Week of: |
11:54 AM
Our man in Baghdad?
Two witnesses interviewed in today's Sydney Morning Herald told the paper's Baghdad correspondent that they saw Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi shoot and kill six suspected insurgents at a prison southwest of the city. The Herald's Peter McGeough reports:
"One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners Dr Allawi had told those around him that he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents."The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them."
According to the witnesses, Iraqi police and a small group of American security troops watched "in stunned silence" during the shootings, which reportedly took place in late June, before the handover of power. Seven prisoners, blindfolded and handcuffed, were allegedly shot, though one survived.
The Herald obtained the names of three of the prisoners involved, and asked Iraq's Interior Ministry to check their status. The next day, the Ministry declined comment and said it had "no information."
The paper said the two witnesses were found by the Herald, and did not approach the paper themselves. Each was interviewed for more than 90 minutes, without being informed that another witness was also describing the events.
Allawi's office dismisses their claims as rumors started by enemies of the interim government. But the Herald says this is just the first eyewitness account after much "debate and rumor" about Allawi's alleged brutality, and:
"Given Dr Allawi's role as the leader of the U.S. experiment in planting a model democracy in the Middle East, allegations of a return to the cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor are likely to stir a simmering debate on how well Washington knows its man in Baghdad, and precisely what he envisages for the new Iraq."
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10:18 AM
Intelligence end run
KnightRidder has an extremely important story out today on prewar Iraq intelligence. As it turns out, back in 2002, James Woolsey, a former CIA director and prominent war hawk, brought a lying Iraqi defector directly to the Pentagon, circumventing the CIA:
A former CIA director who advocated war against Saddam Hussein helped arrange the debriefing of an Iraqi defector who falsely claimed that Iraq had biological-warfare laboratories disguised as yogurt and milk trucks.
Woolsey's previously undisclosed role in the case of Maj. Mohammad Harith casts new light on how prominent invasion advocates outside the government used their ties to senior officials in the Bush administration to help make the case for war. … By using his Pentagon contacts, Woolsey provided a direct pipeline to the government for Harith's information that bypassed the CIA, which for years had been highly distrustful of the exile group that produced Harith.
Why is this important? Remember, back in 2002, the administration hawks thought the CIA's evidence against Iraq was too weak. As Mother Jones reported, Doug Feith, David Wurmser, and other Pentagon officials set up their own private intelligence shop to push the case for war. Until now, though, this story has always floated on the margins, kept alive only by journalists like the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh and Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic.
But with this KnightRidder report, we have official confirmation that a pipeline existed. The Pentagon really did pull in and gather information that the CIA distrusted. And it made a difference. Long after the CIA had discredited Harith, Bush was talking about mobile weapon-labs in his State of the Union address.
Meanwhile, the administration is currently trying to hide behind a "we were misinformed!" storyline. That storyline is rapidly unraveling.
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5:30 PM
Who's watching the watchers? (pt. 2)
One of the "dirty" Pentagon inspectors mentioned earlier was Gen. Joseph Schmitz. Schmitz is the Defense Department Inspector General best known for defending Halliburton's excesses, stonewalling Congressional investigations, and declaring that Abu Ghraib was merely the work of a few "bad eggs". But what you probably didn't know was that Schmitz played a key role in setting up and advising the 29 Iraqi Inspectors General (IGs).
Who -- for that matter, what -- are the Iraqi IGs? They were installed by CPA Administrator Paul Bremer in February of 2004 under Order 57. They're supposed to "provide increased accountability, integrity and oversight of the [Iraqi] ministries." Most critically, they are to investigate "abuse of authority." In a country with a prime minister who has given himself "emergency powers," we would hope that these IGs are all honest and conscientious people. But are we really going to take Schmitz' word for it?
Apart from the IG of Baghdad, Tomma Jaberlog al-Akielie -- who appears by all accounts to be a career technocrat -- no one knows who the Iraqi IGs are. A few months ago, Schmitz himself announced that some of them were "expatriates." Expatriates? What kind? What if the watchdogs supposed to oversee the government all hail from, say, Iyad Allawi's own exile group, Iraqi National Accord, that would make for a pretty big conflict of interest, don't you think? How worried should we be? Without knowing more about the IGs, it's hard to tell.
I can understand if the IGs are staying anonymous for safety reasons. But consider: we've got a strong-arming prime minister whose democratic credentials, as journalist Eli Lake recently noted, are questionable; and the guy training Iraq's independent inspectors isn't exactly known for his own commitment to honest oversight. At the very least, it's worth finding out who's watching the watchers.
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4:15 PM
Obama all the way
For Barack Obama, Wednesday couldn't have gone much better.
The Illinois state senator and U.S. Senate candidate was tapped to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. According to the Chicago Tribune, John Kerry had been considering Obama for the keynote ever since meeting him at a fundraiser in April. An aide reported Kerry's reaction after meeting Obama:
"I have a way in mind for him to be at the national convention this year. He should be one of the faces of our party now, not years from now."
The 42-year-old Obama, who has served in the state legislature since 1997 and also teaches constitutional law at the University of Chicago, called his selection an "enormous honor and enormous responsibility" during a Chicago campaign stop with John Edwards.
More importantly, the keynote selection further confirms Obama's status as one of the party's top new faces, which has led to profiles in Time, The New Republic and The New Yorker. The last noted his ability to connect with a range of people, even Republican colleagues like Kirk Dillard:
"I knew from the day he walked into this chamber that he was destined for great things. In Republican circles, we've always feared that Barack would become a rock star of American politics. Obama is an extraordinary man. His intellect, his charisma. He's to the left of me on gun control, abortion. But he can really work with Republicans."
Obama held a lead of more than 20 points in the polls even before opponent Jack Ryan left the race last month. On Wednesday, Obama saw another potential challenger - Hall of Fame coach and Chicago icon Mike Ditka - turn down the Republican nomination. Said Ditka:
"I don't know how I'd react under the scrutiny. I don't know how I'd react on the Senate floor if I got into a confrontation with somebody I didn't really appreciate or maybe didn't appreciate me."
That's bad news for former Saturday Night Live character "Superfan Bob Swerski" (alias George Wendt), who was the only pundit on record expecting a Ditka victory:
"I have a prediction for the race -- Ditka: 118.4 percent of the vote, Obama: -4 [percent]… My only concern is that the Senate would restrict him to one vote. He is such a massive man that he would probably need a two-thirds majority on his own."
Joking aside, Ditka's decision to drop out is good news for Obama - leaving the Republicans still desperate to find a candidate willing to take on a seemingly quixotic campaign against a rising political star.
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1:38 PM
Misunderestimating overtime
The administration's new overtime laws are back in the news, and the usual confusion still abounds. No one seems to know how many people will be harmed -- labor advocates say one thing, the administration says another. And true to form, the major papers offer a "he said, she said" account and leave it at that:
An EPI [Economic Policy Institute] report estimated that nearly 2 million administrative workers who can be classified as team leaders would lose overtime protection. An additional 920,000 workers who can be reclassified as learned professionals, even though they do not have college degrees, would be similarly affected. It also said 1.4 million workers could lose overtime protection by being reclassified as executives, as could an estimated 130,000 chefs and cooks, 160,000 financial service workers and 117,000 teachers and computer programmers…
The [Labor Department] estimates that as many as 107,000 workers making $100,000 or more annually could lose overtime under the new rules, while 1.3 million low-wage workers who are denied overtime will become eligible.
The Post doesnt bother to sort this out, so here goes. Both sides are right, technically speaking. The Labor Department is talking about people who would lose their overtime pay right now, a fairly small number. Meanwhile, the EPI is talking about people who would lose overtime rights. Many of those 6 million aren't earning overtime at the moment, so they're not losing anything.
What the media doesn't say is that the EPI's number is more important. Currently, many employers hold their workers to strict 40-hour weeks, because they don't want to pay time-and-a-half. When the new regulations come into effect, these businesses will be able to extend their employees' workweeks, without paying extra. In the medium run, this will have a huge impact. Overtime has always provided an incentive for employers to hire more workers, rather than overwork existing ones. That incentive has just been decimated.
By the way, it's nice to see the Labor Department hyping all those "low-wage workers" who will supposedly get pay hikes soon. Why, it seems like only a few months ago that the Department was advising businesses on how to skirt the new rules and avoid paying extra to those very same low-wage workers.
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11:10 AM
Unscientific American
From climate change to stem-cell research, George W. Bush has found ways to tick off serious scientists by ignoring the findings of their research. Sick of being ignored, some top researchers are now starting a campaign to defeat Bush.
The Wall Street Journal reports a coalition of researchers will soon launch "Scientists and Engineers for Kerry," and the group will be active in battleground states "such as Ohio and Pennsylvania that are home to large hospitals, research campuses and medical institutions that employ tens of thousands of potential voters."
This is just the latest example of generally apolitical scientists turning against Bush for his policies. Last month, Kerry won the endorsement of 48 Nobel Prize winners, and the senator's record contrasts with Bush's head-in-the-sand approach to global warming and sex education. As Kerry economic adviser Jason Furman said, that difference applies to numerous issues:
"If you look at the four core issues -- jobs, health care, energy and security -- science plays a really important role in all. For the public, the question of scientific credibility is one of the most clear-cut indicators of presidential credibility. The public can understand when virtually all scientists say something and the administration denies it."
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10:10 AM
Who's watching the watchers?
The Center for American Progress has recently uncovered an extremely disturbing phenomenon: Many of the "independent watchdogs" in charge of overseeing Iraq expenditures are anything but. Key overseers are outright industry shills, and they've turned a blind eye to some of the most egregious reconstruction contract issues in Iraq. To cite just one example:
Andrew Natsios heads the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he oversees the bidding process for reconstruction contracts in Iraq. Under his leadership, the Bechtel Corporation received highly lucrative Iraq contracts, totaling at least $2.83 billion since last April. They received this largesse even though Nastios had intimate knowledge of the company's poor project management record: Prior to joining the Bush administration on May 21, 2001, Natsios was chief executive of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and oversaw the scandalously bloated Big Dig project -- whose chief contractor was none other than Bechtel.
Under Bechtel, the cost of the Big Dig project ballooned to more than five times its original total, from $2.6 billion to a whopping $14.6 billion. According to State Senator Robert Havern, chairman of the Massachusetts Joint Transportation Committee looking into the scandalous project, "it was when Natsios was Turnpike chief that the biggest rise in costs, from $10.8 billion to $14.7 billion, took place."
Lawmakers have submitted formal requests to Natsios, demanding that he release information about all the contracts his agency has awarded. But according to Rep. Henry Waxman, six months after the invasion not one contract had been released by Natsios for congressional review.
Read the whole report. Unfortunately, this is just one instance of a larger trend. Over the past three years, "oversight agency" has become a synonym for "corporate lobbyist." A former tobacco lawyer, Daniel Troy, now gives legal advice to the FDA, using his newfound position to pass out favors to drug companies. Former industry lobbyists are now encouraged to oversee environmental regulation. And so on.
The whole mess has been partly enabled by Republican one-party rule. With regards to Iraq oversight, the GOP has, time and time again, nixed Congressional investigations into the matter.
But it also seems like a serious structural problem when government watchdogs are allowed to oversee industries they used to represent. It's high time to update the outdated government ethics standards that deal with conflicts of interest. So far as I can tell, there are sections on direct "financial" conflicts of interest, but nothing that would regulate, say, former lobbyists from taking up critical overseer positions. That needs to be fixed -- the present system is clearly failing.
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6:03 PM
Apologies in order
During an official visit to India, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage did something all too rare for members of the Bush administration: he apologized for a mistake.
The subject of the apology was George Fernandes, India's former defense minister, who was twice wrongly strip-searched at Washington's Dulles airport. Armitage told reporters in New Delhi he was "horrified" by the treatment, saying, "I did call my friend George Fernandes - to offer my sincere apologies."
Fernandes - who has said he will not visit the U.S. again - spoke publicly about the incidents Wednesday:
"They told me to take off my coat. I did that. They told me to take off my shoes and socks. I did that. Then they told me to spread my arms and body-searched me."
A U.S. embassy spokeswoman told the BBC that the U.S. has procedures in place to waive certain security steps for government officials, but did not explain why such protocol wasn't followed. Lalit Mansingh, who was India's ambassador to Washington, told The Hindu Fernandes should not have been subjected to the search:
"I protested to the security detail that the defense minister should not be searched, that he was a guest of the U.S. government, but the security personnel accompanying Mr Fernandes stood aside and said that they had no jurisdiction to intervene. The defence minister of India wasn't carrying bombs. There was no need to search him."
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4:12 PM
After Arafat
Yasser Arafat has survived plenty of close calls in his life. But with the Palestinian Authority's leader 74 and in poor health, Israeli officials are trying to figure out what happens when Arafat dies.
The Associated Press received a copy of Israel's five-page contingency plan, which outlines several post-Arafat scenarios - none of them terribly positive. They include the takeover of the Palestinian leadership by Hamas and other extremist groups, a rise of militias in the West Bank and Gaza, and a violent clash over efforts to bury Arafat in Jerusalem. The plan expects Palestinians to try burying him in Al Asqa Mosque at the Temple Mount, which Israel opposes. In 2001, Israel tried preventing the burial of Faisal Husseini at the site, but tens of thousands of Palestinians marched past checkpoints and buried him.
Haaretz also reported on the contingency plans, which were used by the Israeli Defense Force in simulated war games:
"If any one of a range of nightmare scenarios turns out to be true, post-Arafat Israel could be in for a surge of violence dwarfing anything it has seen in three years of relentless bloodletting. It could be that the only thing worse for Israel than a Yasser Arafat continuing to live and breathe and rule, is if he were to stop."
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3:10 PM
Making amends
Opponents of the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment can breathe a little easier now that the amendment has lost a Senate cloture vote. Not only did the amendment to ban gay marriage fail to get the 60 votes needed to continue on, it even failed to achieve a majority, losing 48-50.
Three Democrats - Robert Byrd, Ben Nelson and (obviously) Zell Miller - voted with the Republican leadership. But independent Jim Jeffords and six Republicans joined in blocking the amendment's progress. Those Republicans included Northeasterners Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and John Sununu, as well as Ben Nighthorse Campbell and John McCain. In a letter to George Bush, McCain explained that more public support is needed before such an amendment should go forward:
"The founders, wisely, made certain that the Constitution is difficult to amend, and, as a practical political matter, can't be done without overwhelming public approval. And thank God for that. Were it any easier I fear we could not make the claim for the Constitution's enduring success that I have just made…"I stand with [James] Madison on this question, and against a federal marriage amendment that denies the states their traditional right and their clear opportunity to resolve this controversy themselves."
As their votes weren't critical, John Kerry and John Edwards decided against returning to the Senate for the vote. But amendment supporters like Jeff Sessions plan to continue pushing:
"I don't think it's going away after this vote. I think the issue will remain alive."
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2:55 PM
More on intel
Okay, two more quick comments on the intelligence fiasco. First, the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum rightly points out that regardless of what the CIA's intel said, the administration should have known something was fishy once UN inspectors were in Iraq:
The fact is that by March 2003 we didn't have to rely on CIA estimates or on the estimates of any other intelligence agency. We had been on the ground in Iraq for months and there was nothing there. There was nothing there and we knew it.
Did the CIA screw up? Probably. Did it matter? No. George Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003 not because he was convinced Iraq had WMD, but because he was becoming scared that Iraq didn't have WMD and that further inspections would prove it beyond any doubt.
This might be a bit overstated. I doubt Bush knew for sure that "there was nothing there." But he certainly had the opportunity, through continued inspections, to verify further his WMD intelligence, and he refused to do that. So it's disingenuous to say Bush was misled or duped by the CIA. (As an added note, I have a feeling this issue will be investigated by the second Senate report, which deals with how the administration used its WMD intelligence.)
Anyway, the second good point comes from William Safire, of all people, in today's New York Times:
The Senate Intelligence Committee, with a staff of 30 and an annual budget of $3.5 million, exists to oversee our intelligence services, to note their shortcomings and to demand that they be fixed, on pain of withholding funds.
Where has this Senate committee (and its House counterpart, Porter Goss's "Hipsie") been for the past decade? Did any of its recent members - John Edwards, for one - or any staff members have the wit to ask the C.I.A., with its $40 billion a year to spend, how many American spies we had in Iraq? (Answer: not one.) If the intelligence agencies were as badly run for years as the Senate now says, then Congressional oversight has long been bleary-eyed.
Also true, and the committee should start re-evaluating itself. Alas, it's pretty much a fact of democratic government that real reform never comes about until after catastrophe strikes. More to the point, it obviously takes serious gusto to shake things up. Now, I don't have any clever suggestions for who the new Director of Central Intelligence should be. But one thing to watch out for is whether or not a candidate has actual experience managing and overhauling a big operation. Someone who hasn't toiled away in government bureaucracy for years and years. An ex-CEO, for instance. The current top choice, John Lehman, everyone's favorite neo-con on the 9/11 commission, seems to be a terrible pick in this respect.
(Incidentally, this is also why John Kerry probably shouldn't tap John McCain for the Secretary of Defense spot. Though it would thin the ranks of Republican Senators...)
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2:34 PM
What Conservative Media?
Wonkette just posted up 33 leaked memos from Fox News chief John Moody, brought to us courtesy of the producers of Outfoxed. Among the highlights:
Into Fallujah: It's called Operation Vigilant Resolve and it began Monday morning (NY time) with the US and Iraqi military surrounding Fallujah. We will cover this hour by hour today, explaining repeatedly why it is happening. It won't be long before some people start to decry the use of "excessive force." We won't be among that group.
The continuing carnage in Iraq -- mostly the deaths of seven US troops in Sadr City -- is leaving the American military little choice but to punish perpetrators. When this happens, we should be ready to put in context the events that led to it. More than 600 US military dead, attacks on the UN headquarters last year, assassination of Irai officials who work with the coalition, the deaths of Spanish troops last fall, the outrage in Fallujah: whatever happens, it is richly deserved.
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2:09 PM
Jerry Springer reporting ...
Guess what former elected official a Cleveland TV station hired to cover the Democratic National Convention. He promises it "won't be boring." Unfortunately, it's Jerry Springer.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that WOIO Channel 19 will use Springer as a correspondent instead of sending its own reporting team. The station's news director, Steve Doerr explained:
"He's well-connected and as plugged-in as any anchor or reporter we could send…We were looking for an unusual way to cover it, with an unusual person who could give it an unusual bent. Based on our unusual format, it seemed to be a decent fit."
Beyond the sex scandal that derailed the former Cincinnati mayor's political career - and the content of his notorious television show - Springer faces another credibility issue. He's one of Ohio's delegates to the convention, and international reporters are planning to interview him about that role. And he's reportedly looking to re-emerge as a political candidate himself in 2006.
While Kent State journalism professor Tim Smith describes Springer as an "extremely intelligent man," he told the Plain Dealer the host's correspondent gig creates "more conflicts of interests and potential conflicts than you could enumerate."
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12:52 PM
Coalition of the Whaling?
The International Whaling Commission holds its annual meeting Monday, but Japan has renewed its efforts to derail the organization and revive commercial whaling.
The BBC reports Japan is planning to create a new pro-whaling alliance if it doesn't get its way with the 54-member IWC. Along with Norway and Iceland, the Japanese government wants to lift the moratorium on commercial whaling - created in 1986 to conserve the largely endangered cetaceans - and replace it with guidelines for "sustainable" killing. The BBC says a government paper confirms the seriousness of Japan's threat to pull out, which would exclude the country from the organization's oversight.
At last year's meeting, the pro-whaling countries bristled at a then-historic initiative by the progressive majority (including the U.S.) to make whale conservation for its own sake part of the IWC's mission. Japan and its allies argued that conservationist goal makes the organization one it would never have joined in the first place.
However, as Rebecca Mcquillan writes in Glasgow's Herald, the Japan-Norway-Iceland axis has little high ground here, considering the three countries have exploited loopholes in the ban for years. Norway has killed between 550-640 whales per year since 1992 for commercial purposes. Iceland declared last August that it would resume whaling for "scientific research" with a goal of 250 kills annually. And Japan kills more than 600 animals per year, citing research purposes, while illegally allowing the commercial sale of meat and other derivatives. In all, the three countries have already killed more than 25,000 whales since the ban went into place.
As so often happens with international bodies, the IWC needs a stronger enforcement mechanism. It hasn't been able to stop the exploitation of its rules by three rogue nations, and that will remain a problem whether Japan stays or goes.
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12:30 PM
Squaring the inner circle
Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post (who yesterday filed a must-read report on GE's extensive lobbying network, uncovering how the company has influenced recent tax bills) today turns in this rather thin piece on John Kerry's inner policy circle, bearing the message that Kerry's unwieldy army of advisers plays unhelpfully into the candidate's alleged indecisiveness.
[Kerry's] campaign now includes 37 separate domestic policy councils and 27 foreign policy groups, each with scores of members. The justice policy task force alone includes 195 members. …
In contrast, President Bush's campaign policy shop is a no-frills affair. Policy director Tim Adams directs about a dozen experts who make sure the campaign is in sync with the vast executive branch that is formulating policy. Adams's group also analyzes Kerry's proposals and voting record. Fewer than a dozen outside task forces, with five to 10 members, also help out.
"In contrast"? What kind of comparison is this? Weisman goes on to imply that Bush is running a lean, mean operation, while Kerry struggles on with an unwieldy dinosaur. No mention of the fact that Kerry's labyrinthine policy shop has put out a bunch of very serious and very smart proposals -- a clever health care plan, a minimum wage hike, a "service for college" initiative, and so on. Meanwhile, can anyone say what Bush's second term will consist of? So far it seems to come down to a feinted Mars mission and renewed tax cuts. As countless commentators have noted, the Bush team hates talking about policy, and it shows.
You wouldn't know it from the Post piece, but there are obviously advantages to having a broad-based, varied, and contentious network of advisers - not the least of which is the superior quality of their policy advice.
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12:15 PM
Curtains for Kucinich?
He's stayed in the race longer than any other Democratic challenger, campaigning well after John Kerry locked up enough primaries to clinch the nomination. But it looks like Dennis Kucinich is getting ready to wrap things up.
In a Monday letter to supporters, Kucinich urged them to work for improvements without splitting the party:
"Working inside the party is not always convenient. We made a responsible choice to push as far as we could, with all the resources we had, to get as much as we could, without tearing the party apart…"Our party, though deficient it is, cannot fracture and open up the possibility of four more years of lies, four more years of war, four more years of the destruction of the democratic process. We must shore up the party and continue to work within it to influence the American public towards change. We can do this through unifying across all the ideological perspectives within our party."
If that doesn't sound like a concession speech, the link to Kucinich's campaign store now runs under a "Last Chance for T-Shirts!" banner, and the store features "blowout prices" on the candidate's memorabilia.
It's still unknown if Kucinich will have a role in the Democratic National Convention later this month. But his continued campaign brought the Democratic message to some overlooked counties, and the party should thank him for that.
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10:40 AM
Optimism, Iraq style
The news out of post-handover Iraq has been mixed lately, but I'm going to stay on the sunny side and highlight two optimistic reports. The first, from StrategyPage, indicates that the Iraqi locals are turning against al Qaeda and other foreign fighters:
Al Qaeda operations in Iraq have encountered unexpected problems. Iraqis have become increasingly hostile to al Qaeda's suicide bombing campaign. Religious leaders, which al Qaeda expects to get support from, have been openly denouncing these bombings. Iraqis, aware that they are more likely, than American soldiers, to be victims of these attacks, are providing more information on where the al Qaeda members are hiding out.
Second, the Christian Science Monitor reports that the Fallujah resistance is no longer one big, unified anti-occupation family:
[Fallujah] is no longer a sympathetic rallying place for a unified Iraqi resistance. It is now seen as run by intolerant and exclusivist Sunni imams who are seeking to turn it into a haven for Al Qaeda ideologues. Fallujah is emerging as a symbol of the disparate nature of the overall insurgency inside Iraq. Many Shiites, like the Muthars, have stopped supporting it.
Yes, Iyad Allawi's "divide and conquer" strategy against the insurgents really seems to be working. Before we uncork the champagne, though, it's worth recalling that the anti-occupation resistance was never the only problem facing Iraq. As the CSM piece notes, Sunni-Shiite tensions are near boiling point in Fallujah right now, after four Shia truck drivers were murdered by Sunni locals. A Gujarat-style riot between the two groups would be one of Iraq's worst nightmares. Defusing that hot-spot will take a soft touch, something the occupation forces and interim leaders have yet to display.
Meanwhile, as we've seen in Afghanistan, private militias can pose as great a threat to a country's stability as an organized insurgency. And Iraq's got plenty of militias: from Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army to the cagey Kurdish pesh merga roaming the north. I hate to be dour, but it's not like everything is fine and dandy just yet.
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10:38 AM
Where were the whistleblowers?
Did the White House put undue pressure on intelligence analysts in the run-up to the Iraq war? The Senate intelligence report, of course, says no. But at the time, plenty of analysts were saying yes, yes, yes, as evidenced by a KnightRidder story written back in 2002:
"Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews.
No one who was interviewed disagreed.
How can this possibly square with the Senate's conclusions -- that no intelligence was affected by any sort of pressure? As noted here, the Senate committee may have been looking for the wrong sort of pressure. It's probably not the case that analysts were coerced into changing their conclusions. But analysts may have spent so much time working on administration pet-projects, that they didn't have time to build up proper dissents -- a complaint that had been voiced in the past to writers like Kenneth Pollack.
Anyway, national security journalist Laura Rozen has another, more elegant theory: Analysts were simply too afraid to testify before the Senate.
As a journalist who has been covering the national security beat for a few years, I have intelligence sources who told me in the past couple years about pressure to find a link between al Qaeda and Iraq, and more than pressure, an environment where this was a certain obsession, the holy grail. I called up Pat Roberts' office many months ago and spoke with a staffer there about it, and the staffer said sincerely, tell those people, call us from a payphone, we don't have to know their names, but we want to know. But when I told this to various intel sources, their response was, are you crazy?
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4:27 PM
Road rage
George Bush has long backed the logging industry in opposing the ban on road-building in protected forests (consistent with his relentlessly anti-environment stance). Monday, the administration chose to do something about it, proposing to lift the ban that covers 58 million acres nationwide.
In his final days of office, Bill Clinton unveiled restrictions on road-building in one-third of federally protected forests. The Bush administration has supported states that challenged the Clinton plan in court, and cited the new proposal as a victory for states' rights, as governors would have to petition the federal government to block road-building. But to Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, the only winner is the timber industry:
"The idea that many governors would want to jump head first into the political snake pit of managing the national forests in their states is laughable. Besides, the timber industry has invested heavily for years in the campaigns of governors with the largest national and state forests, giving almost equally to Republicans and Democrats."
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said he will petition to keep all his state's protected forest free of roads, and urged other governors to do likewise:
"They should not open these areas, period."
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3:45 PM
Say it ain't so, Joe
Remember Joseph Wilson, the ex-ambassador who went to Niger to try to debunk an alleged attempt by Iraq to buy uranium? Remember how he leaked the name of Wilson's wife, an undercover CIA agent? Remember how this was all potential felony material?
Well, the Senate intelligence report has added a few twists to the story. On Saturday, the Washington Post noted that, according to the report, Wilson was given the Niger assignment as a result of his wife's connections, and this may have implications for the name-leaking:
The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.
Over at National Review, Jonah Goldberg concurs:
If in fact the White House inadvertently revealed Plame's identity in order to explain why a dishonest hack like Wilson was being sent to Africa (i.e. "His wife pulled some strings") and not so as to endanger a whistle-blower's life that sounds like more than a matter of "some political traction." That sounds like the whole enchilada, scandal-wise.
Now to some extent, Goldberg has a point. It's one thing for the White House to brazenly and maliciously expose Valerie Plame out of spite. It's another thing to try to explain why no one should listen to Wilson, and in the process break the law. It's a thin difference, but it's there. If Wilson did have "questionable bona fides as an investigator", the White House might have a moral case, though not a legal one.
But notice I said "if." Nowhere in the SSCI report does it even suggest that Joseph Wilson was not the right person for the job. On page 39, we get the full story of how he was selected. In short, Valerie Plame offered up her husband as a possible investigator, and the CIA's Counterproliferation Division approved. The report never suggests that anyone had any qualms whatsoever about Wilson's credentials. Furthermore, Wilson's report was eventually given a "good" rating by the CIA (p. 46). Seems like the "hack" was perfectly well suited for his job. Exposing Wilson's wife's role does not discredit Wilson's findings in the slightest.
Wilson's Niger findings only corroborated what the agency already knew at the time, and merely reiterated doubts that INR already had about any possible uranium deal. At the time, the CIA was still sitting on the forged memos as an alternate source of intelligence. Those memos would be discredited only much later, by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). So Wilson's report was accurate. He just thought that his report should have been the final say in the matter, when it was not. Now, later on, when talking to the Senate committee, Wilson really became a dishonest hack, flagrantly exaggerating his role in the investigation. But what does that have to do with his wife?
So here's the real question: When Wilson started making noise in June 2003, why didn't the White House simply point out that his findings offered no new information, and that he was exaggerating his role? Why did they have to expose his wife? And, as Josh Marshall points out, if the White House really felt like they were in the clear, why don't they just come clean and reveal who leaked Plame's name? It's like they think they might be guilty or something ...
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2:35 PM
Dangerous work
Last week's murder of Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes Russia, served as a reminder of why, year after year, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has named Russia as one of the world's "Worst Places to Be a Journalist." Klebnikov, an American of Russian descent, was scathing in his criticism of Russia's oligarchs -- one of his books was titled Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. In May, the magazine published a list of the country's 100 richest men, pointing out that Moscow has the highest number of billionaires (33) of any city in the world. Of course, some oligarchs never tire of publicity, but those have made the move to London (where Berezovsky currently resides) and other Putin-free zones. Most of those still in Russia, like to keep out of the public eye.
Still, it's not clear if the list -- or some other project -- was the final straw for whoever hired Klebnikov's assassins. Klebnikov's colleagues say that he was not working on anything explosive at the present time, and immediately after he was shot, Klebnikov said that he did not know why he'd been attacked. If recent history is any guide, his murder will remain unsolved, just like the murders of the 14 journalists killed since Putin came to power in 2000.
Putin won on a platform of law and order, but the impunity with which journalists continue to be murdered makes it difficult to take this commitment seriously. As Klebnikov's friend, the New York Times reporter Serge Schmemann, writes today:
In the end, the perpetrators are not the issue: it is the cruel confirmation that the law and an appreciation of freedom have not taken hold in Russia. It is the evidence that murder is still perceived as a normal and safe way of settling scores and amassing wealth, and that the Kremlin is not really interested in doing anything about it.
A free press is not the enemy, nor is the West. Paul Klebnikov wrote about oligarchs and crime because he believed, almost naïvely,that Russia really wanted to become normal, that its president really wanted to know what was wrong. Many others, like Paul, have wanted to help. But when power tramples on institutions that are at the heart of a free society, we begin to wonder whether we can, or whether we should.
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12:07 PM
Fairly unbalanced
While not nearly the headline-grabber that is Fahrenheit 9/11, a new documentary critical of FOX News has drawn the network's ire. The GOP's favorite news channel is angry not only at the producers of Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, but also at media organizations that report on it.
At a New York news conference Monday, FOX News distributed a statement accusing the New York Times - which published a magazine piece on Sunday about the documentary - of taking "orders from a George Soros-funded web site" that helped finance the film:
"If any news organizations decide to make this an anti-Fox News story, then all of their material becomes fodder immediately for possible out of context and biased documentaries."
FOX also criticized the Times for giving the network only a day to respond to the film's charges of bias. But, as the Los Angeles Times pointed out, it gave FOX a week to respond - and still no response.
Director Robert Greenwald stands by his film, which reportedly includes footage of FOX anchors attacking John Kerry and quotes former FOX employees on the daily memos that drive network coverage. As Larry Johnson, a former FOX commentator and former Reagan-era CIA agent, said:
"You got marching orders, you got talking points, you got what the theme of the day was. They would shape the news, and it was being one in a coordinated fashion with the [George W.] Bush administration."
FOX's John Moody defended the memos to the Baltimore Sun with a rationalization that doesn't exactly contradict Greenwald's argument:
"We pay [journalists] to think for themselves, but there has to be a unifying theme to our coverage. A network has to look and sound approximately the same to viewers throughout the day."
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11:24 AM
Unlimited liability
"Ken Lay should go to jail." Thus the normally mild-mannered Alan Murray getting draconian in today's Wall Street Journal. As Murray notes, there are three major ways of reining in prodigal companies like Enron: regulation, corporate governance, and forcing the CEO to assume greater responsibility:
The regulatory cure was the first to be adopted, but is in many ways the least satisfactory. That is because the bad guys will always outrun even the most nimble of regulators, because regulations impose costs on the good guys and because regulations produce unintended consequences. I'm not yet ready to agree with those who grouse that Sarbanes-Oxley went too far. I do agree regulation is a clumsy, though sometimes necessary, solution.
The corporate-governance cure has more appeal, because it is an attempt to fix the system rather than regulate it. In the textbooks, capitalism works because corporate managers are kept in check by shareholders, who operate through directors they elect. The truth, however, is that many American directors are handpicked and handsomely compensated by the very executives they oversee. Giving shareholders more power over boards would seem a reasonable way to improve the system.
That, of course, leaves the nuclear option: conviction for the CEO.
Mr. Lay on Thursday finally acknowledged that Mr. Fastow had "betrayed" his trust. (Mr. Lay's lawyer was more blunt, calling the former financial officer a "liar and a thief.") Mr. Lay added that "to the extent that I did not know what he was doing ... then indeed, I cannot take responsibility."
If he gets away with this defense, plausible deniability will become the strategy in every corporate suite. If he doesn't, CEOs will understand it is their duty to know how the financial whizzes down the hall are turning business failures into earnings gains.
It's hard to argue with that. Executives have no problem taking full credit for their companies' success, earning lavish compensation packages in reward. So why not full liability? If a CEO doesn't understand what the "financial whizzes down the hall" are doing, maybe, just maybe, he or she shouldn't be CEO in the first place.
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10:51 AM
Show me the money
In a tight race for the presidency, George Bush is pressing every advantage his incumbency provides. As the Wall Street Journal reports, that includes the ability to dispense millions of dollars in pork projects in key battleground states:
In a swing state such as Missouri, handing out small parcels of money can help the incumbent. Iraq may be the overarching issue of the 2004 contest, but Mr. Bush -- as a former governor -- well knows the power of patronage politics to drive grateful voters to the polls.
The Journal uses Missouri as a case in point, with a helpful map to show where the federal funds are heading. Examples of special deliveries from Washington include $48.8 million grant for the St. Louis airport, $3.3 million for the state's laid-off airline workers, $962,435 to build a water system and rail spur in Laddonia, $6,000 for streets signs and a salt spreader in Mineral Point, with many of these funds personally presented by Cabinet members or other top officials. But these pork projects are unpopular with Bush's ideological base, as the Journal explains:
"For critics, that is what makes the administration's efforts all the more flagrant. Bush advisers were so upset over 'thousands of special projects' that they recommended a veto last spring of the new highway bill. At the time, the White House made clear the threat was a tip of the hat toward Republican Party conservatives, for whom the issue of pork-barrel spending is especially important."
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5:35 PM
Why now?
The revelation that government officials are discussing ways to postpone an election begs an obvious question - why now? Or better, why not before now?
According to Newsweek, the Department of Homeland Security asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to consider how to postpone an election in case of a terrorist attack. This came after DeForest Soaries, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, wrote a letter to Tom Ridge asking him to develop a contingency plan in case of an attack. A DHS spokesman told Newsweek the department is "reviewing the issue to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the election."
It's Soaries' job to worry about such things. As chairman of a commission charged with reviewing election procedures, he was reportedly concerned that no mechanism exists for postponing an election. But the U.S. has never had a contingency plan for a disrupted federal election, and four months before election day is rather late in the game to start developing one. As Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said:
"I don't think there's an argument that can be made, for the first time in our history, to delay an election. We hold elections in the middle of war, in the middle of earthquakes, in the middle of whatever it takes. The election is a statutory election. It should go ahead, on schedule, and we should not change it."
It's not as if an election disrupted by terrorism is a new threat - or a new reality. The Sept. 11 attacks took place on the day of two states' mayoral primaries. While New York's Board of Elections quite understandably delayed its state's vote, Ohio went ahead with its election that day. In the words of Cincinnati mayoral candidate Courtis Fuller, who got enough votes for a runoff on Sept. 11 but later lost the election:
"Even on this day when so much tragedy took place, it was important that this election continue. That is the strength of our democracy and our citizens."
Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, tried to stress that Homeland Security is only planning for a worst-case scenario, a way to follow the New York Board of Elections' example on a federal level. But the timing of Ridge's Thursday terrorism warning, including unspecified al-Qaida threats to disrupt the election, gave the appearance of a partisan angle to the debate. As Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla) said:
"Given the fact that the administration chose not to raise the threat level and provided no information to substantiate the severity of their claim, one cannot help but question whether their aim was to deflect attention from the Kerry-Edwards ticket during their inaugural week."
Politics aside, the creation of a contingency plan requires debate on a number of fronts. If an attack were to take place Nov. 2, would all polls be closed or just in the areas attacked? What about votes already cast? How long would a delay last and who decides when to go ahead? What safeguards would prevent an incumbent from extending it? What constitutes a large enough disruption to postpone voting? These and other questions need to be addressed if the plan goes forward and, as the Patriot Act taught us, rushing a plan through can create more problems than it's designed to solve.
And that's the point. There has been ample time since the Sept. 11 attacks to create a backup plan for Nov. 2, but nobody moved on it. While their motivation might be pure, it's not surprising that officials' attempts to develop a plan in the eleventh hour are meeting with skepticism. This should have been decided long ago.
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4:35 PM
Ron around
At the coming conventions, the Republicans might have the Reagan tribute, but Democrats will have the Reagan speech.
Ron Reagan, son of the late president, will deliver a prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention. Reagan said his speech will address embryonic stem-cell research, which the Bush administration still opposes despite the Reagan family's efforts:
"If they had asked me to say a few words about throwing George Bush out of office, I wouldn't do it. This gives me a platform to educate people about stem cell research."
The Republicans have targeted independents by having Democratic Sen. Zell Miller address their convention, and the Reagan speech is a similar move by the Democrats. While the GOP is still planning tribute to Ronald Reagan, his family's unhappiness with the party will be getting prime-time coverage.
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3:55 PM
Coaching the candidate
Unable to find a compelling replacement from the ranks of elected officials for disgraced Senate candidate Jack Ryan, Illinois Republicans are reportedly considering going the celebrity route by tapping former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka for the nomination.
Since Ryan quit the race, the nomination to go up against Democratic rising star Barack Obama has been turned down by a list of candidates, including Jim Edgar, Judy Baar Topinka, Steve Rauschenberger and Ron Gidwitz. Now the party's trying to find any remotely viable candidate. That led a group of Republican voters to create a web site urging Ditka's candidacy, and the coach has expressed some interest in the job, telling WGN news he's "thinking about it." Which has some GOP leaders - like state Sen. Dave Syverson - excited:
"Mike Ditka would be a great candidate because he represents the average Illinoisan. He's just a decent, ordinary guy that worked hard and wasn't handed anything but made it successful."
Ditka introduced then-candidate George Bush at Chicago-area events in 2000, and has fought city Democrats over a proposed indoor smoking ban. He owns a popular downtown restaurant, works as a football announcer and is the spokesman for the Viagra competitor Levitra, which should appease the Bob Dole wing of the party.
Republicans like Rep. Mark Kirk hope the popularity Ditka gained for leading the Bears to their only Super Bowl title will translate into votes:
"If Ditka ran, Democrats would claim to vote for Obama and then secretly vote for Ditka."
Given the precedents of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, the prospect of Ditka faring well in a statewide race doesn't seem that far-fetched. Of course, neither of the "Predator" stars faced an opponent as strong as Obama, who held a lead of more than 20 points against Ryan even before the latter's divorce records became public.
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3:43 PM
Surprise!
Over at Columbia Journalism Review, Corey Pein wonders why the media isn't making more hay over The New Republic's blockbuster "July Surprise?" article on Pakistan. No doubt about it, the article is intriguing. Pundits have often wondered why the Bush administration has been so willing to overlook Pakistan's constant transgressions -- they peddle nuclear secrets, we make them major allies. It never made much sense -- until now. After chatting with a few ISI agents, TNR learned that Pakistan is potentially part of the Bush-Cheney '04 re-elect team:
TNR has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce high value [terrorist] targets by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." …
According to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
I find the article upsetting for slightly different reasons than Pein does. The underlying premise -- that Bush is politicizing the hunt for Osama -- seems all too believable. Of course he is.
More worrying, this is yet another indication that our foreign policy is focused on short-term gain. Relations with Pakistan should really consist of more than pressuring the ISI to hunt down Taliban and al Qaeda goons. In fact, it's not even clear that this should be a top priority at all. Pakistan's government is teetering perilously close to the edge of collapse. Should we really be asking Musharraf to trudge his army into the tribal areas, provoke Islamic radicals, and risk assassination or revolt, all for the sake of a few symbolic and mostly irrelevant "high-level targets"?
Wouldn't Musharraf's preciously limited political capital be better spent, say, rooting out fully his country's nuclear proliferation network? (Some analysts now think A.Q. Khan may have sold nuclear technology to someone besides Libya, Iran, and North Korea. Do we know who? Is anyone trying to find this out?)
The Bush administration has squandered its once-promising relationship with Pakistan. Settling the Kashmir question should have been a major order of business. (Instead, the US has often exacerbated tensions.) As K. Shankar Bajpai has argued in Foreign Affairs, that ongoing conflict is the major breeding ground for radical terrorists in Pakistan. Deft U.S. diplomacy is capable of defusing this crisis and changing the entire situation in Pakistan, though the sort sophisticated strategy required would demand a far-sighted and agile leader. The kind we don't have. Some surprise.
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