In a post below, Steve Benen noted that the national head of the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), Gary Kurpius, is telling the Marines and the Pentagon to back off their investigation of three former Marines who wore unmarked desert fatigures to an Iraq War protest in Washington, DC. Most of you probably already know this. But it bears noting that the VFW is an extremely conservative organization -- not in the Movement conservative sense, but about as down-the-line as you get in terms of cultural conservatism and reflexive hostility to pretty much any sort of anti-war protest. I give Kurpius credit for taking a principled position on this. But I think this is also a measure of just how unpopular this war and this president have become.
--Josh Marshall
Reading over the reports of this alleged JFK terror plot, I again feel the odd sense of dissonance and contradiction one always gets reading the initial reports of these alleged terror plots. A knowledgeable reader tells me the whole concept of this attack basically doesn't make sense -- in the sense that you could get the sort of chain reaction some folks on tv are talking about. And, indeed, this key fact is tepidly noted in the coverage itself, where DHS officials concede that the plot "was not technically feasible."
The relevant information from this report at CNN suggests that the key plotter, Russell Defreitas, is not a bright man.
Here's part of the transcript of one of his conversations with the FBI ...
"Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow ... they love JFK -- he's like the man. If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It's like you can kill the man twice."
Defreitas also appeared to think that blowing up a gas line at JFK would bring the US economy to its knees: "Even the Twin Towers can't touch it. This can destroy the economy of America for some time."
--Josh Marshall
Punishing war vets for speaking out
Given the circumstances, "a little common sense" sounds like it's desperately needed, but in short supply.
The nation's largest combat veterans group on Friday urged the military to "exercise a little common sense" and call off its investigation of a group of Iraq war veterans who wore their uniforms during anti-war protests.
"Trying to hush up and punish fellow Americans for exercising the same democratic right we're trying to instill in Iraq is not what we're all about," said Gary Kurpius, national commander of the 2.4 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars.
"Someone in the Marine Corps needs to exercise a little common sense and put an end to this matter before it turns into a circus," Kurpius said.
The main controversy surrounds Marine Cpl. Adam Kokesh, who attended a recent Iraq war protest with other veterans. He wore fatigues -- with military insignia removed. Kokesh is no longer on active duty, and he received his honorable discharge after one combat tour in Iraq, though he remains part of the Individual Ready Reserve.
Apparently, his attendance at the protest event was enough to spark a controversy. Kokesh was photographed at the event, and is now under administrative review. If punished, Kokesh could lose out on educational and other benefits he is eligible to receive, and may no longer qualify for job opportunities that require a security clearance.
It's a curious way to support our veterans, isn't it?
--Steve Benen
JFK plot
The plot was, as the saying goes, "more aspirational than operational," but the arrests of these suspected terrorists are obviously good news.
A suspected terrorist cell planned a "chilling" attack to destroy John F. Kennedy International Airport, kill thousands of people and trigger an economic catastrophe by blowing up a jet fuel artery that runs through populous residential neighborhoods, authorities said Saturday.
Three men were arrested and one was being sought in Trinidad on Saturday. In an indictment charging the four men, one of them is quoted as saying the foiled plot would "cause greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks," destroying the airport, killing several thousand people and destroying parts of Queens, where the line runs underground.
One of the suspects, Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen native to Guyana and former JFK employee, said the airport was a symbol that would put "the whole country in mourning."
With the news just breaking this afternoon, some of the details are still a little sketchy, but there was no plan for an imminent attack -- the plot, the AP noted, "never got past the planning stages." With that in mind, we don't yet know whether this plot was along the lines of the bizarre "Seas of David" cult in Miami, which posed no meaningful threat to anyone, or something more serious.
We also don't know if this is similar to the plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge (which was less serious than advertised), the British hijacking plot (which didn't stand up well to scrutiny), or the plot to attack Los Angeles' Library Tower (which turned out to be far less serious than we'd been led to believe).
That said, given what we know this afternoon, it appears to be a successful law-enforcement/counter-terrorism operation. The officials who were involved with uncovering the plot and arresting the suspects deserve the nation's gratitude.
It's good to know that intelligence gathering and law-enforcement efforts -- the very techniques Bush and his allies have ridiculed as ineffective -- can make a difference.
--Steve Benen
Iran policy divides Bush gang
About a week ago, Steve Clemons raised eyebrows throughout the political world with a report on the "race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy." As Clemons described it, Cheney's team is actively circumventing the president's team in order to instigate a U.S. conflict with Iran.
Clemons' report was bolstered by comments from the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei, who told BBC Radio this week that a war with Iran is a serious possibility because of "new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran.'" He didn't identify the "crazies," but warned of those who "have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force."
Like people in, say, the Vice President's office?
In interviews, people who have spoken with Mr. Cheney's staff have confirmed the broad outlines of the reports, and said that some of the hawkish statements to outsiders had been made by David Wurmser, a former Pentagon official who is now the principal deputy assistant to Mr. Cheney for national security affairs. The accounts were provided by people who expressed alarm about the statements, but refused to be quoted by name.
Yesterday, Condi Rice insisted that the entire Bush gang is on the same page...
"The president of the United States has made it clear that we are on a course that is a diplomatic course," Ms. Rice said here. "That policy is supported by all of the members of the cabinet, and by the vice president of the United States."
...but Rice's deputies apparently aren't convinced.
Ms. Rice's assurance came as senior officials at the State Department were expressing fury over reports that members of Vice President Dick Cheney's staff have told others that Mr. Cheney believes the diplomatic track with Iran is pointless, and is looking for ways to persuade Mr. Bush to confront Iran militarily.
And what might Cheney's office have to say about one of his top national security aides (and one of the administration's most notorious neocons) advocating war with Iran?
[A senior Bush administration official] said, "The vice president is not necessarily responsible for every single thing that comes out of the mouth of every single member of his staff."
First, that's not much on a denial.
Second, as Kevin noted, "I'm sure Wurmser will be fired any day now."
--Steve Benen
Meet Bush's new Surgeon General
I vaguely recall a time when Surgeon General was a big deal. C. Everett Koop became a prominent national figure in the 1980s, and seemed to take the position from honorary title to leading public health official.
Other than Joycelyn Elders, who gained unwelcome notoriety, the position hasn't garnered much attention since. Quick: name the last Surgeon General. If you said, "Richard Carmona," give yourself a prize. If you know that Kenneth Moritsugu has been the acting Surgeon General for the last year, you're probably either a relative or an employee of Dr. Moritsugu.
However, with Bush's new nominee for the job, James Holsinger, we're probably going to hear quite a bit more about the position.
[Holsinger and his wife] founded Hope Springs Community Church in a warehouse at 1109 Versailles Road. Calhoun called it a socially diverse congregation with a "very vital recovery ministry." It serves the homeless and those with addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex; and it has a Spanish-language Hispanic congregation with its own pastor. [...]
Hope Springs also ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian, Calhoun said.
"We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle," he said. "We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle."
Holsinger, in his capacity as a high-ranking official in the United Methodist Church, also opposed allowing a lesbian to be an associate pastor, and backed another pastor who refused to let a gay man join his church.
The Surgeon General needs Senate confirmation. Expect interesting hearings.
--Steve Benen
Biden comes awfully close to the race card
Much of the political world snickered this week when most of the Democratic presidential candidates announced that they will not participate in the Congressional Black Caucus Institute's scheduled debate, because the event will be co-sponsored and aired by the Republicans' Fox News Channel. When the dust settled, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel -- arguably the three candidates with the longest odds at winning the nomination -- were the only hopefuls who had agreed to attend.
This isn't necessarily a surprise. Obviously, candidates who are struggling to break through want as much exposure and publicity as they can get.
But Biden ought to know better than to start going down this road.
"The single most important constituency in the Democratic Party -- African Americans, led by the Black Caucus, which are the leadership of the black community, asked us to show for a debate and we're not going to show up?" he said.
"Let me put it this way -- if the African American community stayed home or voted Republican, we're not going to elect another president."
Kucinich issued a statement this week with similar rhetoric, arguing that Clinton, Edwards, and Obama decided to "snub" the CBC. "This is particularly troublesome because the concerns of African Americans should take precedent over what network is broadcasting the debate," he said.
Obviously, in the midst of a presidential primary fight, candidates are going to throw the occasional elbow, and score cheap points when they can. And in this case, neither Biden nor Kucinich explicitly accused their rivals of not caring about black people -- but they came rather close.
The heart of this flap is whether Democratic candidates, vying for the Democratic nomination, should legitimize the Republicans' news network. Two-thirds of the field has shown the good sense to effectively tell the CBC Institute, "You picked the wrong co-sponsor."
If Biden and/or Kucinich want to make the case that Fox News is a perfectly legitimate, credible news outlet, and that Democrats should have no qualms about appearing at a FNC event, fine. Let them make the case.
But instead, they've chosen to play the race card. Indeed, Biden's response to questions about this focused on the role African-American voters play in national elections, as if this were somehow relevant. It was hardly a subtle message -- to bypass this debate is necessarily to give the African-American community the cold-shoulder. As Biden and Kucinich see it, they care about black people; their rivals care about Fox News' partisanship.
This is cheap and they know it.
--Steve Benen
Dems in disarray? A new study finds that House Democrats are actually showing a record level of voting unity. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Lewis to retire?
Will bamboozler extraordinaire Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) exit stage right next year? According to Bob Novak, he will.
Republican sources on Capitol Hill and in California say Rep. Jerry Lewis, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee who has been criticized on ethical grounds, will not seek a 16th term next year.
Lewis came under fire last year for pouring millions of dollars worth of earmarks into his heavily Republican southern California district. He has not apologized and vigorously defended himself behind closed doors in the House Republican Conference.
Given the evidence, Lewis' lack of apologies is the least of his problems.
--Steve Benen
A failure to communicate in Milwaukee
What we have in Milwaukee is a failure to communicate.
Apparently, Michael McGee, a Milwaukee alderman, was arrested this week after the FBI recorded him chatting with some acquaintances about an alleged plan to murder someone. McGee's lawyer said this is a big misunderstanding due to federal officials lacking street cred -- McGee's plan to have someone "bust up and beat down" isn't as bad as it sounded.
Will Thomas fleshes out the disturbing details in today's edition of "All Muck is Local."
--Steve Benen
Congress Wants Ashcroft's Testimony
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, come on down.
The Senate and House Intelligence Committees are asking former attorney general John Ashcroft to testify about a March 2004 hospital-room confrontation during which he refused to sign off on a continuation of President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program, according to congressional and administration sources.
The sources, who asked not to identified talking about sensitive matters, said the Senate Intelligence Committee has tentatively scheduled a closed-door hearing for later this month. The panel plans to question Ashcroft, his former chief of staff David Ayres and former deputy attorney general James Comey about a heated dispute with the White House that roiled the Justice Department three years ago. The House committee is also planning a separate closed-door hearing with Ashcroft, according to a spokeswoman for Ashcroft.
The requests for Ashcroft's testimony reflect the mounting frustration on the part of committee leaders in both chambers who feel they have been denied vital information about the wiretapping issue by the Bush administration. Despite having received numerous private briefings from senior administration officials over the last year, members were stunned to learn just how deeply troubled the Justice Department was about aspects of the program -- a glimpse they got only when Comey publicly testified about the program at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month.
Might Ashcroft be willing to accept this invitation? His spokesperson said he is out of town and is unavailable to discuss the matter until next week.
Newsweek added that there will be a meeting on Monday between Senate Intelligence Committee aides and Justice Department officials to discuss the "contours" of the testimony. If Ashcroft declined to cooperate, "the committees could ultimately issue subpoenas."
--Steve Benen
Ingraham 'outspoken'
Maybe I've let my subscription lapse on Far-Right Talking Points Weekly, but at what point did conservatives decide that the word "outspoken" is insulting?
Crooks & Liars posted a surprising video from CNN in which conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham shared her thoughts on the president's immigration policy (she doesn't like it). Before a commercial break CNN's John Roberts told viewers, "Will the new immigration reform bill fix the problem? We'll ask the outspoken Laura Ingraham about that next."
Apparently, that's no longer acceptable in conservative circles.
INGRAHAM: By the way, John, how did you introduce me for this segment before the break. The outspoken Laura Ingraham. Do you guys introduce liberal commentators that way? I'm going to check.
ROBERTS: Yeah, we do actually.
INGRAHAM: OK, I'm going to check that.
ROBERTS: Are you denying that you're outspoken Laura?
INGRAHAM: No, why would you say that?
ROBERTS: I just think that we're appropriately characterizing you.... You're definitely outspoken. You were outspoken about immigration on Wednesday's show.
INGRAHAM: How about radio talk show host and author. That's quite effective.
How does one know that conservative political correctness has gone over the edge? When "outspoken" becomes a point of contention.
Post Script: For what it's worth, Michael Medved and Fox News' Chris Wallace described Ingraham the same way, and she didn't seem to mind.
--Steve Benen
Annals of poorly edited press releases.
This is pretty damn funny. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) was putting out a press release praising first responders. In the process of putting the press release together, the press aide composing it wrote in some editorial comments to the effect that first responders don't really do jack.
Unfortunately those glosses got left in the copy when the thing was released, leaving the senator to say ...
"First responders in Colorado have recently provided critical services in the face of blizzards and tornados," added Allard. "Since I don’t think first responders have really done anything significant in comparison to their counterparts who have dealt with real natural disasters, I have no idea what else to say here..."
Allard isn't running for reelection. Good idea.
--Josh Marshall
When bureaucracy meets bamboozlement, or Where're Pynchon and DeLillo When We Need Them.
According to the Post, despite the fact that even the most confirmed yahoo now concedes that late Saddam-era Iraq had no WMDs, the UN has not and apparently cannot get around to shutting down the office charged with monitoring Saddam's weapons and disarming the now-disheaded Saddam Hussein.
Writes Colum Lynch: "Every weekday, at a secure commercial office building on Manhattan's East Side, a team of 20 U.N. experts on chemical and biological weapons pores over satellite images of former Iraqi weapons sites. They scour the international news media for stories on Hussein's deadly arsenal. They consult foreign intelligence agencies on the status of Iraqi weapons. And they maintain a cadre of about 300 weapons experts from 50 countries and prepare them for inspections in Iraq -- inspections they will almost certainly never conduct, in search of weapons that few believe exist."
The reality of the situation is even more comic and bizarre then the headline. Even I wasn't completely sure I understood it after reading Lynch's article in the Post. But the essence of it seems to be this: the US and the Brits want to shut the thing down, but the Russians say the word has to come from the inspectors themselves. The inspectors, in turn, say they can't definitively say that Saddam/Iraq has been disarmed because they haven't been given access to the records of the Coalition-led Iraq Study Group.
Meanwhile, the current head of the inspectors, a Greek weapons expert named Dimitri Perricos doesn't really seem to want to give up the gig. Indeed, Perricos warns that the Iraqi inspectorate should be kept going because insurgents, terrorists or some new Iraqi government could well reconstitute the weapons at some point in the future. (Hey, where was this guy when Bush and Cheney and Hanity really needed him, right?) Presumably, Martians might also reconstitute the weapons. But he seems not yet to have played this card.
We quote form the Post quoting Perricos ...
"Look, Iraq is not Denmark," he said. "They've made botulin, anthrax, VX, sarin; they've made the whole spectrum of horrifying items, and they've used them. We don't know how things are going to develop in the region, and we want to be sure there are some controls."Last month, Perricos showed the U.N. commission's board satellite imagery of plundered Iraqi chemical factories that produce chlorine, which has been used by Iraqi insurgents in chlorine-bomb suicide attacks. He warned that insurgents may obtain more deadly chemical weapons on the black market, according to U.N. officials.
You get the sense the Russians are getting a bit of a kick out of this.
--Josh Marshall
A new poll finds that the American public gives Rudy and Hillary the best odds of winning the nominations of their respective parties. That and more political news of the day in our Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Just a lil' more background on Karl Rove, Alabama and William Canary.
As the article in this morning's Times explains, William Canary -- the guy who allegedly said he'd talked to Rove about getting the DOJ to take care of Don Siegelman -- is the head of something called the Business Council of Alabama.
The BCoA happens to be the GOP group that brought Rove to Alabama in the early 1990s to help flip the state's Supreme Court to the GOP. My old pal Josh Green detailed the relationship in great depth in this November 2004 article in The Atlantic Monthly.
So, we can be quite sure that Canary knows Rove very well.
The article also explains how Rove used the vote fraud bamboozlement and charges that his client's opponent was a pedophile to win a court race. But, that's just a bonus.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmmm. That adds a little spice to the mix. I noted earlier today that attorneys for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D) got an affidavit from a Republican lawyer from Alabama who says she was on a conference call in which the husband of the US Attorney in the case said "his girls" were going to take care of Siegelman. Now Time has the actual affidavit. And it includes this quote ...
Canary said "not to worry — that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman," the Simpson affidavit says.
Now, even for those of us who've been hot on the trail of the Attorney Purge should recognize that there are a lot of legitimately corrupt pols that will try to use the scandal to skate. But this seems like a lot more than smoke or vague allegations.
The affidavit is from Dana Jill Simpson, an apparently respected Republican lawyer from the state. William Canary, is a GOP operative with close ties to Rove, according to the Times. And his wife is the US Attorney in the jurisdiction in question.
If he said he talked to Rove and that Rove said he'd contacted the Department of Justice about pursuing Siegelman, I think this requires a much closer look.
--Josh Marshall
I think I'm starting to understand part of Fred Thompson's presidential strategy -- to connect himself to as many Bush administration scandals as possible, which is a very canny strategy. As John Dean points out here Thompson is perhaps the most prominent public advocate for a pardon for Scooter Libby as well as a frequent source of false statements about the Libby prosecution. He's also considering hiring Tim Griffin, star player in the US Attorney Purge scandal, as his presidential campaign manager.
Griffin, remember, is the Rove deputy who was appointed US Attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas under the USA Patriot Act. (Another factoid: We haven't reported all the details yet, but it was, ironically, Griffin's loose lips, in a very roundabout way, that played an important role in bringing the scandal to the front pages.)
I assume that Thompson will probably be working to insinuate himself into other Bush administration scandals. So let us know if you find other examples.
Late Update: Thompson has been popping up in so many places preaching the Scooter gospel, I was wondering: did he get hired to represent, advocate, whatever on behalf of getting Scooter a pardon? We contacted Thompson's spokesperson, Mark Corallo (who's also worked for the Scooter fund and Karl Rove), and asked if Thompson has received any cash for his advocacy. Answer: No, says Corallo.
--Josh Marshall
Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D) was convicted on seven counts of public corruption last year. And he's scheduled to be sentenced on June 26th. The Times today has an article about Siegelman's attempts to stay out of prison and, in particular, the fact that his defense has now come forward with an affidavit from an attorney which arguably places his prosecution into the context of the US Attorney Purge and the larger politicization it was a part of.
The relevant passage of the pieces states ...
Now they have an affidavit from a lawyer who says she heard a top Republican operative in Alabama boast in 2002 that the United States attorneys in Alabama would “take care” of Mr. Siegelman. The operative, William Canary, is married to the United States attorney in Montgomery, Leura G. Canary. Mr. Canary, who heads the Business Council of Alabama, was an informal adviser to Bob Riley, a Republican, who defeated Mr. Siegelman in 2002.Earlier, Mr. Canary worked in the White House under President Bush’s father and has close ties to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s top political strategist.
In the affidavit, the lawyer, Jill Simpson, said Mr. Canary’s remark was made in a conference call with her and Rob Riley, Governor Riley’s son and campaign manager.
Ms. Simpson said Mr. Canary assured the younger Mr. Riley that “his girls would take care of” Mr. Siegelman before he had a chance to run for the governor’s seat in 2006 and identified “his girls” as Leura Canary and Alice Martin, the United States attorney in Birmingham.
Now, on the other side of the equation is the fact that Canary recused herself from the case in response to Siegelman's complaints and the case was run by a career prosecutor who says he ran the whole show by himself with no input from Canary.
But let's set that aside for a second. Federal prosecutors are asking the judge to sentence Siegelman to 30 years in prison. Thirty years!
Now, given my focus on public corruption in the last few years, far be it from me to call for leniency on crooked pols. But this strikes me as wildly out of line with the sentences I've seen in the last couple years. For some context, Siegelman was acquitted on 25 counts and convicted on seven. With those charges Siegelman didn't pocket any money himself but rather, in the words of the Times, persuaded a wealthy businessman "to pay $500,000 to retire the debt of a political group that had campaigned to win voter approval for a state lottery."
Compare this to Duke Cunningham, perhaps the most brazen and audacious bribetaker in recent decades. Duke to cash payments from multiple federal contractors in exchange for securing defense contracts. Duke got eight years and four months in prison. Duke pleaded out, which probably took some time off his sentence. But nothing Siegelman was convicted of seems even remotely in Duke's league and yet they want to give him a sentence almost four times as long?
What am I missing?
--Josh Marshall
Rudy's latest puzzling attack on Hillary: He hits her for promising to restore peace and prosperity.
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read: back in 2001, the U.S. Army looked to the Soviets and Chinese for model interrogation techniques.
--Paul Kiel
Alter on Iraq ...
So why the move to permanent bases in Iraq? For years, I have been reluctant to embrace the oil theory of American policymaking in the Middle East. I’ve subscribed to the notion that oil is only part of a complex set of strategic, political and moral issues animating American interests. I still believe that in the short term. Bush and the few remaining supporters of his policy are motivated by more than oil. They want to avoid a failed state in the middle of a volatile region.But what does that aim have to do with permanent bases? The only two reasons to station troops in the Middle East for half a century are protecting oil supplies (reflecting a pessimistic view of energy independence) outside the normal channels of trade and diplomacy, and projecting raw military power. These are the imperial aims of an empire. During the cold war, charges of U.S. imperialism in Korea and Vietnam were false. Those wars were about superpower struggles. This time, the “I word" is not a left-wing epithet but a straightforward description of policy aims—yet another difference from those two older wars in Asia.
--Josh Marshall
Conservative Catholics across the country organize to defeat Rudy Giuliani. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Breaking on CNN: White House counselor Dan Bartlett resigning.
Update: More from the AP: he's "resigning to begin a career outside of government."
--Paul Kiel
Fired McCain evangelical outreach campaign aides: Campaign just wanted an easy hook-up, no long term commitment.
--Josh Marshall
I always come to bash Mort Kondracke far more in sorrow than glee. But the sentiments are so silly and nonsensical that I simply must soldier on. Here in Roll Call (sub.req.) Kondracke explains how President Bush's catastrophic folly in Iraq is equally the fault of Republicans and Democrats.
The headline: "Kondracke: Bush Nears Debacle in Iraq, but Democrats Can’t Be Trusted Either"
Late Update: TPM Reader KD points out you can read the whole thing sans firewall at RealClearPolitics. Let the nonsensical moral equations roll!
--Josh Marshall
The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors' rebellion over President Bush's immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, Ralph Z. Hallow will report Friday in The Washington Times.Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee's chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff last week and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, the fired staffers told The Times.
--Josh Marshall
Democratic Congressional leaders under fire over Iraq have a high-profile defender: Al Gore. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
It's amazing 
how picky people are nowadays.
A big oil company whose executives have been indicted for bribing multiple Alaska politicians can't even be in charge of renovating the state's senior senator's house without people making it like there's something fishy going on.
Find out about Sen. Stevens (R-AK) latest travails.
--Josh Marshall
Art Brodsky: three cheers for Edwards and Gore for their leadership in the arcane but important world of telecom policy.
--Andrew Golis
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) on the newly announced White House policy ...
"The White House announcement that they view South Korea as the model for a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq is further evidence of how dangerously out of touch with reality this administration is."On a strictly historical level, the comparison is comical. A high school student could tell you that there are virtually no similarities between the Korea and Iraq. The administration's inept attempts to come up with tortured historical analogies to try to justify a failed policy should be another reminder just how little credibility they have on the issue.
"The frightening truth is that there are obviously people within the Bush administration who believe that it is a good idea to occupy Iraq military on a permanent basis, which is why we have fought so hard in Congress to establish a clear policy to prevent permanent military bases in Iraq.
"The overwhelming majority of Iraqis want an end to the occupation, and for the White House to suggest that it will continue for another fifty years, or perhaps permanently, only fuels the insurgency and further endangers our troops.
"The American people are also calling for an end to the occupation, and the fact that the administration has responded by saying they think the occupation should be permanent just underlines not only how out of touch they are, but how critical it is for Congress to intervene to bring an end to this failed policy."
--Josh Marshall
U.S. Attorney who was on firing short-list mulls a 2008 challenge to Dem Rep. Chris Carney in Pennsylvania.
--Greg Sargent
TPM Reader JR writes ...
Re your argument that the quest for oil is a parsimonious explanation for the Iraq war. I have long doubted this proposition. Big Oil may be venal in its pursuit of profit, but it has an intimate knowledge of non-western political structures, and it's far from stupid. These interests would have known from the start that a cobbled together, post-colonial state like Iraq couldn't be invaded without catstrophic consequences. This set me wondering, though. I never did come across any substantial report on what Big Oil actually thought as this loony-tunes adventure popped up in the night. I don't mean the paid mouth-pieces but the power managers within the companies - those advised by anthropologists, political scientists, and other experts who actually have a clue about the workings of the real world.
I think this gets at one of the central confusions of this debate. When you say it's about controlling the oil, that's not the same as saying that the oil companies themselves -- ExxonMobil, Shell, etc. -- want to own the oil in the ground or want more generous concessions from the governments. They probably do. But I don't think this is what that's about. The oil companies, in case you haven't noticed, make a decent amount of money under the current system of working with the local oligarchies and kleptocracies in the countries in question.
This is about the US controlling the region itself, having troops on the ground and structures in place so that none of the nominal governments in the region can act on their own without US assent. That's a whole different question than which companies have the right to pump the stuff out of the ground.
--Josh Marshall
Another voter fraud casualty?
Fingerprints of Republican voter fraud kingpin Mark "Thor" Hearne appear on firing of U.S. Attorney Todd Graves in Kansas City.
--Paul Kiel
A new poll undermines one of the Rudy campaign's key talking points about the strength he'd have in a general election.
--Greg Sargent
Shock and disappointment seemed to be the prevalent reactions to the recent Democratic compromise on the Iraq funding bill. Whether you agree or disagree with the bill itself, it makes little sense to be surprised when the Democrats were telegraphing the move in advance. We explain in today’s episode of TPMtv ...
Late Update: For a summary of today's episode, click here.
--Ben Craw
TPM Reader DM chimes in ...
I think saying that our current adventures are all about the oil is only half right. I think that it’s more about political economy broadly speaking, with oil being a necessary factor in the case of the Middle East. Since the dawn of neoliberalism in the 1970s and its takeoff as a grand strategy in the 1980s, a key ideological aim of American policy makers from the Reagan administration through the Clinton administration and up to Bush II has been fostering neoliberal economic policies around the globe: freer trade, rule by law (necessary for the predictability in rules that transnational firms seek), an animus against price fixing, privatization, and anti-import substitution. If a nation or region has had any real potential as trade partner, consumer, and exporter of goods, the US has pushed neoliberal policies on them. Sometimes they have succeeded and sometimes they haven’t. And when the US has succeeded in causing policy changes, the results have been very mixed. The bottom line, though, is that neoliberalism – which is of course amenable to democracy – drives much of American foreign policy.
At any rate, when you look at the Middle East in 2001 (and now, frankly), you see the following: an economically important region whose lone key export industry is run by a cartel of states, not private firms. There is also very little rule of law in the economic sense, and price fixing has long been the order of the day. And a cartel of state-operated industries engaged in rampant price fixing goes against most of the core classical tenets of free trade.
When you look back to the 1990s, the neoliberal agenda acquired the veneer of common sense in the US among both liberals and conservatives. And you could see it pushed everywhere from Eastern Europe to Latin America to South Asia to parts of East Asia (particularly after the 1998 crash). It never penetrated the Middle East, however, despite the fact that unlike Africa (the other region beyond the pale when it came to neoliberal theory), it was economically very important.
So yeah, it’s about oil, but it’s about a much bigger thing as well: fostering a proverbial new world order of democratic capitalism based on neoliberal principles. The vision is hostile to socialism in all its guises, the corporatism that emerged in the interwar years, and to a lesser extent Keynesianism (because it’s harder to attack – Keynesianism’s intellectual and policy hold has remained powerful). Outside of economically unimportant states like Cuba and a host of African countries, Middle Eastern states are the last unreconstructed holdouts to this bold new era. The oil has allowed them to do this, but despite their oil wealth, they are by and large poor countries which outside of oil exports are very poorly integrated into the current global economic system. We want that to change.
Venezuela seems to be going in this direction now too, and our beef with them is about the same set of issues – state control, price fixing, reversing privatization, etc.
Even China has come around a bit, and while the US continues to complain about their economic policies, they’re too big for us to tackle.
This is all true, to an important extent. But let's add on a few more issues. In one sense what we are talking about here is simply US-backed globalization based on neo-liberal economic principles. This is a story we're all familiar with. In a modified form at least it's an agenda I agree with. And part of this broad meta-discussion is the role of US hard power in providing the undergirding of a neoliberal world economic order -- much as pre-WWI free trade era was an ideological and economic construct made possible by the dominance of the British Navy.
Okay, so set all that to one side. And let's get at another part of the question.
I think the perceived need to exercise de facto physical control over these oil resources points to a different goal, a different perception of the kind of world system we're trying to build and where we fit into it. It suggests that we no longer believe we will continue to have the sort of economic and political clout that will allow us to maintain our standards of living and power in the world. So we need to lock down physical control of the oil now with our military power -- the lagging indicator of national decline. In other words, we need to use it before we lose it. It's a very pessimistic vision. And a strategy that's really not panning out so well.
--Josh Marshall
More bizarre revelations from Democratic strategist and former Edwards/Kerry adviser Bob Shrum, who advised Edwards to vote for the Iraq War.
Turns out he worried that he himself would look left-wing if Edwards voted against the invasion.
--Greg Sargent
Paul Krugman has jumped into this week's TPMCafe Book Club, aka The Rumble in the Econ Department.
If you're just checking into the debate, read a quick summary of what you've missed here.
--Andrew Golis
Today's Must Read: what happens when a U.S. attorney raises the issue of possible discrimination against minority voters with the Justice Department division charged with protecting minority voters? What about when the affected voters are largely Democratic?
--Paul Kiel
Troops ask Lieberman during visit to Iraq when they're going home. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Another TPM Reader chimes in on our running debate ...
Of course oil is the motive, not just oil in iraq but in iran and saudi and kuwait. democracy is the sales pitch; it's not much of one since there's no intent to have democracy in saudi or kuwait but it's the sale pitch. some salesmen believe such pitches. but what follows is a national commitment to dependence on oil and a refusal to reengineer energy to stop global warming. this is perhaps in the long run the single worst aspect of the whole mad crazy cruel plan.The election of 08 is really about this plan versus some alternative. Hillary unfortunately is pretty much aligned with the bush plan, although she doesnt want to say so. she would not withdraw all the troops and would stay in the region forever.
This really is the big picture. I broach it in today's episode of TPMtv, which will be coming up later this morning. And I'm hoping we'll be able to get into it more in next week's episodes. We're fast approaching the time when the time required to organize an orderly departure from Iraq is longer than the time left in the Bush presidency. I'm not saying we let the dying continue in January 2009 and not try to do anything about it. I'm just trying to focus on the fact that as we try to end the president's disastrous policies now with the very blunt implements of congressional power we need to also be thinking of a broader strategy for what comes after Bush. Because getting out of Iraq is only one part of the puzzle, in some ways not even that big a part. We can't get back to where we were before the invasion. A whole series of dynamics have been let loose that can't be bottled back up just by getting out. Troop deployment in Iraq, combatting terrorism, the organization of our economy are all part of one puzzle. And the reader's right. That's the puzzle that's on the table in 2008. So who's talking about it? Who's addressing the issue at that level?
--Josh Marshall
One of my first introductions to how aggressively the post-2000 Rove GOP was going to use bogus 'vote fraud' stories to stop minorities from being able to vote came in the extremely close South Dakota senate race back in 2002. That was when Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) barely squeaked out a victory over Jon Thune (R). Thune, of course, came back two years later and defeated South Dakota's senior senator and then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D). If you go back and look through the TPM Search for 'South Dakota Fraud' you'll find a decent cross section of the reporting and writing I did on the subject in the spring and summer of 2002.
It was a riveting and also profoundly disgusting story. The whole rightwing noise machine from Sioux Falls to the Journal OpEd page spreading tales about the rampant vote fraud on the state's Indian reservations. For folks more familiar with how this stuff works in the South it was reminiscent of something from early in the 20th century or late in the 19th. And the aftermath was a lot like the cases we've learned about in the aftermath of the Attorney Purge. Lots of lurid stories and in the end usually it's left to some reasonably honest Republican officeholder to scrutinize the whole thing and have to announce that all the stories were bogus.
In any case, I mention all this because the LA Times has a good article out this evening explaining one of the key reasons that former Minnesota US Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger ended up on the firing list: took too strong a stand in favor of protecting the voting rights of the state's sizeable Native American population.
The state's Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer wanted to use her office to crack down on Native American voting. But apparently Heffelfinger wouldn't play ball.
Remember the Rove/Gonzales motto: Just because there's a 15th Amendment doesn't mean we have to take it lying down.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader WG on Bush, Korea and all the flailing spinmeisters at the White House ginning up more ideas of what the hell it is we're doing ...
I find it hard to believe that people are actually taking Bush's Korean analogy seriously with respect to Iraq. And, so far, the Democratic Congress seems to be giving him a pass on it. The timing was good, of course. He caught Congress with barbeque on their collective chin.As you noticed, there are some remarkable differences between Korea and Iraq, not the least of which is the fact that there never was a Korean resistance to our occupation of the South or to the Soviet occupation of the North, following the liberation, division and occupation of Korea after World War II. The struggle for unification between the South and the North came down to a rather traditional war and a test of military power between the US on one side and the Soviets and China on the other.
The proper analogy for Iraq is still Vietnam. While the government we created in South Korea was functional and able to control its population, the government we have created in Iraq, like the government we created in South Vietnam, has been largely irrelevant. In Iraq, Shiites and Sunnis are fighting us, our al Maliki government, the Kurds, each other and themselves in a last-man-standing free-for-all. While it's tempting to try to find some method to the madness of the last few years, you won't find it in a 50-year plan to control the oil supply of the Middle East. That's a pipe dream that didn't survive the occupation. By floating the Korean occupation as an analogy for Iraq, Bush has created one more leaky vessel to cling to as his presidency is swept into the backwaters of history. We may be in Afghanistan 50 years from now, but we won't be in Iraq.
To a degree I agree the whole 'control the natural resources of the region' idea didn't survive 'first contact', to paraphrase the US Army line about military planning. But denial is a useful thing. And a lot of the flailing about of recent years, actually most of it, has been an effort to find some way to sustain the original vision.
--Josh Marshall
I've gotten a number of responses from TPM Readers to my earlier post arguing that the only credible understanding of the guiding aim of the Iraq adventure -- at this point, with all we've learned -- is long-term domination of strategy natural resources. Or to put it more bluntly, to control the oil.
A few readers say this is too sour an assumption. TPM Reader BH, after outlining a democratizing theory, says ...
If you view the situation through the lens of neo-conservative foreign policy, it becomes clear that ensuring the successful installation of a functioning democracy in Iraq -- which will theoretically spark democratic revolutions across the Middle East, all benefitting the U.S. indirectly -- is the Bush administration's likely justification for maintaining a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq. At present, your logic seems to be: There are only two possible purposes of maintain a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq: nefarious (i.e., securing the world's oil supply), and virtuous (i.e., ensuring democracy for Iraq). Bush is nefarious. Therefore, the purpose of Bush's desire to maintain a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq is to secure the world's oil supply.
I don't find any of this persuasive. In fact, I find the whole bit of reasoning needlessly over-determined. I myself wrote a long article just before the war started, explaining how the grand neo-con plan was to institute an outward unfolding cycle of democratizing and chaos in the region that would ultimately topple almost all the governments in the region.
So is it about democracy after all? Of course, it is. But approaching the matter at this level of soft and vague generality is meaningless. If you're out to control a country, its territory or its resources, of course having the country be stable, respectable and democratic is a great thing. There are always these great tag lines that we want an Iraq that is democratic, is allied to the US in our various endeavors, doesn't threaten its neighbors, fights with us in the war on terror, etc. If nothing else, even the most cynical and militaristic of Americans -- the Dick Cheney type -- wants democracies so long as they are pliant and generate the right policies. But this is only the idealism of laziness, a fuzzy coating for real aims that sometimes the deeply cynical even half believe.
But given the particularities of the situation, the permanent occupation of Iraq simply isn't compatible with the aim of democratizing the country. It's just something that would be nice. And wouldn't it? Look at their words and their actions and you see that what the people in the White House mean by 'democratization' is to keep our troops in the country long enough that they start ordering their affairs peaceably and through orderly processes and decide through those processes that they want us to stay and continue using the country as a base for US power in the region. It's a grand have your cake and eat it too.
Is it all to get hold of the oil? I don't think large groups of people are often able to sustain such crude goals, at least not that baldly stated, even to themselves. But that's the heart of it. Bundled up in their own shallow and lazy thinking, the main actors' idea was that we can take this region where a lot of people really don't seem to like us much and if we just sit on them long enough we can get them to like us, because that's what happened in Germany and Japan, right?
--Josh Marshall
The president says so many stupid things about Iraq that it's sort of hard to know which ones to focus on. But in purely political terms if no others I would think the president's critics would want to focus in on what the White House said about how long the president thinks US troops should stay in Iraq.
By saying that Korea is the model for the US military presence in Iraq, the president is saying that he envisions the US military presence in Iraq continuing for many decades into the future.
Or let's put that in more stark terms, for most of you reading this post, the president envisions US troops remaining in Iraq long after you're dead.
Talking about drawdowns in late 2007 or by the end of 2008 is basically a joke, in other words. Countries can really only think on forty or fifty year horizons. So what this means is that the US military presence in Iraq is permanent.
As TPM Reader DS made clear in the email we posted earlier, there's only one goal that makes sense of that strategy. And that is to permanently dominate the cluster of oil fields in southern Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. Nothing to do with democracy, as though that needed saying. But also nothing to do with terrorism. We're permanently occupying Iraq to lock down the world oil supply.
But all that is commentary. The headline is clear enough to get the message out: the president wants US troops in Iraq for decades to come.
--Josh Marshall
Outta there!
The DOJ has just told the Arkansas congressional delegation that Tim Griffin -- star player in the US Attorney Purge story -- is out as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
His resignation is effective Friday, June 1st.
No word on whether Griffin is taking that job as campaign manager for Fred Thompson's incipient presidential campaign. (No, we kid you not ...)
--Josh Marshall