More Delicious Neo-Con Treats

Wondering about what's propelling that pesky insurgency in Iraq? Greg Palast has the answer. Apparently one of the big goals of the neoconservatives in Iraq was neither to make big bucks off the oil, nor to "liberate humanitarianism". Nope, it was to:

The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas

Sadly, the insurgents put the "kibosh" on this deal, as they were able to elicit mass support by claiming that:

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable,'" said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.
"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is coming."

Fortunately for OPEC, the oil industry appeared to be somewhat unhappy about the idea of crashing oil prices, so the new plan is to let the Iraqis nationalize the industry. Unfortunately for everybody in Iraq, the damage was already done.

(Thanks to Juan Cole for pointing this out on Friday, and for authoritatively showing that the entire idea was rubbish to begin with. To me, it's reminiscent of Perle's crackpot plan to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan by setting up loudspeakers blaring pro-American propaganda. I wouldn't dislike the people running the world so much if they weren't so, well, stupid.)

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Bush Administration

(Hat Tip: Hunter at Daily Kos.)

Well, well, well. It would appear that the old "everybody agreed on such-and-such an intelligence issue" gambit ain't going to work anymore, at least not for the Bush administration.

Such an argument requires that information-sharing is going on, so that countries can vet their intelligence against each other. Even if no sharing is going on, at least that's something that can be trusted to be honest, and states can act with the full knowledge that while there may be knowledge being hidden, at least they know where they stand. You can't have both: you can't both hide your information and gain other's trust by sharing it.

Unless, of course, you're the current Executive. In which case, you LIE.

In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.

But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride -- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium -- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.

Pakistan's role as both the buyer and the seller was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington's partner in the hunt for al Qaeda leaders, according to the officials, who discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity. In addition, a North Korea-Pakistan transfer would not have been news to the U.S. allies, which have known of such transfers for years and viewed them as a business matter between sovereign states.

Ok, if one wants to split hairs, one could say that this "cover up" isn't technically a lie of commission, but of omission. It doesn't matter one whit, because this isn't about North Korea. What it IS is the United States no longer being a trustworthy intelligence-sharing and -gathering partner, because its allies can no longer trust it to not lie to cover up a key strategic ally.

It throws one of the underlying concepts of the entire intelligence community into doubt. Without honesty in the sharing of intelligence, every ally of the U.S. must ask itself whether the United States is "playing" them to isolate a foe or protect an ally. They'll ask that question, and the answer will be "we can't take that chance". They won't trust the U.S., and (therefore) the U.S. won't be able to trust them, because the Americans must realize that nobody likes to play the sucker. The United States has just lost all credibility in Asia, and I doubt it'll return any time soon.

Considering that the core of the War on Terrorism is and MUST BE intelligence gathering and sharing, this literally couldn't be a more foolish act.

I've said it before, I'll say it again... somewhere in Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden is laughing his ass off.

Wolfowitz's World

Ok, the nomination of John Bolton for the UN ambassador job was one thing. That was a clear and understandable "fuck you" to the world community. It was disturbing and incredibly shortsighted, but in keeping with the predominant interpretation of the Bush administration's--and its backers--attitudes towards the body and multilateralism in general. It also drew a line in the sand for the Europeans, but there's nothing new there.

That said, Wolfowitz as head of the world bank?

What possible reason could there be for that choice? Anti-Europeanism isn't worth it. He hasn't demonstrated any significant knowledge or skills that would lend themselves to the job, notwithstanding the Economist's piffle about Wolfowitz somehow leveraging the (overrated) "Revolution in Military Affairs" to radically alter the World Bank. He has extraordinarily damaged credibility after the WMD fiasco. The developing world will cry foul, and the NGOs will become even more alienated from the US than now, defying the logical belief that that was no longer even possible.

The whole situation becomes more and more bizarre by the day.

anti-intellectualism

Someday, I'm going to understand why seemingly intelligent people enjoy taking shots at those who actually bother to think about the world around them (in other words, "intellectuals").

But not today.

Overreach in overdrive!

I hadn't expected luminaries of the right to go as regressive as they have, as quickly as they have. Still, now we're seeing variations on the "race-suicide" argument rear their ugly heads.

(This argument being variations on "white wimmins can reads and such, so they ain't going to breed as many babies, so we's gonna be overrun by them brown people!")

Bobo was pushing it (no link, NYtimes is pay-only by this point) and Stanley Kurtz is pushing it, so it is with great pleasure that I read somebody push back. I'd call it a fisking, if that term weren't useless and insulting.

Favorite line? (Italics are quotes from ol' Stan)

As Wattenberg shows, worldwide, the correlation between falling female illiteracy and falling female fertility is nearly exact.

Holy shit, I guess it is true that reading shrivels your ovaries. And here I was taking the pill all that time.

The crazy part isn't that this sounds an awful lot like the sort of talk popular around the middle of the last century in certain parts of Europe. The crazy part is that they think that they can get away with it. Demonizing gay people is one thing, but educated women?

Double

This entry was a double post of the "Heckling" entry below, but as there are a few comments relevant to the other entry, I'll simply leave this as a placeholder.

My apologies for not catching this earlier.

Heckling

On Bush getting heckled at the state of the union address:

In the vast, vast majority of healthy democracies, the head of government getting heckled, jeered, and booed during his addresses to the legislature is perfectly normal. Hell, in the UK and Canada, it's an artform. It's also at the heart of democracy- the difference between an autocrat and a democrat is that the latter expects to be criticized when leading, especially by the loyal opposition. His party expects it to, so playing silly games about "decorum" are a non-starter.

This might be why rather a lot of new democracies tend to be based on variations of that model. They've had enough of autocrats.

Off to Iran

Sy Hersh has pretty much confirmed that it's going to happen: the United States is going to strike Iran.

The only question is how badly things are going to get screwed up this time, and whether or not Coca-Cola et al will need to pretty much abandon non-US markets.

At least gay people can't get married.

"Ownership Society"

Don't let the label fool you. This has nothing to do with ownership- as Norquist hinted at in this story, it is simply a way of leveraging the enduring popularity of the New Deal and Great Society programs in order to push through bog-standard social Darwinism.

(Actually, that's a misnomer. Darwin explicitly denied that this worked in a sociocultural sense, for good reason.)

Whether you believe that gay marriage or the War on Terror (or both) motivated the 51%, it's clear enough that this nonsense wasn't what they were voting for. Nor is it necessary, as many, many people have been pointing out on the Social Security issue. We're just seeing the beginning of the process of the demolition of the New Deal taking place. This is happening just in time for record interest rates to brutalize a population of increasingly overextended debtors, just as soon as the shoe drops on the U.S. dollar.

This begs the question of the 51%: Was ensuring that God's boy Dubya beat the anti-American libruls, sodomites and terrist unbelievers really worth it?

No, I'm not gone

But I suspect that the American political system is. The Democratic party is thoroughly destroying itself by letting its opponents define it and having its elites leap at the chance to help, and the Republicans are preparing to run the country into the ground in order to kill the New Deal, just as Norquist always advocated.

(Yes, that's what "Social Security reform" is. They'll screw it up, exploit free market theology to say that it's the governmental control of it that's the problem, and get rid of the rest. Probably while drumming up some example of "social decay" to distract the public juuust long enough. Without Social Security, killing the rest is easy.)

On the Dems being "too soft": didn't we learn this lesson in 2002? Saying "I'll do what the other guy does, only better" doesn't work. Period. It's just the trailing end of moving the goalposts. The desperate flailings of the DLC in its attempts to explain its own ineptitude don't change that. Nor, for that matter, does the liberal hawks wishing that they could ignore reality as well as the Republicans (so they could sleep at night knowing that the rest of the world thinks that America just voted to torture Arabs).

CIA purging

One of the most unfortunate parts of this past election is that we're clearly never going to find out just how badly the prewar intelligence was subject to political interference.

The only thing we can surmise, however, is that things are just going to get worse.

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources."

The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

The CIA? A hotbed of liberals? Compared to who, exactly? "Liberal" here must mean "apolitical professional", many of whom have looked at the ideological blinders in the White House with horror. The only people left will be true believers, people who have demonstrated (through the Iraq blunders and the Chalabi debacle) that they're singularly unfit to handle this issue.

And intelligence is the key weapon against terrorism. Straight-up warfare is of dubious usefulness at best without it, and coordination between intelligence and law enforcement is the best way of really stopping problems before they start. It's not like the U.S. can invade Spain just because Al Qaeda may have some cells there.

I'm reminded of Alan Rickman's famous line in Die Hard, when all his plans were brought to fruition. "You want a miracle, gentlemen? I give you the F...B...I."

Osama needs a miracle to succeed.

We gave him B...U...S...H.

Election Thoughts

Would have posted yesterday, but blogger was haywire throughout most of the day.

Don't have much time, so I'll just say this: This was not a victory for Bush's foreign policy, for his economic policy, or the war on terrorism... not really. It was his failures in those that boosted turnout on the left, and that should have defeated him.

Instead, this was a victory for social conservativism- specifically, the hatred and loathing of homosexuals that is bubbling under the surface of far too much of the United States for the rest's comfort. Forget Queer Eye, metrosexuality, lesbian chic and the rest... a significant minority (if not a majority) of Americans have shown outright hostility towards a group that consists of 10-12% of the American population. Rove was right about an aspect of American society that many, many people (including myself) had dismissed as too disturbing and outlandish to take seriously.

More broadly, it illustrates the dual nature of American society- that it is the fusion of the Enlightenment and of Puritanism. The latter was perceived as dying, as America moved in the same secular direction as the rest of the world, comfortably protected by the declared seperation of church and state. This was in error. Religiosity in the United States is very much alive.

The Republican party isn't going to forget this, and how useful it was. They'll milk this for as long as possible, and the Democrats aren't going to get around it by embracing the religious right. They'll be painted as faithless libruls, no matter what.

Osama Bin Laden won't forget this. Although I doubt he cares much about gays, he and his ideological brethren can easily spin this as proof that the "war of civilizations" is not between the "secular West" and "Islamic fundamentalism", but between American and Islamic fundamentalisms, differing only in which religion they assert is the One True Faith.

Moslems in general won't forget this. They'll see it as an endorsement of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, and to the extent that it wasn't a repudiation of such, they'll be right.

Europe won't forget this. Every leader in secular Europe is going to array themselves against the American religious right, and benefit handsomely from it.

Canada won't forget this. North America just got a lot lonelier for Canada. Canadian and American values are diverging, but I don't think either Canada or the United States had fully realized just how much. Canada's past election was a repudiation of overt religiosity- the American one embraced it.

In the meantime, expect American gays to get the message, loud and clear... and expect the division between the United States and the rest of the world to become a gulf. Huntington may indeed have been right about the Clash of Civilizations what he didn't anticipate was that the United States would end up being its own.

The Election

I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, or who I'd vote for. My preference for presidential candidate is pretty obvious to those who have read the site over the last three years.

I'm not going to tell you who I think the winner will be; those sorts of projections are pretty much pointless at this point, although I do think that the high turnout that we're seeing (see Kos for that) does suggest a certain outcome.

What I WILL tell you is that this election may be taking place in the United States, but it has global ramifications; not only in its effects on those who are the targets (recipients? beneficiaries? victims?) of U.S. foreign policy, but on the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world. The United States is divided, but the rest of the world isn't, not really, and if legitimacy is conferred on the victor that was lacking the last time around, it will serve as an endorsement, in the eyes of the world, of that victor's foreign policy goals.

There is no division between the people and the leader, not anymore. American politics does not stop at the water's edge and very possibly never will again. It's too outwardly focused, and if 9/11 did actually change anything, it's that.

In some respects, though, this election is also the culmination of my blogging career. (Bean pointed out in comments that I hadn't been commenting on the election much... that's not because I consider it unimportant, but because of the normal posting issues that I've been grappling with.) More that anything, this site has been dedicated to the effects that online "conservatarians" have had on American political discourse, and American foreign policy.

We've seen the growth of the so-called "Mighty Wurlitzer" and its ultimate expression in the policies (and spin) of the Bush administration. We've also seen the growth of a contrary force, largely based and built online, that has been key to the closeness of this race. Atrios called it the "mighty Casio"... it's smaller, tinnier, and quieter, but it kept on sounding dissonant notes that continually threw the Wurlitzer off. Both were really aimed towards this election, because the "Wurlitzer" is aimed at giving Bush a second term unconstrained by the threat of defeat and the "Casio" in repudiating and arresting the forces that gave him the presidency in the first place.

Thus, although I don't plan to go anywhere, this election is going to--by necessity--change my focus to documenting and analyzing the victorious force's rise and effects.

I think I know which force that's going to be.

I know I hope which one it will be.

Regardless, however, all I can do at this point is watch, and wait, and hope.

Spoke too soon?

In contradiction to my post below, apparently at least Martini Republic agrees with the "Osama knew that this would be used to help Bush" theory.

Edit: Never mind. It looks like I wasn't the only one rousted into posting by Osama. Billmon is back.

By the way, I hadn't really weighed in on Billmon's attack on the professionalization of blogging. (Not linked- AFAIK it isn't available in a public archive). I had mentioned that the massive concentration on a few key sites was a problem, but I don't buy that it's ruining blogging, just that it has lead to somewhat of a "rich get richer, poor get poorer" distribution of eyeballs on the left. Atrios and Kos have their huge audiences largely because they're excellent commentators and update constantly. Many other worthy bloggers don't fit either the former or latter criterion (largely the latter), and that's natural enough as well. A professional needs to be both, but blogger isn't going anywhere, and as long as it's around so will the larger community.

The Obvious..

I'm going to say it, even if others aren't. (Atrios, for example, at least whilst commenting on the laughable antics of NRO and other Bush surrogates.)

Osama Bin Laden is stumping for George W. Bush.

Period.

Full stop.

He knows his appearance could be (and likely would be) spun as a boost to Bush, he's clearly quite aware that the election is coming shortly, and knows that by attacking Bush he's helping Bush make his case. In fact, by aligning his critiques with those of Michael Moore and Kerry (the "Pet Goat" bit, for example), he's subtly ensuring that they'll be seen as discredited.

(Note that I say "seen" for a reason- the point Moore made is in no way modified by its adoption by Bin Laden months later. )

He also knows that the Bush surrogates would try to catch Kerry in a bind, arguing that critics should "get behind the president" in the face of the attack. They would try (and are trying) to resurrect the "politics stopping at the water's edge" idea that they themselves discredited in 2002. The Democrats could never do this to the Republicans, as they'd screech "wag the dog" and keep right on attacking... but the Democrats' astonishing growth of spirit and backbone has only gone so far. The fearfulness and tentativeness of 2002 still lurks in the background.

(Additional Note: None of this should be construed to mean that the tape actually should help Bush, just that it can be used as a tool to do so. The media wants Bush to win, both because a Kerry win would undermine the polling and narratives that they've built up and because there's a lot of personal animosity between the media and the "patrician" (and vaguely wonkish) Kerry. Thus, if something can be spun in favor of Bush, it will be.)

Osama Bin Laden wants George W. Bush to win. The reasons are endless and obvious, even if the Republicans want to pull the wool for just a few more days. Bin Laden is closer to his goals than ever, and knows it. He wants Bush to win, and saw that it wasn't happening. Rove didn't have an October surprise, so Osama provided it.

The old saw of 2001 has returned. If George W. Bush is elected president next Tuesday, the Bin Laden has won.

Literally.

Guess the quote- not just for Atrios anymore

I'll provide the answer, though.

"If you attack your opponent wildly, ruthlessly, they will come to their own conclusions. "

Where is it from? David Brooks.

Unfortunately, he's talking about Kerry.

Gotta love Republican projection, huh?

Title Change

Just changed the title. Why not? The "RBC" bit is about the funniest, most cogent remark on this whole bizarre drama thus far.

(For those who don't recognize it, it's from this Ron Suskind article about Pres. Bush and his "faith-based" presidency.)

"Even If You Photoshop, You're Still Retarded"

A quick heads-up for those (like Steve Clemons and Josh Marshall) who are tracking with the distribution of a flyer in Tennessee, blamed on Democratic candidate Craig Fitzhugh, saying "Voting for Bush is like running in the special olympics; even if you win you're still retarded".

The flyer is a simple photoshop modification of another one that says "arguing on the internet is....", adding the new text and placing Bush's head on the original special olympian (you can tell the font difference for the former.) The original was almost certainly created by someone on somethingawful.com a long number of years back. It is not original.

This doesn't necessarily mean anything, of course, but I think it implies pretty heavily that it was a rush job that has nothing to do with the organized campaigns. Both the Dems and Repubs have much more (and better) talent on board than this hack job would indicate. It does NOT indicate any connection with Something Awful, as that image has been floating around for years. It is possible that it may have been made deliberately poorly in order to insulate the creators from criticism, but that seems very unlikely, at least for Craig Fitzhugh's office- they would know that they would get blamed no matter how bad the job. I also don't buy that the local campaign would be as tech savvy as even this relatively poor job would indicate, or would want to waste their time.

So, my take is that this was the work of a small, somewhat knowledgable Bush-sympathetic group trying to stir up trouble for the other side. Young Republicans, most likely, as they fit the profile of someone who knows a little bit about things like photoshop, but not enough to match the font and carefully blend Bush's head into the photo--as a professional or skilled hobbyist would-- as they'd be more focused on, well, politics.

In other words, Ratfucker trainees.

(Of course, I'm not a freeper, so I doubt this will get picked up by the SCLM.)

Edit: All over the wingnut blogs there are breathless accounts from people who have supposedly picked these flyers up at Fitzhugh HQ. I don't buy it; you can find people willing to back ANYTHING that will hurt a candidate they don't like, and Fitzhugh's involvement still doesn't make much sense. It could have happened, of course, and it would have been in extremely poor taste and deserve condemnation (much like, say, the RNC "democrats hate christianity" flyer did). I just can't see how it'd be useful, especially having them distributed at Fitzhugh HQ. That's just not how this sort of thing works.

Let's be honest, though- compared to what gets said about Kerry, Democrats, and liberals in general, this would be lightweight. Do "vote for Kerry and die screaming" Republicans really want to get into a shouting match over poor taste in advertising?

Kerry Leads

According to Newsweek, it's now a statistical tie with Kerry ahead 47-45. Plus, Newsweek has picked their narrative, and it's "The debate changed the perceptions of the candidates:"

In fact, Kerry’s numbers have improved across the board, while Bush’s
vulnerabilities have become more pronounced. The senator is seen as more
intelligent and well-informed (80 percent, up six points over last month,
compared to Bush’s steady 59 percent); as having strong leadership skills (56
percent, also up 6 points, but still less than Bush’s 62 percent) and as someone
who can be trusted to make the right calls in an international crisis (51
percent, up five points and tied with Bush).

If Newsweek is saying this, others will follow. The media loves comebacks and dramatic changes, and the debate provided both. Those that aren't completely following the RNC line will at least include this interpretation. Anybody reporting on bloggers would be forced to do the same, considering the weak right-wing response.

Now on to Tuesday....

Kerry Won

Yeah, there's no question about it. The only hole that Bush opened was, possibly, that "joining a war you called a mistake" bit, but other than that Kerry dominated it. He was pulling out EVERYTHING that the Republicans and Bush had screwed up, and Bush wasn't really able to rebut any of it.

More importantly, Bush's big "strength" here is his biggest weakness. He was consistent, and there's no doubt he intended to be. Kerry, however, did a fantastic job of saying that there's nothing good about being consistently wrong, and thus has opened the door to the Dems and 527s saying that Bush's consistency is due to his being completely out of touch. Since that hits Bush's greatest weakness, his competency, MoveOn and the rest can tear great chunks out of Dubya's hide.

The most surprising aspect for me? The image control was better on the Kerry side. Bush was smirking, leaning, interrupting, and looked just as bored and annoyed as his dad did in 1992. Kerry, on the other hand, simply smiled, as if to say "go ahead and say that, because I'll make you eat it". Then he did make Bush eat it. Again, and again, and again. The Republicans have practically nothing to run on from the image angle, and that's how they reversed Bush v. Gore.

(Then again, the online Dems aren't going to let them get away with it this time. The media knows Kerry dominated, but can't really say it... but they CAN quote those funny bloggers, and those funny bloggers know the score and will keep screaming at them until they admit it.)

This is a good base to build on, folks. Now on to making sure that the spin war is won by the good guys.