in the hands of Lieutenant-General David Petraeus, who is now leading US forces there. The big battle is to be waged counter-insurgency style inside Baghdad, probably most importantly against Bani Sadr’s supposed 60,000 guerrillas.

This sounds like the Battle of Algiers where, in the 1950s, the French Foreign Legion brutally attacked and overwhelmed the FLN guerrillas holed up in the Casbah. In the end, the French lost, with de Gaulle overseeing a peace.

Counter-insurgency has a long, unpleasant history. The French tried it in Vietnam after the second world war, actually planting their own troops into villages and intermarrying with the Vietnamese. It didn’t work and the French were routed at Dien Bien Phu. Ed Lansdale, who worked with the OSS and later became the CIA’s man in Vietnam, assisted the French in their losing battle, then went on to try and build up the South Vietnamese military.

Lansdale has often been called the true father of American counter-insurgency. He operated in the Philippines, living with Magsaysay before he became president, and was part of Operation Mongoose, Jack Kennedy’s plan to overthrow Castro. He was involved in attempts to assassinate Castro as well. Under Kennedy he ended up as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations. When Reagan became president, Special Operations people in the military, along with scholars at the Heritage Foundation, urged U.S. policy makers to employ counter-insurgency tactics, or what was then called irregular warfare, in Central America. The Contras were the result.

Counter-insurgency depends on good intelligence and a supportive local population -- neither of which the U.S. has in Iraq, certainly not in Baghdad.

The general idea, put forward in the Iraq Study Group report, is to embed American troops within the Iraqi army. That presupposes the Iraqi army can be trusted not to trick the Americans into an ambush and/or to provide decent intelligence, which seems questionable.

General Petraeus is well-liked, considered to be a successful commander in Northern Iraq. He wrote a new counterinsurgency manual for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. "Western militaries too often neglect the study of insurgency," he writes in the manual. "They falsely believe that armies trained to win large conventional wars are automatically prepared to win small unconventional ones."

"In fact," the General continues, "some capabilities required for conventional success... may be of limited utility or even counterproductive in counterinsurgency operations. Nonetheless, conventional forces beginning counterinsurgency operations often try to use these capabilities to defeat insurgents; they almost always fail."

Following, thanks to the Globe and Mail, are
Petraeus's 14 Observations on Iraq:

1. Do not try to do too much with your own hands.
2. Act quickly, because every army of liberation has a half-life.
3. Money is ammunition.
4. Increasing the number of stakeholders is a critical component to success.
5. Analyze "costs and benefits" before each operation.
6. Intelligence is the key to success.
7. Everyone must do nation-building.
8. Help build institutions, not just units.
9. Cultural awareness is a force multiplier.
10. Success in a counterinsurgency requires more than just military operations.
11. Ultimate success depends on local leaders.
12. Remember the strategic corporals and strategic lieutenants.
13. There is no substitute for flexible, adaptable leaders.
14. A leader's most important task is to set the right tone.

American News Media Continues Its Decline

Last spring, I wrote about MSNBC hosts Ron Reagan and Monica Crowley's on-air statement about the "triviality" of issues like Supreme Court nominations, and--even worse--MSNBC senior producer Tom Maciulis's written revelation that news about lobbying scandals, the Bolton nomination and court appointments were things he "didn't give a flying fig about." Though it was obvious to me that no one in charge at the network cared too much about news, it was nevertheless shocking to hear both the anchors and the producer come right out and say so.

Worse still, the statements of these "news" network officials caused no stir at all. I don't think anyone else even blogged about them, but they put a chill up my spine that has never gone away. Anyone who attempts to find out what is going on in the world knows that reliance on American mainstream news media will get her nowhere. When George W. Bush ran for the office of president in 2000, author, columnist and Texan Molly Ivins begged her fellow media employees, "Check the record!" They didn't. Everything from Bush's insider trading to his questionable military record to the mess he made of the Texas educational system and the environmental destruction he allowed industry to wreak on his state--all were virtually ignored by mainstream newspapers and television networks.

It should come as no surprise, then, that ABC's Good Morning America has hired Glenn Beck as a regular commentator. In plugging Beck's credentials, the show's senior executive producer announced that Beck "is a leading cultural commentator with a distinct voice."

Sure. His "distinct voice" recently struck Rep. Keith Ellison, our first Muslim Congressperson, with ""I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.'"

It was Beck who said to Diane Sawyer, "Christmas is really about...the death of [Jesus], redemption...and having a second bite at the apple. Who's offended by that?" He "celebrated" the death of Abu Musab-Zarqawi with a "Zarqawi bacon cake," predicted that we may have to "nuke" the entire Middle East, made fun of the names of missing Egyptian students, and described New Orleanians who could not or did not leave when Katrina hit as "scumbags." And in a rant against so-called "political correctness," Beck became so upset at the thought of wall signs being done in Braille that he quipped, "I'm going to put in Braille on the coffee pot...'Pot is hot.'"

Hate sells. It's a pity that news doesn't.

January 10, 2007

"No Matter How Much You Hate Bush..." (What's Up With the San Francisco Chronicle?)

Generally, I have a pretty low regard of the San Francisco Chronicle. I want to support my local paper but...I just can't. It's the flabby writing, the columnists who don't pick up the phone, the mindless cheerleading of the wine and food industry, the substitution of PC bell ringing for real reporting on race or poverty, the subordination of the Chronicle's home page to the (also bad, and shamelessly clunky) SFGate entertainment portal...in sum, it tends to reinforce every stereotype of yuppie Bay Area solipsism. All of which I would forgive, really, if it just had some damn edge. Of any kind.

(Following exceptions noted: The Balco stuff, that was good. Ok, and the homeless series ; I'd take issue with pieces of it, even premises of it, but they pulled out some stops.)

But I digress. What the hell does this have to do with Bush?

Well, I'll tell you. I was about to talk up a great piece by the Chron's D.C. Bureau Chief that was funny, to the point, analytical...but in the minutes that it has taken me to write this post, that story has fallen off the SFGate/Chron homepage. I dove into the architecture for more than 10 minutes...but I still can't find it. So piece by DC Bureau Chief, on a decision by our fair leader to send more troops into Iraq, written for a city with strong feelings on the matter...can't find it.

And that, in a nutshell, is the San Francisco Chronicle.

In my search for the missing Bush analysis piece, I did find following story, however: "New Year's nightmare for visiting Yale singers". Which is actually quite juicy, if you're into local politics: Matt Gonzalez meets "Fajitagate" meets PacHeights scion deploying his peeps to beat up Yalies.

Though, on that last point, these paragraphs— "But witnesses said one of the uninvited guests -- who happens to be the son of a prominent Pacific Heights family -- pulled out his cell phone and said, "I'm 20 deep. My boys are coming. According to Rapagnani and others, the Yale kids barely made it around the corner when they were intercepted by a van full of young men."—make me wonder why this "son of prominent Pacific Heights family" was not named.

And also, what's up with Pac Heights boys rolling up on Yalies? They'll all work for McKinsey one day...

Bush's Insight: No Magic Formula

It took four minutes or so for 9/11 to come up in Bush's oral report, I mean speech, tonight to the nation on his plan for Iraq. He then went on to say that he and his advisers talked and all agreed that there's "no magic formula" for ending the violence and getting out of Iraq. Wow, I totally thought that was why he took so long to come out with a plan!

Seriously though, the President predictably offered his usual: that we're changing course by staying put, and then some. He didn't use the buzz word of the week, "surge," but he did say it was a "mistake" not to have enough troops in Iraq to secure neighborhoods. No word on where the increase of 22,000 new troops, five brigades he said, will come from. Given the already stretched armed forces -- and the political suicide that would commence with the D-word (Draft) -- redeployment, stop loss, and still looser recruiting standards are surely on the horizon.

Bush emphasized that the situation in Iraq was unacceptable to the American people, and unacceptable to him. He also said that failure in Iraq was unacceptable and that the blame for mistakes thus far lie with him. He did not, though, go so far as to say that his own mistakes were unacceptable. I mean, you have to accept some things, right? After all, there's no magic formula.

Mitch McConnell--Another Republican With Memory Problems

In 1993, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was one of seventy-six senators who voted for an amendment to restrict funding for U.S. military personnel in Somalia. The amendment restricted funds through March 31, 1994, with the caveat that funding could be resumed only if Congress provided specific authorization to do so. McConnell not only voted for the amendment, but spoke in favor of it on the Senate floor.

Yesterday, however, Sen. McConnell said that he was voting against the Kennedy bill because he thought it was inappropriate, but also because "I don't think Congress has the authority to do it (restrict funding)."

Congress, of course, has that authority, as McConnell certainly should know. But if his memory is really that bad, perhaps he should step down.

Nuclear Power No Global Warming Solution, But Green SatNav Might Help

Just as we learn that 2006 was the warmest on record in the U.S., a study published in today’s Nature shows that storing nuclear waste over the tens of thousands, let alone hundreds of thousands, of years will be difficult because the storage containers are transformed by the radiation. Scientists from Cambridge University found that one of the ceramiclike materials favored by engineers, zirconium silicate, turned to glass in just 1,400 years.

Because many radioactive substances continue emitting radiation for a very long time, the containment must persist for an awesome duration. Plutonium-239, one of the most deadly by-products of nuclear power, has a half-life of 24,000 years, meaning that only half of any initial batch has decayed over this time. Ideally it should stay put for about ten times as long: a quarter of a million years.

So nuclear is still a big problem for a lot of reasons, and not the no-brainer fix some would hope. Odds are, the solution will come in smaller packages cobbled inventively together. NewScientist reports that a researcher at the Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden has been testing a satnav system programmed to work out the most efficient and least polluting route to drive.

[Eva] Ericsson and her colleagues report that the average fuel saving on the 22 streets was 8.2 per cent compared with journeys planned by other methods… None of the streets was particularly congested, however, and Ericsson estimates that savings on most journeys would be closer to 4 per cent.

Many Alaskans would welcome even the immediate 4 percent savings. Patricia Cochran, director of the Alaska Native Science Commission, and chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, reports to the BBC how native communities above the Arctic Circle are struggling to adapt.

With thinner sea ice arriving later and leaving earlier in the year, coastal communities are experiencing more intensified storms with larger waves than they have ever experienced. This threat is being compounded by the loss of permafrost which has kept river banks from eroding too quickly. The waves are larger because there is no sea ice to diminish their intensity, slamming against the west and northern shores of Alaska, causing severe storm driven coastal erosion. It has become so serious that several coastal villages are now actively trying to figure out where to move entire communities. While the world's politicians and media focus their attention on the big picture of agreeing the best way to curb global climate change, we are left to pick up the pieces from wasted years of inaction. The cost to move one small village of 300 people ranges from $130m (£66m) to a high of $200m (£102m), even if the distance is a few miles, because moving means reconstructing entire water, electrical, road, airport and/or barge landing infrastructure, as well as schools and clinics.

Dear Troops, Michael Ledeen Wishes You Would Get Off Your Butts and Win the War

Kos highlights the latest National Review column from uber-hawk and phony intelligence-peddler Michael Ledeen, wherein, amongst a whole bunch of craziness about attacking Iran and Syria -- Ledeen actually writes that the way to show the Iraqis we have a "will to win" is to "go after the Iranians and the Syrians." I presume if we could do that effectively we would just "go after" the bad guys in Iraq instead, but I'm not a fancy-pants think tank scholar -- Ledeen manages to do something I don't think anyone on the left has ever, ever done.

He calls out the troops in Iraq for not fighting hard enough.

We’ve got lots of soldiers sitting on megabases all over Iraq. They should be out and about, some of them embedded, others just moving around, tracking the terrorists, hunting them down. I don’t know how many guys and gals are sitting in air-conditioned quarters and drinking designer coffee, but it’s a substantial number. Enough of that.

I wish Michael Ledeen would head over to Iraq and deliver that message to our men and women in uniform personally. I'll bet he'd get some designer coffee thrown in his face.

Mitt Romney Could Actually be Good for America (He is So Screwed)

On the subject of moderate Republicans that we've been discussing today, video has surfaced of Mitt Romney in a 1994 Massachusetts senatorial debate. It's unclear if it was posted by a trouble-making YouTuber or an operative from McCain's camp (or Giuliani's camp, or, uh, Duncan Hunter's camp, or whatever), but it is clear that it's intended to hurt Romney. Why? Because he really seems like a good bloke, the sort of guy who is socially tolerant and accepting. Bad news, bro.

In the video, which you can watch below, Romney says very clearly that abortion should be "safe and legal in this country" and that a main tenet of his family's belief system is not imposing their beliefs on other people. A reporter says that Romney has made a campaign promise to "do more to promote gay rights than Senator Kennedy" and Romney doesn't object. There is also a long portion of the video where Romney talks about how American companies "have to draw on the skills of women and minorities" and how he has worked at length to end the existence of the glass ceiling. I mention that only because it amazes me that someone would think that stance is damaging enough to be worth including. Is some member of the Republican base going to see this video and say, "Whoa, Romney thinks women should be equal to men in the workplace? He's lost my vote!"

Also, Romney apparently lives (or lived) by a personal credo that forces (forced) him to spend one day a week volunteering his time on behalf of those less fortunate than him. It's really too bad this guy is going to lose in the primary....

Watch the video for yourself.

Update: For more on Romney's scandalous past as a non-bigot, see our post titled Gay-Lovin' Skeletons in Romney's Closet.

Dell Tempts Buyers with $2 Trees

Not one to let Apple Inc. steal his thunder, Dell's Michael Dell announced a new program yesterday that will allow consumers to plant a tree when they buy a computer.

Dell’s new “Plant a Tree for Me” collects an optional $2 donation per notebook, or $6 per desktop which will be donated to the Conservation Fund or Carbonfund to offset carbon emissions. Dell estimates that a tree will make up for three years of electricity needed to power a computer (assuming you remember to turn it off each night, we presume).

Dell (the company, not the guy) currently recycles computers for free, and it aims to recover about 275 million pounds of old computers from customers by 2009.

—Jen Phillips

More on the Fate of Republican Progressives

Below, Clara ponders the fate of moderate Republicans, using Governor Schwarzenegger and his new universal health plan as a way in. I think Arnold's the best place to start such a discussion, because he's the only national player in the GOP that, in my opinion, embraces moderation with any authenticity.

Clara argues that the progressive sweep in the 2006 elections should signal a change in fortunes for progressive Republicans. I'm dubious. First off, I don't think America is any more progressive than it was five years ago; I think midterm voters were weary of George Bush's mishandling of Iraq and the Republican Congress' mishandling of its ethical responsibilities, and voted for change. A lot of Republican voters who stayed home and a lot of swing voters who enthusiastically voted Democratic could easily revert to their normal states.

The second reason is that most moderate Republicans, unlike Arnold, don't seem to see any value in embracing their own progressivism, such as it is. In reality, we're discussing John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney here. (Let's pause to note that these three aren't the GOP's real moderates: that would be folks like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and the ousted Lincoln Chafee.) Look at their recent actions: John McCain has embraced the leading figures of the Religious Right and denounced his previous support of Roe v. Wade. Mitt Romney is opposing gay marriage even though he's been very accepting -- and even supportive -- of gays in the past, and has just declared his support for President Bush's surge, citing the advice of "Generals, military experts and troops who have served on the ground." That's funny, because the Generals, military experts and troops on the ground all think a surge is a bad idea. Romney's statement probably should have read, "Look, I've had my disagreements with George Bush in the past, but now that I'm running for President, I stand with him. I'm a real Republican, okay? I'm willing to support the escalation of an already disastrous war to prove it." These actions speak for themselves: Republicans believe they have to move rightward to win.

As for Giuliani, he's got a record he can't really back away from. He's long been pro-gay rights, pro-abortion rights, pro-gun control, and pro-immigrant rights. Sure, he's tough on crime and would inspire all the right emotions on national security, but a Baptist minister once called Giuliani (what with his earlier marriage to his second cousin, his cross dressing, etc.) an "insult to the pro-Christian agenda." It's a much tougher road to hoe when you're a moderate Republican with an interest in actually getting elected as a moderate -- and an interest in actually being yourself.

A Soldier with a Laptop on a Mission

Today's Washington Post has a nice profile of Adam Tiffen, a National Guard lieutenant whose powerful blog posts are gaining him national attention.

I interviewed Tiffen last month for our latest issue, after Garry Trudeau picked up one of Tiffen's blog posts for his new project, The Sandbox, a best-of showing of military blog posts (what Trudeau calls the first "GWOT literary magazine").

Tiffen's posts are raw, honest and gripping and it wasn't long before The Sandbox's editor, David Stanford, asked for more. And Trudeau has even included quotes from Tiffen's posts in recent strips.

In 2005, while stationed outside Baghdad, Tiffen started his blog, The Replacements, for family and friends. He then gained a loyal readership of strangers who came to rely on his posts, and worried if he would miss a day. He wrote in detail about what we at home can barely imagine: details of the soldier's "human experience," the emotions, the textures, the visceral moments that troops experience each day.

As for now, Tiffen is still adjusting to being back home, and likely his newfound fame. He remains in the Guard and sees his men every month, which helps, he told me. When he was in Iraq he thought we were making progress, he tells the Post. But now he's not so sure. "Something has to change," he says. "I really don't know what it is. Maybe putting 30,000 more troops in will help. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows."

January 9, 2007

Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger: "California Has the Muscles, Let's Use Them"

What's a little groping? Arnold looks better and better, first proposing (sort of) universal health care and then pushing for California's "petroleum refiners and gasoline sellers to cut by 10 percent the emissions of heat-trapping gases associated with the production and use of their products."

Ok, so there are some flaws. Some Dems charge that he's going to fund his health care proposal by cutting welfare. And his ethanol plan...depends on well, ethanol, which isn't that efficient or climate friendly, when you factor in the fertilizer to grow and refining and all, and also is being pushed by mega-corn producers like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, etc., who abuse lobby laws, destroy family farms, encourage monocultures...you know the drill.

These are real concerns, and the devil is in the details. On ethanol it is encouraging that Arnold has signaled a need to find sources of the alternative fuel other than corn—like switchgrass or woodchips—a proposal that is possible here in California because we grow a lot of things, but corn...not so much. Since health-care costs are one of the things pushing families into poverty and keeping them there, it is theoretically possible that time limits on welfare could be structured in such a way to at least see if removing the dread of doctors bills would change the overall equation. (I'm not holding my breath, just saying.)

But, for a moment, let us put the specifics aside. Arnold is sending up two huge flares, SOSes on behalf of the climate and low-income—hell almost all—people who do/might/will need medical attention. He's a Republican, California is the 5th largest economy in the world—this could signal big changes.

And it makes me wonder about political futures, not so much Arnold's—he seems resigned to the fact that as an immigrant he can't run for Prez without a Constitutional Amendment. But for other moderate Republicans. A few months ago, I got into a fun debate with my friend Ken Kurson, who's a writer for Esquire and elsewhere, and the "collaborator" (I'm quoting Amazon here) of Rudy Giuliani's bio: Leadership. I was arguing that Rudy or other socially moderate GOPers could never pass through the primary; that they couldn't square the base. Ken pointed out that Rudy's polling numbers looked good among the base, even when reminded of Rudy's social liberalism (or, dare I say, his marital infidelity.) And those numbers, for Rudy and other lib-Reps have gotten even better.

Now it is my contention that McCain is likely to be knocked out for health/age reasons. But if the 2006 election heralded a "Progressive Revolution"—is there any reason to think that that revolution won't help Republican progressives? There's a long history of this being the case. Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt...OK, so that's like a million years ago, we might as well be talking about the Whigs, but "This Week in Arnold" makes me wonder if a Progressive Republican (dare I say ) Surge, is not possible again.

(The groping, though, that's really bad.)

And the Kafka Nonfiction Award Goes to. . .

. . .one Adam Kropiewnicki, whose plight was immortalized deep inside an LA Times story about the emptying of a shelter for the NYC homeless in rural New York. Kropiewnicki, 61, was

a wordless, sweet-tempered Polish man known locally as "the Walker." Every morning for seven years, he set out on foot looking for work as a day laborer. But not until last fall did anyone call an interpreter to the site to speak to him in Polish, said Courtney Denniston, 27, a case manager supervisor.

"The first words out of his mouth were: 'Home. I just want to go home,' " Denniston said. He had come to the U.S. illegally to work as an asbestos handler, but when he lost the job, he had no money to fly home. He had a wife and children in Warsaw.

Volunteers of America, the nonprofit contracted by the city to run Camp LaGuardia, bought Kropiewnicki a one-way ticket to Poland. Staff members asked him to be ready at 2 p.m. on the day of the flight, but he was packed and sitting outside with his suitcases, beaming, at 8 a.m. Denniston loves to tell that story. "He had been waiting seven years for someone to ask him what he wanted," she said.

It's Only January, But We May Already Have A 2007 Irony Award Winner

A Philadelphia retailer has settled a $375,000 federal lawsuit brought by former employee LaShonda Burns. Burns was fired from her assistant manager position in a Florida store in 2004 after she complained of employment discrimination against pregnant job applicants. The company, said Burns, would not hire applicants who revealed that they were pregnant, or who were visibly pregnant. Burns herself was pregnant at the time she was dismissed. Burns filed suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The company must pay Burns $50,000 in back pay, $130,000 for her attorney's fees, and $135,000 for compensatory and punitive damages.

And who is this company? Mothers Work, which sells maternity clothing.

Another NIE, Another Round of Shenanigans and Lies

In August of this past year, Congress ordered the creation of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a document that synthesizes the very best information held by all 16 of America's spy agencies. With opinion against the war at an all-time high, definitive information from the intelligence community about the Bush Administration's failures in Iraq would strengthen the case for withdrawal.

The NIE, not surprisingly, never happened. Six and a half months later, intelligence czar John Negroponte's office is saying that the NIE is "well under development" and will be released at the end of this month. Some are arguing that the timing is suspicious, and that the NIE was effectively held hostage while the Bush Administration decided what to do with the mess in Iraq. And now that Bush has decided on sending 20,000 more troops and will make his case to the nation tomorrow night (in what some are calling the biggest speech of his presidency), it's safe to finally release the info. It's easier, after all, to convince the country when it doesn't know the facts.

And that's why this situation reminds so many of the pre-war experience with the NIE.

In late 2002, with Congress under pressure to give President Bush authorization to go to war, former Senator Bob Graham, then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked George Tenet for the NIE on Iraq. Graham was stunned to learn that the White House hadn't requested one and none existed. In essence, the White House had been planning for war with Iraq for months, yet hadn't gone to the intelligence community to get their best and most formal estimation of the state of the intelligence.

Graham requested a NIE. It was produced in three weeks, becoming the much-discussed October 2002 NIE. (The three week gestation period was a rush job, but still puts the lie to the current six month wait.) Most of the inaccurate claims that made the case for war were prominently placed, including several in the executive summary. (Those inaccurate claims, and the NIE, are discussed fully in the Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline.) Qualifications, concerns, and dissents (mostly from the State Department) were buried. History will judge it as a shameful and deceitful document, intended to help the Bush Administration make the case for war and in violation of the true spirit of the intelligence community. One of the primary authors of the NIE later told Frontline: "This wasn't an inquiry into how can Iraq threaten the United States; it wasn't an inquiry into what are Al Qaeda sources of support. It instead was basically research in support of a specific line of argument... What was the purpose of it? The purpose was to strengthen the case of going to war with the American public…. I regret having had a role in that."

In the end, it didn't matter much. According to the Washington Post, "no more than six senators and a handful of House members" read past the NIE's five-page executive summary. The full document was kept in a guarded vault, where lawmakers could go to read it, if they showed up in person and without staff. Most couldn't be bothered. Maybe that's why they are pushing for a legit and timely NIE this time around. Timely is out of the question; legit remains to be seen. But if history is any judge, you shouldn't bet on it. Once again, Congress will have to decide on a way forward without the proper tools to evaluate the options, leaving a neutered entity to do its work in the shadow of an Administration that has all the facts, and thus, all the power.

Ollie North, Voice of Reason on Iraq

Ollie North said on Fox News yesterday that in a recent trip to Iraq, "not one" service member he interviewed said that the solution in Iraq is more American boots on the ground, and that "nearly all" suggested "just the opposite." See video at Think Progress. An American public already doubting President Bush's plan to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq -- 3/4ths disapprove of the President's decision making, and half say we've lost regardless of how many troops we send -- has reason to doubt it further.

I brought up the question of whether or not the troops support the war in a blog post last month because a day after the press reported new SecDef Robert Gates was hearing from senior commanders in Iraq that additional troops would exacerbate problems and lead to more deaths, the Pentagon staged a photo op in which Gates had breakfast with a group of rank-and-file soldiers that seemed, to a man and woman, to support more troops. Odd, I wrote, that polling says 72 percent of troops in Iraq want to withdraw in a year and 29 percent want to withdraw immediately, and yet Bob Gates manages to break bread (or eggs, as the case may be) with a group that is uniformly in favor of more fighting. It would be nice to hear from the troops directly, but they can't post on liberal blogs like ours because the military prohibits the troops from reading them. Not explicitly of course, but by engineering filters to block liberal sites and allow conservative ones.

Mother Jones has covered dissention within the military extensively. In October 2004, we published "Breaking Ranks," about troops who were speaking out against the war and even a few who were refusing to fight. At that time we also published "Warriors Against War," a list of veterans groups, officers, diplomats and others involved in the armed forces that opposed the Iraq War. And in fall of 2005, we published "Memory's Revenge," an essay that told of Vietnam veterans who have reflected on their wartime experiences and are now discouraging young men and women from enlisting to fight in Iraq.

Pelosi's People Take to the Beach to Impeach

It’s probably no surprise that San Franciscans hate Bush. But Madam Speaker’s constituents are going a step further, using their bodies to broadcast their views as the new Congress convenes. Last Saturday, more than one thousand San Franciscans took to the chilly California beach, laying themselves out in 100-foot letters spelling the word "impeach."

Sorry, make that “IMPEACH!”

Many protesters held signs, asking for “troops home by Christmas 2007,” while others simply flashed the classic two-finger peace sign. “I hope Nancy Pelosi is listening today,” said one participant.

Unfortunately, listening doesn’t necessarily mean action. Pelosi has said several times publicly that impeachment is “off the table.”

Looks like she will have her hands full dealing with her constituents as she navigates more moderate waters as a leader in the Beltway.

—Jen Phillips

Congress on 9/11

Pelosi's proposals for increased secruity by implimenting the remaining 911 Commission proposals are beside the point. The Commission itself avoided asking any really hard questions, like, for instance, putting Bush under oath and getting him to tell what happened that day. It even contributed to the administration's overall obfuscation by hiding its own staff study of the inadequate FAA response to numerous pre-attack warnings, then finally releasing them -- after the presidential election. The Congress never has exercised any oversight to speak of over the FAA, and that includes under both Democratic and Republican leadership. For more than a decade the FAA ignored warnings by its own staff and the Congress could have cared less -- quite possibly because of close ties to the industry by former members such as George Mitchell. Tom Daschle's wife was an airline lobbyist when he was Majority leader of the Senate.

The Members of the Family Steering Committee for the 911 Independent Commission issued a set of ratings and questions after the commission shut down. They remain unanswered. Compiled by Jersey Girls Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie Van Auken, they include such things as how come after Bush was told by the White House situation room a commercial airliner had hit the World Trade Towers, he continued with his classroom visit to the Florida elementary school? And after Bush got warnings of an attack from 11 different nations, what did he do to defend this country? There are more than 20 pages of questions from the families. You can read them here [pdf].

The clear action here is for Congress to reopen the investigation into 911 that had been begun by former Florida Senator Bob Graham's joint intelligence inquiry. The report of that investigation raised questions about -- among other things -- the disastrous role played by the FBI in all this.The Congress formed the commission to carry on the inquiries launched by Graham. Instead of doing so, the commission conducted sets of hearings in which each member got to compliment people like Donald Rumsfeld, who appears to have been absent or out of the loop on 911, Robert Mueler of the FBI, whose San Diego office oversaw an informant who rented rooms to two hijackers and never told anybody about it, and Condi Rice, who had been presented with various warnings but claimed she knew nothing. And then there was Dick Cheney, who in flagrant vioilation of the Constitution was running the country on 911 because Bush was out of contact. What did he do and why did he do it? The Congress doesn't know and to date has been unwilling to find out.