The final days ...
Cunningham (alleged) briber Brent Wilkes' wife sues for divorce as indictment watch comes to a head.
--Josh Marshall
President Bush tries to mend-fences with the Democrat party ...
This was at the House Democrats retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia this morning.
--Josh Marshall
James Fallows says, in essence, forget the surge resolution. The place Congress can best draw the line, he says, is on Iran:
Deciding what to do next about Iraq is hard — on the merits, and in the politics. It’s hard on the merits because whatever comes next, from “surge” to “get out now” and everything in between, will involve suffering, misery, and dishonor. It’s just a question of by whom and for how long. On a balance-of-misery basis, my own view changed last year from “we can’t afford to leave” to “we can’t afford to stay.” And the whole issue is hard in its politics because even Democrats too young to remember Vietnam know that future Karl Roves will dog them for decades with accusations of “cut-and-run” and “betraying” troops unless they can get Republicans to stand with them on limiting funding and forcing the policy to change.By comparison, Iran is easy: on the merits, in the politics. War with Iran would be a catastrophe that would make us look back fondly on the minor inconvenience of being bogged down in Iraq. While the Congress flounders about what, exactly, it can do about Iraq, it can do something useful, while it still matters, in making clear that it will authorize no money and provide no endorsement for military action against Iran.
--David Kurtz
You may not have noticed but this week's UN report on global climate change based its estimate of a 1- to 2-foot rise in sea levels over the next 100 years on computer modeling which took into account only the volumetric increase in sea water as it warms. The estimate for sea level rise did not include melting glaciers and icecaps. While this was duly noted in most of the coverage I saw, it was often buried. The WSJ has a piece today on how much more dire the effects of climate change may be if you consider melting ice and increased cloud cover, neither of which factors the current computer models handle very well.
--David Kurtz
Greg Sargent dissects the Joe Lieberman gang's revisionist history of his successful re-election campaign.
--David Kurtz
I'm not surprised that the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen rendered to Syria by the United States, is all over the news in Canada. But it is surprising how little attention the case is getting here.
You'll recall that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) went off on the Attorney General during his appearance before the Judiciary Committee a couple of weeks ago. The subject was the Arar case, and Alberto Gonzales promised Leahy a secret briefing on the matter.
That briefing finally happened this week, but it apparently left Leahy and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA) with more questions than answers. According to the Globe and Mail, Leahy's primary question--why Arar, who is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen, was bundled aboard a chartered jet and sent to Damascus rather than returned to Canada--was not answered.
--David Kurtz
A regular TPM reader, on the Iraqi civil war:
On the Newshour, Paul Pillar nicely stated the NIE's statement on "civil war" as civil war plus a lot of other violence.The Bushies want to read the NIE report's caution that civil war is inadequate as a term to mean, continuing Pillar's arithmetic metaphor, Iraq is a civil war minus.
The report in fact says the opposite, we have a civil war plus.
I think this simple contrast, civil war minus vs. civil war plus is an effective if simplistic way of pushing back Hadley et al.'s reeking bullshit about this report.
Indeed.
Update: I should also point out this formulation from TPM Reader CH: "Regarding the 4 wars in Iraq described by the NIE: how are we to 'win' if, in some cases, we aren't considered a combatant?"
--David Kurtz
Reed Hundt sizes up the the 'surge', Dick Cheney, Iran and where this path leads.
--Josh Marshall
As you can see below, I spent some of today looking at the issue of the sharp rise in the number of American helicopters shot out of the sky in the last two weeks in Iraq. And then I posted an excerpt from an AP article from December noting US intelligence reports that wealthy Saudis are shipping money and arms, including anti-aircraft missiles, to the Sunni insurgents who are still the primary force fighting US soldiers and marines in Iraq.
This suggests a series of questions, the most obvious of which is whether we're in the process of being gamed much as we were in 2002 when we allied with Saudi Arabia (which had a lot to do with 9/11) against Iraq (which had nothing to do with 9/11) to defend ourselves against another 9/11. Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how we were also allied with Pakistan (a highly unstable, quasi-Islamist regime with nuclear weapons and a big nuclear weapons program proliferator) to make sure secular Iraq didn't get nuclear weapons it didn't have to give to terrorists it wasn't allied with. But I digress ...
The point is that there's a certain illogic in our thinking that Iran is the prime destablizer of Iraq when you consider that we are currently allying ourselves with the forces in Iraq that the Iranians would probably be happy to see run the place. I know it's not quite that simple. SCIRI is more the mullahs' choice, not the al Dawa folks which is where Maliki comes from. But then the last I heard we were angling to dump Maliki in favor of the SCIRI folks anyway. In any case, I won't be a fool enough to try to disentangle the intricacies of Iraq's sectarian and partisan divisions. But we do seem to be doing a decent job driving the Iraqi car in the direction of Iran on our own. And the 'insurgency' is still in the Sunni heartland, though now there is near open war between the Sunni 'insurgents' and the Shia para-militaries.
Still, when you consider that the political question in Iraq is whether the long-oppressed Shia will dominate the new Iraqi state in rough proportion to their numbers, the logical people to oppose such a settlement are Sunni co-religionists in places like Saudi Arabia.
But this gets to a deeper fallacy of the line of argument about neighboring countries 'meddling' in Iraq. Every shred of the failure that is Iraq bleeds over into the neighboring states, either as a threat or an opportunity, since they are all of the same fabric, or rather the same patchwork bleeding over national borders. The Sunnis with their coreligionists in Saudi Arabia; the Shia with theirs in Iran; the Kurds with theirs in southeastern Turkey whose affinity threatens to bring the Turks down into Iraq as well. The more we fail in Iraq, the more the threads we pull will pull into neighboring states. In other words, our inability to come to terms with and deal wtih what we have created in Iraq will almost inevitably lead to a widening gyre of escalation across Iraq's frontiers. I take it that this is what the Iraq Study Group folks were talking about when they spoke of the bleak outlook in Iraq and the necessity of getting quickly to some regional negotiations rather than trying to fight our way out of this box.
--Josh Marshall
More on helicopters ...
The AH-64 Apache shot down during the Najaf 'cult' battle was reportedly brought down by heavy machine-gun fire. The same was apparently true for the Blackwater helicopter brought down in Iraq a week ago. The same appears to have been the case in the one that went down today.
The Black Hawk helicopter shot northeast of Baghdad on January 20th was reportedly brought down by a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile.
--Josh Marshall
We've got video highlights of the different Dem presidential candidates at the DNC meeting here.
--Josh Marshall
Finally, finally. Cully Stimson -- the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs who called for businesses to boycott law firms that represented detainees -- resigns.
--Paul Kiel
Interesting. Earlier I noted that American helicopters appear to be getting downed at a much faster rate of late. Now I see that at a press conference today, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace said that "ground fire ... has been more effective against our helicopters in the last couple weeks."
So what's going on? A friend passes on to me this AP story from early December, which notes that ...
Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash.Saudi government officials deny that any money from their country is being sent to Iraqis fighting the government and the U.S.-led coalition.
But the U.S. Iraq Study Group report said Saudis are a source of funding for Sunni Arab insurgents. Several truck drivers interviewed by The Associated Press described carrying boxes of cash from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, money they said was headed for insurgents.
...
In one recent case, an Iraqi official said $25 million in Saudi money went to a top Iraqi Sunni cleric and was used to buy weapons, including Strela, a Russian shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile. The missiles were purchased from someone in Romania, apparently through the black market, he said.
This is a thin reed in itself. But it does suggest at least a possible connection. And it points to a disconnect in much of the charges we've been hearing about Iranian meddling in Iraqi affairs. Most of the US troops that are getting killed are getting killed in actions against Sunni insurgents. Not all. But still most, I believe. That's led some anonymous administration officials to speculate that the Iranians are actually supplying both the Shia and the Sunnis in an attempt to foment as much chaos as possible and to make the country ungovernable. That's certainly possible. Iran wouldn't be the first country to pursue such a Machiavellian approach. But a much cleaner explanation -- what Occam's Razor suggests -- is that the people supplying the Sunnis are people who support the Sunnis. And that trail does lead directly south into Saudi Arabia. But it's not nearly as convenient.
--Josh Marshall
Move over Don Rumsfeld!
National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley showcases his own ability to talk in circles: "The best plan is to have [the president's] plan succeed," he says. See the video here.
--Paul Kiel
This AP story notes that a American helicopter was shot down in Iraq today just north of Baghdad. This is the fourth downed helicopter since January 20th -- at least three of which appear to have been shot down. The AP says that 54 helicopters have been lost in Iraq since the invasion and about half of them from hostile fire. Events like this can randomly cluster together. But something else seems to be up -- whether it's a more aggressive posture on the Army's part, more use of helicopters to avoid IEDs or better weaponry on the part of the insurgents. If you know more about this, I'd be interested in hearing more.
--Josh Marshall
I was just looking at the lede to the AP story on the president's new war budget request and it says "the Bush administration will ask for another $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008."
Can we assume the number of billions of dollars for "diplomatic operations" is a pretty small part of the pie? And what "diplomatic operations" are they talking about exactly?
--Josh Marshall
Wow. The NIE is bad, bad news for the administration. See our breakdown here.
Update: More here on the NIE's use of the phrase "civil war."
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read: McClatchy on how the U.S. is fighting a militia trained and equipped by the U.S.
--Paul Kiel
In one of our editorial meetings today we were speculating about how the networks would spin the compromise surge resolution. Here's how ABC is casting it on their website: "A compromise resolution opposing the president's Iraq troop buildup is gathering steam. But it preserves funding for the troops, so it may not mean much."
--Josh Marshall
The new Iraq NIE won't be public? Spencer Ackerman brings us the latest.
--Josh Marshall
Regarding when the bombs might start falling in Iran, a few different pieces of evidence point to a time frame in early March. More on this later this evening.
Late Update: I don't make a practice of pulling posts. But this one, in its first writing, sounded a lot more definitive than I meant it to. What I'm talking about is an overlap between the naval deployments in the Gulf and the nuclear developments in Iran. I'll provide more details later.
--Josh Marshall
Symbolic Resolution Watch...
Sens. Biden (D-DE), Hagel (R-NE), Levin (D-MI), Collins (R-ME) and Nelson (D-NE) jump onto Sen. John Warner's (R-VA) bandwagon. But Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) won't get on.
Update: And here's Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) with a big, fat no.
Later Update: A spokesperson for Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) tells us he's "inclined to support it."
--Paul Kiel
Encouraging news! The man nominated to be the Director of National Intelligence says there'll be no cherry-picking on his watch.
--Paul Kiel
Here's a question: if it turns out the culprits behind the Karbala raid were not Iranian-trained but US-trained, should we attack ourselves? This just out from Fox of all places: "Several Iraqis have been detained for questioning in the ongoing investigation of at least two senior Iraqi generals suspected of involvement in an insurgent attack that killed five American soldiers on Jan. 20, U.S. officials told FOX News on Thursday."
(ed.note: In the original version of this post I incorrectly referred to Najaf rather than Karbala. It's hard for me to keep all the shady surge-era incidents straight sometimes. My bad.)
--Josh Marshall
Here's Spencer on this morning's hearing, where John McCain dished it out, General George Casey just took and took, and the commander-in-chief didn't really come up.
--Paul Kiel
A cool resource I didn't know about. We all know that we can read newspapers all over the country and the world with the web. It's worth remembering sometimes just how differently and more slowly information flowed in the pre-web era. But the Newseum has a section of their site where they have the daily front pages of 555 papers in 55 countries. Pretty cool.
--Josh Marshall
McCain: Things were getting better in Iraq before they were getting worse.
--Greg Sargent
Last night a reader wrote in to say that whatever the signs of belligerence on either side of the Iraq-Iran border, there wouldn't be any American attack on Iran because we simply don't have the troops to mount the attack. We don't have nearly enough troops available to mount an invasion of another Iraq. And Iran is a vastly larger country, both in geographical size and in population, with a formidable military. TPM Reader SG just wrote in to ask what the public rationale would be. Let me try to answer both questions in tandem.
The quick answer to this objection number one, I think, is that people who are looking to get into wars are seldom held back by not having the resources or the manpower to do it well or successfully.
The longer answer is that I doubt the United States will ever invade Iran if by that we mean an invasion in force to take over the capital, oust the government and occupy the country. Far more likely would be an aerial bombing campaign (where the US still has ample resources) aimed at Iran's nuclear or missile facilities. Perhaps even more likely than that would be an escalating round of cross-border incursions growing out of US counter-insurgency efforts in Iraq but then taking on a life of their own.
--Josh Marshall
News breaking out of the Congressional Budget Office: While the president has been saying the 'surge' will be 21,500 troops. Actually it will be between 35,000 and 48,000. More momentarily.
Update: We've got the analysis for you here.
--Josh Marshall
Brzezinski focuses us on the essential dynamic we face with this renegade president ...
If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
This is the hinge on which everything now turns. Bush doesn't want to be to blame for the mess in Iraq. So it has to be Iran. There's a bright line leading from the crisis of accountability to the next stage of strategic disaster.
--Josh Marshall
Drats! We can't see the smoking gun evidence!
From the LAT ...
The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence, U.S. officials said.U.S. officials promised last week to provide evidence of Iranian activities that led President Bush to announce Jan. 10 that U.S. forces would begin taking the offensive against Iranian agents who threatened Americans.
But some officials in Washington are concerned that some of the material may be inconclusive and that other data cannot be released without jeopardizing intelligence sources and methods. They want to avoid repeating the embarrassment that followed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when it became clear that information the administration cited to justify the war was incorrect, said the officials, who described the internal discussions on condition of anonymity.
"We don't want a repeat of the situation we had when [then-Secretary of State] Colin L. Powell went before the United Nations," said one U.S. official, referring to Powell's 2003 presentation on then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons program that relied on evidence later found to be false. "People are going to be skeptical."
Concern that the evidence may be bogus would seem like a decent reason not to release it.
--Josh Marshall
What would John Edwards do with his first 100 days as President? He's already got a plan.
--Greg Sargent
Hmmm. Good work by Adam Nagourney. He did the Biden story. And he runs the notorious quote with the highly misleading punctuation intact. Not news that was fit to print, I guess. But makes a better story.
--Josh Marshall
If there's anyone left who thinks there's much redeemable about Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) get ready to change your mind. Here he is at this morning's hearings for the nomination of Gen. Casey to be Army Chief of Staff. Remember that Casey was the top commander in Iraq. And according to the new Bush script he's responsible for ignoring Iraq's steady slide into anarchy over the last three years. All General Casey's fault. Bush would have gotten serious about security. Sent new troops. Done whatever. But Gen. Casey just kept him in the dark. And here's Sen. McCain going along with the malarkey.
It's like a show trial.
Casey was definitely part of what's happened in Iraq. He was the senior commander. He's responsible too. But to imagine that he led the president down the garden path? Please.
We've got Spencer Ackerman at the hearings and he'll be reporting in later at TPMmuckraker. Here's his preview from earlier this morning.
--Josh Marshall
Over at TPMmuckraker, Spencer Ackerman, we're very excited to say, will be sitting in for the next couple weeks.
Today, he'll be covering General George Casey's nomination hearing, where Casey's likely to rumble with Sen. John McCain (A-AZ) over the general's handling of Iraq. Why? Spencer explains.
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read: the U.S. struggles to keep track of who we're fighting in Iraq.
--Paul Kiel
The Duke Cunningham investigation is alive and well, it seems.
Indictments are reportedly coming for not only Brent Wilkes, one of the two defense contractors who made their living off of (allegedly) bribing Cunningham, but also Dusty Foggo, the former executive director at the CIA.
--Paul Kiel
From TPM Reader MW ...
I am curious how the stories of American saber rattling have come off in local media outlets like the 10/11pm news or the local paper. Most americans still get their daily dose of news from these sources. This seems to be a worthy challenge for the people powered reporting that TPM has made famous.
I'm curious too. What are you seeing on the local news?
--Josh Marshall
From the AP ...
Citing Iranian involvement with Iraqi militias and Tehran's nuclear ambitions, the Bush administration has shifted to offense in its confrontation with Iran — building up the U.S. military in the Persian Gulf and promising more aggressive moves against Iranian operatives in Iraq and Lebanon.The behind-the-scenes struggle between the two nations could explode into open warfare over a single misstep, analysts and U.S. military officials warn.
This is the preeminent, really the only question in American politics today: Do we want to go to war with Iran or not? With the escalating chaos in Iraq and the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, is it in our interests or not to get into a shooting war with Iran? The debate over the 'surge' of US troops into Baghdad is significant in its own way, but it pales in comparison to this one.
I've always viewed the fears that the White House would try expand the war into Iran with a mix of deep skepticism, fascination and latent foreboding. Logically, it makes no sense on any number of counts. But the last half dozen years has taught us all that that's simply not a significant obstacle. There are any number of ridiculous gambits I was sure these guys wouldn't try before they did try them.
Again, the 'sensible' interpretation of what's happening right now is that the administration is trying to regain control of the situation in Iraq. And to further that aim they're rattling their sabres at Iran to get them to back off and stop making trouble. That's the sensible explanation. But we're not dealing with sensible people. And much more important, the folks who are running this show are simply too stupid to be trusted to execute such a delicate and perilous feint.
I don't mean they're dumb people. I'm sure they have high IQs. Most went to prestigious universities. They have lists of accomplishments. But the record of the last six years shows so many mistakes, such a record of incapability and incompetence, so many misjudgements, screw-ups and boners that there's no other suitable word.
Through plan or imbecility (and most likely, given who were talking about, both) they're drifting toward war with Iran.
As I wrote last night, I think the new campaign of anonymous leaks suggesting Iranian involvement in the Najaf raid has rather less than no credibility. But even if you assumed, for the sake of discussion, that it were tied to, say, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and that (as the narrative goes) the attack was retaliation for the Erbil raid on the Iranian consulate, that still would not change the question we face: is it in our national interest to go to war with Iran or not?
Everything flows from the answer to that question. Tits for tats or who started what fade into the background. If the answers no, we should be calibrating our actions to avoid such an outcome, not taking actions likely to provoke it. We need a regional plan to walk this mess back from the brink rather than simply yanking every thread on this already frayed fabric and watching it disintegrate in front of us.
We've heard a few squawks and warnings from members of Congress. But now is the time for members of the House and the Senate to get serious about asserting some control over this rapid descent.
I've said this before. But perhaps it seems like hyperbole. So I'll say it again. The president's interests are now radically disjoined from the country's. We can handle a setback like Iraq. It really is a big disaster. But America will certainly surive it. President Bush -- in the sense of his legacy and historical record -- won't. It's all Iraq for him. And Iraq is all disaster. So, from his perspective (that is to say, through the prism of his interests rather than the country's -- which he probably can't separate) reckless gambits aimed at breaking out of this ever-tightening box make sense.
Think of it like this. He's a death row prisoner concocting a thousand-to-one plan to break out of prison. For him, those are good odds. The rest of us are doing three months for disorderly conduct. And he's trying to rope us into his harebrained scheme. Like I said, his interests are very different from ours.
Speak up. We're on the edge of the abyss.
--Josh Marshall
Sens. Levin (D) and Warner (R) agree on compromise anti-surge resolution with broad bipartisan support.
--Josh Marshall
Today was Justin Rood's last day at TPMmuckraker. We thank him and wish him the best. Here's his sign-off post.
--Josh Marshall
We note her passing with sadness and great respect: Molly Ivins, dead at 62.
--Josh Marshall
Statement out from Biden: "I deeply regret any offense my remark in the New York Observer might have caused anyone. That was not my intent and I expressed that to Senator Obama."
Late Update: Obama has one out too that came just before Biden's.
--Josh Marshall
Quick clarification: it was unclear in our prior post, but the audio of the interview with Biden was actually made available by The New York Observer in response to questions about Biden's phrasing.
Biden responds to The Politico about the quote firestorm here.
Late Update: For what it's worth, Biden, when pressed, actually told reporters he believes he "was quoted accurately" in his interview. I think that just means that these are the words he spoke in the interview. His press folks are certainly wise enough to tell him not to get in an argument about commas if he doesn't want to hop out of the fryinig pan into the fire. For our part, I stand on what I wrote below: The transcription of the interview was misleading when judged against the audio of what Biden actually said. The difference in punctuation was subtle but the difference in meaning was not. Transcriptions get put together quickly. And usually a comma added or omitted doesn't make a big difference. But this wasn't one of those times. It made a big difference. Listen to the audio and see whether you agree. -- jmm
--Paul Kiel
Bush is sending more troops -- but the ones already there don't have the equipment they need, a new Pentagon report says.
--Paul Kiel
Uh-oh. Audio of the Biden interview available. Coming in a minute.
Late Update: Okay, here's the link to the actual audio of the Biden interview. Biden still uses a series of words that are arguably racially charged ones in the context -- 'mainstream', 'articulate', etc. But there was a debate going on below about whether the transcription of the interview -- not including a key comma -- might have changed the meaning of Biden's words. And when you listen to the audio of what Biden said, I think it's clear that it's a misleading transcription.
Listen and let us know what you think.
Later Update: Also, a number of people have focused on Biden's use of the word 'clean'. This is one I don't get. This seems clearly to mean he's not tainted by corruption, which seems unobjectionable, not 'clean' in other senses of the word. Still, I think that Dems looking at this have to see this statement as not a landmine but a friggin' minefield, open to a series of very problematic and not unreasonable interpretations, even if some of the key points weren't nearly as bad as they were portrayed in the Observer transcription. In other words, if you're a Democrat evaluating presidential candidates, would you want to be in the middle of this debate over commas in October 2008? Didn't think so.
Still Later Update: TPM Reader TC checks in from Texas ... "The debate shouldn't be comma or no comma. There's clearly a period after "African-American." In fact, the interviewer interjects his own "yeah" during the pause after "African-American," which is followed by another pause, after which Biden continues with "Who's bright . . . ." I don't like Biden much (I can't think of anyone who loves to hear himself talk quite as much as Biden), but there's no "gotcha" here at all."
--Josh Marshall
Indictment of alleged Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes really, really, really close.
--Josh Marshall
But for a comma?
Two TPM Readers offer a contrary explanation of the Biden comment.
TPM Reader DS ...
OK, I'm not a big Biden fan, so I wouldn't be disappointed to see him drop out. But I have to say this: what if the Observer punctuated casually? That is, what if there is supposed to be a comma before 'who,' making it a non-restrictive relative clause:“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Thus he would mean Obama is both
a). the first mainstream African-American candidate for president
and
b). articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy
but not necessarily that he is the first African-American candidate to have these properties. This would be patronizing and stupid, but not the breathtakingly offensive sentiment suggested when the comma isn't there.
In speech, it's not always clear whether a speaker is using a restrictive or a non-restrictive relative, but in writing you have to decide which was meant, and use a comma or not. What if the Observer chose poorly?
Anyway, I thought that was worth offering. Thanks for your good work.
and TPM Reader MD ...
I think what we have is a case of a missing comma and a slightly-less-than-adroit extemporaneous comment from Sen. Biden. He said this: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy... I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” If you insert a comma after “who” and before “is,” the quote becomes an instance of Biden’s delineating Obama’s positive qualities, not one in which Biden denigrates all African-American (people, politicians, whatever) who have preceded Obama. I am a writer by trade and have listened to a lot of Biden on TV. I think the more likely occurrence is that the comma was omitted in transcription from spoken word to written word than that Biden, either intentionally or subconsciously, slurred African-Americans.
Thoughts?
My sense is that this is only partially exculpating at best. Even with the comma it's really condescending bordering on racist. And it would still probably mean that Biden's mouth presents a clear and present danger to Democratic electoral prospects no matter what he meant. Ending his candidacy wouldn't be preemption, just legitimate self-defense.
--Josh Marshall
You've probably already noticed this quote from Sen. Biden (D-DE) in which he manages to call either all previous African-American presidential candidates or possibly all other African-Americans in public life dumb, ugly and corrupt. The actual quote has him calling Sen. Obama (D-IL) "you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."
It's only fair to remember that only months ago we had Sen. Biden saying Indian-Americans were a veritable tribe of 7/11 owners. "You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."
The only thing more ridiculous than the 7-Eleven was his subsequent explanation in which he claimed that he was celebrating the fact that Indian-Americans were no longer ghettoized into high-paid, high-education jobs in engineering, computer science and medicine but were expanding into convenience store entrepreneurship. Sort of breaking through the glass floor, you might say.
I know that Biden is not a popular guy in many parts of the liberal blogosphere. But I think he's actually extremely knowledgeable on foreign policy matters. But I think at this point you have to say that Biden suffers from what one might with real generosity call chronic racial grandpaism. That is to say, the penchant for making comments that are not only racially offensive but also extremely silly and the sort of things that are sometimes excused or at least passed over from men, say, over 80 on the reasoning that they're from a different era and why get into it. Actually, the clock has probably even run out on that excuse when you figure that a man who is 80 today was forty in 1966. But however that may be, excuses that fly in the retirement community or family reunions just doesn't cut it in a man who aspires to the presidency. (Really can't wait to see him speak at the Arab-American dinner, can you?) Atrios is right. The shortest presidential campaign ever.
Late Update: TPM PO writes in ...
Something struck me: Senator Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 at the age of 29. I would suggest he's not so much a grandpa as he is a well-meaning, 1972-era liberal. You know, the kind that say Negro when trying, in an honest, well-meaning, earnest way, of complimenting 'those people.' [With the qualifier that he's good guy, with some personal tragedy and good deeds under his belt to mature his empathy, and so on.]
Fair enough. I had thought of adding into the original post that there doesn't seem to be any animus in these comments. But that's context not an excuse for someone in Biden's position.
Later Update: TPM Reader TW responds ...
I think it gives Biden way too much credit to say that he's just a well-meaning 1970s liberal. Recall his recent speech at a Rotary Club meeting in South Carolina, where he basically said he wishes Delaware had been part of the Confederacy. It sounds to me like he's just a bigot.
--Josh Marshall
Don't miss Chalmers Johnson writing at TPMCafe today about the precarious balance of democracy and empire.
--Paul Kiel
What a way for Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) to roll out his presidential campaign.
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy... I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read: the Iraqi government's not-so-sterling record of meeting benchmarks.
--Paul Kiel
Matt Yglesias has an interesting series of posts on his site about just what the big deal is when Republicans call the Democratic party the 'Democrat party'.
As it happens, a few months back I got an email from a TPM Reader who I think was a linguist. And he explained that there is something about the concatenation of syllables, the sound or structure of the phrase 'Democrat party' that actually sounds somehow inherently grating or awkward on the ears. When I got the note I think I was busy with something else. And I never really got a chance to work through and understand just what the guy was saying. I think I'll probably try to dig it up.
But that is a secondary point. The whole issue of 'Democrat' party -- other than as an example of Republican infantilism -- is an issue of respect or rather intentional and repeated expression of disrespect as a means of asserting dominance.
There's a certain conservative columnist named James X. who shall remain unnamed. At some point a few years back I had cause to exchange an email with him. And I called him 'Jim'. I don't think I gave it a second thought. I'm Josh or Joshua -- doesn't matter to me. But a short time later I got a half questioning, half barely repressed anger email from the guy asking whether I was intentionally disrespecting him by addressing him as 'Jim', the dimunitive form of the name. Now, as I say, it was accidental. I apologized and explained that it was totally unintentional. And if he preferred to be called James I would certainly do so. As it happens, in the intervening years, my lack of respect for him has grown apace. But I'd still always call him James and not Jim. And this is the point. You address people the way they choose to be addressed. You address them by what they consider to be their name. In the ordinary course of life, when people do otherwise, we rightly recognize that they're trying to pick a fight or demean the person in question.
It is, as Matt points out, another illustration of the 'bitch-slap theory of politics'. You assert dominance over someone by mangling their name and continuing to do so even after the correct pronunciation or style is pointed out. It's right off the schoolyard and it's no surprise that it's a stock and trade of this president.
--Josh Marshall
BusinessWeek ...
The Inspector General for the Defense Dept. is concerned that the U.S. military has failed to adequately equip soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially for nontraditional duties such as training Iraqi security forces and handling de