In a post below, Steve Benen noted that the national head of the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), Gary Kurpius, is telling the Marines and the Pentagon to back off their investigation of three former Marines who wore unmarked desert fatigures to an Iraq War protest in Washington, DC. Most of you probably already know this. But it bears noting that the VFW is an extremely conservative organization — not in the Movement conservative sense, but about as down-the-line as you get in terms of cultural conservatism and reflexive hostility to pretty much any sort of anti-war protest. I give Kurpius credit for taking a principled position on this. But I think this is also a measure of just how unpopular this war and this president have become.
Yesterday evening TPM Reader PD wrote in a note that, in addition to a more detailed technical explanation, “An explosion at a jet fuel terminal, which is a pumping station, would have no effect on the fuel “artery,” no more than lighting your stove has any effect on your natural gas pipeline.” It sounded like PD knew what he was talking about. And now this article at MSNBC, after passing on various lurid tales of half of Queens blowing up, quotes …
Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline expert and president of Accufacts Inc., an energy consulting firm that focuses on pipelines and tank farms, said the force of explosion would depend on the amount of fuel under pressure, but it would not travel up and down the line.
âThat doesnât mean wackos out there canât do damage and cause a fire, but those explosions and fires are going to be fairly restricted,â he said.
So it sounds like the whole ‘plot’ as well as virtually all of the news coverage of said ‘plot’ is based on a misunderstanding of how the pipelines work.
If you know more about the technical details of this issue, please drop me a line. Also, I’m interested in particularly egregious TV or print reporting on this incident and these arrests. So if you see cable news jockeys saying how all of Queens was going to blow up, shoot us an email about that too and we’ll try to get the footage.
We’ve reached an entertaining point in Bush’s presidency — normal weeks are now newsworthy.
For a lame duck, President Bush looked remarkably spry last week, announcing a series of policy initiatives that caught many in Washington off guard. […]
On Tuesday, Bush announced new sanctions against Sudan and a nominee for World Bank president who was quickly embraced by both parties and allies around the world.
On Wednesday, the president announced a summit with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and an initiative that he said would double spending on AIDS prevention in Africa.
And on Thursday, Bush announced a new effort against global warming, saying he would lead a push to get the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases to commit to cutting back.
Even if we put aside the merit of these various proposals and nominations, in most presidencies, this would generally be characterized as a normal week. The White House talked up a few policy initiatives, engaged in a little foreign affairs, and offered a World Bank nominee. Seeing this, DC is suddenly caught “off guard.” The president now appears “remarkably spry.” Why? Because the Bush gang managed to go a few days without a colossal screw-up or major new scandal.
“I think we’ve had a very great week this week in announcing initiatives that the president has been building on over his time here at the White House,” spokesperson Dana Perino said Friday.
Talk about your soft bigotry of low expectations, Bush and his team now congratulate themselves for Basic Governing 101. It’s kind of sad, really.
Over the past couple of days, the divisions within the administration — specifically between the State Department and the VP’s office — have focused on Iran.
Newsweek reminds us that the divisions are broader than policy on just one foe.
In the last few weeks, Cheney’s staff have unexpectedly become more active participants in an interagency group that steers policy on Afghanistan, according to an official familiar with the internal deliberations. During weekly meetings of the committee, known as the Afghanistan Interagency Operating Group, Cheney staffers have been intensely interested in a single issue: recent intelligence reports alleging that Iran is supplying weapons to Afghanistan’s resurgent Islamist militia, the Taliban, according to two administration officials who asked for anonymity when discussing internal meetings.
Rice has more directly clashed with Cheney’s office on issues like Mideast peace, where according to administration sources who declined to be named discussing internal deliberations, she’s found herself stymied in efforts to push for more engagement with Syria and the Palestinian radical group Hamas. A senior White House official concedes that even on what should be the simplest-to-achieve dealâa new relationship with Syria that would help stabilize IraqâCheney’s office is blocking Rice’s efforts to bring Bush around. The secretary has also fought with the veep’s office in seeking to soften detention policies at Guantánamo.
Newsweek asked Rice specifically about the disagreements, prompting her to say the VP doesn’t try to undercut her behind the scenes. The interviewer asked, “Not even when Don Rumsfeld was around?” Rice reportedly laughed and said, “You asked about when I have been secretary of State.”
No, no divisions there at all.
New poll: Hillary’s national lead is holding steady, while Obama’s support is softening and Edwards is sinking. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Sunday Roundup.
One of the great fighting voices of the liberal blogosphere, Steve Gilliard, has died. Only 41 years old.
Okay, I think we’ve got a pretty solid entrant in the contest to find the most dimwittedly alarmist report on the JFK pipeline ‘plot’. As noted earlier, the whole idea behind the alleged ‘plot’ — that the explosion would travel up and down the pipeline — seems to make no sense.
But according to the AP’s Adam Goldman, “such an attack would have crippled America’s economy, particularly the airline industry.”
Late Update: Runner-up, CNN online poll asking “Would the destruction of John F. Kennedy International Airport by terrorists have as much emotional impact as 9/11?”
Even Later Update: According to this article, Russell Freitas, the plot’s ringleader, “sells books on street corners and exports broken air-conditioners to Guyana.”
Given how disappointing the Washington Post’s editorials have been on the Iraq war over the last five years, it was mildly encouraging to read the headline on today’s piece: “After the Surge: It’s time for the president and Congress to begin talking about a smaller, more sustainable mission in Iraq.”
Sounds heartening, doesn’t it? If the headline is right, Hiatt & Co. want Bush to work with Congress on withdrawing at least some U.S. troops, and implicitly concede that the status quo, which the Post has been defending for quite some time, is not “sustainable.”
Alas, the editorial went downhill from there.
Like most states emerging from decades of repression, Iraq is likely to take years to stabilize; as its politicians and U.S. commanders keep saying, it will not conform to Washington’s timetables. Whether the United States endures through those years and continues to defend, train and support moderate Iraqi forces will do much to determine what the country looks like when it finally settles — whether it is allied with liberal and modernizing forces in the Middle East or with suicide bombers. What’s needed is not a continued surge of American forces but a mission that will be materially and politically sustainable. Now is the time for Congress and the Bush administration to begin talking about what that mission should be.
The Post, of course, sets a few conditions for what those talks might include.
Troop withdrawals must be connected to developments on the ground: U.S. commanders will try to hand off authority in Baghdad to Iraqi forces so that the gains of the surge will not be lost.
For that matter, Hiatt & Co. endorse a policy whereby 100,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq after the surge is deemed successful, while the editorial approves of the administration’s model of post-war Korea as a template, despite the fact that it doesn’t make any sense.
Maybe the Post should have just quit after the headline.
Just when it seemed neocon civilians at the Pentagon could be no more reckless in their ambitions, they manage to surprise you.
The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations — creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.
Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell’s chief of staff through two administrations, said in little-noted remarks early last month that “neocons” in the top rungs of the administration quietly encouraged Taiwanese politicians to move toward a declaration of independence from mainland China — an act that the communist regime has repeatedly warned would provoke a military strike.
The top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan at the time, Douglas Paal, backs up Wilkerson’s account, which is being hotly disputed by key former defense officials.
As CQ’s Jeff Stein reported, there was an awkward Keystone Kops routine playing out during the early years of Bush’s first term. “The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.”
In turn, Powell would dispatch his own envoy “right behind that guy, every time they sent somebody, to disabuse the entire Taiwanese national security apparatus of what they’d been told by the Defense Department.”
I was reminded this morning that it was none other than Josh Marshall who explained in 2003 that the “grand neocon plan for the Middle East was to spread chaos, not contain it.”
The thinking applied to other regions, as well.
May was the costliest month in Iraq for U.S. forces since November 2004, and the last six-month period has seen more casualties than any other “Friedman” since the invasion was launched in 2003.
Tragically, June isn’t looking any better.
Fourteen American soldiers were killed in three deadly days in Iraq, the U.S. military said Sunday, including four in a single roadside bombing and one who was struck by a suicide bomber while on a foot patrol southwest of the capital.
The blast that killed the four soldiers occurred Sunday as the troops were conducting a cordon and search operation northwest of the Iraqi capital, according to a statement. Two other soldiers from Multi-National Division â Baghdad were killed and five were wounded along with an Iraqi interpreter in two separate roadside bombings on Sunday, the military said.
What’s more, the Washington Post reported today, “As U.S. troops push more deeply into Baghdad and its volatile outskirts, Iraqi insurgents are using increasingly sophisticated and lethal means of attack, including bigger roadside bombs that are resulting in greater numbers of American fatalities relative to the number of wounded.”
Sullivan explained, “My low-point in letting hope get the better of the evidence in the Bush era was my airing of the ‘flytrap’ theory a few years back. The theory posited that chaos in Iraq might give the U.S. a chance to target and kill Jihadist terrorists in the Middle East more efficiently than constantly playing defense. Four years later, and it’s clear the reverse is happening. Chaos in Iraq and our presence there is honing Jihadist skills, weaponry and tactics.”