Let's broaden this out a bit, shall we?
Perhaps we were too hasty in criticizing the president for only giving cabinet nominations to people who have already served as his butler, or footman or personal tutor. Because when he goes outside his personal circle the process seems almost comically inept, hasty and reckless.
I guess for the next day or so we've got to keep pretending that it was this nanny issue that cost Kerik the post. And the Post has a story out tomorrow with the first reports that Kerik lied to them about the nanny thing. But then there's this passage ...
In the vetting process, which was conducted by the office of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, Kerik also never mentioned that a New Jersey judge had issued a warrant for his arrest in 1998 over a civil dispute over unpaid bills, the sources said. The existence of the dispute was first reported by Newsweek Friday night.It is unclear why White House lawyers could not uncover a warrant that Newsweek discovered after a few days of research, although some are blaming Bush's insistence on speed and secrecy for failing to catch this and other potential red flags in Kerik's background.
"[T]his and other potential red flags."
That's <$Ad$> sort of a charitable way of putting it, isn't it?
As nearly as I can tell, almost every major assignment Kerik has had turns out to have been hazed over with clouds of scandal. At the posting in Saudi Arabia he is, it seems credibly, accused of pursuing his boss's private agenda and spying on the boss's many paramours on his behalf.
Then on Kerik watch, Riker's Island turned into a latter-day GOP Tammany Hall, with punishment meted out to employees who didn't do off-duty work for Republicans. At the NYPD there were reportedly other problems. And then you've got the Baghdad bug-out after that.
And then you've got the 9/11-based security rainmaking with Rudy, though perhaps that's considered an advantage since he could work better at DHS with former employers.
Perhaps Kerik is just misunderstood or has a lot of ungenerous accusers. Or I'm just putting it all in the worst light. But was this really the best pick for Homeland Security, given that the president has made it the central issue of his presidency?
Late Update: In this article in the Times, David Sanger makes explicit the analogy to Linda Chavez's abortive nomination to the Department of Labor, which we mentioned earlier. But if the Bush White House really wants to stick with the story that this nanny business was really all that sunk Kerik, doesn't that mean that all the other cases of scandal and evidence of his using police power to pursue personal and political agendas just didn't matter to them?
--Josh Marshall
Newsday: "The short, disastrous nomination of Bernard Kerik ended with a whimper and may have ended Rudolph Giuliani's Teflon period -- a three-year stretch when his status as "America's Mayor" largely obscured his own shortcomings and the foibles of close associates."
The headline is "Flameout burns Rudy politically."
And how ...
--Josh Marshall
The one clear casualty of the Cash-n-Kerik debacle is Rudy Giuliani. How much has his star been dimmed in Republican circles over this? Or at least in Bush circles. Or is there a difference anymore?
--Josh Marshall
In all the flurry of stories about Bernard Kerik<$NoAd$>, I must confess that I missed this one in Wednesday's Post about his time in Saudi Arabia. This had been one of the many apparent feathers in Kerik's cap.
But according to the Post article ...
Since he was nominated last week to be homeland security secretary, however, nine former employees of the hospital have said that Kerik and his colleagues were carrying out the private agenda of the hospital's administrator, Nizar Feteih, and that the surveillance was intended to control people's private affairs. Feteih became embroiled in a scandal that centered in part on his use of the institution's security staff to track the private lives of several women with whom he was romantically involved, and men who came in contact with them, the ex-employees said.
Not only is this a rather unfortunate record, if true, but it jibes with other parts of his history -- running Riker's island as a Republican fief, the undying and unlimited fealty to Rudy, the rainmaking, whatever mumbo-jumbo happened in Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
Newsweek's Mark Hosenball suggests that his investigation may have been what scotched the Kerik nomination. And he may be right. According to this story on the Newsweek website, early this evening Newsweek reporters faxed the White House documents detailing an arrest warrant that was issued for Kerik in 1998, stemming from a dispute over unpaid bills for a condo he owned in New Jersey.
--Josh Marshall
It was only the tip of the iceberg.
I was away from the computer and any news for the evening and here I come back to find out that Bernard Kerik has withdrawn his name from consideration for head of DHS allegedly for a nanny problem. (AP quotes the White House saying simply that it was for "personal reasons.")
Frankly, I doubt that was all there was. As we've discussed on this site, only a president with majorities as compliant as George W. Bush has right now would have even considered nominating Kerik. On top of the mysterious departure from Baghdad and the Rudy and Co. rainmaking, there's the fact that he left the Riker's Island prison as something very near to a latter-day version of Tammany Hall. And that was hardly the end of it. Eventually, the pay-off to Rudy aspect of the nod would have come up too.
This is the Bush way of handling these sorts of things: if it's going to be bloody, dispatch him early. Don't even let it get to the hearings stage -- just like Linda Chavez.
I'll be very curious to hear the follow-on reporting about what really happened. What was the problem that did him in? When did the White House send the message? How did they do it?
Maybe not a horse-head in the bed-sheets, but there must be some story to tell.
--Josh Marshall
Here is the extremely broad-ranging <$NoAd$>list of participants for the Social Security (abolition) panel at the president's "Securing Our Economic Future" conference.
Richard D. Parsons, Chairman and CEO, Time Warner Inc.; Co-Chair, President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security (New York, NY)Liz Ann Sonders, Chief Investment Strategist, Charles Schwab and Co. (New York, NY)
William Roper, Dean, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC)
James Glassman, Senior U.S. Economist, JP Morgan Chase (New York, NY)
Tim Penny, Professor, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota; Member, President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security; former U.S. Representative (Waseca, MN)
Sandy Jaques, National Advisory Council Member, Women for a Sound Social Security Choice (West Des Moines, IA)
Everyone from Wall Street economists who support ending Social Security, to think-tankers and activists who support it too.
[ed.note: I tried to find a link for everyone. But neither google nor Nexis gave me any results for "Sandy Jaques" or her organization "Women for a Sound Social Security Choice." So presumably it's another phoney-baloney astroturf outfit that's so new their site isn't even listed on google yet. I'd figure Mr. Synhorst would be more on his game for the big moment.]
Late Update: A reader sent in this press release about the mysterious Ms. Jaques from October 6th of this year. That was apparently before she cooked up 'Women for a Sound ... etc.' She seems to come out of Citizens for a Sound Economy.
From this page, it sounds like Jacques is a classic astroturf operative.
--Josh Marshall
Could this be one of the things that got ol' Clark Kent Ervin out of favor at the White House?
You may have heard of the case Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, who was born in 1970 and immigrated to Canada in 1987. In September 2002, during a stopover in New York while returning to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia, he was taken into custody by US Immigration officials who claimed he had ties to al Qaida.
Arar was subsequently deported to Syria. And, when he returned to Canada over a year later, he claimed to have been tortured while in Syrian custody.
In December 2003 Rep. John Conyers (D) of Michigan wrote the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security -- that would be our Mr. Ervin -- asking him to conduct a review into the circumstances under which INS deported Arar to Syria despite that fact that he was carrying a Canadian passport at the time of his detention.
But, according to a letter Ervin sent Conyers on July 14th, 2004, he wasn't getting a lot of cooperation on his review.
(Before proceeding, it's important to note that whether or not Arar is a bad guy is an entirely separate question from whether the statutorily-empowered Department IG can review what happened.)
Ervin began his letter by explaining various delays in the review because of his inability to see classified documents and because of various claims of privilege by DHS lawyers.
Then, in the final three grafs, Ervin describes how he had been prevented from interviewing past and present government officials involved in the case as well as being denied access to additional government documents because DHS lawyers were asserting various legal privileges, such as attorney-client privilege, among others.
Ervin found the assertions of privilege to be bogus (my words, not his) but had had "no success", to use his words, in his efforts to get the access he felt he needed. Click here to see the passage from Ervin's letter.
After reading the letter, my question is less why the guy got canned than how he ever got hired by these guys in the first place.
I hear Sen. Collins ain't crazy about Ervin either, though the reasons I've heard for her disapproval seem debatable.
--Josh Marshall
What is this world coming to when you have to quit your job at Hustler just because your stepdad gets nominated as AG?
--Josh Marshall
Imagine for a moment that we were having a different sort of Social Security debate. In this alternative universe it wouldn't be about reform or privatization or who had the best plan to save Social Security. The issues would be different. The question would be whether we should abolish Social Security and replace it with a system of loosely-federally-regulated 401ks, or not.
It wouldn't be abolished overnight, of course, but phased out over time. So any oldsters collecting benefits now wouldn't need to worry. And the same would probably go for pre-fogies too ... say, anyone over 55.
But that's the essence of it: abolishing Social Security or not.
Well, guess what? That is exactly the debate we're having. Only many of Social Security's defenders don't seem to know it. It's not that they don't know it exactly. They, more than anyone, understand the stakes involved. But for all the great facts they're bringing to the table, they still seem content to frame the argument in a way that obscures the true issues involved and benefits their opponents immeasurably.
If the shoe were on the other foot, Republicans would not make the same mistake.
--Josh Marshall
Kevin Drum does some helpful fact-checking on the record of Social Security privatization abroad.
--Josh Marshall
They may not have a clue about running most of the federal government, but the Bushies do keep the memory hole running on time. Clark Kent Ervin, the overly-aggressive DHS Inspector General ABC reported canned last night, has already had his page removed from the DHS website.
Clark who? I'm afraid you must have ...
(Here it is preserved for posterity.)
--Josh Marshall
Maybe the conservatives who go <$NoAd$> into paroxysms with charges of anti-Semitism any time the word "neoconservative" is uttered, will spare a moment to take notice of this (courtesy of Andrew Sullivan) from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League ...
Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it. That's why they hate this movie. It's about Jesus Christ, and it's about truth. It's about the messiah. Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common.
The Jew-Hollywood-Anal-Sex-Abortion conspiracy revealed!
--Josh Marshall
More on CBS News' kamikaze-like rate of decline -- Kevin's got the details.
--Josh Marshall
The blog medium is nothing if not flexible; and it's open to a seemingly limitless variety of unexpected uses. Here's one I wouldn't have expected: a group of climate scientists has established a climate change group blog, RealClimate.org.
(Actually, the promo introducing the site seems to go to some lengths not to call it a site about climate change but rather one about climate science. Between you and me, I think it's basically about the climate change issue. But don't tell them I said that.)
The brief description on the site says it is aimed at the "interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in political or economic issues."
I can't say I'll be clicking the refresh button non-stop throughout the day on this one. But so long as the rate of posts doesn't move on the geologic time scale I think I'll be stopping by regularly to find out more. It's a creative way to spread knowledge about an important subject.
--Josh Marshall
The Post discusses the president's domestic policy plans and particularly the effort to phase out Social Security.
One nice passage: "To build public support and circumvent critics in Congress and the media, the president will travel the country and warn of the disastrous consequences of inaction, as he did to sell his Iraq and terrorism policies during the first term, White House officials said."
This would seem to be an analogy critics could use to some good effect.
--Josh Marshall
David Brudnoy, who we noted this morning was near death at Mass General Hospital in Boston, died this evening. He was 64. Andrew Sullivan has some brief words in remembrance and tribute.
--Josh Marshall
The latest installment of 'Great moments in listening to Larry King say something and wishing you were a member of another species' ... Atrios has the details.
--Josh Marshall
Did the ADL and Media Matters get under the skin of Bill O'Reilly, embattled champion of Christmas ("nobody sticks up for Christmas except me ...")?
--Josh Marshall
As Bernard Kerik says, "Political criticism is our enemies' best friend." And we all know that what our enemies like best is overly aggressive Inspectors General. So, thank God, this guy, Clark Kent Ervin, the IG at Homeland Security, just got canned.
Late Update: I'd be curious to hear from people who are familiar with the backstory here. Ervin comes off the Bush-Houston-Texas ladder. So what happened?
--Josh Marshall
When there's a lot of kindling on the ground, a few sparks can really start a fire ablazing. And that's what now seems afoot between the "DLC" and "the base" in Democratic blogdom. I did a post yesterday about one of my pet peeves about some in the leadership of the organization. So in the interests of having this fire generate more light than heat, let me briefly wade back into this debate.
If there is an institutional failing in the DLC, it is that some in its leadership -- or more specifically, its founder and CEO Al From -- have a habit of making public statements, often at what I consider to be opportunistic moments, that amount to saying that the problem with the Democratic party is that it has ... how can I say this, too many Democrats.
There is also a habit of deploying a highly elastic definition of what it means to be a New Dem which can be expanded or contracted for effect as the opportunities of the moment dictate.
In these intra-party disputes, I always try to get people to take the snarled edge of original sin off their polemics, wherever possible. So perhaps I should take that admonition to heart myself for yesterday's post. But however that may be, I stand behind the basic critique.
But my comments would be incomplete if I didn't note the crude, often silly, and in any case highly misleading caricature of the organization that I hear from readers in emails and on various sites.
The thinking goes that those behind the "corporate/DLC agenda" are simply closet Republicans, whose aim is to put a Democratic label on Republican policies or kow-tow and make nice to Republicans so much that the Democratic party becomes even more impotent and enfeebled than it already is. Whether these points are true or not, their model for successfully winning elections has been endlessly discredited and in any case all they're really about is serially abandoning the various groups that make up the Democratic party. And what right do they have to screw, or sell-out, of $%#& blacks or unions or the poor or gays or the environment, when these guys aren't even real Democrats anyway?
As I noted in my earlier post, over the last six or seven years I've had a few perches which gave me some unique perspective on this intra-party tussle. And I can see kernels of truth in the caricature. But this is a highly misleading portrayal of who almost all of these people are. And the caricature is sustained by a lot of people who only know what these folks are about from left-leaning anti-DLC polemics -- though I would say the DLC folks come in for a good deal of criticism for that being the case.
So before everyone goes off half-cocked, with misleading slogans and impressions, trying to purge this or that wing of the party, I would say, find out a bit more about the groups you're talking about. There are plenty of real differences to argue about without getting into shouting matches with folks who might agree with you about more than you imagine.
I should probably add here that there's also the running battle between From's DLC and Simon Rosenberg's New Dem Network over ownership of the 'New Democrat' label and various other stuff. I have no particular investment one way or another in the DLC as an institution. It certainly has its problems. I would just ask that people spend as much time finding out who these folks are as they do blasting them.
One final point, you'll notice I often link to the NewDonkey blog. It's run by my friend Ed Kilgore, who's the Policy Director for the DLC. If you want to know about what these folks are about, hearing what their policy director thinks is a decent place to start. And not just one visit. Spend some time there because that's the only way to get a sense of it.
At the moment the lead post is a smack-down of David Sirota's "Da Vinci Code" piece in the Prospect. So maybe this isn't the most auspicious moment for trying to get everybody to get along. But then, a core argument of David's piece was blaming the DLC for what ails the Democratic party and trying to write them out of the same. So what do you expect?
In any case, the Dems got 48% last month. Whatever else you can say about that number, it suggests we don't have the luxury of having enough of us that we can start purging anyone. There are serious issues that divide us -- and they'll be argued over. But I don't believe that any of them are deep enough to prevent both sides from coexisting within the same party, especially considering what we are up against.
--Josh Marshall
You’ve probably already seen much discussion of Peter Beinart’s “A Fighting Faith” piece in The New Republic. So let me add a few comments and start by making some broad points that I hope I’ll be able to follow up on in subsequent posts.
To review, Peter’s argument is that Democrats face a similar challenge to that they faced in 1947 when the founders of the Americans for Democratic Action (a group which, I’m sure they’ll want you to know, still exists) pushed the Democratic party --- and its various institutional bastions --- into foursquare support for the Cold War. Anti-Communism, they argued, and argued successfully, was inseparable from liberalism.
Peter says Democrats face a similar challenge today: to transform themselves into a movement that puts the fight against terrorism at the center of their agenda and root out or purge those who are indifferent to the war against terror or doubt that American power --- military and otherwise --- can be a force for advancing liberal goals of democracy, openness and individual liberties around the globe.
I should start with what I agree with. In fact, I should begin by declaring a prejudice. Like Peter, I see that moment in 1947, the birth of the ADA, and more generally Cold War liberalism as a defining moment and one of the proudest moments of the liberal political tradition in the United States. It is a touchstone against which I measure my own political views.
I also agree with Peter that Democrats have a basic and non-cosmetic problem with national security policy. I wrote a number of articles about this in 2002 and had a hand in a couple of others. The problem is not principally dovishness but rather --- as Peter notes --- that Democrats are by and large simply not sufficiently interested in national security policy, as such. This is at least as much a problem in the Democratic operative world as it is at the grassroots. As I’ve written before, lack of interest in national security policy leads to lack of knowledge. And lack of knowledge leads to tactical and mutable political decisions on national security --- which is both bad on principle but also feeds public perceptions that Democrats aren’t serious about the issue and that they’re not trustworthy guardians of the national security in dangerous times.
To the extent that Peter’s piece can spark further discussion of this essential problem, great.
But I also have some major disagreements, which I’ll try to note here and hopefully expand on in later posts. Basically, I think Peter's diagnosed a key problem for Democrats. But the cure he prescribes is the wrong one, largely, I think, because several of his premises and assumptions are flawed.
First, the War on Terror is not comparable to the Cold War. Let’s focus the point a little more closely and say that the war against militant Islam is not comparable to the Cold War.
Let’s survey the world stage the ADA folks faced in 1947 for some points of comparison. Having vanquished fascism, the democratic world faced in world communism a political movement that in its basic hostility to democracy and liberalism was more similar to than opposed to fascism. Russia, half of Europe and (in a couple of years) China were all communist. The communists controlled the largest land army in the world and would soon have nuclear weapons. Communism had substantial minority support across Western Europe, including vast support (active or passive) among the most articulate in society. And in the United States many on the left saw communists less as enemies than as errant allies, with whom cooperation was possible on common goals.
Placing context or limits on the danger posed by Islamic terrorism is a hazardous business these days. But unlike communism in 1947, militant Islam simply does not pose an existential threat to our civilization. It just doesn’t. It puts us all physically at risk. And especially for those of us who live in DC, New York or other major urban areas, it could kill us tomorrow.
But aside from middle eastern immigrants in western countries, this ideology has close to no support anywhere outside the Muslim world. As an ideology it controls at best a few small states; and it has possible access to Pakistan's small nuclear arsenal. But where is the danger of the Islamist takeover of any of the world’s great powers? China? The US? Europe? India? Japan? Brazil? Will Germany or Canada becomes ‘finlandized’ by Islamist power? That doesn’t mean the danger doesn’t exist, only that it’s different. And those are fundamental differences we shouldn’t ignore.
Admittedly, the lack of Islamist power, in this sense, will be cold comfort for many of us if al Qaida brings us cargo ship with a nuclear weapon into New York harbor tomorrow. But the difference between an existential threat and a physical one is an important one for thinking about its impact on our politics. Particularly, whether it should lead us to purge folks from the Democratic party or from American liberalism who haven’t yet come around to a sufficiently serious view of the threat of terrorism or a coherent and tough-minded national security policy.
Peter rightly points out some instances where groups like Moveon and such consorted with some very illiberal outfits. And they shouldn’t have. But I agree here with John Judis when he says that Peter is wrong in comparing Moveon or Eli Pariser to the old fellow-traveling left. And calling these folks the modern-day heirs of Henry Wallace is just bad history and bad reasoning.
I think many of the points Peter makes in his piece are more appropriate to the intra-Democratic debate over US military action in the Balkans in the late 1990s. That was a defining debate and one I think the right side generally won. This current debate is too muddled by the militaristic and neo-imperial policies of the Bush administration to make it as black and white a picture as Peter wants.
Much of the debate about how to practice anti-communism in liberal circles in the 1940s came down to basic questions about which errors were products of naiveté or political inexperience and which represented something more sinister or a deeper failing of attachment to liberal principles. And here’s where the differences between then and now become quite important.
I would argue that it is precisely those differences between today and fifty years ago which explain why we don’t need and really can’t afford to start to define ourselves by instituting any purges. To the extent that there is any analogy between Moveon and anything that happened half a century ago, the analogy should be to organized labor more generally. The ADA Democrats didn’t try to purge labor. They mounted a campaign within organized labor to get unions to separate themselves from illiberal forces. In any case, whatever disagreements I may have with them on policy --- and particularly foreign policy --- I think Moveon is part of the solution not part of the problem in restoring a center-left in American politics that embraces liberal values both at home and abroad. And this comes from someone who vociferously attacked Dems and liberals who opposed US military involvement in the Balkans and is, I’m sure, more of a foreign policy hawk than the majority of the people who read this site.
So, to summarize, the war on terror is not the Cold War. Tying the two together in too tight analogies leads to errors in judgment and prescribed policy.
A few other points.
I think Peter raises Kerry’s vote against the $87 billion Iraq supplemental to an ideological significance it simply won’t bear. This wasn’t a vote for isolationism or against democratization abroad. It clearly did hurt Kerry in the general but it was a mix of political calculation and even more than that --- and something that couldn’t really be discussed in the campaign --- it was an effort to exercise some control over a president who was well on his way to creating the disaster we’re now saddled with by placing restrictions and oversight of his conduct of the reconstruction. He didn’t really vote against that money in way Peter implies.
Iraq. I don’t think we can deal with the issue of Democrats, national security policy and the war on terror, without addressing Iraq front and center and recognizing just what a disaster our enterprise there has become. This isn’t a secondary issue.
Finally, I should confess that ideally I would like to see the Democratic party unify behind a thorough and coherent TPM agenda, with TPM views on national security, social policy, fiscal policy and all the rest of it. Those who wouldn’t go along with the proper TPM doctrine I’d probably expel, I guess.
In the absence of that TPM party, though, I’m happy to consider myself one more fallen and perhaps disagreeable member of the Democratic party, filled with people I disagree with but with whom I think I share some core political values and beliefs. And I’ll work to point them in what I think is the right direction.
--Josh Marshall
If you've ever lived in the Boston area (and for many who never have) you'll know David Brudnoy, the WBZ radio talk-show host, who has long been one of the fixtures of the city. According to this morning's Globe, David is standing at the threshold of death at Mass General, with cancer, once in remission, that has spread through his vital organs.
--Josh Marshall
I got an email this morning from a New Dem friend alerting me to the column by Al From (CEO) and Bruce Reed (President) of the DLC on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
The essence of their argument is that Democrats must put back into play most, if not all, of the red states if they're to have any hope of winning presidential elections or again becoming the majority party. Some of the particulars I agree with; others I don't.
I first considered printing the exchange my friend and I had, but quickly realized that expurgation would rob it of its meaning.
Suffice it to say that I asked my friend whether he thought From and Reed were fully aware of the 'optics' of running such a 'Dems get your house in order' piece on the Journal's editorial page. He said yes, they did and that they enjoyed the optics of it. I responded, yes, I knew that; but still really didn't think they quite 'got it'.
Let me explain what I meant and didn't mean. I didn't mean that Democrats should boycott the Journal OpEd page or restrict their writing to house organs -- plenty of liberals write pieces there and that's fine; I wouldn't want it any other way. Nor do I mean that Democrats shouldn't air their dirty laundry. They should. And now, frankly, as far as you can get from an election, is the time to do it.
But to advise Democrats you've got to be a Democrat, part of the Democratic party. And what that means is a certain threshold level of lack of contempt for people who, day in and day out, are the Democratic party. I don't mean 'the base'. I mean everyone -- right, left and center, the volunteers, the funders and the intellectuals, the issue activists and the occasional voters. And this shows a basic unwillingness to do that -- even in the most simple symbolic ways, indeed, a delight in not doing so.
I've come to expect this sort of thing from Al From, but I was more surprised to see it from Bruce Reed, who, from personal experience, has always struck me as a different sort of player.
My disgruntlement over this, I should add, is not rooted in an opposition to the DLC, but a belief in how much most of those associated with the organization have to offer the Democrats. On most issues, I probably see more eye to eye politically with my friends there (who, for the purposes of this post, I will mercifully leave nameless) than I do with those in "the base" of the party. (The last 9-to-5 job I had I basically got run out of for being -- allegedly and rather ridiculously -- a DLC plant. But that's another story.)
But for folks who often, unfairly, get charged with being Democrats in name only, they manage to find awfully good ways of playing the part.
--Josh Marshall
I've gotten a bunch of questions asking why I've yet to weigh in on the debate about Peter Beinart's piece -- "A Fighting Faith" -- in the current issue of The New Republic. It's not for lack of interest. And there's no implied judgment from the lack of comment. It's rather that the issue is so near and dear to my heart that I've been mulling what I think and considering the pros and cons of Peter's argument.
I should mention that the PPI is putting on a panel discussion about Peter's article Friday at 12:30.
--Josh Marshall
Don Rumsfeld responding to complaints from troops that they're forced to dig up scrap metal to fashion make-shift armor for their vehicles: "If you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up."
If ya think about it ...
--Josh Marshall
With bad effects on policy, but some advantages for clarity, most of our political debates about North Korea are driven by screaming CNN headlines like "NORTH KOREA ADMITS TO MAKING MANY NUKE BOMBS" or "WHITE HOUSE: NORTH KOREA'S URANIUM PROGRAM ON VERGE OF COMPLETION."
But a new article (set to be released tomorrow, but linked here now) from Foreign Affairs argues that the evidence for a North Korean uranium enrichment program (in violation of the 1994 'Agreed Framework') is far more tenuous than the administration has led us to believe.
The piece is written by Korea-watcher Selig Harrison, Director of the Asia Program and Chairman of the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy at the Center for International Policy.
Precisely what Harrison argues is difficult to summarize in 'they got'em' or 'they don't got'em' terms. But the essence of it is that in early 2002 the White House feared that the process of detente between South Korea, Japan and North Korea might be slipping from its control.
As he writes, the initial confrontation over the North Koreans' alleged uranium enrichment program "seems to have been inspired by the growing alarm felt in Washington in the preceding five months over the ever more conciliatory approach that Seoul and Tokyo had been taking toward Pyongyang; by raising the uranium issue, the Bush administration hoped to scare Japan and South Korea into reversing their policies."
Harrison doesn't say that there was no evidence of a program for producing highly-enriched uranium (HEU). There was some, and some of it dated back to the Clinton administration. But prompted by these geopolitical considerations, the White House portrayed ambiguous evidence as rock-solid proof in order to scuttle the Clinton-era Agreed Framework which had been the basis of rapprochement for the previous several years.
(This argument about political calculations is not novel; but it takes on a new dimension in light of Harrison's arguments about the weakness of the intelligence for an HEU program.)
So what do the North Koreans really have in terms of HEU? The analysis is technical and lengthy -- and if you're interested in this subject, I strongly recommend reading the piece. But, in brief, he argues that it is possible that the North Koreans never had a bomb-related uranium program, more probable that they made some attempts but didn't get very far, and very unlikely that they have or had a program anywhere near as advanced as the White House has led us to believe.
(Harrison's discussion of these various scenarios is inherently speculative, and may in some cases give the North Koreans too much of the benefit of the doubt. But, by my reading, the case Harrison makes for their not having any sort of advanced program -- intentions aside -- seems pretty strong.)
Now, he argues, that focus on an HEU program, which may not even exist, is making it impossible to come up with a deal or solution to the Plutonium-track production which certainly does exist and is the greatest danger that North Korea poses.
If you're interested in this issue, read this article.
--Josh Marshall
Because I was busy spending time on planet earth I hadn't noticed that there are more than a few conservatives now claiming that Sen. Harry Reid must be a racist because he said on Meet The Press that he would consider voting for Justice Scalia for Chief Justice but not Justice Thomas since the latter had been an "embarrassment" as a member of the court.
To these folks, I suppose, both men are equally well-respected "conservatives," and thus favoring one over the other can only be a function of race prejudice.
(Tonight I even got one of the inevitable 'you're a hypocrite because you don't give Reid the treatment you gave Sen. Lott' emails.)
Perhaps someone can help me out here by sending in a clever witticism noting how those most eager to shape jurisprudence to demand proof of racist intent to justify remedial action are also the quickest to toss around the most risible accusations of racism to cover for their own mediocre Justices.
--Josh Marshall
Ed Kilgore (aka New Donkey), Policy Director, Democratic Leadership Council: "I came to believe strongly that the real agenda of the people closest to Bush--including his political advisors and much of the Republican congressional leadership--was not only dishonest, but deeply cynical and irresponsible: a drive to simultaneously wreck the federal government and to perpetuate their control over the wreckage as long as possible through the exercise of the rawest sort of institutional power and corruption. And moreover, this belief made me angry at even those Republicans who did not share that agenda, because they were helping to promote it against their own best instincts ... I think today's Republican Party, and its leader, are built on a foundation of fundamental dishonesty about who they are, what they want, and where they are taking the country. As a Christian, I will endeavor not to hate them for that. As an American, I will endeavor to respect those who voted for Bush, because after all, they have as much right to the franchise as I do. But until they demonstrate the ability to walk, or perhaps I should say swagger, in a straight line, I will continue to hold the president, his advisors, and his allies in Congress in minimum high regard. That did not change on November 3."
--Josh Marshall
The FT on what they aptly call the "witch-hunt against Kofi Annan" and the editorial confidence men, street hustlers and hired fists who are fixing the knot in the rope.
No mention of the wantwit front man who's agreed to read the script.
--Josh Marshall
Krugman to the rescue on the Social Security "crisis," explained simply and elegantly, as only he can.
--Josh Marshall
Thank President Bush (from the FT...)
Oil exporters have sharply reduced their exposure to the US dollar over the past three years, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements.Members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries have cut the proportion of deposits held in dollars from 75 per cent in the third quarter of 2001 to 61.5 per cent.
Middle Eastern central banks have reportedly switched reserves from dollars to euros and sterling to avoid incurring losses as the dollar has fallen and prepare for a shift away from pricing oil exports in dollars alone.
Private Middle East investors are believed to be worried about the prospect of US-held assets being frozen as part of the war on terror, leading to accelerated dollar-selling after the re-election of President George W. Bush.
Thank you, thank you, a <$NoAd$>thousand thank yous.
--Josh Marshall
Some other points to follow up <$NoAd$>on (from the LAT on July 30th ...)
A comprehensive examination of the U.S.-led agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Iraq has triggered at least 27 criminal investigations and produced evidence of millions of dollars' worth of fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report by the Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general....
The Times has reported on several cases in which a small circle of former Republican administration officials had drawn scrutiny for their actions in Iraq, including a deputy undersecretary of Defense under investigation by the FBI in connection with a telecommunications contract. In another case, officials have said, a former senior U.S. advisor conducted negotiations with a family connected to Saddam Hussein to form a new Iraqi airline.
Former CPA officials and contracting experts said they were surprised at the number of criminal investigations described in Bowen's report. They noted that criminal corruption charges in the U.S. involving federal contracting were rare.
...
The report cited several criminal cases under investigation, though it provided no names and few details.
In one case, a senior U.S. advisor "manipulated" the contracting system to award a $7.2-million security contract. The contract was later voided and the money returned.
In another incident, a contractor billed $3.3 million for nonexistent personnel working on an oil pipeline repair contract. A security contractor guarding the pipeline overcharged the CPA by $20,000. Both incidents are under criminal investigation.
In another example, a military assistant to a Pentagon employee gambled away part of a $40,000 grant issued to help coach an Iraqi sports team, the report found.
"In the early days, there was no record keeping. They were flushed with money and seized assets. People just didn't follow established procedures," said Charles Krohn, a former CPA official. "You were dealing with inexperienced people who didn't understand that there's always a day of reckoning."
Besides the more than two dozen criminal cases under investigation by the inspector general, about 35 other matters have been referred to other U.S. agencies for further investigation, said James Mitchell, an inspector general spokesman.
Perhaps Kerik left because he couldn't abide how much stuff wasn't being done by the book, how much cash was going into the wrong hands?
--Josh Marshall
Another clue?
When last we left our story, we were trying to find out why Bernard Kerik left Iraq after three months in the country when he was originally slated to serve from between six and eighteen months building the new Iraqi police force.
The earliest word of Kerik's departure now seems to be in the second week of August in reports in the Newsweek website and in an interview on CNBC.
But perhaps this is another clue. On November 30th of last year Britain's Daily Telegraph reported that a bounty had been placed on the head of Douglas Brand, a South Yorkshire assistant chief constable, working in Iraq on building up the Iraqi police force. According to the article, Brand came to Iraq in July and is an "expert in conflict management [who] came out to Iraq to take over the task of reforming the Iraqi police begun in May by Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner."
So perhaps the plan had changed as early as mid-July, about six weeks after Kerik arrived.
--Josh Marshall
The White House is now putting the first dollar signs on its plan for gradually phasing out Social Security and replacing it with a system of government-regulated private investment accounts. A few examples are included in this article out this evening from Reuters.
But an odd parity is emerging in the numbers -- even the highly optimistic ones favored by the White House.
The proponents of phasing out Social Security say we have to get rid of it because the program is "unsustainable", as Scott McClellan said today. The reason it's "unsustainable" is that the program would need more funds to get through the demographic bulge created by the baby generation.
(This in itself is a highly debatable point; but let's leave that for a later discussion.)
Just how much extra funds would be needed and whether those funds would come from borrowing or benefit cuts or new taxes is a matter of debate. But precisely those choices which make Social Security "unsustainable" in a few decades are the ones the White House is happy to make now in order to speed the process of phasing out the Social Security program.
Simply financing the 'transition costs' of phasing out Social Security will cost a good trillion or two dollars, maybe more -- by the White House's own informal estimates. And where on earth are we going to get that money? Borrow it, says the White House. Notta problem. In other words, we have to start phasing out Social Security now because if we don't we're going to face some big borrowing in a few decades. But we can avoid that horror of horrors by doing some big time borrowing now to finance abolishing Social Security we won't have to face that terrible fate a few decades from now.
Makes perfect sense, right?
We'll return with more detailed numbers and explanations in future posts. But the new numbers out from the White House only underscore the basic fact that this debate isn't about funding or lack thereof. It's all about who's in favor of the Social Security phase-out and who isn't.
--Josh Marshall
More to consider ...
In prepared remarks <$NoAd$>praising the new nominee last week, President Bush ranged across the whole of Kerik's career, from his days as a beat cop in Times Square, to his hands-on work at Ground Zero on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.Yet the President was oddly — and utterly — silent on Kerik's work in Baghdad, and perhaps for good reason. Though Kerik presided over the hiring of thousands of recruits for the reconstituted Iraqi police force, most were hired without background checks, and many turned out to be hardened criminals. As a result, some 30,000 of them, or roughly 25 percent of the entire force, are now reportedly being let go, with the U.S. footing the bill for $60 million in severance payments.
There's also Kerik's never-fully explained role in the 1990s as head of a New York City Corrections Department foundation that was secretly funded with roughly $1 million of tobacco company rebates from departmental purchases of cigarettes using city funds. Kerik's hand-picked treasurer for the foundation, Frederick Patrick, is now serving a one-year prison sentence after admitting in court that he pilfered nearly $140,000 of the foundation's money to pay for collect-call phone sex from inmates.
And heck, that's from the New York Post ...
--Josh Marshall
And the mystery deepens<$NoAd$>.
Last night we reported that the first reports of Bernard Kerik's departure from Iraq came in an August 25th piece in the Times. But one of our many eagle-eyed TPM readers (two actually, JB and TB) put us on to this August 15th piece on the CPA bubble in Newsweek in which the magazine's Christopher Dickey wrote ...
Yet L. Paul Bremer III, the American pro-consul who is, I’m told, about to go on vacation, and Bernard Kerik, the former NYC police commissioner who came, who saw, who commented, and is about to go home—these guys say things are getting better all the time.
Normally a cover date on a news weekly would be at least several days after the date the thing appeared. But this was a "web exclusive". So it seems Kerik was putting out word that he was bugging out in the second week of August.
And that is confirmed in an appearance he did on August 11th with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo in which there was this exchange ...
BARTIROMO: I believe you said when you went to Iraq back in the middle of May that you would be there between three and six months. Still true?Mr. KERIK: I'm--I'm here three months now. You know, hope--hopefully, within the next three or four weeks, you know, I'll be able to get back home. I came here with one job in--in mind, and that was to stand up the Minister--Ministry of Interior, to reconstitute the interior. We have identified the two primary deputies. I have the first deputy in mind at this point. We've identified the Baghdad chief, the--the chief of operations. Police chiefs all over the country have been identified. I've appointed the--the new head of border enforcement and immigrations and customs. So basically, reconstituting the ministry is--is just about finished. Now it is recruiting, training, stand up. That's going to take--take time. It'll take between another year--18 months to two years to get it all intact. But for what I came to do, I'm just about there.
BARTIROMO: So when do you think you'll be able--or the US will be able to turn over security to the Iraqis?
Mr. KERIK: Well, I think it's not--you know, there's not going to be a day. There's not going to be a date. I think it's a transitionary process. The more Iraqis you stand up, the more you can work on transition and disengagement from the military, but it's going to be a while before that happens.
As we said last night, he actually said he'd be there for at least six months. So again, what happened?
--Josh Marshall
In the course of his confirmation hearings, Bernard Kerik may be able to shed some unique light on decision-making in the early days of the Iraq occupation.
Here's what interests me most.
In an article in the New York Daily News on May 16th 2003, Kerik confirmed that he'd been tapped to be the American in charge of the Iraqi Interior Ministry (formally, he'd be the chief 'advisor'). Principally, that meant he'd be in charge of domestic security and specifically in charge of standing up a new Iraqi police force. This was just after Bremer had arrived on the scene. And he told the Daily News he'd be leaving for Iraq within three days. As for how long he'd be in the country, he said he'd be in Iraq "in excess of six months, but no one really knows . . . as long as it takes to get the job done."
As Kerik suggested, six months seemed optimistic. In mid-July, according to an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Robert C. Orr, who the Pentagon had just sent as part of a fact-finding mission to Iraq, said that "former New York police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik, is training an Iraqi police force but his work won't be completed for at least another 18 months, and the need for help is urgent and immediate (italics added)."
If you review the newspaper reportage over the next couple months you'll see Kerik quoted in various articles about security and policing in Iraq. He even showed up in walk-along columns by the Post's Jim Hoagland and the Times' Thomas Friedman.
But little more than two months into his tour, just as Iraq was slipping the first few rungs down the ladder into chaos, something happened -- something that I've never seen explained.
Remember that on August 7th, the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad was bombed -- the first high-profile terrorist act since the war. Then on August 19th a truck bomb destroyed the UN compound in the Iraqi capital killing seventeen, including the head of the UN mission, Sérgio Vieira de Mello.
Then, only a few days later, a few press reports noted for the first time -- in most cases just in passing -- that Kerik was preparing to leave the country. The earliest of these that I'm aware of came in a Times article by Dexter Filkins in which he notes in passing that Kerik was "wrapping up his tour in Iraq" and later that Kerik's "time here is to end in a week."
[ed.note: If there are earlier references to the timing of Kerik's departure I'm not aware of them. But if you are, I'd be obliged if you could let me know.]
Then just a few days later, on August 29th, a bomb exploded outside the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf killing upwards of a hundred people including Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, head of SCIRI.
Tracking down the precise date of Kerik's departure is difficult. But he apparently left the country either two or three days later. The first word of Kerik's departure that I could find comes in a September 3rd article by John Tierney in the Times, which reported on the truck bombing of the central office on the Iraqi police in Baghdad. In that report Tierney notes that the leader of the effort to reconstitute the Iraqi police force had been "Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner [who] finished his three-and-a-half-month tour here this week."
The question, I suppose, pretty much asks itself: what happened? Kerik arrived in Iraq with a rather open-ended committment. By his own account, it should have carried him at least through the end of 2003. There was even some suggestion that it would keep him in the country through 2004. Yet just after the first two major terrorist attacks in Baghdad reports surfaced that he was about to leave. And only a week later, after major terrorist incidents numbers three and four, he was gone.
At the time, the Pentagon and Kerik (or rather people speaking on his behalf) made rather unconvincing claims that Kerik's departure was simply part of the original plan.
As TPM noted a week after Kerik left, the Pentagon said the Kerik was actually supposed to leave in the summer and "extended his stay to finish his ongoing projects." That was a bit hard to figure since that would have meant his entire tenure in the country would have lasted only a few weeks. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Kerik's employer, Giuliani Partners, said the plan had always been that he'd only stay in the country for 90 days. But that of course directly contradicted Kerik's own statements.
We now know that the many of the key security-related decisions that have haunted the occupation for the last year and a half happened in those first few months. Kerik also left at a time when there seemed to be plenty of police work to go around in Iraq.
So again, what happened?
--Josh Marshall
Kerik on critics of the war: "Political criticism is our enemies' best friend."
(As quoted in Newsday, Oct. 20, 2003)
--Josh Marshall
Beautiful ...
Marshall Wittman: "Despite the mass exodus, the incompetent one remains -Rummy. All that happened on his watch was an abysmal post-war plan and a prison scandal. This confirms that the only ones held accountable in this Administration are welfare mothers and struggling third grade students. For them, standards and accountability apply. For Rumsfeld, he is just passed along to the next grade (or term) regardless of his performance."
--Josh Marshall
){kind=link}