Week of: |
5:27 PM
Sudan faces a sanctions deadline
Monday marks the United Nations deadline for Sudan to either disarm its Janjaweed militias or face international sanctions. And according to a study released Friday by Human Rights Watch, the Sudanese government has done little to disarm the militia groups that have slaughtered tens of thousands of people and left more than a million homeless.
An HRW team in Darfur returned to the U.S. last week, and reported the militia camps remain active. Peter Takirambudde, the executive director of the group's Africa division, said:
"Throughout the time Khartoum was supposedly reining in the Janjaweed, these camps have been operating in plain sight. These Janjaweed camps should be immediately investigated by the U.N. and the African Union ceasefire monitors, then disbanded ..."The existence of these Janjaweed camps shows clearly that Khartoum is not at all serious about ending atrocities and providing security. The fact that there are still armed camps filled with killers terrorizing civilians in Darfur makes it impossible for people to go home."
Further complicating the situation is Sudan's vow to challenge any military intervention by other nations that doesn't meet with its approval. The African Union is trying to organize a peacekeeping force of more than 3,000 troops, but Khartoum has refused to allow it. The government is also refusing to fully disarm until the rebel groups in Darfur disarm. Considering Sudan's penchant for not following through on its promises, the rebels are unwilling to do so.
Less than 72 hours remain before the U.N. deadline passes. Barring an eleventh-hour deal, the deadline will pass with Darfur still in great peril.
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5:25 PM
Terrorism on the cheap
A United Nations report released this week concludes that, with the exception of 9/11, major terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda have cost under $50,000 to carry out. For example, less than $10,000 was spent on the Madrid bombings in which 191 people were killed. The report also casts doubt on the effectiveness of international attempts to curtail financial support for Al Qaeda via sanctions against sympathetic organizations and individuals. Al Qaeda has been able to engage in terrorism on the cheap because the attacks have been low-tech and the organizations has become even more decentralized since 9/11.
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5:21 PM
Bush: a man wholly unwilling to learn from his mistakes
If you read George W. Bush's recent interview with the New York Times, you find a man wholly unwilling to draw any lessons from his mistakes:
Mr. Bush also acknowledged for the first time that he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be'' in postwar Iraq. But he insisted that the 17-month-long insurgency that has upended the administration's plans for the country was the unintended by-product of a "swift victory'' against Saddam Hussein's military, which fled and then disappeared into the cities, enabling them to mount a rebellion against the American forces far faster than Mr. Bush and his aides had anticipated.
He insisted that his strategy had been "flexible enough'' to respond, and said that even now "we're adjusting to our conditions'' in places like Najaf, where American forces have been battling one of the most militant of the Shiite groups opposing the American-installed government.
Mr. Bush deflected efforts to inquire further into what went wrong with the occupation, suggesting that such questions should be left to historians, and insisting, as his father used to, that he would resist going "on the couch'' to rethink decisions.
But Bush is precisely wrong -- we aren't "adjusting to our conditions" in places like Najaf. Today's truce with Moqtada al-Sadr looks exactly like the truce drawn up with Sadr in Najaf three months ago. Sadr will keep his militia, remain in control, and live to fight another day. As I've written before, Ayad Allawi and John Negroponte almost certainly guessed that public opinion would side with them against Sadr, and probably believed that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani would green-light a full-blown attack on the rebel cleric. It turns out, the U.S. "misunderestimated" Sistani once again, just as they did last November when they tried to draft an Iraqi constitution. At what point does this become farcical?
In the Washington Post today, Howell Raines addresses the 'dumb' factor -- the theory that President Bush just isn't smart enough to lead this country. It's an important point, but to really see this theory in action, look at other leaders who really did get "on the couch" and agonize about their mistakes.
Bill Clinton was often accused of lacking coherent foreign policy principles. In his defense, he came to office in a new, post-Cold War, era where no one really knew what our foreign policy should be. But he certainly foundered in his first term. The administration first ramped up our ill-conceived foray into Somalia (which had been originally authorized by Colin Powell, who thought he needed to justify the existence of a massive post-Cold War military). Then there was Haiti, and the shameful abdication of responsibility in Rwanda.
But the most important point in all this was that Clinton did agonize over these decisions, he did go "on the couch," and eventually he developed a semi-coherent foreign policy doctrine -- combining international cooperation with the promotion of democracy -- and put that doctrine to work in the campaigns to end genocide in Serbia and Kosovo. So too did the Clinton administration's understanding of terrorism evolve over time, and it was able to make progress in disarming North Korea. Without idealizing these policies, we can say that in the 1990s the Democrats arrived at a flexible, working theory of foreign policy.
Bush, for his part, simply hasn't adapted to conditions on the ground. Conservatives often accuse liberals of living in a "pre-September 11 mentality," but the Bush Administration can be fairly accused of still partying like it's March 2002. But things have changed since then -- more than they did on September 11. Abu Ghraib undercut our moral authority throughout the Arab world. Our allies no longer respect us. The quagmire (yes, quagmire) in Iraq means that our military no longer strikes fear in the streets of Tehran and Damascus. North Korea has potentially gone nuclear and the macho-as-usual posturing simply won't work. And our foreign policy agenda hasn't changed one bit. There are only so many ways you can keep hammering this point home.
It should be blindlingly obvious that we need a president who agonizes over the past. As Todd Gitlin pointed out in Salon, Kerry's antiwar speeches from 30 years ago reveal a man who grappled with the very real atrocities and mistakes committed in Vietnam. The fact that Bush's Swift Boat myrmidons are putting out new ads condemning those speeches tells you all you need to know about which side is truly stuck in the past.
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2:59 PM
Britain wonders: is being allied with the U.S. more trouble than it's worth?
The other day we rifled through evidence of a growing rift between Britain and the U.S. over Iraq. At around the same time, Steve Clemons (who appears to have contacts just about everywhere) was talking to a few friends of his who are close to Tony Blair and found that the rift is indeed widening:
The British have lost three military staff in Basra these last several weeks -- after not having had any killed for several months (in dramatic contrast with the U.S.) -- and are seriously worried that the conflict in Najaf could incite Shia sympathy and insurgency throughout Iraq.
Several senior officials repeated the same fear that this stand-off between Iraqi national guardsmen (guided and backed by U.S. military detachments) and Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has all of the ingredients of a "Middle East Waco." They fear that any assault by the Iraqi National Guard and U.S. troops could trigger al-Sadr to blow up the Najaf Shrine, making it look like the U.S. did it.
As I am currently on a plane back to Washington, I have no idea whether there has been further action in Najaf, but many in Blair's world are worried that the price of being America's most dependable ally is becoming very high.
Now, we know that Najaf didn't end with a Waco-style showdown -- probably because the British intervened and brought Sistani back to Iraq. For whatever reason, it's now clear that we can't handle ourselves in Iraq without our allies. Neoconservatives like Robert Kagan like to say that Europe can only provide us abstract benefits like "moral legitimacy" -- but in fact, their assistance is far more concrete, and far more necessary.
Does the president really want to debate this? Bush's refrain that he will never defer to allies in times of danger has now been amended to read, "I will never defer to my allies when America is in trouble -- at least not until things are so bad that they have to go behind my back and defuse the crisis on their own." That would make for quite the bumper sticker.
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11:57 AM
Another domestic test for the Coalition of the Willing
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a close ally whom George Bush has called a "man of steel" and his "sheriff" in the Asia-Pacific region, is reportedly ready to announce an election date.
Howard, who zealously supported the war in Iraq, has long been rumored to be planning a vote prior to the U.S. election, so that a Bush defeat, should it happen, would not undermine his own re-election bid. According to AFP, he will announce that date as either Oct. 2 or Oct. 9, ending months of speculation.
Polls have consistently shown Howard's government slightly trailing the opposition Labor Party and its candidate Mark Latham - who has called Bush "the most incompetent and dangerous U.S. president of the past century" and labeled Howard an "arse-licker" for his relationship with Bush. Howard reportedly considered making his announcement last week while Latham was hospitalized with an inflamed pancreas, but ultimately chose not to exploit the situation.
Instead, this week Howard has offered new tax breaks to seniors, leaving the Labor-controlled Senate in the difficult position of handing him a victory or voting against the elderly. He has also announced plans for arm its fighter planes with sophisticated long-range missiles, his latest Bushlike attempt to use national security as a wedge issue.
Howard is a shrewd politician, and his defeat at the polls is by no means assured. But his friendship and loyalty to the Bush administration despite domestic opposition to the war might yet prove his political undoing.
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5:51 PM
Hamsters against Kerry! It could happen ...
Over at The New Republic, Gregg Easterbrook conjures up some fictional political front groups that could conceivably materialize given the absurdities of this election season. The Swift Boat Captains for Truth are dominating the news and perhaps even hurting Kerry in the polls. But what if this is only the beginning -- a mere prelude to the politics of personal destruction practiced by vindictive, right-leaning hamsters:
Hamsters Against Kerry. All across the country small, furry constituents are organizing and empowering themselves politically for the first time. They demand to know why John Kerry placed an innocent, trusting little hamster in danger in the first place. Why wasn't the hamster wearing a life vest? Was John Kerry certified to give CPR to a hamster? Why were there no miniature defibrillators available? And if John Kerry really saved a hamster, where is that hamster today--why hasn't he been introduced to the media? Rumor says the hamster is being held incommunicado somewhere in a little wheel."
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4:21 PM
Zimbabwe's opposition: playing into Mugabe's hands?
Robert Mugabe barely kept his job as president of Zimbabwe in 2002, by way of an election marred by fraud and intimidation. Unimpressed with Mugabe's reforms for the next presidential vote in March, his main opposition has responded by threatening to boycott the election -- virtually guaranteeing Mugabe's lock on power.
The Movement for Democratic Change, which holds 57 of the Parliament's 120 elected seats, said it will not take part in elections until Mugabe agrees to adhere to the election standards set up by the Southern African Development Community, a group of 14 nations that includes Zimbabwe. In the words of MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi:
"Until there are tangible signs the government is prepared to enforce the SADC protocols on elections, the national executive has today decided to suspend participation in all forms of elections in Zimbabwe."
On Thursday, the governments of Great Britain and South Africa echoed the call for reform, which is obviously needed. However, the MDC boycott only strengthens Mugabe's hand, allowing his government to portray the opposition as sore losers. Hence government minister Patrick Chinamasa's reaction to the boycott:
"They have lost the confidence of Zimbabweans and will not win elections. It is their democratic right not to be embarrassed and we will not lose sleep over that."
Real election reforms are clearly required, but denying voters a viable alternative seems like a poor strategy. What's needed is pressure from other SADC members for Zimbabwe to enforce agreed-upon guidelines like media freedom and independent observers. Mugabe's reluctance to take these steps only reinforces the perception that a fair election -- which would likely end his reign -- is precisely what he doesn't want.
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2:41 PM
Will Kerry leave us awash in red ink? We doubt it.
Jonathan Weisman's piece this week in the Washington Post, predicting that John Kerry's domestic agenda would jackboot the government further into debt, comes as something of a concern:
A Washington Post review of Kerry's tax cuts and spending plans, in addition to interviews with campaign staff members and analyses by conservative and liberal experts, suggests that they could worsen the federal budget deficit by nearly as much as President Bush's agenda. If projected savings from unspecified cuts do not materialize, Kerry's pledges could outstrip those of the president, whom the Democrat has repeatedly accused of unprecedented fiscal recklessness.
Alas, the only hard numbers on Kerry are provided by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. How reliable is that? Eric Engen, one of the AEI analysts looking at Kerry's budget-busting plan, is best known for the clownish argument that businesses must hate Kerry because stock markets go down when Kerry goes up in the polls. (A likelier explanation: bad news -- like botched wars or torture or deficits -- causes both markets to go down and voters to get angry at the sitting president.)
But never mind the ad hominems. As Noam Scheiber argues, we have every reason to believe that Kerry wouldn't exacerbate the deficit, regardless of what programs he's promising now. His advisors, after all, include deficit hawks like Bob Rubin and Gene Sperling. And a president Kerry will need to burnish his centrist credentials, leading to a likely deficit-reduction program.
To add to Scheiber's list: if you look at the historical record -- as The Century Foundation did -- you can see that since World War II, the deficit has grown under Republican presidents (with the exception of Eisenhower), while Democrats have always sewed it back up.
Republican profligacy can be largely explained by their desire to "starve the beast" -- that is, cut taxes and hope the deficits will provoke drastic spending cuts. Of course, it never works. But why are Democrats, historically, so thrifty? Probably because the Democratic Party has always placed emphasis on employment. If you want full employment, you need low interest rates. If you want low interest rates, you need to close up the deficit. Obviously the process is more complex than that, but I think Kerry's advisors are basically of this school -- when it comes down to it, they'd rather have low interest rates and full employment than spend another couple million on some discretionary program. And with a Republican Congress chopping down many of Kerry's spending programs, that's what we'll probably get.
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12:35 PM
Jesse Ventura wades into the war debate
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has been conspicuously silent on the war in Iraq. But now, the former Navy SEAL is speaking out against the use of National Guard troops in the war:
"They are designed to protect us here in the United States of America and in our homeland - not to be occupying nations halfway around the world. And that is not the role of the National Guard. And in many cases, many of these men are doing things they were never trained to do, which is dangerous for them and dangerous for the war itself."
Ventura, who became the Reform Party's highest elected official before splitting with the party in 2000, is also serving on the advisory board of a new nonpartisan group called Operation Truth, which describes itself as giving voice to troops who served in Iraq. So far, "giving voice" includes criticizing the level of pork in the defense appropriations bill, and promising to speak out about cuts in veteran's benefits.
Both Ventura and the group stress they're not anti-war, just against the way it's being waged. For George Bush, this certainly can't help.
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11:10 AM
The return of the convention bloggers (at least, some of them)
The numbers won't compare to Boston, but bloggers will again be joining the media horde at the Republican convention in New York. Fifteen bona fide bloggers received credentials this time around (compared to some three dozen for the Democratic convention), and the Wall Street Journal profiles them in today's edition.
The 15 bloggers include 12 on-the-record Bush supporters, two undecideds, and a nonpartisan blog about how politicians use the web. Adam Nelson, who plans to do straight news coverage, said he learned some lessons from the bloggers at the Democratic convention:
"Otherwise normal people (in this case, bloggers), when subjected to intense media attention, quickly develop professional-level media training. If you're going to be lucky enough to go, you better retroactively earn your place through hard work. Stop people on the street. Blog from bars. Get to the hall early. Blog from your room late. ... Be worth it. Treat the 'real' media seriously and with respect (but not deference). They're working harder than you, and many had to slave a beat for years before earning the right to cover a convention. Blogging is a hobby, reporting is a job."
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9:00 AM PST
Good environmental news for WA -- but there's more to be done.
It didn't get a lot of media attention, but Washington state got some good environmental news this week with the removal of nuclear residue from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near the Columbia River.
The Hanford site -- which features 149 underground tanks with an outdated "single-wall" construction -- has been a cleanup concern for decades. The removal of waste from those tanks Monday was an important milestone, considering almost half the tanks have reportedly leaked radioactive waste into the surrounding soil -- soil that drains toward the Columbia. As the Seattle Times reported in 1999 (article not online), Hanford's potential danger sat out of the public eye too long:
"Born in Manhattan Project secrecy, it manufactured the bulk of the nation's nuclear arsenal for more than 40 years. With the public but dimly aware, Hanford was to plutonium what Pittsburgh was to steel. And almost everything about it was top secret."It took decades for the government to admit Hanford stacks had vented some radioactive clouds over Eastern Washington. And once the bomb factories shut down and the veils started falling, perhaps the biggest secret emerged: the science-fiction mess that bomb-making left behind.
"Ground water beneath a fifth of Hanford's 560 square miles was contaminated. Thousands of brittle nuclear-fuel rods were stacked in leaky pools near the river. One of the site's many million-gallon tanks full of deadly chemicals routinely burped flammable hydrogen."
The situation at Hanford was troubling enough that Gov. Gary Locke called the site "an underground Chernobyl waiting to happen" in his 1999 appeal for the Energy Department to speed up the cleanup. That same year, the state and federal governments agreed on a timetable to remove more than three million gallons of liquid waste from the aforementioned single-wall tanks to a safer containers. As the editorial board of the Seattle Times explained:
"The removal of pumpable liquid wastes from Hanford's risky single-shell tanks is an important achievement in a long and difficult job. It's also a testament to the state's abiding efforts to hold the Energy Department responsible for cleaning up the mess it made over five decades of nuclear-defense production."
However, there's much more work to do to ensure Hanford doesn't endanger its surroundings. There are still millions of gallons of solid waste housed in potentially leaky single-wall tanks, the consequences of the already leaked material is yet unknown, and nothing good can come from massive quantities of waste within a few miles of a major waterway. Monday's success was a good start, but there's a long way to go.
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8:50 AM
The Guanatanamo tribunals hit a snag
A new controversy has emerged in the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals, with questions surrounding whether the commissions hearing the cases should be replaced.
Charles Swift, the military lawyer for detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan, called for the resignations of four out of five commissioners -- including chief presiding officer Peter Brownback -- questioning their qualifications to try the case. Of the commissioners, only Brownback has a legal background (the tribunal does not allow the others' names to be released). And as observer Anthony Romero of the ACLU explains, Brownback has his own issues:
Notably, the presiding officer does not have an active bar license (though that is apparently not required in military proceedings). But, more importantly, Mr. Brownback held a meeting with the prosecution earlier this summer at which the defense counsel was not present and it appears that he made some statements about whether or not defendants had a right to a speedy trial."Right before our adjournment at 7 p.m. [Tuesday], the defense counsel asked the presiding officer to allow him to enter a transcript of this meeting that was taped unbeknownst to the presiding officer. The presiding officer reopened the questioning and did allow the transcript to be entered, to Mr. Brownback's credit. Whether or not he is removed for cause will be decided in the future. It reminded me of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia having to recuse himself because he expressed an opinion before he saw the facts on the Pledge of Allegiance case. We'll see if that's the case here.
During Wednesday's proceedings, Brownback was again asked to step down, this time by Joshua Dratel, a lawyer for alleged "Australian Taliban" David Hicks. As the Sydney Morning Herald reports:
"Mr Dratel questioned Colonel Brownback on his close personal and professional relationship with the senior Pentagon official appointed by the US Defense Secretary to run the military commissions office. Colonel Brownback acknowledged the friendship but said he had a record of making independent judgements."
According to Romero, Brownback isn't the only commissioner with a potential conflict of interest:
"The issues with the lack of an independent review outside the chain of command became particularly clear. Several commissioners had very active roles in the government's war on terror: two with regards to operations in Guantanamo and one with substantial experience in the battlefields in Afghanistan. The lack of distance and the possible appearance of 'victor's justice' was a problem that Mr. Swift underscored in his questioning of the commission."
These connections don't do anything to allay international concerns that the Guantanamo tribunals are simply show trials. Romero said he was asked by an Australian reporter if this commission was really the best America could do, and he correctly reflects, "However you answer that question, it certainly doesn't look good."
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8:35 AM
Strains in the Anglo-American special relationship?
Keep on the lookout for signs of tension between the U.S. and Great Britain. Juan Cole wonders whether our biggest ally authorized Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's return to Iraq, over the implicit objections of the U.S. military:
Note that [Sistani] did not fly into American-controlled Baghdad but rather to Kuwait, traveling overland to Basra. Since Basra is in British hands, with a Shiite governor that seems pro-Sistani, it seems possible that Sistani's people coordinated his return with the British and with the Basra authorities rather than with the United States and the Allawi government. Indeed, America's most militant asset in Najaf, governor Ali al-Zurfi, seems dead set against Sistani returning with crowds this way.
You have to wonder if the British MI6 and military are showing some insubordination toward the Americans by allowing all this, as a mark of their disapproval of the gung-ho Marine attacks in Najaf, which have caused trouble in the British-held South and endangered the British garrisons.
It's not a bad conjecture. The British, recall, have always been leery of the U.S.'s "drop the hammer" counterinsurgency tactics -- so maybe they think that killing Sadr isn't such a great idea.
This wouldn't be the first time the British have defused an American crisis. Back in June, there was that little border incident, when U.S. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez ordered British troops to prepare for a "full-scale ground offensive" against Iran, before British FM Jack Straw stepped in and resolved matters diplomatically. But this might be the first time the British have tried to undercut the U.S. strategically, and that's big news. Is Tony Blair still simmering after Colin Powell embarrassed him by shooting down his proposal for Iraqi military autonomy? Is that why Blair won't come to the U.S. and accept his Congressional Medal of Honor? And more importantly, are we in for more bickering and backbiting?
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3:21 PM
Abu Ghraib: tracing blame up the chain of command
Everyone should read Spencer Ackerman's New Republic analysis of the Schlesinger report on Abu Ghraib. The Schlesinger report tries to imply that just because Bush exempted al Qaeda and Taliban "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo from Geneva protections, that doesn't mean the president also authorized torture in Iraq. But as Ackerman makes clear, policies don't exist in isolation -- once you start authorizing torture anywhere, you've effectively burst the dam:
Consider this typical formulation [from the Schlesinger report]: "It is important to note that [interrogation] techniques effective under carefully controlled conditions at Guantanamo became far more problematic when they migrated and were not adequately safeguarded." Š
But, of course, no policy "migrates." Officials actively provide instructions to other officials. Or, failing such active authorization from their superiors, some officials take individual initiative based on what they judge to be relevant prior circumstances. A combination of these two factors is what Schlesinger surely means by the "migration" of interrogation policy. What his preferred euphemism glosses over are the questions of who told what to whom, with whose approval. Which is what allows the report to raise an even more crucial question for the war on terrorism without ever adequately addressing it: whether the administration's supposed distinction between Geneva-exempt Al Qaeda enemy combatants and Geneva-protected Iraq detainees is a tenable one in practice.
Ackerman reminds us that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez authorized tougher interrogation techniques after an October 2003 visit from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was sent by the Defense Department to ramp up the interrogation process in Iraq. True, Miller never explicitly told Sanchez to use the harsh Guantanamo techniques. But he did tell Sanchez that such techniques existed, as a sort of "heads up" comment. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Sanchez soon issued new, tougher interrogation guidelines, and the abuses intensified shortly thereafter.
In drawing up the guidelines, Sanchez also "us[ed] reasoning from the President's Memorandum of February 7, 2002," a memo in which our president gave himself the authority to exempt "enemy combatants" from Geneva protections. It seems that every time the commander-in-chief starts noodling over new waterboarding techniques, the entire military starts cracking down on its detainees. That's really quite the coincidence, isn't it?
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1:59 PM
The Passion of the Fox
Fox, which will be releasing the Passion of the Christ on DVD on August 31st has sent out 260,000 postcards to churches, advising to buy the discs in bulk and tell church-goers to get their own copies. So far, DVD pre-orders are 20 percent ahead of projections and other networks are cashing in on Passion fever with a stream of DVD releases on the life of Christ. Among the less serious piggy-back riders is Comedy Central's South Park: The Passion of the Jew, ("Inspired by Kyle's change of heart and a powerful love for Mel Gibson, Cartman incites many of the film's hardcore fans to band together and carry out its message.") And for the die-hard fans, there is the Talking Jesus & Satan Plush Set.
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12:19 PM
Protesting the GOP convention
When the Republican National Convention kicks off in New York next week, the delegates will be joined by thousands of protestors. To get a sense of how diverse those protestors are, check out the list compiled by Newsday.
The paper ran a list of organizations expected to protest, with a brief synopsis of each. Here's a few of the highlights:
Axis of Eve: A coalition of women who express their disgust with President Bush by publicly wearing bright colored underwear that "exposes" him and calls for his removal from office.Billionaires for Bush: One of the better known of the theatrical protest groups whose snappily-dressed members picket Republican events shouting slogans like "Blood for oil" and "Corporations are people too!" They are hosting a march on August 29.
Christian Defense Coalition: A group of anti-abortion activists who protested against abortion at the Democratic National Convention and who intend to show their "spiritual support" for President Bush through two prayer vigils.
Greene Dragon: A light-hearted New York City based group of "life artists" who promote radical self expression and often dress in colonial-themed red, white, and blue. Earlier this year they began their American Revel-ution that they describe as, "a fun and freewheeling independence movement from President-Select George II and his corporate monarchy."
Ring Out: Local group that plans to hand out hundreds of small bells as a symbol of protest against the Republicans and their Convention on Aug. 28. The group also plans circular demonstrations, or ring outs, where participants will ring their bells enmasse as a protest.
Young Communist League of New York City: An inclusive group of local socialists and communists who oppose the War in Iraq, President Bush, the Republicans and capitalism in general.
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8:40 AM
Cheney's mixed messages on gay marriage
On the stump in Iowa on Tuesday, Dick Cheney spoke about his views on gay marriage. And he sounded a lot more like the campaign-trail Cheney of 2000 then the one everyone saw during the recent debate over the Federal Marriage Amendment:
"Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue our family is very familiar with. With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone ... People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to."The question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that's been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage.
So if marriage law is the prerogative of the states, how does Cheney explain the president's push for a constitutional amendment that violates that spirit?
"I think his perception was that the courts, in effect, were beginning to change, without allowing the people to be involved. The courts were making the judgment for the entire country."
So one state court in Massachusetts was deciding for the whole country? Obviously, the Republicans are trying to straddle the line between their states-rights libertarians and the anti-gay forces on the right. But they can't have it both ways.
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8:30 AM
They're called "battlegrounds" for a reason ...
At first glance, the latest Zogby poll of battleground states looks like great news for John Kerry. The interactive map looks decidedly blue, with 14 of the 16 battlegrounds leaning in his favor. But a look at the percentages and the margins of error should temper Democratic optimism.
First, the good news for Democrats. The poll shows only West Virginia and Ohio - both of which went for Bush in 2000 - leaning that way again. It shows little support for Ralph Nader, with Nevada's 2.3 percent easily his largest total. And Kerry has gained in several states since the last Zogby poll on Aug. 2, taking the lead in Nevada and Arkansas. Both those were Bush states in 2000, and Zogby shows Kerry leading in fellow Bush states Florida, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Missouri.
The bad news for Democrats is Kerry's leads in this poll are pretty slim. In only three of the 16 battlegrounds does Kerry have a lead outside the margin of error. He leads Bush by 11.3 percent in Oregon, 8.4 percent in Washington, and 8.3 in Pennsylvania but, even if those numbers hold up, those states all went Democratic in 2000. Kerry's lead has shrunk from Aug. 2 in Minnesota and Michigan, and his leads in Florida and Missouri are by less than 1 percent.
Kerry supporters can't help but be happy looking at all the blue on that map. But the battlegrounds are living up to that moniker, and this election remains a long way from a landslide.
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5:03 PM
Blogging the Guantanamo tribunals
As previously noted, Anthony Romero of the ACLU is keeping a blog about his experience as an observer for the preliminary hearings at Guantanamo Bay. In his Tuesday morning dispatch, Romero lauds the defense counsel, with whom he and other observers met:
"The defense counsel are men and women in uniform who believe passionately in the system of justice and some basic American values - so much so, that they are willing to vigorously defend the rights of some of the most hated defendants in America. They are the only ray of hope in a system of justice that is simply broken and cannot be fixed. While I am sure they will do their best before these military commissions, the finest legal minds in the world can't fix the fact that the rules as now constructed are unfair and fundamentally un-American."
Romero had lesser words for the presiding officer, and his ill-conceived plan to deal with the press:
Unbelievably, the presiding officer of the military commissions informed the media at the end of the day that, in the event that classified information was revealed during the commissions this week, the military would seize the notebooks of the reporters to redact that classified information. (FYI, all of us who are here have agreed to basic ground-rules, including one that says we can't disclose classified information if revealed during the commissions.)"But the fact that the presiding officer believed that he could casually collect the notebooks of the U.S. and international media and return them when he was done with them left many breathless. He later backtracked when he heard of the fury in the pressroom."
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4:29 PM
Defaulting on the American Dream downpayment
A long-dormant issue popped up briefly in today's Washington Post story on Bush's second-term agenda. (Upshot: still no sightings) The Bush campaign has started sending out emails to reporters hyping, among other things, the president's plans to promote homeownership, especially his plan to provide "assistance with down payments for low-income home buyers." I have a hunch we'll be hearing a lot more about this idea in the coming weeks.
Back in 2003, President Bush signed the American Dream Downpayment Fund, a $200 million per year program that would let families make zero down payments on their homes. John Kerry's campaign, by all appearances, hasn't ever bothered to denounce the proposal, instead weakly arguing that Bush hasn't spent enough money.
Politically, Kerry's reticence is probably wise (this seems like the sort of thing John Edwards should attack, but apparently he's too "nice"). But that shouldn't validate Bush's big idea: Indeed, evidence suggests that down-payment subsidies tend to hurt homeowners in the long run. The problem is that when lenders calculate mortgage points and fees and all that, they look at the down payment as a sign of a family's ability to pay its bills. Homeowners putting down zero down payments usually incur high borrowing costs. To add insult, mortgage bankers tend to push low-income families into homes they can't possibly afford. This is a very good deal for mortgage bankers; less so for families.
The results are stark: families purchasing homes through the Federal Housing Administration are several times more likely to default on their homes. Two Berkeley economists found that lowering the down-payment requirement will only boost this number. But surprisingly only the Heritage Foundation has come out publicly against Bush's plan. Conservative think tank or not, they're absolutely right on the merits.
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2:32 PM
The post-convention ... weapons stockpile
The Democratic National Convention has come and gone, without any of the violent worst-case scenarios authorities planned for. Now Boston police are, as the Boston Herald reports, "sitting on a weapons stockpile" put together for the event.
City officials expect the federal government to reimburse most of the preparation costs, expected to reach $35-40 million once personnel overtime is factored in. Boston has already submitted $1.9 million in expenses, most of it for equipment.
Beyond recouping the funds, police have to figure out what to do with their collected arsenal, which includes stun grenades, rubber bullets, tear gas, and the like. Police spokeswoman Beverly Ford promised the Herald, "We are going to be recycling these as part of our training. They are not going to sit on the shelf and expire.'' Other items, like jackhammers, bullhorns and saw blades can be easily put to use by the city.
New York police must be hoping that this is the biggest problem they have to deal with when the convention spotlight shifts there next week.
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1:31 PM
Attack politics: sit back and let the media do the work for you
Michael Kinsley gets right to the point on the whole Swift Boat Vets ordeal:
The technique President Bush is using against John F. Kerry was perfected by his father against Michael Dukakis in 1988, though its roots go back at least to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. It is: Bring a charge, however bogus. Make the charge simple: Dukakis "vetoed the Pledge of Allegiance"; Bill Clinton "raised taxes 128 times"; "there are [pick a number] Communists in the State Department." But make sure the supporting details are complicated and blurry enough to prevent easy refutation.
Then sit back and let the media do your work for you. Journalists have to report the charges, usually feel obliged to report the rebuttal, and often even attempt an analysis or assessment. But the canons of the profession prevent most journalists from saying outright: These charges are false. As a result, the voters are left with a general sense that there is some controversy over Dukakis' patriotism or Kerry's service in Vietnam. And they have been distracted from thinking about real issues (like the war going on now) by these laboratory concoctions.
No doubt about it, our "papers of record" have played their part in keeping this nonsense alive. Kinsley's op-ed is titled "These Charges are False"; but there's no good reason why the Times' front page can't print a headline like, "Group Affiliated With Bush Brings False Charges Against Kerry." Whenever a person says something about, say, John Kerry, it's not a speech act, and it's not a "controversy"; it's a proposition that is either true or false. Even Jon Stewart understands this. Why can't reporters?
But whining about the dullards running CNN won't cut it. As Digby notes, we've sunk down to a new low in dirty politics -- not because of its nastiness but because it so easily overshadows more pressing issues -- and it's going to take a serious effort to climb out:
Just fighting back isn't going to solve that problem. Indeed, over the long haul, it's likely to result in failure if that's all we do. They love fighting a lot more than we do. And losing doesn't dull their bloodlust, it engages it. We need to think of a more sophisticated battle plan.
Off the top of my head, the first one to come to mind is divide and conquer. Perhaps it's time we formed a religious group that is anti-abortion and for school prayer, but is adamantly against corporate materialism. Or a libertarian GOP front group that wants to purge the party of the religious right. Perhaps if we could set off a civil war among the Republicans we could cure them of their love of political battle.
Josh Marshall has some suggestions too. Last month in Boston Review, a number of scholars butted heads and drew up long-term battle plans for the Democratic party. Most of it involved creating compelling policies, dusting off the old economic populist message, etc. That's all quite nice, but Digby's right: we need a plan for dismantling the Republican sludge machine. Right now, the party of Karl Rove and Lee Atwater is the biggest obstacle to liberal progress. And smart political warfare is the only way to get around that.
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12:31 PM
What happened to local elections in Iraq?
I'm going to add to Tom Engelhardt's overflowing pile of underreported Iraq stories and ask, What ever happened to local elections? Way back in June 2003, CPA administrator L. Paul Bremer III ordered a halt to all local and municipal elections in the country, preferring instead to appoint his own handpicked mayors and town leaders. Said Bremer at the time, "I'm not opposed to [elections], but I want to do it [in] a way that takes care of our concerns."
Then, in December, Bremer decided to stage a few local elections -- in Hilla and Dialla -- to pacify Shiite demonstrators in the area. Likewise, in February 2004, the CPA under Tobin Bradley organized a few experimental elections in Nasiriyah. By all accounts, the elections were a success, with those dreaded fundamentalists garnering only 3 percent of the vote.
But there is no evidence that the U.S. or the interim government have expanded these efforts. As late as June, political groups across the country were complaining that they had no local forum in which to participate. Local councils, meanwhile, have noted that they lack any real authority: even the police forces are controlled by the national government. As I said, What ever happened to local elections? Why isn't interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi even talking about bringing them back? For a leader with serious legitimacy issues, this seems like a rather pressing issue.
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11:43 AM
Bush to Kerry: let's play telephone
Having trouble keeping up with the distortions of John Kerry's record and comments? Dana Milbank of the Washington Post today has collected a number of Kerry quotes, showing how Bush has misreported them.
Here's an example of the back-and-forth Milbank likens to a children's game of telephone. First Kerry's actual statement:
"Yes, I would have voted for the authority [to use force in Iraq]. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has. My question to President Bush is: Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace? Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?"
And Bush's response nine days later:
"He now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq. After months of questioning my motives, and even my credibility, the Massachusetts senator now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpiles of weapons we all believed were there, knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power."
Speaking of collecting distortions of Kerry's statements, the Annenberg Public Policy Center has devoted much of its Factcheck.org site to looking at the veracity of political ads -- including those by the anti-Kerry Swift Boat veterans.
With the accusations flying, those are some good resources to see just how distorted the attacks have become.
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9:00 AM
Welfare caseloads are down -- but that's not the whole story
The Washington Times was virtually alone yesterday in picking up news that welfare caseloads declined in 2003. For those who think that reducing welfare caseloads is an end in and of itself (see, for example, Mickey Kaus), this is good news. But for those who think welfare reform should actually help people, the results are mixed, to say the least.
In an analysis of the welfare date, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities shows that, even though welfare rolls are declining, unemployment for single mothers rose dramatically in 2003. By all appearances, then, the welfare laws seem to be shoving single mothers out the door at a time when they need the most help.
Critics of Bill Clinton's 1996 welfare bill used to say that caseloads mostly declined because the labor market improved so much in the late '90s. In other words, the law itself had little to do with getting people into the workplace. That may be true, but if the CBPP is right, the situation is even worse than that. Now we see that even during times of modest job growth, many families are falling deeper into poverty without welfare support. Something has gone horribly wrong. Earlier this year, the Senate and the House were trying to string together a welfare reauthorization bill with half the life raft and twice the work requirements. If a bill like that passed, caseloads would no doubt continue to shrink. But there's little evidence that families would be better off.
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4:49 PM
This just in -- Middle East Dangerous for Americans
The State Department just issued an updated travel warning over the weekend, prompted by the indictment of three Hamas members in an alleged money-laundering scheme:
"Anti-American violence could include possible terrorist actions against aviation, ground transportation and maritime interests, specifically in the Middle East, including the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, the Arabian peninsula and North Africa."
It's unlikely Americans are any more of a target in those areas because of the indictments. State said credible information indicates possible "suicide operations, bombings, hijackings, kidnappings and targeted attacks resulting in death" against Americans in the Middle East, but that's hardly news.
The new travel warning expires Feb. 18. Until then, it's probably best to just "remain vigilant."
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3:31 PM
Reservists are getting shafted
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has a short report (PDF) out today on the problems that Army Reserve Soldiers have in receiving pay after they've been deployed. Most of this is technical stuff -- the automated systems are creating errors in pay stubs, the payroll process has trouble tracking rapid deployments -- but it speaks to a larger laziness with which the government takes care of our soldiers.
Reservists, remember, are being sent to Iraq in record numbers. All the while, they've had to deal with inadequate funding for armor and other necessities, scaled-back imminent-danger pay, and a Pentagon plan to prevent Reservists from signing up for military health insurance. Now these soldiers can't even get paid. So it's all well and good for President Bush to talk about shifting bases and grand redeployments, but that still leaves the problem of making sure our current soldiers are being cared for. So far, little has been done.
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1:40 PM
Electronic voting: a cautionary tale
Lest anyone think Florida was alone in having vote-counting problems last election, the Washington Post took a look at New Mexico -- and found that 678 votes in Rio Arriba County alone were never recorded.
The errors wouldn't have affected the election's outcome, but they call into question the reliability of the state's electronic voting system.
The Post found one voting district where the state's certified results list zero votes recorded - while 203 voters showed up on Election Day 2000. In another district, two-thirds of early votes went unrecorded. Computer technician Steve Fresquez told the paper that the machines were programmed incorrectly for early voters, but that the mistake wasn't discovered until after the election:
"It was such a mess, but there was nothing we could do about it because it was over. It was too late. The election had already gone through. We allowed the county to do the best they could and, as you can see, it wasn't too good."
These results give more fodder to critics of electronic voting, and show that simple programming mistakes have the potential to swing a state. As William F. Welsh, former chairman of Election Systems & Software told the Post:
"You can spend all the money you want to spend on technology and you're still not going to get better elections."
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11:55 AM
Destroying democracy in order to save it!
Back when the fighting in Najaf first started, we argued that Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi attacked Moqtada al-Sadr because, well, he thought he was popular enough to get away with it. Today Spencer Ackerman rounds up more evidence for that supposition, and suggests that Sadr has successfully outwitted the interim government.
At this point, Allawi and friends seem to have run out of options in dealing with Sadr. Getting the cleric to disarm his Mahdi militia will be thorny -- how do you verify disarmament in a country where everyone and his brother owns a gun? Likewise, the idea of luring Sadr into the political arena seems destined to failure. This is a man who gives apocalyptic speeches about the coming of the Mahdi (the final Islamic imam) and wants fundamentalist, clerical rule for Iraq. He's not going to sit tight in congress and debate the finer points of federalism. Plus, if Amatazia Baram is right, Sadr's mentor, Ayatollah Kazam al-Haeri -- a fundamentalist who also wants Iran-style clerical rule in Iraq -- is one of the leading contenders to replace Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani as the pre-eminent Shiite voice in Iraq. If Haeri were able to promote Sadr within the Shiite clerical hierarchy, the latter would become fairly unstoppable.
That leaves what seems to be the "best" course of action: killing Sadr and bracing for the backlash. At absolute best, we would bring semi-liberalism to Iraq by gunpoint, as Algeria and Egypt have done, repressing the unsavory characters (and some not-so-unsavory characters), bombing rebel cities indefinitely, and waiting for radicalism to fade away with a whimper. Oh, and the process could take decades. It's a splendid thing, this struggle for democracy.
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10:49 AM
Kerry's investigation of terrorist financing is a true "signature achievement"
George Bush has criticized John Kerry for having "few signature achievements" in the Senate and being weak on terrorism. But, as David Sirota and Jon Baskin point out in the Washington Monthly, Kerry's 1988 probe into the Bank of Credit and Commerce International gives him ammunition to counter both those arguments.
As part of a probe into the finances of Latin American drug cartels, Kerry eventually uncovered connections between the BCCI and numerous terrorists and other shady characters. But because prominent Washington insiders - including George W. Bush - had accounts with the bank or its joint ventures, both parties pressured Kerry to end the probe:
"But Kerry refused to back off, and his hearings began to expose the ways in which international terrorism was financed. As Kerry's subcommittee discovered, BCCI catered to many of the most notorious tyrants and thugs of the late 20th century, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the heads of the Medellin cocaine cartel, and Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist. According to the CIA, it also did business with those who went on to lead al Qaeda."
By getting BCCI shut down in multiple countries, John Kerry helped cut off a key revenue source for terrorist groups, and he showed the willingness to do the right thing despite political pressure. His campaign should do a better job telling stories like this to the public.
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10:29 AM
How the media under-reports overtime
The reporting on the administration's new overtime rules, which come into effect today, has been particularly lazy. Over at TAPPED, Matthew Yglesias wonders why the New York Times coverage can't just cut through the fog and tell us who actually benefits and who loses. The Times apparently thinks it's all a difference of opinion:
The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, has issued a report, which many Democrats have relied on, concluding that the rules will exempt about six million workers from overtime coverageŠ
The administration has accused the institute and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. of engaging in a partisan campaign of misinformation on the issue.
But as I wrote here, the claims aren't impossible to sort through. The administration used faulty arguments, and a few rhetorical gimmicks, to arrive at its estimates. (For instance, the Labor Department didn't bother to look at workers who are kept to 40-hour workweeks now, but could be forced to work longer hours without overtime protection.) Unfortunately, the Labor Department gambled that the media wouldn't bother spending time on these nuances. And they were right.
Of course, the Times could have also noted that three former Labor Department officials, nonpartisans every one, came out against the new rules, back in June. If you're going to print two competing claims without analysis, wouldn't it be useful to go for the independent opinion to settle matters? Or would that just ruin all the dramatic tension in the story?
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