4:41 PM
Powell's last stand
In his last overseas visit to Europe as Secretary of State, Colin Powell was soundly rebuffed in his final attempt to recruit members to a NATO-led training mission in Iraq. The resolute critics of the Iraq war -- France, Germany and, lately, Spain -- held firm and were joined in their opposition by Greece, Belgium and Luxembourg. While they cheered Powell for his work over the past four years, the prospect of sending more troops into an increasingly chaotic and dangerous situation was never going to happen. In fact, Powell's failed effort signaled that the divide over Iraq could get worse in the coming months with an untested Condi taking over the reigns next month (good luck!). Powell seemed particularly irritated by the decision, and on a festive final day found time to call into question NATO's credibility:
"When it comes time to perform a mission, it seems to us to be quite awkward for suddenly members in that international staff to say, 'I'm unable to go because of this national caveat or national exception.' You are hurting the credibility and the cohesion of such an international staff or organization."
While Powell continues to hurt his international credibility as an apologist for the Bush administration's failed policies in Iraq, his role as the moderate voice in a sea of neoconservative irrationality has clearly bolstered his political and celebrity standing at home. He is already leading premature polls in the 2006 New York governor's race against Elliot Spitzer and there are rumors swirling that he's pondering a future as a political commentator. His accomplishments as Secretary of State deserve much closer scrutiny as he makes the expected move toward elected office. But for now it's fitting that despite his popularity in Europe, Powell was unsuccessful in mending the wide gulf between "Old Europe" and the Bush administration.
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2:10 PM
Good news for gay marriage
While American gay-rights groups are debating how to proceed in the wake of their electoral defeats, the movement made some gains elsewhere in the world yesterday.
In Canada, the Supreme Court ruled the government can legalize gay marriage under the constitution (though the U.S. is unlikely to recognize marriages performed up north). Gay marriage is already legal in six of Canada’s 10 provinces (and one territory), and Prime Minister Paul Martin says he’ll now push for it nationwide.
Also on Thursday, New Zealand’s parliament passed a civil-union bill that gives the same tax, welfare and custody advantages married couples have to gay partners (as well as unmarried heterosexual couples).
Combined with recent victories in South Africa and Spain, gay-marriage activists are continuing to make inroads in the world.
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1:14 PM
What's behind the body armor story?
Yesterday, a National Guardsmen asked Donald Rumsfeld why soldiers were forced "to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic [i.e., bulletproof] glass to uparmor our vehicles". Rumsfeld's reply had two parts. First, he condescended: "[I]f you think about it," he said, "you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can [still] be blown up." Then, he explained: "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
Peter Scoblic of the New Republic quickly pointed out that Rumsfeld did not go to Iraq with the "army [we] have"; he invaded Iraq with a pared-down force, over the objections of his commanders, in order to prove to the world that the U.S. could topple countries with a mere flick of the wrist. Meanwhile, at least one armor company claims that more armor is just a phone call away -- that there is not, in fact, a capacity shortage. Not surprisingly, some commentators have interpreted all this to mean that Pentagon is withholding armor for ideological reasons, i.e. so as to keep up the fiction that the U.S. still has a light force that can "quickly topple Iran, Syria, North Korea, whomever".
Now I love Rumsfeld-bashing as much as anyone, but I think the story's more complicated than this -- in a way that both exonerates Rumsfeld slightly and, oddly enough, goes even further in damning him. Let's start with Greg Jaffe's Wall Street Journal report on the subject from many months ago, which notes that the Army has been opposed to making lots of armored Humvees for over a decade. As one colonel involved in procurement during the 1990s vividly put it: "Getting the Army to support the armored Humvee was like pushing a limp rope up a hill." Throughout that period, the Pentagon was expecting to fight high-intensity wars against a high-tech foe like China -- hence the big-spending on projects like the Future Combat System -- and never gave much thought to the sort of "peacekeeping missions under fire" we're seeing in Iraq. Thus the current situation. As it turns out, a lack of rocket-proof Humvees is only the tip of the armor-less iceberg -- as Phil Carter reported long ago, almost none of the combat support personnel have what they need to defend themselves. The Pentagon never prepared for the situation we're in now.
This, of course, despite the fact that the U.S. military was engaged almost entirely in "peacekeeping missions under fire" throughout the 1990s. But, as Thomas Barnett points out in The Pentagon's New Map, military leaders saw these missions as mere distractions from preparing for the coming epic battle against China or whatever high-tech foe would emerge in the future. It was Cold War thinking at its most misguided, and the inertia is still trending that way.
So you can't blame this entirely on Rumsfeld -- the problems started long ago. However, as I've pointed out before, Rumsfeld has been extremely ineffective at shifting the military's focus; the FY2005 procurement budget still reflect the Cold-War thinking of the Clinton era. So it's not that Rumsfeld's merely setting up the military to go to war in rapid succession against Iran, Syria, and North Korea. In a sense, he's still gearing up the military to go to war against China. That's the worst option of them all.
One final thought on the whole press conference fracas: Why would a soldier feel the need to bypass the entire chain-of-command and ask Rumsfeld this question directly? The whole point of the military's Command Information Program to make sure that these concerns can be addressed down the chain. Why isn't it working?
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12:42 PM
Cleveland loves Peroutka?
Among the many red flags surrounding voting problems in Ohio was the surprisingly high vote total for third-party candidates in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County. Well, the Cleveland Plain Dealer examined the affected precincts, and found the problem. Here’s how Ohio determines ballot layout:
The stage for the mix-ups was set by a state law that requires candidates' names be rotated on ballots so that each candidate gets a turn at the top position. The rotation is done in the name of fair play, a nod to conventional wisdom that undecided voters tend to choose the name at the top.In Cuyahoga County, where punch-card voting machines are used, the names are rotated on the pages in voting books that guide voters to the proper position on the punch cards. There were five versions of the page for the presidential candidates.
The first version lists the candidates' names alphabetically, with "Disqualified Candidate" taking the position of "N," because Ralph Nader was expected to be in that spot. In each subsequent version, the candidate at the top of the list moves to the bottom, bumping the rest up one notch.
So far, that all makes sense. But here’s the spanner in the works:
Voters from multiple precincts typically share a polling place. Candidates' names in voting books are rotated by precinct, so there are different versions at the same polling place. Voters are supposed to use polling booths, and the voting books in them, that are specific to their precinct, not just any booth in the polling place.The problem comes when a punch-card ballot for one precinct is inserted in the voting device for another precinct. Because of the name rotation, a voter unknowingly punches a hole for the wrong candidate. The punch cards that voters slide into the device are the same, but their backs are stamped with the precinct so they will be counted properly.
So as a result, there’s no way of knowing where votes in these precincts were supposed to go. Take the two precincts that voted at Benedictine High School, for example. In one, John Kerry got 334 votes, and Libertarian Michael Badnarik got 164. In the other, Kerry got 299, but right-winger Michael Peroutka received 215. Presumably, a high percentage of those third-party votes were intended for Kerry, just as the Florida "butterfly ballot" boosted Pat Buchanan’s total in 2000. Yet another example of the need for a uniform system of voting and counting.
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11:32 AM
I thought they called you guys the "opposition"...
Atrios has been surfing the TV channels and finds that conservatives are swarming the airwaves, hyping privatized Social Security at every turn. Private accounts will make us rich! Private accounts will save Social Security! Buy now! And where, pray tell, are the Democrats on all this? Ah, here's a report, courtesy of Terence Samuel:
House Democrats this week got a lecture on how to frame the issues in the big privatization fight that’s on deck. They intend to position themselves as protectors of Social Security and accuse the administration of trying to privatize the retirement program simply as a prelude to eliminating it. Their metaphor coach suggested that they talk about the deficit as the "baby tax," as it’ll be up to today’s kids to pay it off later.
Oh, how cute. A metaphor coach… Look, at what point does the minority party figure out that this is a serious fight? There's a very easy way to frame this whole Social Security debate -- by splitting it up into two separate issues. Issue A is that Social Security will likely run a deficit at some point in the future, either because benefits will exceed payroll tax receipts (maybe), or because the federal government is running a whopping Bush-created deficit and can't pay back money it's borrowed from the trust fund. Issue B is that some people want private savings accounts. Notice that creating private accounts obviously addresses Issue B, but it's completely unrelated to Issue A, and in fact makes the problem worse.
There are no free lunches here, and if the Democrats allow conservatives to go on the air night after night and pretend that there are in fact free lunches, they can expect to remain a minority party from here until eternity.
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10:26 AM
Has the U.S. been meddling in Shiite politics?
Yesterday I wondered why the Shia candidate list, expected to dominate next month's elections, left off Muqtada al-Sadr. Today the AP's Sameer Yacoub reports that Sadr refuses to participate so long as his followers are "being arrested and harassed" by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's National Guardsmen. Over at the New Republic, Spencer Ackerman wonders why the Shia leadership won't just "speak out on Sadr's behalf… in the interests of unity?"
Here's one theory. Last week, in a little-noticed story, Agence France Presse reported that the U.S. military had arrested a senior Sistani aide in charge of drawing up the list. According to the Los Angeles Times, the arrest then "spurred frantic daylong negotiations among the American military, U.S. Embassy and Mowaffak Rubaie." Interesting. Did these "frantic" discussions include a request -- or a demand -- that Sadr not make it onto the Shiite list? Was the United States trying to put its thumb on the scales here? It sounds awfully suspicious: In another AP report today, Nick Wadhams finds a coalition adviser bragging that "some al-Sadr followers were included on the list." But Sadr had been promised 30 seats -- more than any other party! "Some" won't cut it.
So it looks an awful lot like the John Negroponte and the U.S. Embassy have been busy making sure that Sadr stays out of politics. You'll recall that the U.S. did the same sort of last-minute meddling in Afghanistan, by removing Herat governor Ismail Khan from power right before the elections. In Iraq, running a bit of interference won't necessarily be a bad thing -- Muqtada's not the sort of person anyone wants leading a country -- except that the U.S. has misread the militant cleric before, with disastrous results. I, for one, hope they know what they're doing this time around.
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4:14 PM
Blair, McCain teaming up
With global warming talks still underway in Argentina, the Bush administration's isolated position on climate change is becoming more irrational and indefensible. Earlier this week, French Ecology Minister Serge Lepeltier predicted that business considerations in the EU would force the U.S., perhaps unwillingly, into the Kyoto agreement. That appears unlikely, and I outlined some of those reasons in another post. But with the negative impact of global warming readily on display, Bush is facing greater opposition from Tony Blair and John McCain, two powerful and influential Bush buddies. Both position themselves as proponents of Kyoto and they recently met on Downing Street to chart strategy in their fight against climate change.
With the UK assuming the presidency of the G8 and EU in 2005, it is important that Blair appears prepared to push global warming as a top issue. And his position on the Kyoto Protocol creates separation from his adherence to bad Bush policies. But it's McCain who seems poised to assume the role of Bush's strongest opponent on greenhouse gases. In his last speech as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain assured colleagues that the fight against global warming would continue, and issued a scathing critique of the Bush administration's response to climate change:
"We do have a major task in convincing the administration [to support mandatory greenhouse gas caps]. Its performance so far, to date, is disgraceful."
As Amanda Griscom Little writes in a recent muckraking piece on the politics involved, global warming is the issue that could potentially divide the small but prominent group of pro-environment Republicans (McCain, Schwarzenegger, Pataki, and perhaps even Giuliani) from Bush and other global warming "nonbelievers." While this group can exert extraordinary political pressure on Bush, Blair and McCain are better positioned to convince Bush on the need for at least some watered-down version of Kyoto. And with Bush set to visit the EU in February to mend relations, he had better recognize that his weak position on global warming is increasingly more untenable than the war in Iraq.
--
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3:18 PM
What does King Abdullah have up his sleeve?
As if potential Shiite infighting wasn't calamity enough, Jordan's King Abdullah is now accusing Iran of meddling in the upcoming Iraqi elections. In fairness, Iran probably is meddling, but Jordan's hardly a disinterested party here: As Juan Cole explains, the Jordanians are worried about the spread of Iranian-style Shi'ism throughout the Middle East. I would also add that King Abdullah no doubt likes having interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in charge of Iraq -- Allawi, after all, has longstanding ties with the Hashemite monarchy. Add in the fact that Iran is probably backing Ahmed Chalabi -- who has a long-running feud with the Hashemites -- and Jordan can't be too happy about this.
But does any of this matter? Well, the King's anti-Iran, pro-Allawi stance could be dismissed as harmless posturing, except I see that Addustour, an independent Iraqi daily, is now reporting that
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has decided to make the Jordanian capital Amman the place to sort out the absentee ballots of Iraqi expatriate voters. Hence, ballot boxes will be transported to Amman for this purpose.
Okay, then. Get ready for a firestorm.
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3:04 PM
Shiite politics get... interesting.
The labyrinthine world of Iraqi Shiite politics hasn't seen much intrigue of late, but that's about to change -- and fast. The unified Shia party list for the January elections emerged today, and early reports indicate that Muqtada al-Sadr's party was left off the list. (You may remember young Muqtada and his al-Mahdi Army from such hits as the Springtime in Najaf, and the hit sequel, Showdown at the Imam Ali Shrine.) According to Hussein al-Shahristani, who helped put the Shiite list together, "The Sadr movement is not registered as a political entity, and therefore is not part of the alliance." Huh? Early reports had indicated that Sadr's followers would get up to 30 slots on the list. Now they get nothing?
Granted, a lot of contradictory reports are flying about, so we'll have to wait to see exactly what's happening here. Interestingly, the Guardian had earlier reported that Ahmed Chalabi -- everyone's favorite con man -- had apparently broken his alliance with Sadr and signed on to the unified Shiite list. But this wouldn't be the first time Chalabi double-crossed an ally, now would it?
If Sadr has been left out in the cold, though, that's trouble. Sadr's no pushover: Over the past few months, the cleric has been quietly overseeing a number of reconstruction projects in Sadr City -- a Baghdad "slum" the size of Chicago -- and building a base of support among thousands of poor, angry Shiites. More recently, Sadr has clashed with the major exile Shiite groups -- al Da'wa and SCIRI -- complaining about harassment and trying to paint his opponents as American stooges, aligned with Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. It should be noted that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who brokered most of this list, gave the parties in the interim government -- like SCIRI and Da'wa -- only around 30 percent of the total slots. So this is not a "pro-American" slate by any means. But if Sadr wants to run as the anti-American candidate, he could do so convincingly, and pick up a huge swath of the Iraqi nationalist vote in the process.
Now things really get interesting when we note that the Shiite political platform includes a call to negotiate the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq. The Shiites, apparently, believe they can deal with the Sunni insurgency on their own. (There's a "Them and what army?" question lurking about, but ignore that for now.) But here's the thing: if Sadr decides to drop his support for the Shiite list and starts a campaign of his own, the establishment leaders could feel threatened and insecure enough to ask U.S. troops to stick around. Just in case. On the other hand, it's possible that nothing bad will actually come of all this, but hey, welcome to the labyrinth!
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2:35 PM
Democrats' primary focus
Friday in Orlando, DNC chair Terry McAuliffe will announce the members of the committee tasked to create a nominating schedule for 2008.
Already, Iowa officials are worried about comments from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who feels a more diverse state like, oh, say Michigan, would make a better first-in-the-nation contest than the Hawkeye state. And New Hampshire is undertaking its own lobbying efforts to keep itself on the front end.
Regardless of whether the order of primaries changes, the committee should at least look at stopping, or even reversing, the trend of ever-earlier primaries. California has already pushed back its primary from Super Tuesday, and this year’s race saw a seemingly endless period of time between John Kerry clinching the nomination and the anticlimactic convention. It's about time to set a schedule that lets states have their say without 2008 primaries creeping closer to 2007.
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1:19 PM
Dean, Dorgan and the DNC
Whether Howard Dean ultimately decides to pursue the chairmanship of the DNC instead of a 2008 presidential bid, his possible entry into the race has definitely drawn more media attention to the DNC decision than at any point in recent memory. It’s also worried the centrist wing of the party -- as the New York Times notes, "The size of the field reflects the calculation by many Democrats that the party will recoil at the prospect of naming Dr. Dean, or that Dr. Dean himself will end up not running if he comes to the conclusion that he would suffer another embarrassing defeat."
According to Thursday’s Roll Call (subscription), new Senate minority leader Harry Reid is pushing for Sen. Byron Dorgan to seek the chairmanship. This, it should be noted, is a bad idea. For starters, Dorgan just won re-election on Nov. 2. It would be a bit of a slap to the voters of his state for him to give up his seat now and, considering how "red" North Dakota is, why should Democrats remove a popular senator who has six years left on the seat? Reid notes Dorgan would give a voice to "heartland" centrists, and he can do just that by staying in the Senate. Also, it’s odd that Reid, often credited with keeping his party united during his time as minority whip, keeps getting involved in dividing it by pushing individual candidates (first Tom Vilsack, now Dorgan) for the DNC job.
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11:58 AM
Through the prism of Iraq
The responses to Peter Beinart's grand New Republic manifesto about how Democrats need to get serious about national security have certainly been heated. The most forceful criticism comes today from John Judis, who points out that it's unfair to paint Democrats who opposed the war in Iraq as "soft". After all, plenty of liberals, including many of Kerry's top advisers, opposed the war on Iraq because it was a distraction from the fight against al Qaeda -- a serious hawk position if ever there was one.
There seem to be two ways to handle this dispute. On the one hand, you can say that Iraq is over and basically irrelevant. In all probability, the United States will not invade another country anytime soon. So while dredging up the old political wounds over Iraq may feel cathartic, it certainly isn't very instructive for crafting a coherent, forward-looking Democratic foreign policy.
Indeed, I've noticed that much of the debate over national security these days is still being conducted almost entirely through the prism of Iraq -- and especially with an eye towards preventing another Iraq. We talk about multilateralism vs. unilateralism, or the problems with "preventive" war, or about the true sources of American legitimacy. This is all well and good, but after our experience with occupation over the past year and a half, massive "preventive" invasions are likely off the table for now. So a Democratic foreign policy, whatever shape it may take, needs to focus firmly on the problems of the future -- which means al Qaeda and nuclear proliferation, of course, but also: the stalled tide of democracy in the Middle East, or the widespread sources of Muslim rage, or the ring of failed states across the global south. Separating out the "hawks" from the "doves," as Beinart does, is a fun parlor activity, but it's not especially relevant to any of these issues.
So that's one way to look at it. The other way, though, is to note that the current occupants of the White House are a bit crazy, and even though logic would dictate otherwise, they might actually try to take on Syria or Iran via military force over the next few years. In this case, the disputes that surrounded the war in Iraq obviously becomes very relevant. But it's pretty clear that some of the Iraq "doves" have had the better part of these disputes in the past, so it certainly does no good, as Beinart suggests, to simply "purge" the "softs" from the party. What's needed is an honest assessment from all sides of what went wrong (and right) in Iraq, and how to move forward. Not this game of figuring out who's more "hawkish" than who. Otherwise, liberals are going to get caught wrong-footed at the doorstep of a strike against Tehran, and not know what to say or do.
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11:33 AM
Flaws in the execution?
Cases of wrongly convicted inmates freed from death row have made national headlines in recent years. While activists focus on those awaiting execution (for obvious and sound reasons), there’s long been discussion that proof of a wrongly executed innocent might convince more people that the system’s broken. On Thursday, the Chicago Tribune published the must-read results of its investigation into last February’s execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas.
Willingham was convicted of murder after a fire in his home killed his three young daughters, and maintained his innocence literally until his last words. As the Tribune reports:
"While Texas authorities dismissed his protests, a Tribune investigation of his case shows that Willingham was prosecuted and convicted based primarily on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances. According to four fire experts consulted by the Tribune, the original investigation was flawed and it is even possible the fire was accidental."
The article goes on to detail a litany of problems with the case against Willingham, from the prosecution’s reliance on testimony from a drug-abusing jailhouse snitch (a tactic all serious reformers want to end), to the questionable evidence that the fire was an arson, to the circumstantial argument used to tie the alleged arson to Willingham. It’s definitely worth a read, and the evidence at least raises some serious doubt over the conviction. As Dorinda Brokofsky, a juror in the case, told the Tribune after looking at its evidence:
"Did anybody know about this prior to his execution? Now I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. Maybe this man was innocent."
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9:52 AM
Yes, Palestine does matter...
About a week ago in the Jerusalem Post, Amir Taheri argued that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can't really be the cause of Muslim rage towards the United States. After all, Arab nations have never complained about Kashmir, or the genocide of Muslims in Serbia. So they must just be looking for any excuse to despise America. That's a good point, and fair warning that solving the Arab-Israeli crisis won't "solve" all of the problems in the Middle East, nor resurrect our image completely.
But just because anger over Palestine is in a sense irrational doesn't mean it's not real. The Arab-Israeli conflict may not be the source of all that ails the region, but a lot of very key figures in Europe and the Middle East have certainly made it out to be. Were the U.S. to press hard for a resolution, those leaders would in a sense have trapped themselves (especially in the eyes of the public), and would no doubt feel compelled to respond by acting on some of Washington's demands for reform. For Arab nations, that would mean taking concrete steps to liberalize their political systems -- no more high-sounding principles or charters. For Europe, that would mean actually getting involved in promoting political change. As Taheri says, these leaders may indeed all be bluffing about the real importance of the peace process. But then call them out on it.
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9:06 AM
A deeper shade of red
Recall that last February -- and at numerous points on the campaign trail -- President Bush promised to halve the deficit by 2009, which means taking a budget hole that was about 3.6 percent of GDP in 2004, and inching it down to around 1.6 percent of GDP by the end of the decade.
As it turns out -- and as predicted by, well, just about everyone -- we can safely throw that promise in the dustbin. The Economic Policy Institute has helpfully added up all the budget promises made by Congress thus far, tossed in the cost of making the existing Bush tax cuts permanent, and found that the deficit will still be around 3.4 percent of GDP in 2009. Even worse, that figure does not include the recent corporate tax bill, whose costs are uncertain but assuredly massive. It also doesn't include the transition costs for privatizing Social Security, which could easily reach $2 trillion over the next decade.
Little wonder that Republicans now want to extend the budget window out to 30 years. After all, what's a short-term deficit between friends, right? Sure. Now try telling that to the financial markets.
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9:01 AM
How many Iraqi casualties?
A new campaign by the health organization Medact and the Iraq Body Count project released a letter from 40 prominent figures in the UK calling on Tony Blair to initiate an inquiry on the number civilian deaths in Iraq.
The U.S. and British governments have, thus far, avoided any official count (for obvious reasons) and figures widely vary from IBC's 14,000 to the Lancet estimate of more than 100,000 since March 2003. Blair immediately dismissed the need for casualty figures and blamed the terrorists for the significant number of Iraqis killed. Yet, as Medact director Michael Rowson noted, these figures are of great importance to medical relief efforts as well as the all-important battle for "hearts and minds" in the region:
"We hope that the government would consider setting up such an inquiry. It's really important, and part of the battle for winning hearts and minds. If we know what the health needs are in Iraq, Britain and other countries will be in a much better position to address them properly. So, we're very hopeful that he will set up this inquiry."
I wouldn't sit around waiting for either Blair or the Bush administration to begin the count. The lack of accurate numbers -- and the refusal to even attempt gathering these figures -- devalues Iraqi civilian life and delegitimizes the notion that an open and democratic society is coming to Iraq. Yet the increased alarm surrounding Iraqi casualties does further magnify what Nina Berman accurately described to me as the dirty little secret in Iraq -- that large numbers of Iraqi civilians, especially women and children, are being killed in Iraq and few people are even talking about it.
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8:18 AM
The "stovepipe" returns!
For the past few weaks, intelligence officials have been fighting their bureaucratic battles by leaking to all the major papers. So toss a grain of salt on Dana Priest's scoop today about an anonymous CIA operative who alleges that, back in 2002, he was pressured into lying about Iraq's WMD program, refused to do so, and was then fired by this managers.
But only a little grain. Because no one really knows what sort of administrative pressures were placed on intelligence agents to make the case for war against Iraq. Reporters like Jason Vest and Robert Dreyfuss, or Seymour Hersh, have suggested that the "stovepiping" started all the way up at the White House. But the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence decided not to investigate the issue until after the election. Assuming it now moves forward, and assuming that Priest's report is more or less accurate, this should be one heck of an investigation.
And yes, it still matters. Especially now that the intelligence world is cranking out new intelligence on Syria and Iran -- the sort of thing that could lead to further hostilities, or yet another war. Maybe we want to get it right this time around, no?
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4:21 PM
Snow's back. Too bad.
It looks like Treasury Secretary John Snow will remain "Treasury Secretary John Snow" for the next four years. That's too bad: rumors had it that either White House Chief of Staff Andy Card (Of "They're gonna blame Andy Card!" fame) or former Sen. Phil Gramm (Of "it's a one-way ticket to recession!" fame) were being pegged for the job. Either would have provided years worth of comedy gold. Instead we'll have to settle for the drearily on-message Snow, cheering on whatever crack scheme the Bush administration dreams up next.
On a more sober note, reading this week-old Washington Post article, one gets the sense that Snow's only sticking around because all of the more competent people out there -- like MIT's James Porteba, or Stanford's John Corgan -- turned down administration jobs. Apparently, top-flight economists are no longer keen on gambling their reputation away in the Bush White House. Huh.
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3:50 PM
Time for some serious revisionism!
Here's the usual take on North Korea: In 1994 the country agreed to halt its nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees, light-water reactors, oil shipments, and other American goodies. North Korea, being the evildoers they are, then cheated on the agreement and restarted its program for enriching uranium. Finally, in 2002, the Bush administration called out Kim Jong-Il on his cheating, at which point North Korea got huffy, kicked out nuclear inspectors, took away a bunch of plutonium rods that had been under international surveillance, and went full force on its nuclear program. The takeaway lesson: Diplomacy doesn't work because the bad guys cheat!
The liberal revisionist view -- which I've outlined at length here -- holds that, in fact, the United States was the first to cheat on the Agreed Framework, and that Bush administration's saber-rattling in early 2001 forced North Korea to take a more aggressive posture, thus leading to the 2002 crisis. This view is, as a result, less skeptical about using diplomacy to deal with issues of nuclear proliferation.
But now we have even more revisionism, courtesy of Selig Harrison of the Center for International Policy. In the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs, Harrison argues that Bush's ultimatum in 2002 may have been based on faulty intelligence. It's possible (not certain) that North Korea never enriched uranium for military purpose at all, and our misguided accusations led to a breakdown in talks:
On June 24, 2004, the United States proposed a new, detailed denuclearization agreement with North Korea … in Beijing. Before discussions could even start, however, the Bush administration insisted that North Korea first admit to the existence of the alleged uranium-enrichment facilities and specify where they are located. Pyongyang has so far refused to confirm or deny whether it has such facilities; predictably, the U.S. precondition has precluded any new talks.
The real scandal, though, is that Bush's 2002 "showdown" with Kim Jong Il led directly to North Korea kicking out inspectors and taking away those plutonium rods to make bombs. So even if Harrison's right and the country wasn't a threat before 2002, it is certainly a nuclear threat now. What's more, the White House decided to confront only because Japan and South Korea had begun engaging Kim Jong Il. (And you just can't cozy up to evildoers, y'know?) It was politicized intelligence all over again.
Alas, the time has long passed when we could hold Bush accountable for making the world a more dangerous place. So the relevant issue now is whether diplomacy can induce North Korea to disarm. If Kim Jong Il didn't actually cheat after 1994, then it's reasonable to think that a new nuclear agreement could work crisis this time around.
Finally, and I say this only because it's a pet issue of mine, the alleged screw-up over North Korea's nuclear program really, really underscores the need for better coordination of our intelligence on WMD programs. Really. But Congress, sadly, believes otherwise, judging from the limp intelligence bill it just passed.
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3:19 PM
Counting casualties
U.S. casualty figures in the Iraq war passed another grim milestone Wednesday, as the military reported total combat deaths since March 2003 have now passed 1,000. Adding in non-combat deaths, according to the Associated Press, the total number of American troops killed in Iraq sits at 1,278. But a true reckoning of the human costs of the war remains far more complicated.
The AP notes that "for every American soldier killed in Iraq, nine others have been wounded and survived -- the highest rate of any war in U.S. history." Writing this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Atul Gawande looks at the role of improved medicine in lowering the percentage of those combat injuries that end in death (an accompanying photo essay shows some painful examples).
Even that total doesn’t include "non-combat" injuries such as illness, psychological trauma and injuries from accidents. For a 60 Minutes piece last month, the DoD said more than 15,000 troops have been evacuated for this category of injuries, but its official casualty count doesn’t list a concrete figure. Some estimates place these injuries closer to twice that figure -- since the government hasn’t released specific figures, it’s hard to get a true read. In a Wednesday letter to George Bush, Ralph Nader asked the president to clear all this up:
What's your problem here? The American people need to know the full casualty toll of U.S. personnel in Iraq and know it regularly and in a timely fashion. Not to do so is disrespectful, especially of the military families, but none more so than of the soldiers themselves. As a severely wounded Chris Schneider told CBS: "Every one of us went over there with the knowledge that we could die. And then they tell you -- you're wounded -- or your sacrifice doesn't deserve to be recognized or we don't deserve to be on their list -- it's not right. It's almost disgraceful."Soldiers like Chris Schneider, Joel Gomez and Graham Alstrom want to know whether you are going to continue to stonewall their desire for official respect. What shall we tell them and others who seek that simple, decent official recognition? Please do not think that because you are a chronic non-responder to critical questions, you will be able to delay this growing demand indefinitely. Your hit and run photo opportunities with the troops just doesn't cut the mustard. Stand up and face it. It is the right thing to do by them.
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1:46 PM
Re-examining the Hispanic vote
At long last, those of us who still want to do election postmortems are getting the poll-data we so desperately need. Last week, NBC exit pollsters reported that President Bush may not have gained all that much among Hispanic voters in 2004, revising his estimated total downwards, from 44 to 40 percent (he got 35 percent in 2000). On the surface, then, it seems like Bush did alright among Hispanics, but not that much better than his national average.
But before Democrats start breathing their sighs of relief, check out Richard Nadler's take on the Hispanic vote in National Review. Breaking down the numbers state by state, Nadler makes clear that wherever the GOP targeted Hispanic voters with advertising -- Arizona and New Mexico in particular -- Bush made impressive leaps in the Hispanic vote.
It should be noted, however, that the Democrats did pull out of Arizona and New Mexico early, and the New Democratic Network, a 527, never even aired its Spanish-language ads in those states. Meanwhile, in Colorado and Florida, where NDN's Spanish-language ads were run, John Kerry actually improved on Al Gore's share of the Hispanic vote. The lesson here should be obvious. Another issue, though, is that Democrats can't assume that Hispanics will have a natural aversion to the GOP. The old charges of racism and xenophobia against conservatives have lost much of their relevance. President Bush really has helped his party's image with both his pro-immigration stance and his high-level Hispanic appointments -- which, however cynical they may seem, are both genuinely good for perceptions of race in America and politically shrewd.
So what should the Democrats do to counteract this trend? In his lengthy analysis of the Hispanic vote, Dr. Henry Flores argues that Hispanics tend to vote more on "concrete" issues, like jobs or foreign policy, than the public at large, and focus less on cultural issues like abortion or gay marriage. This could indicate that the Democrats "problems" among Hispanics jibe with their problems among voters in general: the lack of a compelling message on the economy and national security.
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1:23 PM
Dreaming of a blue Christmas
With holiday shopping season underway (and, according to Bill O’Reilly, "Christmas under siege"), the new Buy Blue website shows progressive consumers how to spend their holiday money with companies that supported the Democrats in the last election.
The Buy Blue site lists "red" and "blue" companies, along with the amount of money they spent on the 2004 election and what percentage went to which party. So, for example, Borders, Starbucks and Foot Locker gave 100 percent of their contributions to Democrats, while Fruit of the Loom, Circuit City, Hallmark, Sears and Wal-Mart gave the vast majority of theirs to the GOP. And, as the site notes:
Most major gas companies supported Republicans with more than 80% of their donations. Shell is the closest we have to a Blue-Friendly company. [56 percent to Democrats]
So for the strictly partisan, holiday shopping can be a way to hit the GOP where it hurts -- in the free market.
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12:51 PM
Robert Reich's defense of CAFTA
Over at The American Prospect, Robert Reich posted the latest defense, albeit a poor one, of CAFTA, which is essentially an extension of NAFTA to Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Forget manufacturing jobs; Reich argues that the primary issue of the agreement is agriculture commodities and American farmers' addiction to subsidies that deprive "poorer nations" of markets:
"In fact, the real issue surrounding CAFTA isn't about manufacturing jobs at all. It's about agriculture commodities like sugar and rice. U.S. sugar producers don't want CAFTA. They want to keep their generous government subsidies and tariffs that result in sugar prices here being three times what they are on the world market. CAFTA would open the door just a crack to much cheaper sugar imports from Latin America, and America's sugar barons won't hear of it.""As to American rice growers -- yes, there are American rice growers -- they get more than a billion dollars a year in subsidies from Uncle Sam. A billion dollars is more than Nicaragua's entire national budget. It's even more than the total market value of all the rice produced in the United States. Unless those subsidies are ended, CAFTA will flood Latin America with U.S. rice so richly subsidized by U.S. taxpayers that Latin America's own rice-growing farmers will be forced out of business.
"So you see, the issue behind CAFTA is really the same one that derailed the Doha round of global trade talks a while back: How to wean big agribusinesses off tariffs and subsidies so poorer nations can sell their food to the rich. To the extent CAFTA is a step in the right direction, it's a good idea."
As the former Labor Secretary who pushed theNAFTA agreement, Reich should remind readers that the ill effects of this agreement extend well beyond agriculture. While I agree that rice subsidies for American farmers, for example, are too high and place an unfair burden on Central American growers, the agreement is a boon for American-owned multinational corporations and the push toward even greater privatization of water, telecommunications, and other public entities in Central America. Check out Public Citizen for a shrewd index of CAFTA's negative impact on subjects ranging from farmers and agriculture to public health and labor rights. As the CAFTA debate intensifies, it's important to understand the agreement's damaging effects (especially when arguing with those selling it as a "good idea").
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11:25 AM
The Social Security "crisis" revisited.
Kevin Drum's post on Social Security gets it exactly right. The projected "shortfall" in the program depends on extremely modest assumptions about growth and productivity over the next 75 years. As Drum says, if you assume instead that America will grow at a healthy 3 percent rate, Social Security will be solvent for a long, long time. I'll add that we could also solve this problem by opening up the immigration gates a little wider -- so that the U.S. keeps its ratio of workers-to-retirees relatively high.
Now there's one interesting objection to all this. Privatization buffs also argue that private accounts will boost national savings, which will in turn boost business investment, and thus lead us into an era of supercharged growth. Maybe, though this is a big leap. I was talking about this with Daniel Altman the other day, who noted that economists don't have anything near a consensus on how to get people to save more. (After all, people with private accounts might think they've already "secured" their retirement, and hence save less than they otherwise would.) The only proven way to increase savings in general is to reduce our national debt. Yet Bush wants to privatize Social Security by borrowing and expanding the deficit -- perhaps, as we've seen, needlessly. How, exactly, will this help anything?
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10:37 AM
Did we really get intelligence reform?
So in the end, Congress got its intelligence bill, and lo, it was toothless. As Fred Kaplan explains in Slate, the tiny little change in the bill's final language -- ordering the National Intelligence Director not to "abrogate the statutory responsibilities" of the Secretary of Defense -- may well make the NID a useless figurehead. Not surprisingly, most of Congress didn't even bother to read the 600-page bill, so it's not likely that anyone really knows what's going on. But there's quite a lot going on here.
A few months ago, I wrote about the 9/11 Commission's reforms, noting among other things that it was crucial for a new National Intelligence Director to have some meaningful control over the Pentagon's spy agencies. The big concern here is that the Pentagon and intelligence community have thus far made a mess of trying to coordinate their technical capabilities to track WMD proliferation. (Read this litany of complaints by former undersecretary of defense Ashton Carter.) An NID with the power to move money and personnel around -- as originally proposed by the Senate -- could have improved this coordination. The NID created by the final compromise bill, however, won't have that ability.
The Pentagon, and Republicans like Rep. Duncan Hunter, have objected that an intrusive NID would interfere with the military's "chain of command" on the battlefield. That's dubious. As more than one intelligence expert has told me, if the Pentagon really wanted to keep something from the NID's hands, it would just set up a whole new intelligence apparatus to do whatever it wanted to do. (This is exactly what happened after the creation of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1961 -- the services all set up their own, separate intel shops.) What's going on here seems like nothing more than a bureaucratic turf war, plain and simple.
Now, reasonable people have raised solid objections to the idea of an NID. But then propose something else. There are actual problems with the intelligence community that need fixing -- especially the WMD problems outlined above. The Bush administration, however, has simply opposed outright any and all meaningful reform, and the president is signing this largely useless new bill only to give off the appearance of actually doing something.
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10:20 AM
Interior remodeling
While not the most high-profile of Cabinet departures, the Tuesday resignation of deputy Interior secretary J. Steven Griles is a small bit of good news for environmentalists.
The short New York Times piece on Griles’ departure focuses mainly on his dispute with Native American tribes over resource revenue, only noting that "Mr. Griles, a former lobbyist for mining companies, angered environmentalists because of his close ties to energy and coal mining businesses." But, like his boss, Gale Norton, Griles represented a takeover of the Interior Department by officials who put industry first.
And his now-ending three-year stint wasn’t Griles’ first attempt to undermine the environment (pun intended) at Interior. In 1981, the rabidly anti-environment James Watt appointed Griles to the department’s Office of Surfacing Mining -- an office Griles had promised to destroy. And he did his part, cutting staff, cutting enforcement and drastically reducing the number of federal inspections. Griles helped slash regulation as he moved up at Interior during the Reagan years, before going to work as a lobbyist for Big Coal and returning to Interior after Bush became president.
In his book Crimes Against Nature, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. devotes most of a chapter to Griles -- particularly the deputy secretary’s practice of meeting with his former clients (such as Chevron and the National Mining Association) while they lobbied the administration for relaxed regulations. It got so bad that the Office of the Inspector General for Interior conducted an ethics investigation of Giles, and as Kennedy notes:
"The report characterized the initial choice to appoint Griles, with all his inherent conflict of interest, as a ‘train wreck waiting to happen.’ It confirmed that Griles had regular dealings with energy- and mining-industry clients from his former lobbying firm even as he continued to receive income from the firm’s owner. The report concluded that evidence showed that ‘the department’s leadership did not take ethics seriously.’"
This being the Bush administration, Griles never had to resign based on these findings. While his choice to return to private life is welcome news, he’s left a lot of damage in his wake. And with Gale Norton still in charge, big polluters will still find friendly ears at Interior.
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5:17 PM
What happened in Colorado
With all the post-election analysis from beleaguered Democrats and other progressives, it's somewhat refreshing to read a Republican lament the outcome of the 2004 election. Although Bush-Cheney managed to win by a comfortable margin in Colorado, Democrats otherwise swept the traditionally Republican state. Ken Salazar was elected to the Senate, his brother upset his opponent for a House seat, and Colorado's state House and Senate went fully Democratic for the first time since 1960. As outgoing Colorado Republican State Senate President John Andrews writes on the web site of the Weekly Standard: "this was the ugliest election for Colorado Republicans that I've experienced in my 30 years in politics."
Andrews argues that the "3 M's -- money, message, and motivation" cost Colorado Republicans on November 2. Much as his liberal counterparts did in explaining Kerry's defeat, Andrews focuses on motivation as the leading explanation for defeat:
"It was motivation, above all, that powered this Democrat victory. Democrats were driven and hungry from decades in the political wilderness. Republicans were complacent and soft from too long in power. Their motive for winning was to get in there and do things. Ours, it often seemed, was merely to stay in there. These attitudes translated into discipline and unity for Democrats, indulgence and disunity for Republicans."
This rationale is bogus and cleverly avoids both the more plausible explanation for the Democrat's victory and the likelihood that Republicans face long-term difficulties getting elected for statewide office in Colorado. As I wrote before the election, Colorado was in play for Democrats thanks largely to a significant increase in the number of Latino voters. This fact, more than anything else, contributed to Colorado's leftward shift in the 2004 election. Even Kerry, who lost to Bush by 5 points (52% to 47%), managed to win a large majority of the state's Latino vote (68% to 30%). Ken Salazar did even better by winning the Latino vote 72 to 25 percent.
Andrews' article fails to even mention the word Latino (or Hispanic) in explaining the Republican downfall in Colorado. And with the number of Latino voters in Colorado rising, the Democrat's resurgence is likely to continue as well. Until Colorado Republicans figure out a way to gain at least 40 percent of the Latino vote, it's likely that they will continue to write post-election breakdowns, like Andrews, that ask "what the hell happened?" but fail to provide any answers.
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2:41 PM
Global warming and global terror
The U.N. conference on climate change opened in Buenos Aires yesterday, the first such meeting since Russia decided in November to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, leaving the U.S. and Australia -- which together account for about a third of the planet's global greenhouse gas emissions Kyoto is intended to curb -- as the lone holdouts against the treaty.
The conference is a matter of some urgency for a number of attending countries. Argentina, for one, has already begun to experience the previously identified consequences of global warming -- more frequent storms and tornadoes, floods, receding glaciers and a rising sea level.
Colin Powell is using his final official trip as secretary of state to mend ties with the European Union. This is going to be tough, because Europe, having done a fair amount to curb emissions, is annoyed at the Bush administration's rejection of Kyoto and its failure to propose an alternative means of tackling climate change. Some Europeans think it's only a matter of time before the U.S., which objects to the treaty on economic grounds, comes around -- if only under the threat of suffering serious economic consequences. Today French Ecology Minister Serge Lepeltier hazarded this prediction:
"I am convinced that we are going to bring the United States into Kyoto, even if it doesn't want to ... American corporations which have operations in Europe ... are going to have to meet the rules which we set in place to uphold Kyoto, at least on (European) soil. It may not happen today and it may not happen tomorrow, but the United States will inevitably have to develop these technologies because they do not want to lag, which would be a major risk for their companies."
Those fighting words could again spur the House of Representatives to rename its cafeteria French fries. However, the prospect that U.S businesses will succumb to industry pressure from Europe seems too optimistic given that many U.S. business leaders who continue to deny the reality of global warming. Perhaps the U.S. will be more susceptible to a national security argument for action on climate change. As former president Clinton noted in a forum yesterday, the issue of global warming links environmental degradation with national security. (That is, dependence on oil ties the United States to unstable Middle Eastern regimes in the Middle East, stoking resentment among those regimes' repressed populations.) It would make sense for Kyoto proponents to stress this point by arguing more forcefully that noncompliance only further complicates the global fight against terrorism.
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12:34 PM
Judging Reid's comments: A dissent.
To quibble slightly with Jeff's interpretation of Sen. Harry Reid's comments on judges, I think the new Minority Leader might have been suggesting that he would, in fact, accept a principled conservative on the court, but not a radical constructionist. (I've noted the difference between the two elsewhere.) Antonin Scalia, for all his excesses, still tends to accept the doctrine of stare decisis (the notion that judges ought to respect legal precedent). Clarence Thomas does not, and has indicated before that he'd prefer to get back to the "original" version of the Constitution, even if it means overturning two centuries of legal doctrine. That's a rather crucial difference.
As an asterix, David Garrow recently tried to argue in the New Republic that Thomas isn't quite as radical as his critics make him out to be. For example, in his opinion on United States v. Lopez, Thomas writes that he'd be willing to interpret the Commerce Clause in a manner that reflected recent history: "Although I might be willing to return to the original understanding [of the Commerce Clause], I recognize that many believe it is too late in the day to undertake a fundamental reexamination of the past sixty years." That would be comforting, except that "many believe" is not quite the same thing as "I believe." And Thomas could feel emboldened to overturn recent history if a few more Supreme Court judges felt the same way he did about the Commerce Clause -- ie: that New Deal-style regulation should be ruled unconstitutional. Hence the concern: he may be constrained now, but no one wants to see Clarence Thomas unleashed.
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11:56 AM
Judging Reid's comments
Harry Reid spent Monday passing out committee assignments to the new Senate, giving prime spots to the likes of Ron Wyden, Ben Nelson and newcomers Barack Obama and Ken Salazar. But Reid drew more attention from his Sunday talk-show comment that he could possibly, maybe, conditionally support Antonin Scalia for chief justice. As the Washington Post says, "Reid's comments startled lobbying groups preparing for the battles sure to come with the likely turnover in the Supreme Court in the near future." Here’s what Reid actually said on "Meet the Press":
"If [Scalia] can overcome the ethics problems that have arisen since he was selected as a justice of the Supreme Court. And those ethics problems -- you've talked about them; every reporter's talked about them in town -- where he took trips that were probably not in keeping with the code of judicial ethics. So we have to get over this. I cannot dispute the fact, as I have said, that this is one smart guy. And I disagree with many of the results that he arrives at, but his reason for arriving at those results are very hard to dispute."
The more important part of the interview comes later, when Reid calls on Bush to work with Democratic leaders on finding acceptable, confirmable Supreme Court judges. He cites Bill Clinton’s working with Orrin Hatch to do the same. Taken as a whole, Reid’s interview comes off as a call for Bush to be reasonable in filling the court, and a willingness for Democrats to be open-minded. Saying Scalia is acceptable "if he can overcome the ethics problems" –- a highly unlikely scenario -- is more like political posturing than abandoning the base.
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9:58 AM
What's behind the UN witch-hunt?
Nick Confessore wonders why Republicans are so outraged over the UN Oil-for-Food scandal but remain curiously silent about the countless reports of waste and fraud surrounding the occupation of Iraq. Now this double standard sort of speaks for itself, sadly enough. But there's another, more subtle reason why Republicans are latching on to Oil-For-Food: It can provide a retroactive justification for the war in Iraq. After all, if Saddam Hussein could skim all that money off the program, then sanctions must not have been working, and the only option left was to invade, right?
Well, except that the Duelfer Report on this matter noted that sanctions had actually strengthened after September 11, 2001 -- especially once inspectors re-entered Iraq in late 2002. Also, Saddam Hussein may have been siphoning off money, but he certainly wasn't buying a nuclear program with the cash. (The $10 billion he made off kickbacks was scandalous, but not enough to finance a big military operation.) But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good witch hunt?
Anyways, there's more to this witch-hunt than just that -- conservatives would of course love to undermine the UN and "prove" that we can no longer rely on our European allies for anything. All this makes it more crucial that Democrats jump out ahead of the curve and start proposing sensible reforms to the UN before the opposition can get its hands on the torches and pitchforks. It's good to see that the DLC grasps all this and is calling for UN accountability. Staying silent on the issue -- or worse, endorsing the status quo at the UN -- will only strengthen the hand of Republicans who want to use outrage to tear down the whole international order.
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9:30 AM
Mark your calenders: We're leaving Iraq! (Or not...)
These days, everyone wants to know just when the U.S. is planning on pulling out of Iraq. Sadly, there seem to be as many answers to that question as there are spokespeople. Just yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld said we'll be out of there in four years. (Although he's also in the grips of a bizarre theory stating that decisions on troop levels are "out of my control", so who knows what's going on in that brain of his.) But just days before, Iraq's interim president, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawer, sounded even more upbeat on "Meet the Press," saying troops could be withdrawn "in six months or eight months or a year. I don't think it will take years." So a year? Four years?
On the other hand, Iraqi officials are striking far more pessimistic notes. Last week a "senior Interior Ministry official" told the New York Times that "any major withdrawal of American troops for at least a decade would invite chaos." So who's right? I guess it depends on who you want to believe: A defense secretary far removed from reality, an interim president trying to put on a happy face on a Sunday talk show, or an anonymous Iraqi official voicing an extremely unpopular opinion about how out of control the whole situation has become.
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3:58 PM
Fox and friends
If it’s true that people who get their news from Fox are disproportionately misinformed, today’s news from the business world isn’t too encouraging.
On Monday, Clear Channel agreed to make Fox the main source of national news for many of its member stations.
"This deal positions Fox News to become a significant player in the radio industry and is another example of our commitment to the medium," Roger Ailes, Fox News chairman and CEO, told the Associated Press.
Indeed, the contract calls for a five-year relationship between Fox and Clear Channel, the nation’s largest radio conglomerate, which owns about 1200 stations. About 100 stations will start airing Fox news initially, but the AP reports up to 500 stations could be affected by the middle of next year.
Clear Channel had been getting national news from a number of sources, but decided to take the same consolidation approach to news that it’s already taken with playlists. Even setting aside Fox’s "fair and balanced" approach to reporting, this is bad news for anyone concerned about the increased homogenization of media voices, as the "competition" of the marketplace is again leaving consumers with fewer choices.
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2:21 PM
Bill Frist, M.D.
I'm ripping this off Sam Rosenfeld's post over at Tapped, but it's worth reading. You recall the Waxman report from last week, documenting the untruths and idiocies peddled by federally-funded abstinence programs around the country. Well, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) -- who, by the way, is a certified doctor -- went on This Week yesterday to try to defend the programs. Here's what transpired after host George Stephanopoulos pressed him on the issue:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, let me switch to another subject. There was a bit of an uproar in Washington this week about this issue of these abstinence programs that are funded by the Federal government, the funding has doubled over the last four years but there was a report by the minority staff at the House Government Affairs Committee that showed that 11 of 13 of these programs are giving out false information. I want to show some of the claims they identified in the curricula. One of them was, one of the programs taught that "The actual ability of condoms to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS, even if the product is intact, is not definitively known." Another, "The popular claim that condoms help prevent the spread of STDs is not supported by the data." A third suggested that tears and sweat could transmit HIV and AIDS. Now, you're a doctor. Do you believe that tears and sweat can transmit HIV?
FRIST: I don't know. I can tell you ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: You don't know?
FRIST: I can tell you things like, like ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, wait, let me stop you, you don't know that, you believe that tears and sweat might be able to transmit AIDS?
FRIST: Yeah, no, I can tell you that HIV is not very transmissible as an element like, compared to smallpox, compared to the flu. It is not, but the first slide, because I think it's dangerous to show that and then sort of walk away.
[...]
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me just, I wanted to move to another subject, let me just clear this up, though. Do you or do you not believe that tears and sweat can transmit HIV?
FRIST: It would be very hard. It would be very hard for tears and sweat, I mean, you can get virus in tears and sweat but in terms of the degree of infecting somebody, it would be very hard.
Okay then.
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12:41 PM
Whatever happened to "freedom on the march"?
Yesterday, the New York Times put up a grand headline: "U.S. Slows Bid to Advance Democracy in Arab World." Indeed, this would be big, big news if the U.S. had actually, you know, been promoting democracy around the Arab World all this while. But as Marina Ottaway, a democracy expert at the Carnegie Endowment, noted way back in June, the Bush administration has been continually scaling back its "Greater Middle East Initiative" to the point of utter toothlessness.
At any rate, it appears that the Bush administration will now officially take a softer, more, ahem, European approach to things and try to pursue quiet, low-key reforms -- including modest economic and social changes. It's not clear, though, that this is nearly enough; as Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, told the Times: "What is missing is not technical and financial know-how, it is the political will to reform." Also, the Times doesn't mention it, but many of the economic issues that the administration plans to discuss at the Arab summit in Morocco next week are already discussed as part of existing U.S. aid programs in the region. This is nothing new.
Now in Bush's defense, American ambassadors have made some efforts at pushing for real change in the region. In a recent and underreported story, David Welch, the ambassador to Egypt, met with the country's opposition party to talk democracy and political reform. Still, we're light years away from the White House's bold rhetoric about "Transforming the Middle East".
Why is that? According to this Carnegie report, the biggest obstacles to change include the White House's refusal to negotiate regional security assurances, and its even more prominent refusal to discuss the Arab-Israeli peace process. Until this happens, the Bush administration will have to keep piddling around talking about secondary issues in the Arab world, like legal aid and civic education, rather than the crucial stuff: elections, judiciary reform, political party formation, etc. etc.
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12:34 PM
Parity in Palestinian poll positions
The race for the Palestinian leadership appears to come down to a choice between Mahmoud Abbas and Marwan Barghouti. And, according to recent polls, there’s no decisive lead for either.
In a poll conducted by the West Bank-based Bir Zeit University, Barghouti holds a 46-44 lead against Abbas. According to a poll from Ramallah’s Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Abbas leads Barghouti 40-38. And the results of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion poll show Abbas up 40-22. (each of these polls each had a margin of error about 3 percent).
Some speculate Barghouti is running in order to force Abbas to take a harder line against Israel, and will ultimately drop out. But for now, he says he’s planning to govern from prison, where he’s serving five life sentences. As Slate’s Brendan Koerner (also a contributing writer at Mother Jones) writes, Barghouti wouldn’t be the first man to win an election from the pokey. And some Israeli leaders are worried about Barghouti’s increased embrace of violence in recent years, and his key role in launching the second intifada. Yossi Beilin, one of Israel’s leading voices for an independent Palestine, told the New York Times he has lost respect for Barghouti based on his role in the creation of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and his threats of violence:
"[Barghouti] is not innocent at all. I believe he was carried away. He thought he could control the violence he unleashed and end the intifada in a few weeks. But he was carried away in an ongoing competition with Hamas on the ground, which was about violence, and today Hamas is stronger than Fatah, and Barghouti is to blame -- because Fatah started this intifada, and not Hamas."
Another Israeli official succinctly summed up the central challenge of a Barghouti victory.
"As Barghouti became more violent against Israel he attracted more support. And if he becomes a peacemaker, he'll lose his popularity. After recruiting more and more people to carry out violent terror attacks, he fell in love with it. That's his mistake and he knows it. To speak of Nelson Mandela and Marwan Barghouti in one breath means you don't know either man."
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11:43 AM
A Sunni election strategy?
On Sunday, Juan Cole wrote an op-ed in the Detroit News suggesting that the U.S. set aside 25 percent of National Assembly seats for Sunnis in Iraq, even if Sunni voters don't turn out. It's not bad, and I have yet to hear a better suggestion, but let's remember that this sort of jury-rigging barely begins to solve the problems here. Whatever Sunni politicians got those seats, for starters, would be tainted in the eyes of many, having been "installed" by the Americans. Meanwhile, the truly influential Sunni leaders might just refuse to join. The problem right now, after all, isn't that they can't get elected; the problem is that they don't want to, because they don't see what they would gain from being a permanent minority within a democracy.
But set that aside. As long-time readers of this blog will recall, what happens after the elections is an even bigger co