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By Weldon Berger, on March 30th, 2007
I think it’s great that congressional Democrats managed to keep their redeployment language in the military appropriations bills they passed this week. It’s a shame that the language won’t actually accomplish anything material even if Bush doesn’t veto the bills.
I’m not talking about the president’s insistence that he isn’t bound by laws he doesn’t like, or suggesting that the administration would find an Iran-Contra style solution to the problem of funding the war — not because I think those paths are off limits, but because they’re unnecessary. Bush may veto the eventual bill out of petulance or on the principle that Congress can’t tell him what to do, assuming that distinction can be made and that the reconciled version retains the redeployment language, but he doesn’t need to.
That’s because the bills don’t specify which troops would have to be withdrawn by sometime next year, presumably because that would constitute “micromanaging” the military; instead, they specify only which troops needn’t be withdrawn. Those include anyone protecting US or coalition personnel and facilities, anyone training Iraqi personnel, anyone engaged in counter-terrorism operations and anyone supporting the troops executing those missions. If I had to guess, I’d say that those activities will turn out to require something in the neighborhood of 130,000 troops, give or take 20%.
Continue reading Democrats on Iraq: Throwing the bunny into the briar patch
By Weldon Berger, on March 27th, 2007
If you could draw one overriding conclusion from current and past administration scandals, it might be that Republicans, at least the ones in power, have little use for democracy. They like the trappings but they distrust and fear the actual process.
The scandal now dominating the news neatly illustrates the point in several ways. First, at least some of the fired US attorneys were dismissed for not pursuing voter fraud and corruption cases against Democrats aggressively enough to suit the White House. The goal was to influence elections overtly by targeting Democratic participants in them and, more subtly and more perniciously, to call into question the legitimacy of close elections in general by using bogus or questionable investigations of specific elections to create an expectation of fraud.
Congressional oversight is another target of the scheme. The Senate is constitutionally mandated to scrutinize US attorney nominees. By using a now-rescinded Patriot Act provision to bypass the confirmation process, the administration directly attacked a fundamental democratic precept. In the administration’s view, Congress has no business interfering with the executive in any fashion, and the executive has every right to bend government offices to politics rather than policy. Throughout the attorney scandal, administration officials have insisted that the practices are perfectly legitimate; it’s just the explanation of them that was inadequate in this instance.
Continue reading A pocket guide to GOP corruption and Constitutional rape
By Eric Brewer, on March 22nd, 2007
In which Tony dodges questions about the U.S. Attorney firings… . . . → Read More: Playing dodgeball with Tony Snow
By Keifus, on March 21st, 2007
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: B
David Kamp, The United States of Arugula: B+
Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: B
Growing up, I lived, without grasping its significance, in a foodie’s paradise of local produce and meat and poultry, an abundance of natural goodness supplied by an ecological- and health-conscious family. Lately, I’ve been reminiscing on that, and thinking about sustainability and cooking, and all that good food that I miss from my childhood. These three books helped vet the curiousity and the nostalgia both.
Continue reading Foodie Central: Three Books Reviewed
By Weldon Berger, on March 16th, 2007
A Government Accountability Office document says that the Pentagon won’t tell Congress what shape the Iraqi army is in. GAO official Joseph A. Christoff said in a prepared statement to a House armed services subcommittee that the Department of Defense is refusing to provide the GAO and Congressional committees with the department’s Transition Readiness Assessments, monthly reports that include detailed information on the training and capabilities of Iraqi army units.
Christoff’s testimony before the subcommittee on oversight and investigations was aimed at identifying obstacles to the creation of Iraqi police and military forces capable of functioning independently of US forces and advisers. He mentioned the Pentagon’s unwillingness to share the TRAs eight times in the course of his relatively brief statement. In GAO-speak, which typically couches complaints in understated and dry terms, that’s the equivalent of screaming at the top of your lungs into an arena-sized sound system.
What Christoff said, repeatedly, is that without the information collected in the TRAs, Congress has no way of knowing whether Pentagon requests for funding to train and support Iraqi troops are reasonable, and no way of knowing whether the expenditures are producing results. These are obviously things the Pentagon doesn’t want Congress to know, probably for the usual reasons: the administration doesn’t think Congress has any business butting into the matter, and the news isn’t good.
Continue reading Pentagon withholds critical Iraqi troop info from Congress
By Weldon Berger, on March 16th, 2007
Some anonymous Bush administration officials appear to be trying to play Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf. A March 11 New York Times story reports that at least some officials think the death of Musharraf, whose military government is in serious political trouble, would have little impact on the country’s relationship with the US and would be unlikely to spark an attempt by religious radicals to seize power there.
This is not something you want to hear coming from an administration with a flawlessly disastrous record of predicting the course of events in troubled countries, but the way the story is written suggests that someone in the administration speaking on deep background floated the idea to Mazzeti — and thence to Musharraf’s critics and rivals in Pakistan — that a Pakistan without Musharraf might not be such a bad thing.
Possibly the idea is to prompt Musharraf to take a more aggressive role in squelching the Taliban resurgence. Possibly it’s one of those things certain people do just for the hell of it.
Continue reading In which we learn that the nation of Pakistan is too stable
By Weldon Berger, on March 15th, 2007
Fox News chairman Roger Ailes gave a speech at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington last week. It was about what you would expect from Ailes: an assault on other news organizations and Democratic politicians, a sweeping misinterpretation of the First Amendment, a self-serving justification of the Fox News aversion to unbiased reporting.
The occasion was the Radio and Television News Directors Association First Amendment awards. Ailes was honored with the First Amendment Leadership award; other recipients of lesser honors included Kimberly Dozier of CBS and Bob Woodruff of ABC, both of whom were seriously injured while reporting from Iraq, and Philip Balboni, the founder of New England Cable News network.
Ailes’s speech was preceded by an elegiac slide show featuring Fox News personnel lauding him for being a great human being, the lone champion of unbiased news — Brit Hume’s contribution— and, according to Fox News correspondent Steve Centanni, “above all else, a people person.” The First Amendment was scarcely mentioned, and no one offered any examples of Ailes defending or advancing it other than his efforts to secure the release of Centanni and his cameraman when the two were kidnapped in Gaza. It’s not as though no other organization has suffered employees taken hostage or worked hard to free them, but in Ailes’s case that apparently merits offering him the opportunity exercise his right to free speech by spitting on whoever displeases him and on the organization presenting the award. (In fairness, the RTNDA asked for it; they knew what they were getting.)
Continue reading Roger Ailes, a soldier for the First Amendment
By Eric Brewer, on March 13th, 2007
The Bush Doctrine’s return on investment is unattractive… . . . → Read More: Global War on Terror™ Annual Progress Report
By Keifus, on March 9th, 2007
“Daddyyyyy.”
Oh, crap.
“Daddy, can I use the computer?”
“Not right now, sweetie. You need to do your homework. And I’m using it right this minute anyway.”
“Daddy?”
“Homework.”
“Daddy, did you write your book report on The Wee Free Men yet?
Continue reading Bedtime Reading: Two Books for Children Reviewed
By Weldon Berger, on March 7th, 2007
At Hullabaloo, Digby takes note that former administration toady Andrew Sullivan is now calling, in the wake of the Scooter Libby verdict, for the investigation and, should he not cooperate, the possible impeachment of Cheney in connection with the administration’s assault on Joe Wilson and the outing of his wife as a covert CIA agent. Sullivan’s sentiment, which mirrors that held by many people, is that Cheney wouldn’t have freaked out about Wilson and Libby would not have soldiered off to court unless there were some really good reason to do so, something along the lines of “the fact they were terrified that the full details of their pre-war WMD knowledge would come out.”
At one point I counted myself among those who thought there might be some specific, criminal act that required concealment, possibly the involvement of Cheney’s office in the forged documents behind the administration’s claim that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from Niger. Now, I’m not at all so sure.
In an earlier post, Digby invoked Dick Nixon while describing Karl Rove’s role in the Wilson affair, and if there’s one single thing that stands out about the crimes that did Nixon in, it’s that they were entirely unnecessary.
Continue reading Blogs on Parade: Scooter’s day in the barrel
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Word of the Decade Ignoranus: An ignorant asshole.
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