It’s an inspiring tale that would only be possible in the Bush administration.
How a lowly Republican aide, a rioter in the streets of Florida in 2000, rose to be an immigration judge. The politicization of the Justice Department at work.
Barack Obama blasts Romney and McCain, heaps scorn on McCain’s Baghdad Stroll.
Late Update: The battle continues.
Later Update: Drudge makes an anonymous McCain aide’s attack on Obama his lead story — with no sign of Obama’s response to McCain.
New poll: Seventy percent of respondents think Bush has let down our Iraq War veterans.
Karl Rove makes a rare appearance in the Justice Department emails.
Rudy follows McCain, accuses Hillary and Obama of being “anti-troops.” That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
Where the right is on the war. From TPM Reader JDG …
Yes, our war in Iraq is very much like the one in Viet Nam, but not the way its opponents mean the comparison. What’s similar is this: Both of these war efforts by the United States have been sabotaged, probably on purpose, and we will probably lose this one as we lost Viet Nam, by the media’s practice of showing us the daily body count in color on the nightly news every single day, again and again and again and again!
It is simply impossible for a democratic country to pursue any war, no matter how justified, to a successful conclusion under those conditions.
No matter what you think of the merits of the present war, it’s obvious that two choices lie before America: either we go back to our pre-1950 policy (which most countries in the world still follow) of wartime censorship — not just of information that would help enemy commanders, but also of information that would undermine our own public’s morale — or we may as well pack it in and invite China to rule our country, since we can never possibly win another war.
Telling on many levels. Perhaps the most revealing is the assumption that we’d be better off, in a better position to bring the endeavor to a successful conclusion if we were still under the illusion that Doug Feith, Paul Bremer and Don Rumsfeld were doing a bang up job — and in all likelihood that they were still running the show.
I was offline most of the day. So I didn’t see this McCain/flak jacket ridiculousness in real time. ‘Flak’ without the ‘c’ is the spelling I know for ‘flak jacket’ or ‘catching flak’. But as Greg Sargent notes here, Websters’ says they’re both acceptable spellings. But really, who cares how it’s spelled since, My God, the candidate doesn’t spell-check the press release.
That makes McCain’s criticism so mind-boggling silly and juvenile that it breaks new ground even for those of us who’ve grown painfully accustomed to his now apparently permanent decline.
When Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama joined 12 other Democratic senators in opposing Bush’s war-funding package, Republican presidential candidates pounced. If Dem presidential hopefuls are willing to reject funding for the troops in a time of war, we now have proof, the GOP concluded, that they must hate the men and women in uniform.
* Giuliani: Obama and Clinton have “moved from being not just anti-war, but to being anti-troops.”
* McCain: “[I]t is so irresponsible to tell these young men and women who are serving in uniform with the orders of their commander in chief that you’re not going to give them the necessary ability to defend themselves.”
* Romney: “Voting against our troops during a time of war shows the American people that the leaders of the Democrat [sic] Party will abandon principle in favor of political positioning.”
Got it. But I have a quick follow up question: If opposing money for the troops in a time of war is necessarily anti-military and un-American, why did Bush reject war funding less than a month ago? If supporting the military means supporting funding measures, didn’t the president deny those in uniform the resources they need?
Or is it more likely that rejecting funding for the troops in a time of war is perfectly acceptable to Republicans, just so long as they think there’s a good reason to do so?
For all of the Republicans’ many, many flaws, they’re generally quite adept at manipulating language. A program to allow warrantless searches on Americans becomes the “terrorist surveillance program.” A policy that allows more pollution becomes the “clean skies initiative.” A withdrawal policy in Iraq becomes “cut and run.”
And as Andrew Sullivan explained yesterday, torture becomes “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
I’m not sure where exactly this came from, but George Tenet seems to have been the tipping point. But it’s important to note that Tenet has a very personal interest in lying about torture. After all, he will be subject to war crime charges if he concedes that he authorized it. But in his rewording, he has also, it seems to me, conceded something very important. He was clearly concerned that the term “coercive” in the newspeak phrase “coercive interrogation techniques” could be legal peril. It implies physical or mental pressure so severe it renders any choice to cooperate moot. It implies, inevitably, “severe mental or physical pain or suffering,” in order to extract information. That is the only relevant legal and moral criterion for torture. Is the information coerced, i.e. is the physical or mental suffering so severe that the victim has no choice but to tell the torturers what the want to hear? If it is, it’s torture, under American and international law. And Tenet is a criminal.
Abuse of common English is one of the hallmarks of political mischief. I don’t think any journalist should let a politician off the hook on this one. Words matter.
They do, indeed. And where do the words “enhanced interrogation techniques” come from? According to one of Andrew’s readers: from the Gestapo.