Sen. Stevens (R-AK) breaks his silence on who paid for the luxe home renovations overseen by scandal-tarred oil services company Veco …

As a practical matter, I will tell you. We paid every bill that was given to us. Every bill that was sent to us has been paid, personally, with our own money, and that’s all there is to it. It’s our own money.

See Laura McGann’s ongoing coverage of the Stevens’ investigation at TPMmuckraker.

Here’s a key exchange from White House Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend’s press conference yesterday about the new NIE on al Qaeda. We know that intelligence estimates received by the White House prior to the invasion of Iraq warned that the invasion and occupation could give new life to al Qaeda — a boon for recruitment, fundraising and more. Yesterday, CNN’s Ed Henry asked Townsend precisely this question. Weren’t you warned about this in advance of the war and haven’t those predictions now proven out? Isn’t al Qaeda stronger and aren’t we more vulnerable because of the invasion of Iraq.

Townsend’s answer is that of course al Qaeda will use our attacks on them for propaganda purposes to further grow their movement. But it’s silly to argue that we should never attack our enemies just because they’ll try to use our attacks against us in this way. It’s not a zero sum game, she argues.

Now, Henry didn’t have the perfect follow-up ready for this response. But honestly it’s not always easy to parry this sort of bamboozlement perfectly in real time. (Believe me, it’s not that easy.) But the key point is that Townsend dodges the essential issue. This would be a decent response if people were making it as an argument against our invasion of Afghanistan, because that was after all al Qaeda’s base of operation. We were attacking them where they were. So it would be silly or at least a weak argument to say we shouldn’t have attacked Afghanistan just because al Qaeda would use the attack as a propaganda tool against us. As Townsend’s logic suggests, sure they might use it for their media campaign. But that’s far outweighed by the benefit of destroying their sanctuary.

But that’s the heart of the issue, the one Townsend dodges and which Henry unfortunately didn’t press. Iraq wasn’t a sanctuary or recruiting or training ground for al Qaeda before we invaded. This has now been as definitively established as proving a negative ever can be. So, contra Townsend, it really is a zero sum game for us since we did nothing to hurt al Qaeda by invading Iraq — they weren’t there and had no prospect of being there. But we did help them almost immeasurably by giving the whole organization a new lease on life for recruitment, fundraising and more. And the rising unpopularity of the United States in the Muslim world because of the invasion has undoubtedly played a large role in preventing Pervez Musharraf from keeping al Qaeda from reestablishing itself in Pakistan.

Townsend sort of begs off this last point by saying that if al Qaeda didn’t set up in one country it would set up in other. If not Iraq, then Somalia and if not Somalia then in the Magreb or Southeast Asia or wherever. But what sort of sad sack defeatism is that? If that’s the case why are we spending so much time trying to stop them from getting set up in Iraq?

The whole point is stupid.

The simple fact is that the full picture is now clear. The White House was repeatedly warned in advance that attacking Iraq would strengthen al Qaeda. We did and it did. That’s where we are now. The White House has no excuse and no answer.

Elizabeth Edwards stars for the first time in a campaign ad for her husband. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s release of the declassified NIE on Al Qaeda, the U.S. military in Baghdad announced today that it has captured a top leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq:

The U.S. command said Wednesday the highest-ranking Iraqi in the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq has been arrested, adding that information from him indicates the group’s foreign-based leadership wields considerable influence over the Iraqi chapter.

First off, the capture took place two weeks ago but was not announced until today. Hmmm, have we seen that before? And the detainee just happened to confess to a greater level of coordination between AQ in Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s global AQ, right in line with the official White House line that AQ in Iraq and AQ are one and the same. The White House is already highlighting the capture in its daily email to reporters. Go figure.

Well, there you have it. The Senate GOP minority has blocked a vote on withdrawal from Iraq, with the threat of a filibuster. No big surprise. It was clear from the outset that not enough Republicans would defect to overcome their party’s filibuster threat.

GOP senators can whine and complain all they want about the President’s Iraq policy, but when push comes to shove, the vast majority of them are still lined up right behind the President and his disastrous policy.

Since the media hasn’t been able to bring itself to use the f-word (filibuster) in describing the GOP’s procedural maneuvering, I’m not optimistic that the coverage of the defeat of the Democrats’ proposal for a withdrawal timeline will be much better.

We’ve already picked up on some doozies. The vote to end debate and proceed to a vote on the Democrats’ withdrawal amendment was 52-47, with 60 votes needed for passage. So that’s 52 senators voting to end debate and proceed to a vote. How does FOX News report it? The Democrats proposal failed 52-47, as if only 47 votes could be mustered for the Democrats’ position.

Now you would expect that kind of thing out of FOX, but CSPAN? Take a look:

Thanks to TPM Reader AG for the catch.

We’ll be following the coverage closely. Let us know what you find.

[Note: Oops. In its original form, this post incorrectly transposed the vote total as 57-42, instead of 52-47.]

Update: From TPM Reader TH:

I think even the New York Times headline gives the wrong impression. It reads: “Democrats Fail to Force Vote on Iraq Pullout.” It’s technically accurate, of course, but even someone up on the debate is likely to think that the Democrats couldn’t get their act together, that they weren’t united on this. An equally accurate but essentially more truthful headline would be: “Republicans Stymie Vote on Iraq Pullout.”

Exactly right.

Late update: Lead headline on the website of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Filibuster Fails to Force Iraq Vote.” Huh?

Thanks to TPM Reader MK for the catch.

Former Cheney aide sentenced to 10 years for passing classified information to the Philippines. No word yet on a commutation.

There’s a lot more heat than light coming from the Iraq debate, as the last 24 hours in the Senate showed vividly. But when it comes to Afghanistan, where the war on terrorism began, there’s a relative pall.

Last week, I sat down with Afghanistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Said T. Jawad, to learn more about a country that’s become more and more of an abstraction as the U.S.’s focus remains squarely on Iraq. In today’s episode of TPMtv, we bring you part one of our interview with Ambassador Jawad, where he tells us what Afghanistan will require from the U.S. and the international community to come back from the precipice of failed statehood.

Check back tomorrow for the final installment of our interview with the ambassador.

So what exactly did Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) mean when he said yesterday that he had personally paid every bill he received for the renovations to his home in Girdwood, Alaska?

Today, we find Dick Cheney comfortably ensconced in the Executive Branch, which offers him the advantage of being able to assert executive privilege in the face of congressional subpoenas. (The specter of Cheney raising executive privilege came in this letter from the Vice President’s counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT). This, of course, is in contrast to Cheney’s position a few weeks ago that he was part of the Legislative Branch and thus not subject to an Executive Order on the handling of classified documents.

I used to think that Cheney’s undisclosed location was an underground bunker somewhere in the wilds of Maryland. Perhaps it was really this strange new netherworld between the Executive and Legislative branches, an imaginary place of the Vice President’s own making.

The award for most misleading headline on today’s Iraq vote goes to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whose website leads with “Filibuster Fails to Force Iraq Vote.”

Whoa. Wrong on so many levels.

We were just kicking that one around amongst ourselves. Greg Sargent pointed out that it’s a twofer: “The Dems filibustered, and they failed at it. They are filibustering losers.”

Just in case all the bamboozling has you confused, it was the Republicans who were threatening to filibuster to thwart a vote on withdrawing from Iraq. Rinse and repeat.