By the way, I hadn't commented on this, but Lawrence Lessig is currently having Howard Dean guest-blog on his site (latest entry is here), and both he and Joe Trippi have said that he will be reading the comments on the site and responding when and if he can. It's a hell of a gesture; it's far beyond the level of, say, Clinton with his sax on Arsenio. So if you wish to say your piece to the Man of the Hour, this is your chance.

(That being said, keep in mind that Lessig's blog is about copyright and trademark issues, so the discussions largely revolve around those issues. Questions about the war are not really germane, but aren't verboten either.)

Lessig himself is a great writer who has been a strong influence on my own views in regards to information technology, the Internet, networking and, yes, blogging. Even if you aren't a Dean backer, there's lots of great stuff to look through.

This is getting pretty meta, but lookat what I found on Daily Kos

From the comment board:
CNN this instant.
A five-year-old little blond army boy: 'We wanted my daddy to be home for my birthday, but the President changed his mind again. He keeps on doing that.'
We were waiting for the tipping point. We were saying the higher Bush rose, the harder he would fall. Well, the dam has burst. Ari got out just in time, 'cause things are going to get ugly for Bush."

I actually saw this report, and the interview with the mother that preceded it where she complained about "these people lying". I agree with Kos, of course, but I was more amazed that this story got on CNN in the first place. This is more than just the media getting their claws into a juicy story with the Yellowcake scandal (kids are gonna be learning about that term in school, I guarantee you that)... it seems to reflect a turning point in how the media and the populace think of the Bush administration.

It's not a simple case of "things getting ugly", at least in terms of being caught in a bad situation. We seem to be witnessing a fundamental shift in attitudes here, one that we never saw with Clinton, Bush, or Reagan. (Bush I may be similar, but he got sunk on the economy and by a perception that national security wasn't important... there wasn't this sort of wholesale shift of perceptions) Heck, even Nixon's downfall wasn't like this. I can't even think of a simple example of this kind of shift in American history... which makes sense, because I can't think of an administration that so begged for it as much as the Bush administration.

Atrios is right in one respect... there isn't going to be an impeachment. The Republicans, however, may wish to seriously rethink not having a primary. The "bogging down" during the war was something that Bush managed to pull his way out of (although it was the first hint of this shift). I don't think he's easily going to pull his way out of this. Another war wouldn't work, the economy isn't going to be strong enough, and spin doesn't work when you've got nothing to build it on.

It's ironic. Iraq was supposed to rocket Bush to victory. Instead, it may end up more akin to cement shoes. Hope he brought his wetsuit.

Ok, it's official: the CIA is at war with the Bush administration. Now they're undercutting an anticipated briefing on Syrian WMDs that Bush was to have presented.

U.S. officials told Knight Ridder that [Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton] was prepared to tell members of a House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee that Syria's development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had progressed to such a point that they posed a threat to stability in the region.

Syria has come under increasing U.S. pressure during and after the Iraq war for allegedly giving refuge to members of Saddam Hussein's regime, allowing foreign fighters to cross into Iraq to attack U.S. troops and for backing Palestinian militant groups that were conducting terrorist strikes on Israel. After Saddam's government fell, some Bush aides hinted that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus might be the next U.S. target.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies said that assessment was exaggerated....
Bolton's planned remarks caused a "revolt" among intelligence experts who thought they inflated the progress Syria has made in its weapons programs, said a U.S. official who isn't from the CIA, but was involved in the dispute...

...The CIA's objections and comments alone ran to 35 to 40 pages, the official said.

The punchline? The address was supposed to happen on Tuesday, but the avalanche of objections and the continual public leaks from the CIA make that impossible, so it's been pushed back to September. What's disturbing about this situation, however, isn't that the CIA has decided they're not going to knuckle under anymore, it's that if they hadn't been doing so, we'd all be talking about the upcoming invasion of Syria at this very moment. It's abundantly clear that that's what Bolton's address was all about; he was starting the ball rolling, and we'd have seen the same little "we won't/we will/why are you asking that" dance that we saw last summer, as the administration gets everybody used to the idea of invasion, starts to understand it as an inevitability, and spends their time trying to ferret out whether Bush is actually going to authorize the invasion or not instead of whether or not such an invasion is justified.

Right now, though, any such attempt would be almost impossible. The questions about misrepresented, misinterpreted, or deliberately altered intelligence make the sort of trust in the President that would be necessary for any sort of war (let alone a preemptive one) absolutely impossible. This is why this is worse than Clinton, and why the Republicans have been so obviously tendentious over the actions of the two presidents. Clinton's behavior eroded his moral authority- he had (supposedly) lost the "bully pulpit" with which a head of state can cajole the people into doing what they don't necessarily want to do but must for the good of the nation. Bush, on the other hand, has shown the American public that he cannot be trusted: to know what's happening in the world, to relate it to the people, and to formulate foreign policy based on that knowledge and their reactions.

This is extraordinarily dangerous. If he doesn't know if a country is a threat- if nobody knows if a country is a threat- then he could be damaging America's alliances and reputation through unwarranted military action, or he could be letting a real threat get stronger. Either way, it damages American national security. Since that is the most important job he has in the eyes of most Americans, it raises questions about his fundamental competency for the job. I think those questions are what have prompted the CIA to start contradicting Bush. It isn't just trying to blame Tenet or the CIA; it is a realization that their boss is dangerously incompetent, threatens their own country and families, and that they hold the key to getting him kicked out.

Just goes to show that, as others have pointed out, you really, really don't want to tick off the CIA.

After having tried to put up (then quickly take down) a paypal donation button a few months ago, I've switched some things around and have once again placed a donation button on the site. With any luck, there won't be any problems this time, but email me or leave a comment immediately if there are any problems. Donations will be put toward switching this site to Blogger Pro and the upgraded Blogspot, so that I can add RSS, XML, titles, pictures, and all those other Blogger Pro and upgraded Blogspot goodies. They'll also be put towards humbler but necessary things; it's not like I'm going to be able to line up for Scaife dollars. Heh.

(Ideally, I'd like to switch to the upgraded services soon before or after switching templates, but that depends on how much pent-up generosity there is among my readers.)

Donors of outstanding generosity (defined as "the kind that makes me involuntarily whistle and/or swear under my breath") will be mentioned on the blog and have their names placed over yonder near the blogroll, if they wish. (I might do something more involved after the move) I'd be more than happy to support those that support me. All donations of any denomination, though, will be thoroughly appreciated.

Thanks to Calpundit for blogrolling my humble site. Kevin's emerged as one of the premier liberal bloggers out there. It's amazing, considering that just over a year ago he was a guy who tended to spend a lot of time commenting on my site, and now I've been spending far too much time reading (and commenting) on his.

In other news: I'm almost certainly going to be switching templates fairly soon- partially to modernize, and partially because I keep getting complaints about the yellow-on-tan color scheme. I am staying with blogger, because a switch to MT is impossible for pseudonymous bloggers like myself, but a change is called for. I'm open for suggestions as to which template to choose, keeping in mind that this is a straight blogspot/blogger account, so images are not really an option.

So, thoughts?

Heh. Looks like they still haven't learned:

The White House mounted an aggressive campaign today to contain what several Republicans said was a potentially worrisome dispute over President Bush's use of suspect information in pressing for a war on Iraq.

As part of their offensive, White House officials released new information to buttress Mr. Bush's claim, attacked the credibility of his Democratic critics and accused the news media of a 'feeding frenzy.'

Keep on pulling a Stanfield, Mr. President. As long as you keep protesting, the media will be more than happy to continually tell people just why you're protesting, and everybody's opinion is just going to keep heading south.

He's back, and he's come back swinging. Yes, that's right, Prof. Paul Krugman's long absence is over, and he (oddly enough) sinks his teeth into the yellowcake scandal, saying what most of the rest of the media will not:

How did we get into this mess? The case of the bogus uranium purchases wasn't an isolated instance. It was part of a broad pattern of politicized, corrupted intelligence.

Literally before the dust had settled, Bush administration officials began trying to use 9/11 to justify an attack on Iraq. Gen. Wesley Clark says that he received calls on Sept. 11 from "people around the White House" urging him to link that assault to Saddam Hussein. His account seems to back up a CBS.com report last September, headlined "Plans for Iraq Attack Began on 9/11," which quoted notes taken by aides to Donald Rumsfeld on the day of the attack: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

But an honest intelligence assessment would have raised questions about why we were going after a country that hadn't attacked us. It would also have suggested the strong possibility that an invasion of Iraq would hurt, not help, U.S. security.

So the Iraq hawks set out to corrupt the process of intelligence assessment. On one side, nobody was held accountable for the failure to predict or prevent 9/11; on the other side, top intelligence officials were expected to support the case for an Iraq war....

It gets worse. Knight Ridder newspapers report that a "small circle of senior civilians in the Defense Department" were sure that their favorite, Ahmad Chalabi, could easily be installed in power. They were able to prevent skeptics from getting a hearing — and they had no backup plan when efforts to anoint Mr. Chalabi, a millionaire businessman, degenerated into farce.

...So who will be held accountable? Mr. Tenet betrayed his office by tailoring statements to reflect the interests of his political masters, rather than the assessments of his staff — but that's not why he may soon be fired. Yesterday USA Today reported that "some in the Bush administration are arguing privately for a C.I.A. director who will be unquestioningly loyal to the White House as committees demand documents and call witnesses."

As myself and others have pointed out, this issue of perverted intelligence is in many ways far more important than whether or not Bush knew that the SOTN address contained false information. No matter where you sit on the ideological scale, you have to acknowledge that the only way a "shadow war" like the War on Terrorism can be fought is with absolutely unpoliticized and unblinkered information and intelligence. It is also crystal clear that Bush and Rumsfeld and their lot have been desperate to try to take intelligence and fit it into their pre-conceived notions of what the world is like and what the shape of the war should take. Then they act surprised when it blows up in their faces.

This is disasterous, but not surprising. This administration has proven over and over that it cares very little for what the truth of any particular issue might be. It has, in fact, taken the post-modern stance of believing and acting like there is no "objective truth" at all, merely different positions (positions based, of course, entirely on political ideology). We've seen this pattern over and over again: on taxes, on trade, on foreign relations, on morality, on religion, on governmental spending (it is the core of the term "Bushwhacked")... the truth is irrelevant as long as their spin is dominant.

Adroit observers will also note a similarity between this behavior and the attitudes and behavior of the "conservative media" in the United States. The sacrifice of truth, veracity, honesty and objectivity to political ideology and Republican-friendly spin has been the case for a long time in the pages of the National Review, the Weekly Standard, Newsmax, Frontpage, and the various quasi-journalists that staff them and surround them. Observers will also notice that there is a similarity between the Bush administration's behavior and the actions and writings of conservative think tanks which exist not to produce clear-eyed scholarship but to (as the Heritage Foundation eagerly points out) solely support pre-determined conservative positions- to provide reams of "studies" that conservatives can point to as proof of their positions and "experts" to flood the media with conservative positions. And let us not forget that the very same people who worked for these truth-averse conservative media, think tanks, and lobbyist groups are the ones working for the Bush administration right now!

Is it any wonder that "faith-based intelligence" is the rule in the Bush White House? Everything that has come from the conservative movement over the past 20+ years has been "faith-based"! Why on earth should their attitudes and behavior regarding the CIA, the State Department, and the Department of Defense be any different? The Bush administration exists almost solely as a jolly playground for conservative hacks and pseudo-scholars of every stripe!

I've said it before elsewhere, and I'll say it again here: as of this point, the Republican party and the conservative movement have proven that they cannot be trusted with executive power. They endanger the Union and the world. This power needs to be removed from them as soon as is constitutionally possible. Impeachment isn't going to happen, but the 2004 election is. Enough damage has already been done, and I only hope that the American people will see through the "faith-based" snowjob they've had done to them.

Steve Gillard at DailyKos is stunned by Tony Blair's latest pronouncement: that western democracies should be able to intervene whenever and wherever they wish:

Tony Blair is appealing to the heads of Western governments to agree a new world order that would justify the war in Iraq even if Saddam Hussein's elusive weapons of mass destruction are never found.

It would also give Western powers the authority to attack any other sovereign country whose ruler is judged to be inflicting unnecessary suffering on his own people.

A Downing Street document, circulated among foreign heads of state who are in London for a summit, has provoked a fierce row between Mr Blair and the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.

.........................

The document echoes his well-known views on "rights and responsibilities" by saying that even for self-governing nation states "the right to sovereignty brings associated responsibilities to protect citizens".

This phrase is immediately followed by a paragraph which appears to give the world's democracies carte blanche to send troops anywhere there is civil unrest or a tyrant who refuses to mend his ways. It says: "Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect."

This is, of course, the humanitarian/interventionist variation of Bush's "preemptive strike" doctrine, and is likely intended to provide some moral/ethical cover for a war in Iraq that was not fought for the reasons that it was supposed to be fought for. It's one stage in the ongoing attempt to redefine what the war was about: a process that began right after the U.S. failed to secure U.N. permission and has only accelerated as the "imminent threat" justification has unravelled. That Blair said it instead of Bush means little, as Blair's career is on the line as well.

Unfortunately, this sort of doctrine faces the same problems that any pre-emptive doctrine does, no matter how desirable. It faces the very realist problem of power, and the reality that if a country is both well armed and a violent dictatorship, it will not be affected by this pronouncement in any way shape or form. China is not going anywhere, no matter what Mr. Blair says, and as long as China (and North Korea) get to stick out as gaping holes in this doctrine nobody will take it seriously.

In addition, it raises the question of "who gets to decide what 'suffering', 'internal war', 'insurgency', 'repression', or 'state failure' are? These are questions that people who spend their lives studying international relations and politics in general cannot agree on, so what's the likelihood that states will agree to intervene in the absence of some independent body (such as the U.N.) to adjudicate? Certainly neither the U.S. or U.K. could do so- the whole point of many of the anti-war protests is that one state's interests can not and should not be mistaken for actions serving a higher purpose, because it allows for the possibility of those higher purposes being chained to base economic and strategic interests (or even just the desire for re-election). It's not like the U.S. and U.K. will be the only states using this excuse, either; every state across the globe will attempt to adopt these arguments as an excuse to declare war on their neighbours, which will only lead to more violence and suffering.

(Sure, it's supposed to be a right for "democracies", but let us kindly remember that even the U.S.S.R. dubbed itself a democracy.)

Yes, there are times when there should be interventions done in awful situations, but the problem is figuring out when to do it, and when not to do it, and what sort of reasons and logic should divide these. Historically we've seen that national security is one guideline, multilateralism another, and imperial interests another still. Grand but essentially contested concepts like liberty, democracy, stability and prosperity, however, are not. I don't want to see variations in interpretations lead to WWIII.

Well, as Calpundit pointed out, Time magazine has done an excellent job of ensuring that the yellowcake story does have some legs, even with Tenet "falling on his sword". The story is continuing, but the question remains... what is the story, really?

In my opinion, (as I've mentioned earlier) it isn't Bush's lies about that subject, or their relationship to war, or even the public's reaction. It's the media, appropriately enough, that is the true story here. The story is in their willingness to explore these sorts of question; when they discover something, it's also in their reluctance to simply regurgigate the President's spin, as had been the case in the past. While the story is often (and, in my opinion, erroneously) framed as a Bush v. Democrats issue, the fact that the issue is making it onto the cover of Time and into the pages of newspapers shows a media that is, perhaps, more willing to attack Bush. In fact, in many respects it is the covers and headlines that are key- as others have pointed out, many people pay more attention to the headline than they ever do the article, and the headlines have been predominantly uncritical of Bush even when articles include critical elements. (The controversy over the CBS "lied" headline also centers around this point- that they felt confident enough to overstate instead of massively understate speaks volumes)

This means that what happens with "yellowcake" is in many respects unimportant, although I certainly think that Bush and his advisors knew full well that the CIA had disputed (if not debunked) all of the acknowledged British intelligence sources. (I also think they also know what the word "learned" means, and when to use it, and that it carries with it the ring of revealed truth and not repeated hearsay, as is the argument we so often hear). This issue is only one of many, and there will be others even if yellowcake fades into the aether.

Fortunately, the Bush administration appears unwilling to let it die. Their protestations that "the information is accurate" reminds me of the story of the failing candidacy of a Canadian wanna-be Prime Minister, the Progressive Conservative Bob Stanfield. Stanfield was a good speaker, a decent person by all accounts, got decent press, and was giving Pierre Trudeau a run for his money. Stanfield ruined it all, however, when he managed to fumble a football during a game of catch while some quick-witted journalist snapped a picture of the event. The picture of Stanfield fumbling the ball became front-page news, was played up by his opponent (Pierre Trudeau) and was a key element of his defeat, as Stanfield's opponents continually referred to him "dropping the ball".

Here's the thing. The problem was not Stanfield fumbling the ball, or the picture. The problem was that shortly after the picture was taken, Stanfield and his campaign staff kept on trying to prove that Stanfield could play football just fine. They insisted that it was a one-time thing, that it was unimportant, that he played catch and caught the ball all the time. It went to the point of Stanfield's people showing pictures of him catching footballs! None of it worked, however- every time they tried to respond, it just meant that damnedable picture got one more airing, and Stanfield looked that much worse. The problem was that the best way to handle this story would have been to let it die, but by going back to it over and over again they just made things worse, until they eventually lost the election.

That is exactly how the Bush administration is handling the Yellowcake disaster. The squadron of advisors fanned out across the Sunday morning talk shows were making two points: that the story was unimportant, and that the information may well have been accurate anyway. Both are ludicrous. The second obviously conflicts with know facts and past spin, but the former is even worse. It has a fundamental contradiction at its core: why on earth would they be spending so much time talking about it if it were a "dead issue"? Why not let Tenet bleed from that self-inflicted wound, and do what it takes to let the story die and move on to something else? Talk about another issue, make an announcement, invade someone (this is Bush)... but just do something else. Instead, they're "pulling a Stanfield"... they're not only trying to say that they can play football just fine, but that it's not important that Bush didn't catch that football. Every time they do, the media is going to think that the story is that much more important... and with every story that the public sees, reads, and hears, they are going to think that this issue is that much more important.

Honestly, Rice and Co. have done the Democrats and Bush critics in general a huge favor. If they were smart, they would have talked about something else. As it is, they've ensured that everybody will show that dropped football just one more time. Dean, Kerry, Gephardt and Co. are no Trudeaus (who is?) but Bush is turning himself into quite a Stanfield.

CalPundit has a great summary for the main defense against the Yellowcake scandal:

Once again, we have the White House acting like a five-year-old. No, scratch that. More like a too-clever-for-his-own-good 15-year-old. "All we did is say that the British said it, and they did, so technically it's completely true."

Well put. Unfortunately, it ain't just the White House.

Greetings to those coming from the Unofficial Dean 2004 weblog- nice to have you here.

It's almost fascinating to watch the right wing blogosphere go into full-on spin mode over the Yellowgate controversy. We've got several variations going:

There's simple namecalling and strawman-building (a sample: "they believe Bush is stupid when he needs to be stupid, and fiendishly clever when their conspiracy rubbish calls for guile...it's about time to pull the plug and throw people out of civil discourse on account of being partisan hacks");

There's multiple instances of misdirection (Eugene Volokh seems to be under the impression that using the word "false" instead of "dubious" to describe a president deliberately misleading Congress and the nation is somehow more newsworthy than the act in the first place... he also plays semantic games with polling statistics);

There's the endlessly amusing "This was one sentence in one speech" bit, which nicely ignores the fact that the case was built on WMDs, and the WMD charge was built on Iraq's supposed attempts to create a bomb, and the chief evidence for that was the Yellowcake bit;

There's the attempts to conflate a legitimate and well-sourced story that's all over the media with a discredited one that was in a few blogs (Pejman also used the "small bit" part, actually saying that it was just 1.3% of the speech, which is almost surreal);

And, of course, there's good ol' Glenn, coordinating the whole thing and making sure that his continuing quest to ingratiate himself with the conservative movement continues unheeded by balance, fact, morals or journalistic integrity. Sorry, but anybody who describes the ongoing questions about Bush's administration like this:

I think that people are tuning them out because their motivation is so transparent, and because they've piled on a bunch of issues like this, only to have them collapse one after another. It's the whole "crying wolf" thing.

...either works for Bush, or wants to.

It goes to show one thing, though. It looks like this story does have legs, otherwise there wouldn't be so many desperate and transparent attempts to dismiss its importance and distract from its shocking nature. After all, nobody advocating the target of a story says "nobody cares" unless they're blowing smoke and covering asses. If nobody really cared, Bush's defenders wouldn't need to discuss it.

"Cry Wolf"? Try "Big Lie", Glenn.

Someone got leaned on. The story that I referred to below as "Bush knew Iraq info was false" has now been turned into "Bush knew Iraq info was dubious."

There's no doubt pressure was brought to bear. None. Whether it was directly by the White House, or simply by some higher-up at CBS terrified of the White House, this didn't happen because the reporter decided "well, I should use a more passive term to make the story sound better". Interestingly enough, however, the content of the story didn't appear to be changed too much, and the "money quote" saying that "he bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true" was left in place.

(On the other hand, that "might" may not be in the original article.)

Still, this remains an indication of a weaker White House than we've seen in a while- six months ago, this story would not have been written. Period.

Does anybody have a saved copy of the original article? I'd like to go over exactly what was changed, if possible.

I've been asked via email to take another one of my DailyKOS comments and reproduce it here. Not a problem, and here's the thread it came from.

Rob: [Clark's excellent chances in the south] doesn't necessarily mean that Clark should be the Presidential candidate. If anything, it implies that he'd be an absolutely ideal VP. (Which he would be, and I'm still convinced that he'd be willing to accept that if the presidency isn't in the offing.)

I think the thing that people should keep in mind is that the successful candidate will need practically every advantage possible to take down the Bush machine. He'll have to have the Dean-esque volunteer machine. He'll have to have the party behind him, in a way that Gore never did with the DLC. He'll have to be able to handle, nay, control the media coverage of his campaign. He'll have to get Dem-leaning pundits out in force in order to support him (yes, this does mean the bloggers doing their part, as well as American Prospect/Washington Monthly/American Guardian types getting into the act and onto TV as much as possible). He'll need to have some sort of basic story for his campaign that makes him fit into an archetype that Americans can accept (like Bush's "folksy" bit).

Most importantly, he'll need to train every remaining resource he has on checking the Republican oppo research and responding in kind.
(Yes, this is also a role for the bloggers. It's one of the things we're good at.)

Honestly, if even one of these things is ignored, Bush will likely get re-elected. Each would provide a hole through which the Republicans could fit a wedge that would crack the Democrats wide open, and no candidate so far has all of these covered. If Dean can make peace with the media, he could be close, but right now the Republicans are defining the Democratic race- witness Russert- and that's a huge, election losing problem.

Yes, there is hope, but let's not kid ourselves. Starry eyed optimism is exactly what Rove wants. A democratic win will be considered an upset no matter how world events move over the next year and a half. Upsets are damned hard. Not impossible, which is why people should remain somewhat optimistic... but they're hard.

Incredible. The title of the latest CBS story about the nuclear procurement debacle is, and I quote:

Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False

Not "questions continue" or "new allegations" or "democrats charge" anything like that. It was out-and-out. That such a thing is even possible says something about how the political climate has changed in regards to the media.

CBS also has a ton of polling data that implies that the attitudes and opinions of the American people are shifting on Iraq- both on why the war was fought, and the condition of the occupation now. Less than half of respondents believe that Iraq is under control, compared to 71% in April. It's quite a staggering drop, considering the relatively short timespan... only 3-4 months. This creates even more problems for Bush, because the consummate skill that the Republicans push of making things out to be "old news" isn't going to work in regards to Iraq. It won't work for critiques of the occupation, and it won't work for questions about why the occupation had started, because that "old news" is directly related to today's news.

I doubt this will mean that the public will en masse turn against Bush- they're too scared of the terrorist threat to do that, and many still buy into the Bush image of dim but forthright "CEO" credibility. What it will mean and already means, instead, is that the Bush administration will have much less control over the media than they used to enjoy, as the media knows that criticizing Bush will not necessarily turn into criticism of them, as was happening prior to (and during) the invasion of Iraq. They're freer than they've been since 9/11.

More than that, they also know that since the activist wing of the Democrats is reinvigorating itself (thanks in part to the Dean campaign), critiques of Bush won't place them between a raging administration and a cowardly opposition. It's much easier to "speak truth to power" when there's a little covering fire, and the Dems are looking to (finally) be able to supply that covering fire and to do their job of turning journalism into political criticism. They also know that sucking up to the Bush administration will earn them grief from Democrats, and that that might be a bad idea. It's a much better arrangement for all involved, excepting those Republicans that want to intimidate the press. It's a nice change.

You know, for a good ol' fashioned belly laugh, nothing beats the subtitle of NRO article: "Is the GOP conservative?"

Go ahead. Wait until you recover before you continue reading. I'm still chuckling.

The article is mostly just a grab bag of standard extreme conservative complaints about the Republicans. There's the whining about "entitlement programs" (a code phrase for social security), affirmative action, the legalization of sodomy, the Supreme Court, etc. These are easily countered with the multitude of ways in which the Bush administration and the GOP have been true-blue conservatives, and to an extent NRO acknowledges this, saying that "it is not Bush's fault that Democrats oppose entitlement reform, or that the public wants it less than it wants a new entitlement to prescription drugs. " They don't seem to understand that the government should, well, respond to the public's wishes even if they break with ideology, but they acknowledge that those wishes exist, at least.

Still, all of this is fairly standard ideological ranting about the realities of government.

What's really bizarre about this, though, is their main charge at Bush: that he isn't vetoing bills.

It is not Bush's fault that Democrats oppose entitlement reform, or that the public wants it less than it wants a new entitlement to prescription drugs. He should, however, have used the veto more effectively to restrain spending. Had he vetoed the farm bill, for example, Congress would have sent him a better one. We need presidential leadership on issues other than war and taxes. Instead we are getting the first full presidential term to go without a veto since John Quincy Adams. Bush's advisers may worry that for Bush to veto the bills of a Republican Congress would muddle party distinctions for voters. But this dilemma results from a failure of imagination. Why must the House Republican leadership always maintain control of the floor? When Democrats and liberal Republicans have the votes to pass a bill, sometimes it would be better to let them do so, and then have the president veto it. The alternative — cobbling together some lite version of a liberal bill in order to eke out a congressional majority — is what really makes it hard to press the case against big-spending Democrats.

I think it should be honestly asked: are the editors that wrote this absolutely stark raving mad? No, seriously, they can't be this stupid, so there's going to be some crossed wiring involved. Of course Bush hasn't been vetoing bills! Those advisors have a damned good reason to not want Bush to veto those bills. Has NRO even considered how bad it would look for the President to stand against a Congress controlled entirely by his own party? How the Democrats would play this up, gleeful at the prospect of being able to show the Republicans as a party so incredibly divided that one of the most powerful Republican presidents in ages is forced to veto bills... by a party whose fortunes are owed almost entirely to the political acumen of the very same advisors that NRO is taking potshots at? Any rhetoric of bipartisanship would be entirely dead, and the Republicans have spent decades redefining bipartisanship to suit their purposes.

Has NRO even considered how the press would look at this? It'd be a circus! It'd be a story that sticks around for ages because it'd be so inherently funny and sad at the same time. Political moderates and liberals would be all over the media portraying Bush as such an enormous extremist that he's too much for Congressional Republicans. The amazing part is... they would be right. Bush would position himself as being more conservative than a body led by Tom DeLay.

No, NRO, vetos aren't an option. Sorry, that's the price you pay for a pet Congress.

Ok, leaving vetoing aside, what else are they advocating? You probably aren't going to believe this, either:

Republicans need a strategy for dealing with the judicial usurpation of politics that goes beyond trying to make good appointments to the bench — a strategy that now has a two-generation track record of nearly unrelieved failure. On gay marriage, a constitutional amendment appears to be necessary to forestall the mischief of state and federal courts. But a mere statute can make the point that Congress controls the federal judiciary's purview. Congressman Todd Akin's bill to strip the federal judiciary of jurisdiction over the Pledge of Allegiance has the votes to pass the House, and has a powerful Senate sponsor in Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch. It should be high on the Republican agenda.

Let's leave aside the grand fun that would be watching that "stripping bill" get struck down by the Supreme Court as a clear attempt by one branch of the Government to control another's job, exactly the same thing the Republicans are (erroneously) ascribing to the Court.

Can anybody even imagine what the battle over a anti-Gay constitutional amendment would be like, and what it would do to the Republicans in the eyes of moderates? Not only would it be exceedingly unlikely that the thing would go anywhere, but the attempt to push it would be music in the ears of ever Democrat who tried to win an election by portraying the Republicans as intolerant bigots. It'd be the sound that launched a thousand attack ads, and it would ensure that the moderates would desert to the Democrats in droves.

Simply incredible. I can only hope that conservatives take it seriously, because nothing would ruin the party faster than impatient and unrealistic conservatives "declaring their independence". If the Democrats were smart, they'd find a way of fanning the flames of this self-destructive movement. It could only be to their benefit.

Ok, I switched around the sidebar so that the voluminous archives follow the other links, instead of the other way around. I thought it'll look cleaner.

If anything seems broken from the switch, let me know.

Hoo boy, Bush is in trouble. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a whistleblower.

A former US intelligence official who served under the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war accused the White House yesterday of lying about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

This was the first time an administration official has put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower, Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, and had access to the classified reports which formed the basis for the US case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and his aides.

Mr. Thielmann gave specific examples:

In one example, Mr Thielmann said a fierce debate inside the White House about the purpose of aluminium tubes bought by Baghdad had been "cloaked in ambiguity".

While some CIA analysts thought they could be used for gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, the best experts at the energy department disagreed. But the national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, said publicly that they could only be used for centrifuges.

Mr Thielmann also said there was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida. He added: "This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude ... 'We know the answers - give us the intelligence to support those answers'."

Needless to say, this has put Bush on the defensive. What's really interesting, and entirely unreported, however, is the Arms Control Today document written by Mr. Thielmann that appears to have partially prompted this news conference: Rumsfeld Reprise? The Missile Report That Foretold the Iraq Intelligence Controversy. This article documents Mr. Thielmann's experiences with Rumsfeld's brand of "faith based intelligence" that long predates the Iraqi conflict. Here's the opening:

In recent weeks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has come under fire for his part in the Bush administration’s misuse of U.S. intelligence to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But Rumsfeld’s tendency to hype selective portions of intelligence that support his policy goals was already familiar to intelligence professionals. They remember his chairmanship of a 1998 congressionally chartered commission charged with evaluating the nature and magnitude of the ballistic missile threat to the United States. As with Iraq, Rumsfeld’s work on ballistic missiles often ignored the carefully considered views of such professionals in favor of highly unlikely worst-case scenarios that posited an imminent threat to the United States and prompted a military, rather than diplomatic, response. Just as is likely to be the case with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), time has proven Rumsfeld’s predictions dead wrong.

The “Report of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States,” chaired by Rumsfeld and released in July 1998, was one of the most influential congressionally mandated reports in recent memory. The presentation of the Rumsfeld Commission report and the unexpected attempt by North Korea to launch a satellite one month later combined to create a political tidal wave that ultimately engulfed one of the most successful arms control treaties in history, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The report also led to massive increases in spending on defenses against ICBMs rather than on domestic spending, other defense priorities, or more urgent defenses against short- and medium-range missiles....

The bolding was mine. That date in regards to that behavior is extraordinarily significant, because it puts the lie to both Bush and Rumsfeld's claims that 9/11 and the war on terrorism was responsible for their willingness to discard, misinterpret, or ignore evidence. Rumsfeld's claims in his defense that he ""saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11" are total falsehoods- he had behaved in the same fashion three years before 9/11!

The Rumsfeld Report itself contained some seriously flawed arguments:

The Rumsfeld Commission strongly implied that movement from single-stage, short-range ballistic missiles to multiple-staged ICBMs is a straight-line, relatively rapid, and predictable progression. This notion is both ahistorical and unrealistic. Missile development programs of even the most advanced industrialized states have advanced in fits and starts, encountering serious programmatic setbacks along the way. Even after the development secrets of long-range missiles have been unlocked by other states, it can take many years to move beyond the rudimentary short-range missiles represented by the Soviet Scud model. Those countries today that seek to build missiles that can deliver a sizeable payload on target to the other side of the globe must still overcome significant technological hurdles. These include, among others, the use of staging, developing, or acquiring sophisticated guidance systems and mastering high stress atmospheric re-entry. Moreover, emerging missile states also have to seek foreign help in an environment where most potential suppliers have pledged to withhold assistance.

It ain't as easy as it looks to get an ICBM program up and running, and Rumsfeld's implication of that raises serious questions. Thielmann himself notes that "for the Rumsfeld Commission to have erred in its principal warning is an important symptom of deeper problems, but it is hardly an impeachable offense in and of itself.". This is true; it might have simply been overzealous. The problem, however, is that "...instead of elucidating a security concern, it sounded a false alarm. In the process, it fostered a polarization of the intelligence community on the warning function, emphasizing possible but highly unlikely outcomes. Moreover, the Executive Summary of the report blurred the distinction between a real, tactical ballistic missile threat to U.S. forces and interests and a hypothetical future threat to U.S. territory from “rogue state” strategic ballistic missiles, just as the administration recently blurred the distinction between Iraq and the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks."

Especially applicable now was its misrepresentation of the threat of WMDs. It "exaggerated the threats that Iran and North Korea could pose to the United States by blurring crucial distinctions on the ability of each country’s missiles to carry different payloads—from nuclear to chemical and biological weapons.". Thielmann points out that nuclear weapons are more difficult to deliver due to the greater weight, and that ballistic missiles are actually poor candidates for chemical and biological weapons:

Biological weapons pose particular technical challenges in surviving the high temperatures of ICBM warhead re-entry. The deadly effects of chemical weapons are confined to the area of use, requiring more accuracy, and are critically weather dependent. Moreover, many types of chemical weapon agent are lethal for only a short period.

This is all information that the Rumsfeld Report would have had available to it, and information that it deliberately ignored when the "three categories of unconventional weapons were lumped together under the catchall label 'weapons of mass destruction'". This was not just a benign omission or mistake- this could only have been an attempt to deliberately mislead in order to play up the threat- once again, three years before 9/11.

(This is all assuming, of course, that the things would even work. Thielmann doubts it, considering the state of Iranian and North Korean technology.)

Worse, however, is the effect the Rumsfeld Report and Rumsfeld himself had on the intelligence community. One of the specific charges is that Rumsfeld forced the CIA to change the rules on what constitutes a threat:

The intelligence community had been judged harshly by elements of Congress for the alleged sanguinity of its past assessments of foreign ballistic missile developments. Yet... a commission chaired by former CIA director Robert Gates [came to similar conclusions]. After passing a new law, which broke with the congressional tradition of naming commission members proportionately between the parties, the Republican majority did succeed in appointing a new commission under Rumsfeld and naming six of its nine members. In an apparent effort to mollify Republican congressional critics, the intelligence community adopted a more alarmist tone in its next full-blown National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the subject in 1999, “Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States Through 2015.” This NIE lowered the threshold for identifying a new missile threat. The previous standard of “initial operating capability,” still used by the U.S. military, was discarded... adoption of the new criterion meant that missile systems under development would now be considered “a threat” significantly earlier than before.

Rumsfeld and the Republicans forced the CIA to redefine a missile threat to make the threat seem more alarming. Again, this was three years before 9/11 supposedly caused Rumsfeld to "re-evaluate the evidence."

"Re-evaluate?" It's the same old "evaluation" that he's always done.

The impact of this?

The North Korea section of the unclassified summary’s Key Points began by assessing that “North Korea could convert its Taepo Dong-1 space launch vehicle [SLV] into an ICBM that could deliver a light payload…to the United States.” The tone implied that a quasi-ICBM threat already existed. One would have to read deeper into the document to learn that this system failed even to place its small satellite in orbit. If the system were to be converted from an SLV into an ICBM, the North Koreans would also have to learn how to construct a warhead that could be brought back through the atmosphere successfully, undamaged by the considerable heat and vibration of re-entry, and then could be directed to hit its target. These requirements each pose discrete engineering challenges — and mastering them is far from a foregone conclusion for a country that has no long-distance instrumented test range and no long-range missile development experience.

Again, bolding mine. Remember North Korea? The member of the "Axis of Evil" whose imminent threat was a chief reason for NMD? Apparently, they were nowhere near being able to build anything close to an ICBM, and Rumsfeld and the Republicans pushed the CIA into covering it up. This continued throughout the late 90's and into the new century, with the only dissenters being (predictably) the State department, whose own intelligence showed that the thread was overblown and misinterpreted.

Thielmann brings these two elements together (the hyperbole of the Rumsfeld Report itself and the effect it and the Republicans faith-based intelligence had on American intelligence-gathering) and shows the effects:

The report’s dubious assertions that the new missile states could have ICBMs within five years of a deployment decision and that there would be little warning in advance of a flight test created a new sense of urgency. Although Clinton ultimately postponed the expected deployment decision in 2000, the die had been cast. It made little difference that the ABM Treaty did not preclude the deployment of defenses against the short- and medium-range missiles, which had experienced dynamic growth. Nor did it matter that there was a nearly universal desire internationally for retention of the ABM Treaty and that Russia had made START II implementation contingent on adherence to the ABM Treaty. Bush announced before the end of his first year in office that the United States would withdraw from the ABM Treaty, without even selecting a system architecture that would explain the necessity for withdrawal. Six months later, the treaty was gone, and with it, the START II agreement that would have verifiably halved the number of U.S. and Russian strategic weapons.

Bilateral strategic arms control was not the only victim. Withdrawing from the ABM Treaty was one of the first in a long series of major U.S. policy decisions flying in the face of world opinion—spending precious political capital and lowering the reservoir of international support needed in moments of crisis. The full-bore pursuit of strategic missile defenses will have cost the United States tens of billions of dollars in obligations over five fiscal years. It has diverted attention and resources from the... threat posed by terrorist attack. It has even siphoned funds from the tactical ballistic missile defense programs that would address a real and present danger to U.S. forces.

The Rumsfeld Commission report also weakened the NPT regime by ignoring progress made over the previous decade in nonproliferation efforts and implicitly denigrating the potential effectiveness of existing international instruments... Moreover, by emphasizing how dire it would be for the United States to face off against even one unreliable, inaccurate ICBM with a biological- or chemical-weapon warhead, the report gave heart to the missile program advocates in hostile states that their efforts would yield a great political dividend in deterrent value.

The end result... was to distract... from the most serious security threats to the nation, leading to misallocation of resources, America’s estrangement from its allies, and a weakening of the nation’s deterrent... in the aftermath of a war propelled by dubious threat assessments from the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz Pentagon, it is difficult to avoid being overcome by a powerful sense of déjà vu.

There you have it, folks. Clear proof that very same tricks that we know Rumsfeld and Bush have used in order to support the War on Iraq were also used to support their quest for Missile Defense, THREE YEARS before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that both continually use to justify their actions. This shows a pattern of lies, both by omission and commission, used to forward the foreign policy aims of the Republican party and (naturally) the foreign policy hawks within that party. It also shows that they have absolutely no respect for the functions of the Executive Branch of the United States of America, as neither any single president nor his appointed political representatives have any right to force parts of the branch (such as the CIA) to deliberately misuse their power, resources, and responsibilities to favour the desires of partisan political appointees. The CIA does not work for President Bush and they certainly don't work for Donald Rumsfeld. They work for the Presidents' boss: the citizens of the United States of America. Those citizens were the victims of these actions, and the pathetic bleatings of Rumsfeld about 9/11 only sink him in deeper.

Don't believe the lies. This has nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden, and everything to do with Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, and the Republican party. Everything.

For those few who aren't aware of it, daily Kos is probably the best place right now for discussion of the Democratic race, and one of the chief reasons are the comments threads. Apparently they've attracted a bit of attention, because one of the larger of said theads attracted the Attention of Wesley Clark Jr. discussing the possibility of his father entering the race.

The comments by Mr. Clark Jr. are interesting, to say the least. He highlights his father's liberal credentials, his multilateralism, and some very disturbing thoughts about the Republican convention in NYC, which he believes is designed to cause a riot similar to the Chicago '68 riot.

The problem, unfortunately, is that I don't necessarily think that the Clark candidacy will be an unchallenged "good thing".

First, it's going to turn into a battle of activism between Clark and Dean... I doubt that eithers' adherents are going to "cross the floor" easily, and this will very likely lead to a lot of bad blood between the two camps. While I (somewhat) agree with the notion that Deanies are unlikely to bail out given the current situation, I think that the situation with Clark vs. Dean is very different. It's going to be a tough battle, even without Kerry, and bridges may get burned. This could also be a problem because of the Dean campaign's success in employing innovative techniques (like the meetups, tight connections with online liberals, and the "drips and draps" donation scheme that has netted Dean so much cash). While there's no doubt that Clark will employ those ideas, those individual ideas are less important than the brilliant political strategists that came up with them (Joe Trippi and his team). If they decide that they won't play ball with Clark, that will be a huge blow. The Dean campaign is proof that Trippi may be the Democrats' Rove.

Second, there's the base. I don't see this as a huge problem, but there is going to be some number of people within the Democratic base who are going to say "General? Ugh!" and turn away. I doubt this will have a serious impact, but it might have some impact on the number of partisan activists that Clark can bring into the fray.

Third, there's the problem of optics. The "Democrats are so desperate they need to bring in an outside" line is going to have some traction. It just is. It shouldn't, but keep in mind how many stupid things the Republicans have been able to hang on the Democrats in the past, and how the meme of the "weak field" has exploded across Washington and the media. Wesley Clark is going to face a serious uphill battle fighting this, and there's no doubt it'll be a Republican talking point. It was even on the Daily Show last night, when Jon Stewart was talking to that Fox News guy.

(There's another question. What the hell is up with Jon inviting a googleplex of conservatives onto his show? Is his producer afraid of looking liberal? Are they getting hate mail? Is Viacom leaning on them? What?)

In an election where there's no doubt that the voters will be looking for security and where Bush will be promising the moon in order to make them believe he can provide it, an outsider may be perceived as somewhat threatening. Normally outsiders do well in American politics, but this is not going to be a normal presidential election.

Finally, and related to the previous point, is the problem of Clark's inexperience. The Republicans are going to attack his lack of political experience, and it's going to be hard to explain away. Were Bush not Bush, Clark could probably get away with saying that he was going to bring in those with political expertise to advise him. Indeed, I have no doubt that that is what he will do. As it is, however, he will be up against a President that embodies that concept in the minds of the voters; two "CEO presidents" may not play well. This may be accidently accentuated by both the media and the activists taking pains to portray Clark as an outsider in order to best build their narrative. This may lose Clark some moderates. It may lose him a lot of moderates.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not against Clark per se any more than I'm against Dean, but the sheer unusualness of both of their campaigns(?) will have repercussions. This isn't 2000- the Wurlitzer will not have free reign this time around, and Democrats will not let Republican oppo research run the show. Still, these factors should be taken into consideration.

It would appear that, courtesy of Motorola, nanotech is finally hitting the big time. What's the first application? Oddly enough, enormous televisions for less than $1000

From atomic-scale "carbon nanotubes," Motorola Inc. has sprouted a new technology that will make it possible for the first time for manufacturers to easily grow and inexpensively produce the material to make large-scale TV and computer display tubes, the Schaumburg technology company announced Tuesday.

...the breakthrough was the development of a new, less complicated process... known as chemical vapor deposition, the tubes are laid down properly oriented on materials such as glass.

Ken Dean, principal staff scientist on the project... compared the process to a "cloud forming snow crystals [in which] the water vapor makes beautiful snow flakes." In this case, the vapor lays out standard-sized carbon nanotubes.

The Motorola process precisely places the carbon nanotubes on a surface material, while controlling their length and diameter. "This innovation gives manufacturers the ability to design products on a molecular level,"... the process will help display manufacturers better control brightness, color purity and resolution on flat panels.

Dawn McCraw, director of marketing for Motorola's advanced technology business, said the first application of the new technology will likely be as "nano-emissive displays" to enable manufacturers to build large flat panel displays with images comparable to today's flat panels using LCD or plasma technologies--but at a lower cost. She said licensing discussions are under way with manufacturers in Asia and Europe.

There are also plans to use this technology for more "uplifting" concepts, such as micro-level anti-bacterial technology, but there's something very appropriate about the initial application of the biggest hyped technology of the late 20th and early 21st centuries being, well, television.

(I won't even get into the relationship between new technology and pornography.)

As a concrete example of how things have changed, I give you the top five blogs on N.Z. Bear's average traffic listings:

1) Instapundit 34681 visits/day (1)
2) Daily Kos / Political State Report 17648 visits/day (2)
3) Eschaton (Atrios) 15089 visits/day (5)
4) Gizmodo : The Gadgets Weblog 12125 visits/day (629)
5) Tom Tomorrow 11841 visits/day (23)

Incredible: although Instapundit still manages a higher number of visits than any other blogger by a wide margin, three of the other four in the top five (and a large proportion of the top ten) are liberal bloggers- and together, their visitor numbers do exceed Instapundit's.

(At number 11 is Howard Dean 2004. Which says a lot as well.)

My own humble site sits at 110, for those who are wondering. As these are average numbers, however, and as I've had a few periods where I haven't been updating much due to being busy or technological trials, it doesn't quite reflect what my visitor numbers really are on any given day. Then again, Kos' numbers might not reflect properly, either.