McClatchy on why tonight’s filibuster isn’t a filibuster …
McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said Republicans would speak on the floor, not just yield to Democrats, but that it wouldn’t be a true filibuster because the lawmakers in the minority party weren’t the ones who wanted it.
Here’s another beaut just out from the AP in which David Espo describes tonight’s events but refuses to use the word ‘filibuster’ until he gets around to describing what the Democrats did four years ago in the judicial appointments fight — that is to say, when the Democrats did precisely what the Republicans are going to do tonight. (ed.note: Thanks to TPM Reader AR for the catch.)
Like I said, the ploy that dare not speak its name — except when Democrats use it.
(ed.note: Honestly it’s gotten so flagrant, especially with AP, that I start to wonder if it’s not intentional rather than a product of sloppiness and being cowed by GOP flacks)
Late Update: And then there’s Reuters. When is a filibuster not a filibuster? When it’s a “procedural roadblock.” (ed.note: Thanks to TPM Reader AH.)
Because Filibusters Must Stay in the Closet Update: Even the Washington Post goes in for the song and dance. In this story in tomorrow’s paper, the word ‘filibuster’ doesn’t appear until the final graph when Moveon.org’s “counter-filibusters” are mentioned. (ed.note: This one was flagged by TPM Reader AS.)
Really Late Update: Sigh. I’m not sure anyone can top this nonsense from Diane Sawyer who says Harry Reid “vows to filibuster.”
Let me return one more time, at least for today, to this issue of who’s al Qaeda and who’s not. Obviously, at one level it is simply a semantic question. And it can seem like a lot of ink to spill on a point of words and definitions when so much carnage and controversy are unfolding before our eyes. So it is worth stepping back to see just what the big deal is and how it plays into our predicament in Iraq and how we might get our way out.
Beginning in the months just after 9/11 and ever since the president and his deputies have tried to float their foreign policy on the shock, fear and desire for revenge spawned by the 9/11 attacks. The first signs (though these weren’t clear in their details at the time) came in the decision to pull troops away from the hunt for bin Laden himself in late 2001 in order to ready them for the assault on Iraq little more than a year later. There we have the kernel of deception which is like the original sin of the Iraq War and, because of that, keeps coming resurfacing again and again. The claim that attacking Iraq was attacking the people who attacked the United States on 9/11, that the two things were related in anything more than a mental figment.
So at the outset it was that Iraq and al Qaeda are connected and either did attack us together (as Dick Cheney frequently suggested) or could in the future (as everyone else did). Then the beginnings of the insurgency were not a problem because we were drawing al Qaeda into Iraq to fight them on our own terms. Then we couldn’t leave Iraq because doing so would hand it over to al Qaeda.
As the cycle progressed there was an mounting tendency for the administration to argue that we could not abandon its policies precisely because of the scope of the failure of those policies up to the present point — a veritable perpetual motion machine of incompetence and disaster. But setting that aside, the enduring pattern has been for the White House to ask us to make our decisions about Iraq not based on what is happening in Iraq but on what happened in New York and Washington on 9/11.
Don’t look at Iraq to make this decision, look at the Twin Towers. That’s been the administration strategy for over five years. So when we see the scam popping up in a slightly different guise, even if it requires getting deep into the weeds and raising an alarm over key points of word choice and emphasis, then we simply must do so. Because this is the original sin, the founding deceit upon which everything has been built and from which the entire catastrophe unfolded.
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.