Earlier this evening I flipped by the Fox News media criticism show and noticed that they were talking about the Mark Halperin memo posted on Drudge. I had the volume off so I didn't hear what was said. And there is a certain richness to Fox News discussing any other news organization's 'bias' when they're just a few days away from and have yet to explain why their chief political correspondent published a denigrating and fabricated story about the candidate he is supposed to be covering.
But what does this memo say, exactly?
Various right-wing barkers are trying to make it out as though Halperin has been caught in some impolitic or embarrassing remark. But quite the contrary is the case.
This is simply a news organization trying to grapple with the same reality that every respectable news outlet is now dealing with -- how to report on the fusillade of lies the Bush campaign has decided to use against John Kerry in the final weeks of the campaign.
The plain intent of the memo is to tell ABC reporters that they should feel neither obligated nor permitted to equate the level of deceptiveness of the Kerry and Bush campaign's if and when they are in fact not equal.
Everyone can see that they are not equal. Halperin is just saying it. And in doing so he has run smack into the epistemological relativism that now defines the Republican party.
The most noteworthy thing I've seen in the right-wing response is that there seems to be little effort to deny or engage the question of whether the Bush campaign is being qualitatively more dishonest than the Kerry campaign. All the whining is focused on the fact that any news organization would have the temerity to try to distinguish between them.
Which gets us to a key irony of the conservative assault on the concept of journalistic objectivity and claims of media bias. Though they attack the very notion that journalistic objectivity is practiced by the mainstream (i.e., non-Fox) media, they are most often -- and certainly in this case -- its great beneficiaries in as much as the failing of the current norm of objectivity is that it advantages liars. No surprise they'd want to maintain that advantage.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. Karl Rove tells Sean Hannity about 'October Surprise' he's working on. "We've got a couple of surprises that we intend to spring," says Rove.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. More information on the guy, Carlton Sherwood, who made the anti-Kerry film that Sinclair Broadcasting is ordering on to its stations across the country a few days before the election. Seems he worked for Tom Ridge in Pennsylvania and then got a gig with the Bush administration running part of their Homeland Security media operation.
--Josh Marshall
Even the Times now is asking whether President Bush was wearing a wire in the first debate. When asked, the Bush campaign first said the photograph in question had been doctored. When shown that it was taken directly from the official debate feed, a spokeswoman, Nicolle Devenish, said it was "most likely a rumpling of that portion of his suit jacket, or a wrinkle in the fabric." Said the Times: "Ms. Devenish could not say why the 'rumpling' was rectangular."
--Josh Marshall
David Brooks on what the Duelfer Report means ...
Saddam "was on the verge of greatness. [Had we not deposed him] we would all now be living in his nightmare."
Viva Booosh!
--Josh Marshall
Amazing. Right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company that owns local TV stations across the country, is ordering its local stations to preempt normal broadcasting a couple days before the election to air an anti-Kerry film made by a former 'reporter' for the Washington Times.
Basically it's a 90 minute Swift-Boat ad which Sinclair is ordering stations seen in a quarter of the nation's households to show a week before the election.
Check out Josh Green's article on Karl Rove in the current Atlantic Monthly if you want some clue what's going on here. See earlier TPM discussion of the article's contents here.
--Josh Marshall
I’ve already said that I believe President Bush gave the Democrats a big opening by telling the final questioner, in so many words, that he doesn’t think he’s made any mistakes. But there was another part of this answer that is equally revealing. And it came in an aside, which is often a vehicle of spontaneous or unintentional honesty.
In the course of his answer President Bush said: “Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV.”
I don’t think anybody familiar with this president or this White House can have much doubt about the people he was talking about there.
Paul O’Neill seems almost certain to have been one of the people, probably the person, the president had in mind. Quite likely Richard Clarke, perhaps John DiIulio, and others in the same category. The president prizes loyalty over all else. And the folks who’ve gotten canned are in almost every case folks who’ve raised concerns about the president’s mistakes before he made them or before their consequences became fully evident.
Though the president didn’t appoint Eric Shinseki as Army Chief of Staff, his accelerated retirement for questioning whether the president was putting enough troops on the ground in Iraq is the telling sign for how the Bush White House works.
In the president’s world, accountability and punishment aren’t for the folks who make the mistakes. They’re for the people who recognize the mistakes or, God forbid, admit them. And when the president had a chance to come up with any mistakes he might have made in four years as president the one that instinctively popped into his mind were the times he’d appointed folks who turned out to be from the second category, rather than the first.
This is all of a piece. In the Bush world you never admit mistakes. The only mistakes the president can think of are the times he appointed people who do admitted mistakes --- who put reality above loyalty to the president.
No one likes admitting mistakes. And it’s often especially difficult for public officials to do so. But recognizing mistakes --- on the inside, if not for public consumption --- is how you prevent mistakes from metastasizing into disasters. Which all explains a great deal about how we got where we are now in Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
Having listened to the whole thing very carefully, I thought it was basically a draw.
President Bush was certainly more coherent and on-his-feet than he was a week ago. But then, that's a pretty low standard. I think the president's advisors will be happy that he hit Kerry several times with the 'most liberal Senator' line. As NewDonkey noted a couple days ago, that's BC04's new pivot: liberal, liberal, liberal. I also thought there were opportunities to wallop the president that Kerry didn't take. The president showed moments of temper and irritability, but nothing that bad. Having said all that though I didn't think either candidate made any serious errors. And both did a reasonably good job pushing the issues their campaigns wanted them to push.
If I'm right and this was basically a draw, I think that represents a victory for Kerry for two reasons.
First, momentum seems clearly to be on Kerry's side. The president needed to arrest that momentum and I don't think he did.
The other reason turns on something I said last week. The basis of President Bush's resurgence in late August and September was based less on confidence in him than in his campaign's effective effort to portray Kerry as not an acceptable commander-in-chief. Kerry's strong performance in the first debate undermined that impression and knocked the race back to parity. I don't think anything happened in this debate to change that.
What I do think you'll have from this debate is some steadying of the president's supporters. Even the president's most die-hard supporters were knocked for a loop by his stammering and wobbly performance last week. After seeing this performance I think they'll feel like they saw the candidate they expected. And that will steady them and buoy their morale.
Now, as I've said from the beginning, what matters in these debates is less the 90 minute encounter than the spin war that unfolds after it ends. That's even more so with this one since on a Friday night (and given it's the second debate) the viewership will be down. That means the impressions voters take from this one will be even more determined by the post-debate chatter.
And on this I think the president and the last questioner gave the Democrats a real opportunity. The fiscal health of the country is a wreck. The country faces an unfolding disaster in Iraq. And numerous examples emerge day after day showing how that disaster grew directly from bad decisions the president made. And faced with a questioner who asked for just three mistakes he thinks he's made over four years, he couldn't come up with one. His answer was to say that on each of the big issues he's gotten everything exactly right.
If the Democrats and the Kerry campaign are smart they can use that to cut right to the president's greatest vulnerability -- the sense that he's out of touch, won't face what's happening and more than anything else won't level with the American people.
This is the line for the Dems to hit again and again. Seeing all we see on our TVs, he can't think of one wrong decision? He won't level with the public. And if he can't think of one thing he's gotten wrong, reelecting him means four years of more of the same.
--Josh Marshall
Can we get the straight story on these computer disks containing photos and layouts of schools in the United States?
According to reports that ran yesterday the disks came from an "Iraqi insurgent captured in Baghdad last summer [who] had allegedly downloaded floor plans of elementary and high schools in Florida, Oregon, Georgia, New Jersey, Michigan and California."
But this CNN report from late this morning says that Department of Homeland Security officials say "the material was associated with a person in Iraq, and it could not be established that this person had any ties to terrorism. He did have a connection to civic groups doing planning for schools in Iraq."
So the guy with the disks was involved in setting up schools in Iraq? Sounds a little less worrisome than finding them in Zarqawi's butler's knapsack, right?
Did everyone get scammed again on this one?
And what's with the school plans being mainly from swing states?
[ed.note: Special note of thanks to sharp-eyed TPM reader AK]
--Josh Marshall
Will the canons of journalistic objectivity buckle under the weight of the president's lies?
That's the question raised, albeit implicitly, in an article in the Times today by Adam Nagourney and Richard Stevenson entitled "In His New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts."
The awkward generosity of that headline touches the essence of the problem. It's obvious to pretty much everyone watching these final weeks of the campaign that in response to the setback of the first debate the president's advisors decided that he would only be able to win by moving from harsh attacks and distortions of his opponent's record to straight out lies.
Yet by the rules of daily newspaper and television journalism it's not possible to quite say that -- a blind spot of the profession which Mike Kinsley has spoken about eloquently for many years.
So the Times frames the matter this way. After noting how the president dramatically ramped up his criticisms after last week's debate, the authors write: "in the process, several analysts say, Mr. Bush pushed the limits of subjective interpretation and offered exaggerated or what some Democrats said were distorted accounts of Mr. Kerry's positions on health care, tax cuts, the Iraq war and foreign policy."
'Several analysts say'.
They can't get themselves to say it, even though the authors of the piece, Nagourney and Stevenson, are seasoned political reporters who know the relevant facts perfectly well enough to make the judgment themselves.
This isn't an indictment of these two reporters. It's a recognition of the system they're working in, and the tactical advantages it gives to liars.
Give the piece a look and see the level of indirection they feel obliged to use in discussing the fact the Bush campaign has made a decision to completely toss aside any serious pretense of telling the truth. Like Sherman's Army cutting their supply lines in their March to the Sea, the Bush campaign is cutting itself free from any semblance of the truth with the expectation that they can live off the rhetorical fat of the land until November 3rd.
--Josh Marshall
It ain't a pretty sight, Paul Bremer's OpEd in the Times Friday. And though it's a rough and grisly comparison, reading Bremer's column, and watching him try to gobble down his own words, I couldn't help thinking of the imagery of hostages, orange-jump-suited or not, reading out recantations or self-denunciations, on grainy film, on pain of their life.
The last couple days can't have been pleasant ones for Bremer. And the pressure to clean up his mess must have been withering. The point of Friday's column was to try to take his impolitic admissions about troop strength out of political circulation in time for Friday night's debate.
The key passage in Bremer's piece is the fourth graf ...
It's no secret that during my time in Iraq I had tactical disagreements with others, including military commanders on the ground. Such disagreements among individuals of good will happen all the time, particularly in war and postwar situations. I believe it would have been helpful to have had more troops early on to stop the looting that did so much damage to Iraq's already decrepit infrastructure. The military commanders believed we had enough American troops in Iraq and that having a larger American military presence would have been counterproductive because it would have alienated Iraqis. That was a reasonable point of view, and it may have been right. The truth is that we'll never know.
So it was a small tactical <$Ad$>disagreement, focused on the immediate post-war period of looting. And Bremer's not even sure whether he or those he disagreed with were right.
But look at what the Washington Post says he actually said: "The single most important change -- the one thing that would have improved the situation -- would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout."
In the Times today, Bremer's only response seems to be: Even though I said what I said, I wasn't really saying it when I said it.
From there the column is a lockstep recitation of the full Bush Regime Change catechism.
"Progress is being made ... The press has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the president's strategy in Iraq ... The president was right when he concluded that Saddam Hussein was a menace who needed to be removed from power ... President Bush has said that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He is right ... Our victory also depends on devoting the resources necessary to win this war ... These were vital resources that Senator John Kerry voted to deny our troops ...
A year and a half ago, President Bush asked me to come to the Oval Office to discuss my going to Iraq to head the coalition authority. He asked me bluntly, "Why would you want to leave private life and take on such a difficult, dangerous and probably thankless job?" Without hesitation, I answered, "Because I believe in your vision for Iraq and would be honored to help you make it a reality."
Viva Booosh!
--Josh Marshall
Traffic stats for September: Total unique visitors: 698,963; Total visits: 3,411,600; Total page views: 5,049,521.
--Josh Marshall
Howard Fineman's new column is entitled, "Bush is beginning to sound desperate."
And if I were Bush, and I'd lost even Howard Fineman, I'd start to feel desperate too.
--Josh Marshall
If it weren't so sad (and tragic), it would truly be funny to watch the White House scrounge around for even the most ridiculous retrospective rationales for war as the original ones collapse around them.
Today we have this line from the Associated Press: "This week marks the first time that the Bush administration has listed abuses in the oil-for-fuel (sic) program as an Iraq war rationale."
That's the new casus belli -- corruption in the oil-for-food program.
You can't make this stuff up.
Or, rather, I guess you can make this stuff. Since they are making it up.
In post-9/11 world, we can't stand idly by while third-world politicians take bribes and kickbacks!
The whole thing makes me feel not only sorry for my country but also sorry for the Kerry campaign's strategists and opposition researchers because what sort of supple and outside-box mind can possibly predict what arguments the president and his advisors will come up with next?
War was justified because not enough schools and hospitals were open before the invasion.
War was justified by back taxes owed to Kuwait by Iraqi occupation soldiers stationed in Kuwait during the second half of 1990.
War was justified by Iraqi mendacity in fooling Americans into thinking that they had WMD.
War was justified because the UN had to be freed up to work on East Timor and Sudan.
War was justified because Kuwait is still called Iraq's "19th province" in the Encyclopedia Iraqiana.
War was justified because Saddam was discriminating against faith-based organizations in handing out government contracts ...
--Josh Marshall
Here's a question. Not a rhetorical question, but a real question.
Over the past several months we've several times discussed the charges that Iraq used oil-for-food money to bribe various international dignitaries and politicians, including Benon Sevan, the head of the UN office that administered the program.
The oil-for-food program was riddled with corruption, as was known long before the invasion. And if these charges are true as well, then heads should roll.
But, as I've noted repeatedly before, I remain skeptical since the documents incriminating these individuals came right out of the Chalabi operation in Baghdad. And, quite suspiciously, he and his assigns have repeatedly refused to hand those documents over to independent investigative authorities to authenticate them. Again and again, silly or nonsensical excuses were proferred for not doing so.
Needless to say, with Mr. Chalabi, ascertaining whether these documents are forgeries or not is hardly an academic exercise.
The story has again resurfaced now -- in large part because the charges are included in the Duelfer Report on Iraqi WMD. Not surprisingly, Vice President Cheney pounced on the story yesterday on the campaign trail. And in a virtual tour de force of inanity, President Bush today suggested that the invasion may well have been justified by Iraq's abuse of the oil-for-food program.
But has any independent observer -- most notably the Volcker Commission -- gotten access to those documents yet? As recently as August 10th, Judith Miller reported in the Times that Volcker still had not been allowed access to the original documents to ascertain whether or not they were forgeries.
This passage in an article in the AP suggests that hasn't happened ...
The lists, parts of which had been published previously, were compiled from 13 secret files maintained by former Iraqi vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan and the former oil minister, Amir Rashid.But there was no independent verification. "We name those individuals and entities here in the interest of candor, clarity and thoroughness," the report said, adding that it did not "investigate or judge those non-Iraqi individuals."
Several U.S. firms were on the list but their names were not released because of privacy laws.
There's a separate question about why U.S. firms on the list aren't being identified, only foreigners. But, setting that aside, has any independent body yet reviewed those documents? And if not, why are they being given such credence considering Chalabi's record as a convicted criminal, forger of documents, producer of phony intelligence and, in all likelihood, someone who passed on American intelligence to Iran?
--Josh Marshall
I think Media Matters has the Times dead-to-rights on this question of Catholic support for John Kerry. Very sloppy work.
On the other hand, Bill Keller isn't an "op-ed columnist and senior writer" as MMFA identifies him. He's the Executive Editor of the paper. He runs the place. Which, I'd say, makes it worse.
--Josh Marshall
I touch on this subject with some hesitation because almost always there turns out not to be anything to this sort of thing. But the story just doesn't add up to me.
In 2001, 2002 and 2003 the president had his annual physical in early August. And after each he's gotten a clean bill of health. To all appearances the president is in excellent health.
But this year, according to AFP, he's decided to postpone his physical until after the election.
On its face, the explanation makes a certain amount of sense. "This has been a busier travel period for the president than the previous three years," Scott McClellan told the AFP.
But can the president really not afford one day?
And another thing occurs to me.
What was the president doing in early August this year? Right about then is when he was taking the traditional hiatus from campaigning during the Democratic convention. It seems like then of all times he had some time free.
It occurs to me that the president's campaign officials might not have wanted the contrast of Kerry's coronation with a doctor's visit for the president. And that may be a reasonable point.
But still it strikes me as odd.
I hunted around a bit on Nexis to see whether Clinton had postponed his physical in 1996. But I couldn't find anything. Whether or not he did would probably shed some helpful light on this question. If he did, then perhaps I'm just underestimating how disruptive it would be to the campaign.
Late Update: A reader sends in this link that shows that President Clinton did have his physical in 1996. But his annual visit was in May, rather than August. So it's not a perfect comparison.
--Josh Marshall
Those of you who read with interest the recent, lengthy New York Times piece on the flawed intelligence on the Iraqi nuclear program, will remember this passage about the Energy Department's then chief of intelligence ...
Some laboratory officials blamed time pressure and inexperience. Thomas S. Ryder, the department's representative at the meetings, had been acting director of the department's intelligence unit for only five months. ''A heck of a nice guy but not savvy on technical issues,'' is the way one senior nuclear official described Mr. Ryder, who declined comment.Mr. Ryder's position was more alarming than prior assessments from the Energy Department. In an August 2001 intelligence paper, department analysts warned of suspicious activities in Iraq that ''could be preliminary steps'' toward reviving a centrifuge program. In July 2002 an Energy Department report, ''Nuclear Reconstitution Efforts Underway?'', noted that several developments, including Iraq's suspected bid to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, suggested Baghdad was ''seeking to reconstitute'' a nuclear weapons program.
According to intelligence officials who took part in the meetings, Mr. Ryder justified his department's now firm position on nuclear reconstitution in large part by citing the Niger reports. Many C.I.A. analysts considered that intelligence suspect, as did analysts at the State Department.
But perhaps that's not the whole <$Ad$>story.
Longtime readers of this site will remember that we discussed Ryder a year ago with respect to this same incident. And the information we discussed came from what may seem like an unlikely source, two columns by Paul Sperry in WorldNetDaily.
The Times refers to Ryder's 'inexperience' and quotes an Energy Department official saying he was "not savvy on technical issues."
But, according to Sperry's article from August 6th of last year, that understates the matter. He referred to Ryder as "a human resources manager with no intelligence experience" who was "close to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham."
More disturbing were revelations contained in an article Sperry wrote six days later.
Sperry notes that Ryder directly overruled his technical experts who wanted to dissent from the NIE findings on an Iraqi nuclear program.
Then after the NIE was published and just before the war began, Abraham awarded Ryder a $13,000 bonus for "exceeding performance expectations."
This was in addition to an earlier $7,500 bonus he awarded Ryder prior to the NIE's publication.
According to the last section of Sperry's second article ...
Bonuses that big are rare, and Energy insiders say they cannot recall previous intelligence chiefs receiving as much bonus money as Rider, who is said to be close to Abraham....
Yet despite Rider's alleged outstanding performance, Abraham didn't keep him in the top position. In February, he was replaced by CIA official John Russak. By July, Rider had been relocated to another department – energy assurance.
So Spencer Abraham taps a friend for a position for which he seems to have no qualifications whatsoever. Then that friend overrules his technical experts to greenlight a finding that Iraq is building nuclear weapons. Then Abraham gives him a big bonus for outstanding performance -- performance so outstanding that he doesn't keep him on in the job.
--Josh Marshall
AP: "The Education Department has advised school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia. The warning follows an analysis by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department of the siege that killed nearly 340 people, many of them students, in the city of Beslan last month. 'The horror of this attack may have created significant anxiety in our own country among parents, students, faculty staff and other community members,' Deputy Education Secretary Eugene Hickok said in a letter to schools and education groups ... The Education Department sent its letter by e-mail Wednesday to school police, state school officers, school boards, groups representing principals and many other organizations." (emphasis added)
Pretty much on schedule, right?
--Josh Marshall
In its editorial today, The Washington Post goes to some lengths to put a good face on the Duelfer report about Iraq's phantom weapons of <$NoAd$>mass destruction.
One interesting passage notes what we might call the geopolitical educational benefits of the invasion ...
As long as Saddam Hussein remained in power and refused to cooperate fully with the United Nations, there could have been no certainty about his weapons. Mr. Bush had to decide whether the risks of invading outweighed those of standing pat without knowing for sure what U.S. forces would find in Iraq or what would happen once they were there.Because Mr. Bush chose to act, we know what capabilities Iraq did -- and did not -- possess, and we've learned how difficult it is to occupy and attempt to reconstruct that country.
So, it is only thanks Mr. Bush's decision to invade that we can now have the certainty we do about how wrong he was about Iraqi WMD.
Similarly, Bush's decision to invade has gained us invaluable new insights into urban guerilla warfare and how badly an occupation can go wrong.
I think I now have a better understanding of what the president and his supporters mean when they call Iraq a 'catastrophic success.'
--Josh Marshall
Nice to know everyone's got their priorities in order.
According to this morning's Post, in response to an "increasingly high-profile Virginia gun rights group whose members have taken to wearing firearms on their hips in public places to make their case", the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has agreed to ease the "overly restrictive rules" about bringing firearms to National and Dulles Airport.
--Josh Marshall
Fly on the wall envy ...
On Tuesday—the same day after Bremer’s critical remarks were made public by The Washington Post—he received no fewer than three calls from top White House officials asking for an explanation, NEWSWEEK has learned. National-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, chief of staff Andrew Card and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby all spoke to Bremer to make sure his comments were being reported accurately. One Bush official said Libby called from the road because Cheney was about to go into a debate with Democratic nominee John Edwards in Ohio, and it was obvious he would be asked about the Bremer remarks. Rice, he said, called for a similar reason—she was doing television interviews.
Pitiful.
Read the rest here.
--Josh Marshall
Fred Kaplan on how the White House conned the cable networks into live broadcasting one of his stump speeches -- and what it means.
--Josh Marshall
In Newsweek, Isikoff and Hosenball run down the litany of Vice President Cheney's misstatements, falsehoods and efforts to rewrite history from Tuesday night's debate.
In a quarter century-plus of quadrennial presidential debates, has any candidate uttered even half as many falsehoods, fibs and lies as Cheney did Tuesday night?
Don't even think of it in partisan terms. Just on the merits. Can anyone think of any of them who even comes close?
--Josh Marshall
As we noted at great length back in 2002, former South Dakota congressman John Thune (R-SD) has spent the last few years trying to use bogus charges of voter fraud to get back into elective office.
Now it seems that one of Thune's campaign volunteers -- Thune's nephew -- may be guilty of the real thing.
--Josh Marshall
Take a look at what 'NewDonkey' has to say here about the coming pivot from the Bush campaign. Important stuff.
--Josh Marshall
Wanna pick a swing state to go to on election day to help get out the vote?
Click here to find out how.
--Josh Marshall
Well, at least one columnist -- Lloyd Grove -- had the guts to touch Josh Green's Karl Rove expose.
But then Lloyd has already left DC. So I guess he isn't petrified by the fear of payback and lost access that has quelled the pens of other reporters.
Viva Lloyd!
Late Update: I stand corrected! Lloyd wasn't the only one with the, shall we say, requisite equipment, to take note of Karl Rove's bad acts. The Anniston Star, a paper from Alabama, where many of the shenanigans noted in the article took place, also spoke out in an editorial that ran in yesterday's paper.
--Josh Marshall
Who would have guessed that Charlie <$NoAd$>Duelfer would have served up the key talking points for John Kerry in Friday night's debate.
This from the AP ...
Contrary to prewar statements by President Bush and top administration officials, Saddam did not have chemical and biological stockpiles when the war began and his nuclear capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing, according to the report by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group. (emphasis added)
and this from a longer AP piece running on CNN ...
Duelfer found that Saddam, hoping to end U.N. sanctions, gradually began ending prohibited weapons programs starting in 1991. But as Iraq started receiving money through the U.N. oil-for-food program in the late 1990s, and as enforcement of the sanctions weakened, Saddam was able to take steps to rebuild his military, such as acquiring parts for missile systems.However, the erosion of sanctions stopped after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Duelfer found, preventing Saddam from pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
Duelfer's team found no written plans by Saddam's regime to pursue banned weapons if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Instead, the inspectors based their findings that Saddam hoped to reconstitute his programs on interviews with Saddam after his capture, as well as talks with other top Iraqi officials.
So, no weapons. No clear plans for future weapons. No advances in nuclear program. In fact, a clear deterioration in the nuclear program. Plus, 9/11 sealed up the eroding sanctions.
--Josh Marshall
With the Bremer debacle still seeping out into the national consciousness, there is a reassuring sense of clockwork and regularity in watching the designated GOP foot soldiers responding to the orders from Winger Central to zig or zig on command.
So for instance yesterday we first heard that Bremer had been misconstrued and that he was only talking about the delayed arrival of the 4th Infantry Division.
Now the folks at the Wall Street Journal editorial page are pulling the standard dump on Bremer, claiming that he, in addition to getting this or that wrong during his tenure in Iraq, now can't keep his story straight about whether he was asking for more troops on the ground in the country or not.
Trouble is, we haven't found a single other senior official involved in the war or its aftermath--in or out of uniform--who attests to Mr. Bremer's version of events."I never heard him ask for more troops and he had many opportunities before the President to do so," one senior Administration official tells us. Or to be more precise, Mr. Bremer did finally ask for two more divisions in a June 2004 memo--that is, two weeks prior to his departure and more than a year after he arrived.
Poor Bremer, really getting the treatment ...
But when the Journal editors were zigging, the Bush campaign had already started to zag. And the party line became predictably tangled.
Yesterday afternoon the Bush campaign told the Post that Bremer had requested more troops, but that the president preferred to take the counsel of his military commanders.
So it's either Bremer never said anything and now he's just making excuses (the Journal line.)
Or, yes he said something, but we chose to ignore him (the Bush-Cheney 04 line.)
Is BC04 lying too? In a cynical ploy to shift blame onto the president?
So with the regime-change dead-enders' media strategy you have dishonest arguments, poor coordination, lack of a game plan. Remind you of anything?
--Josh Marshall
Reader DP writes in the following<$NoAd$> ...
As a trial lawyer, Edwards learned not to allow a witness to explain. Had he challenged Cheney on each lie, Cheney could have explained them away. A better trial tactic, I am not sure about a debate, is to let the falsehood sit there but point it out later to the jury or the judge. By not letting Cheney explain away the lies, he is stuck with them and the public will act as the jury.
I have no way of knowing if this is what Edwards was consciously trying to do. But it does make me wonder.
--Josh Marshall
The DSCC is charging that the NRSC (the Republican senate committee) is using a 'race-baiting' ad to shore up Tom Coburn's flagging senate campaign in Oklahoma. Looking at the ad, I think they've got a point. But you take a gander at the ad and make up your own mind. I don't want to, shall we say, prejudice your viewing. But keep an eye out for the racial dimensions of the ad.
--Josh Marshall
A note from TPM reader <$NoAd$>RW ...
If the Republican's were given the gift Dick Cheney gave the Democrats last night, Peggy Noonan would be on TV today wondering aloud why Dick Cheney felt compelled to lie about something so silly, and so easy to refute.It's very odd, Peggy would muse... Peggy would then sweetly wonder if Dick Cheney wasn't a compulsive liar. She would detect a 'pattern' of lies stretching from his house days, to the Iraq hype, to the recent debate. She would then wonder if it wasn't a pathological problem.
Finally she would shrug and say 'I am not saying the Vice President definitely has a compulsive lying disorder, I'm just saying it's worth expert analysis.'
You can imagine the rest. A two week parade of experts mulling the possibility that Dick Cheney is a compulsive liar. Jokes on the radio and TV. Headlines about Cheney's 'illness'. etc.
Where is the Democratic Peggy Noonan?
Sounds right to me ...
--Josh Marshall
More trouble...
Last night Vice President Cheney told John Edwards: "Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you 'Senator Gone.'"
This morning the 'hometown newspaper' chimes in with a response: "Well, not exactly," they say.
See the rest here.
Not a lie really. Just a pretty egregious distortion. So sort of an improvement for the VP.
[ed. note: A special note of thanks to reader JT.]
--Josh Marshall
When you can't even keep the lies straight ...
This morning in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania President Bush told a crowd: "My opponent says he has a plan for Iraq. Parts of it should sound pretty familiar -- it's already known as the Bush plan."
Then about a minute later he said: "In Iraq, Senator Kerry has a strategy of retreat; I have a strategy of victory."
Oops ...
Late Update: A few readers have written in to say that what President Bush said between these two sentences takes away any sense of contradiction. Specifically, he says that there is one thing that distinguishes the "Bush plan" from the "Kerry plan". Looking back over it, I think that's a fair point. But, on the merits, what he says in between is just flat-out false, a lie.
Here's the key passage: "There was one element of the Senator -- there's one element of Senator Kerry's plan that's a new element. He's talked about artificial timetables to pull our troops out of Iraq. He sent the signal that America's overriding goal in Iraq would be to leave, even if the job isn't done."
Kerry hasn't set any timetables. He's said he hopes to bring back some troops by next summer. But he's bent over backwards to say that that would be determined by the situation on the ground at the time. As to his saying that the overriding goal is to leave rather than get the job done, that's explicitly the opposite of what Kerry and Edwards have been saying again and again.
They just make the stuff up. Like Cheney never meeting Edwards.
--Josh Marshall
I loved the headline Will Bunch had on his blog this morning about the Dick Cheney's George Soros/Factcheck.com debacle, "Why George Soros is a billionaire -- and you're not!"
There's been endless speculation online over the last dozen hours or so about whether someone from Soros's shop had snatched up the domain on hearing the VP's goof or cut some deal with the owner of the site or perhaps owned it all along.
But apparently the Soros people had nothing to do with it.
This morning I spoke with Soros's senior aide and spokesman Michael Vachon. And he told me that they hadn't snatched up the domain or made a deal with anyone. In fact, they had no idea what happened.
However the site got redirected to Soros's site, he told me, it was something done by the owner of the domain and not by them. They were as surprised as everyone else.
Myself, I kind of preferred the fast-moving Soros cyber-coup theory that everyone's been going on. But they say it just ain't so.
--Josh Marshall
When Dick met John. A short clip from the February 2001 prayer breakfast. In some ways, the photo is even more telling. So you can take your pick.
--Josh Marshall
At Slate, Fred Kaplan thinks Dick Cheney got the better of John Edwards in large part because Edwards did not zing the Vice President for a long list of falsehoods he uttered through the course of the debate.
That's not the way I saw it.
But whether I'm right or Kaplan is, this is a very good example of how the debate itself is only the kick-off of the several day post-debate spin war.
True, perhaps Edwards didn't spell out how the vice president was lying through his teeth when he said: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11."
But that shouldn't stop every Democrat under the sun from flogging the point at every opportunity over the next forty-eight hours. The truth is that Vice President Cheney has repeatedly suggested that the Iraqis may have played a role in 9/11.
In this article out this evening, the Post notes just two cases where he pressed the long-since-discredited claim that Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in early 2001. Making that point is, of course, on its face suggesting a connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
A year ago September on Meet the Press he said that in invading Iraq we had "struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
And shortly before that he had this exchange with Russert ...
MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.
MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know. You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn’t have any evidence of that. Subsequent to that, we’ve learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization.
We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.
Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact. With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.
As I wrote at the time, in his discussion of the purported Iraqi tie to 9/11, Cheney provided the best explanation of why the Post found that 69% of Americans believed there was a connection. Why? Because government officials like Cheney keep lying to them about it.
Cheney's defenders may insist that he never outright claims there was a tie. But when Cheney says 'we don't know' presumably he's basing the veracity of that claim on the same principle by which he doesn't know that I can't bench press a thousand pounds.
In the absence of any appeal to common sense it's difficult to prove a negative.
But by dangling this 'we don't know' line repeatedly in front of viewers he was clearly trying to create the impression that the existence of a tie was an open question, despite the fact that at the time Cheney made his remarks US intelligence had found no credible evidence whatsoever of a connection. Moreover, the US had assembled a quite detailed and complete narrative of the people and networks involved in the attacks. And none of it involved any involvement by the Iraqis.
Time and again on this issue Cheney sought to deceive the American people. And tonight he denied ever having suggested there was a connection.
Purely on the basis of this evening's debate, Cheney has a mammoth credibility problem. Again and again he said things that were simply false. In the case of the Iraq-9/11 tie, I think there's no question but that he simply lied when he said he had never suggested there was a connection.
Yet Cheney is well-liked within the Washington establishment so it will be interesting to see whether the the big TV shows and major dailies are willing to call him on it.
It will be key for the Democrats to force the matter and tie it to the broader issue of the president's lack of credibility and fear of levelling with the American people.
--Josh Marshall
Ryan Lizza brings you the inside scoop on the orders from BC04 central command on how surrogates should zig and zag.
--Josh Marshall
And then there's another rather humorous screw-up. Cheney clearly wanted to send folks to factcheck.org; but he sent them to factcheck.com.
So close and yet so far.
Factcheck.com is George Soros's website.
Some guys are just lucky, I guess. Soros spends millions on the campaign. And Cheney sends him a blizzard of more free media.
Late Update: Now I'm hearing word from readers that during the debate itself factcheck.com was a dead URL. Nothing was posted on it. Only later did it redirect to GeorgeSoros.com. Perhaps the owner of the domain immediately redirected it? Or the Soros people sprung into action? One reader suggested to me that the Soros people must have found out that the domain wasn't being used and quickly snapped it up for their operation. But my admittedly out-of-date experience tells me that it takes a good deal longer for a domain assignment to propagate through the Internet. Perhaps I'm wrong on that last point. But I'm sure we'll hear the whole story soon enough.
--Josh Marshall
As I noted earlier, I think the debate spin -- if the Dems are even remotely sensible -- will turn heavily on the great number of straight-up falsehoods Cheney told during the debate. But who knew the first one to be pegged would be so gratuitous and easy to nail?
In a rather churlish moment, Cheney told Edwards that the two of them had never met before tonight's debate, despite the fact the Edwards is a serving senator and Cheney's the body's presiding officer.
But as Atrios and no doubt many others have now pointed out, one can easily find a citation on the web of a prayer breakfast the two men attended together in February 2001. And the Dems are already circulating a picture from the event showing the two standing right next to each other.
There was less than no reason to get into the fairly irrelevant topic of whether the two guys have ever met before. But Cheney did. And right like that, smack in the face, what he said turns out to be false.
The key for Democrats will be to drive into Cheney's falsehoods on Iraq and terror. But this is a nice addition. And Cheney has provided Dems with plenty of grist.
Oh ye Dems. That is your meme. Spin forth, spin I tell you.
[I can already hear the Dems' snark line: "Dick Cheney says he'd never met John Edwards before last night? I bet he wishes he still never had."]
--Josh Marshall
As I did last week, I flipped off the volume on the television after the debate ended so that I could put down some unmediated impressions before hearing the spin and CW in the process of formation.
I hesitate to say this. But my basic impression was that Edwards didn't strike a false note for the entire 90 minutes. And I say this having been critical of him in the past.
After I saw him at a Town Hall meeting in late January in New Hampshire, I described how I was wowed by him during the event itself but then found myself not long after feeling the whole thing was somehow light and insubstantial.
Going into this debate I worried that I might see the same things. Specifically, I was concerned that everything else notwithstanding, Cheney might just outclass him on at least the perception of heft and seriousness.
But I didn't see that. Not at all. And the sharp on his feet quality I ascribed to Cheney late this afternoon didn't seem particularly evident.
Let me review some running impressions of the debate itself.
I thought Cheney started very weak and that Edwards started just as strong. Cheney recovered after not too long; but Edwards remained clean and on-message.
One thing I also noticed is that Cheney didn't look very good or even very healthy. Something like that can simply be a matter of bad make-up or unflattering lighting. So I'm not making any assumptions about Cheney's health based on what I saw. But the physical contrast between the two men was unmistakable from the outset.
Another point that I believe will ripple over the next few days is that Vice President Cheney told a number of just straight-up falsehoods during the foreign policy portion of the debate. And that creates lots of grist for Democrats in the on-going debate spin war.
I didn't take close notes and I don't have a transcript available. But there was the time when the VP said he'd never suggested Saddam was connected to 9/11 -- which will come back to haunt him. And there were a number of other Iraq, WMD and 9/11-whoppers.
Then there was the time when he said that a major reason for the decline of suicide bombings in Israel is that Saddam is no longer paying those $25,000 bounties to the families of the bombers.
That's got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. No one believes that. And I'm sure he'll be ridiculed endlessly for saying it.
There were other moments when he tried out really silly number and word games. In response to Edwards' claim that the US has sustained 90% of the coalition fatalities in Iraq, for instance, Cheney insisted that Edwards wasn't telling the truth because he wasn't including all the Iraqi soldiers and police officers who are of course now dying in their hundreds. So Cheney said the number is only 50%.
If you want to change the definition of 'the coalition' that everyone has used for the last two years I guess this may be technically true. But it struck me as silly and drove home the President's and the Vice President's unwillingness to look reality in the face and level with the public.
The essential truth is that for whatever reasons we don't have many allies with us in Iraq and the overwhelming number of casualties are Americans. Word games don't change that.
Two other final points on Cheney.
Despite what we saw last week, and the lesson the debate prep folks must have taken from it, I thought that about a third of the way through the debate Edwards started to get under Cheney's skin. The VP seemed mad. And not in a flattering way.
The basic reason, I think, was the same as in President Bush's case. He didn't like hearing the fusillade of criticism about Iraq and the war on terror. There were no grimaces and rolling eyes like in the president's case. But something about him turned sour and snide. And, again, not in a way that helped him land any punches on Edwards or Kerry.
The final point is that in the final half hour or so of the encounter Cheney seemed to grow somehow philosophical in his responses. And I don't mean that in an altogether uncomplimentary way. I thought that was the case in his answer about dividing the country and in a couple other answers that I'm not remembering at the moment. He seemed to be honestly airing the question and thinking them over, tossing out this idea or that, but not with any particular energy or verve.
The problem was that had I been one of the Bush Cheney strategists I would be thinking, "How does this answer hurt John Kerry or help the president? What is Cheney talking about?" He seemed just disengaged somehow.
I don't usually think much of the sort of comment that I'm about to make. But there was a moment during this 'philosophical' phase of Cheney's performance when I couldn't help but think: 'I just don't know if this guy's heart is really in it. I'm not sure they really want to win.' He was listless. It was like Cheney checked out of the debate about a half hour before Edwards did.
So that's Cheney. Now to Edwards.
As I said at the outset, I thought Edwards struck pretty much every note right. I'm not saying he was the best debater ever or that it was a bravura performance. But every answer seemed well-crafted and on point. He went right to Cheney's and Bush's weakest points on the issues of credibility and honesty about the war.
He also did the one thing that was most important for him to do in this whole exercise: he shored up his boss on the issues of vulnerability left open from the last debate, the ones the Bush-Cheney team has been hitting on ever since. Again and again, he pressed the point about Kerry's strength and resolution and sought to disentangle whatever messiness was left over from the 'global test' issue.
He followed the one dictate that was absolutely key for him: he was there to defend John Kerry. It wasn't about him. It was about his boss.
On foreign policy I thought he more than held his own with the VP. He made sharp and focused attacks and never got caught flat-footed by a man who has literally decades more foreign policy experience than he does. On domestic policy he was solid; and that provided a telling contrast to Cheney who seemed bored or lost on the issue.
Those again are my initial thoughts. Certainly we'll be returning to this topic over the next couple days. On balance I think Edwards held the momentum Kerry created last week and advanced the arguments of competence and honesty that worked against the president. Equally important, I thought Cheney's efforts to land punches against Kerry were only marginally effective at best. A friend who called me while I was writing this told me that he thought Cheney scored points attacking Kerry's foreign policy record reaching back to the 1970s. But I didn't think Cheney knocked those issues that effectively or with enough consistency.
The task for Democrats over the next forty-eight hours is to bang home with hammering detail and repetition just how many things Vice President Cheney said during the debate that were just flat-out false and to make the case that this is part and parcel of a general pattern of denial about what's happening in Iraq and failure, on so many fronts, to level with the American public.
I think the Kerry folks are pretty happy with what they saw; I doubt the Bush-Cheney folks are feeling the same way.
--Josh Marshall
This is classic. From what one can gather from this late piece in the Post, the White House is having a hard time figuring out who to smear as a liar over the Bremer debacle.
In this morning's Post a "senior defense official" denied that Bremer had ever pressed for more troops in Iraq, as the former administrator claimed he had in various speeches (at least not until two weeks before the end of his tenure and then to secure the borders.)
The claim that Bremer was lying, however, only seemed to last about half a news cycle because in the follow-up piece that went online at 4:41 PM a Bush campaign spokesman, Brian Jones, confirmed that Bremer had in fact requested more troops.
The specific remark was a bit oblique, but clear enough: "Ambassador Bremer differed with the commanders in the field. That is his right, but the president has always said that he will listen to his commanders on the ground and give them the support they need for victory."
This later zig in the party line also effectively cuts off at the knees the regime-change dead-enders who spent the day zagging, or rather arguing that Bremer was only talking about the delay in the arrival of the 4th Infantry Division. (This sorry excuse is ably noted here by Andrew Sullivan.)
Once Bremer arrived on the scene, the delay in the arrival of the 4th ID wasn't a matter of policy but logistics. If the issue was one of policy disagreements between Bremer and the military commanders on the ground that means that he couldn't have been talking simply about the absence of the 4th ID during the early stages of the occupation.
Who would have thought that a crew that's done such a bang up job in Iraq would have so much trouble organizing a smear and damage control operation?
--Josh Marshall
Allow me a few comments about tonight's debate.
I find this encounter much harder to predict than Kerry-Bush.
Both these guys -- Edwards and Cheney -- are very sharp on their feet rhetorically. But their styles and strengths are wholly different. Edwards is affable and engaging. He has the common touch. But he can also come off as a bit light. Cheney is sharp and can manage an uncannily reassuring and reasoned approach that belies his actual views and impulses. He also says a lot of things that aren't true and the whole baring your incisors as a debating tactic can be a downer in this feel-good era.
What Edwards should keep squarely in mind is that this debate isn't about John Edwards or Dick Cheney. Views of both of them are close to irrelevant. This is a proxy debate between John Kerry and George Bush. It's about defending Kerry and taking the fight to the president. Everything else is a distraction.
I'm sure the campaign strategists have thought through all sorts of good angles for Edwards to pursue. But what I'd like to see is the following.
The real vulnerability now for the Bush-Cheney team is the perception (very much based on reality) that they lied the country into war and even more that they're not being straight with the public now about what's happening in Iraq. More than anything, that was President Bush's undoing in the first debate. Not only were his answers on Iraq wobbly. But getting hit on the issue was, I think, what really got under his skin.
As I said above, this debate isn't about Dick Cheney. Yet Cheney has been the most foward-leaning in his deceptive comments (TPM secret decoder ring: 'biggest liar') on WMD, the phantom Iraq-al Qaida tie, the post-war situation in Iraq and just about everything else. So he is uniquely ill-situated to defend the White House on these grounds.
There's plenty of fresh ammunition this week -- even the material in the New York Times article on the Iraqi nuclear program, though most of that had appeared earlier elsewhere.
Cheney's awfully quick on his feet. But if Edwards zeroes in on this stuff, I think Cheney will have a hard time not either completely abandoning some of his previous positions or repeating some ridiculous whoppers that will provide plenty of grist for the inter-debate spin war on from tomorrow through Friday evening.
--Josh Marshall
Charlie Rangel's (D-NY) statement on the draft bill <$NoAd$>brought to the House floor today ...
The Republican leadership decision to place the draft legislation on the Suspension Calendar is a political maneuver to kill rumors of the President's intention to reinstate the draft after the November election.I am voting no, because my bill deserves serious consideration. It should be subject to hearings and to expert testimony. The Administration should come and tell us about our manpower needs, about recruitment and retention, about the extent to which out troops are overextended. And they should give us their views about shared sacrifice. If they did all of those things in a serious way, they would have to admit that my bill is an option.
But what we are seeing now is election-year politics. They are using the Suspension Calendar, which is reserved for non-controversial items, to make a cynical political statement. The American people are deeply concerned about this issue deserve more than this. So do our troops, who after we leave here today, will still be on ground, and left with the message that we couldn't take the time to discuss their situation and what should be done to relieve them.
This is hypocrisy of the worst kind. I would not encourage any Democrat running for reelection to vote for this bill.
More as the story develops ...
--Josh Marshall
Et tu, Breme?
So here we go again: A former Bush administration official says -- after the fact -- that the central critiques of administration policy were entirely correct.
In this case, the admission is that the US never had enough troops in Iraq to get the job done. On top of that, there is a critical subsidiary point: that the US lost vital and perhaps irrecoverable ground in the first days and weeks of the occupation by not ending the widespread looting and not moving quickly enough to restore law and order.
"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," said Bremer, according to the Post, "We never had enough troops on the ground."
Needless to say, this wasn't just a critique mounted by political opponents but a prediction made far in advance of the outbreak of hostilities by many of the president's statutory advisors -- like Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki.
As Atrios notes, we're already hearing the chorus of Bush leakers whipping up the cry that Bremer is a liar and some sort of hopeless fool who was lucky not to get canned for all the mistakes he made -- a la, Clarke, O'Neill and all the rest.
What strikes me in the Post article is Bremer's contention, contained in an email he sent to the article's authors, that his contention that the US had insufficient troops applies to the immediate post-invasion period rather than to today.
Partly, this dodges the question. There's a lot of time between April/May 2003 and Sept./Oct. 2004. Most of that time, Bremer was in charge.
The key though is that it's hard to argue that the US had too few troops on the ground in June 2003 or December 2003 or March 2004 and yet has an adequate amount today when the situation has deteriorated so dramatically.
Not impossible, but very hard.
The whole point of coming in early with a robust occupying force is that you can establish law and order early with a number of troops that might not be able to re-establish order once things have spun out of control. The number of troops needed to put the genie back in the bottle, almost by definition, has to be greater than the number that would have been needed to stop it getting out in the first place.
Where was James Q. Wilson when these jokers needed him?
--Josh Marshall