Election Central adds the latest crack in Mitt Romney’s conservative armor.
Back in 1992, Romney threw a fundraiser for a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.
Obama calls for removal of all — yes, all — combat brigades from Iraq by March 2008. That’s a little over a year away, incidentally.
Update: Here’s some video of Obama speaking as he introduces his bill for phased withdrawal.
Late update: John Edwards adviser Jonathan Prince calls to remind us that Edwards has been “calling for complete withdrawal of all combat troops for more than a year.”
“Is it the position of this administration that it possesses the authority to take unilateral action against Iran, in the absence of a direct threat, without congressional approval?â
Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) asks again for an answer to his question.
I was out of the office (aka TPM World Headquarters — yes, it really exists) most of the day today. So I want to take a moment to thank Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for spending time at TPMCafe today to discuss his new book Positively American: Winning Back the Middle Class Majority One Family at a Time and to engage with TPM Readers in a discussion of the book and building a Democratic majority. You can read Sen. Schumer’s discussion of his book here and his exchanges with readers in these two posts (#1 and #2).
As the saying goes, if it didn’t exist, you’d have to invent it.
So with that in mind, let’s do a little prospective journalism. When the bogus ‘Iran incident’ happens that becomes the predicate for a military attack on Iran, what will it look like? Let’s try to sketch it out in advance. Will it be a real incident in Iraq for which the Iranians are blamed? Or will it be a complete bogus incident, something that never happened, that they’re blamed for? Will we receive the news in manufactured evidence? Or will it all come through unnamed leaks and Richard Perle appearances on CNN?
Some key requirements occur to me.
1. Despite being fake, the incident must seem reasonably credible.
2. It must appear serious enough that discounting its importance or questioning its veracity appears the height of unseriousness.
3. It must place the majority of us in the odd and unexpected position of granting to President Bush the unfettered discretion to launch a war against Iran at the time and place of his choosing, despite our desire that he start it right now.
Any other requirements?
Late Update: TPM Reader TB adds some key requirements …
The incident can’t be quickly falsifiable. It will have to take a long time and a lot of effort to be revealed as bogus. Weapons of mass destruction were perfect: we had to get into Iraq to show them to be false, and by that time, of course, it was too late to stop the war. The sort of same thing will be needed to commit some sort of act of war on Iran.
Later Update: We can of course evaluate this one for potential. This is right off the presses from CNN …
The Pentagon is investigating whether a recent attack on a military compound in Karbala was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives, two officials from separate U.S. government agencies said.
“People are looking at it seriously,” one of the officials said.
That official added the Iranian connection was a leading theory in the investigation into the January 20 attack that killed five soldiers.
The second official said: “We believe it’s possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained.”
Five U.S. soldiers were killed in the sophisticated attack by men wearing U.S.-style uniforms, according to U.S. military reports. (Watch how attackers got into the compound Video)
Both officials stressed the Iranian-involvement theory is a preliminary view, and there is no final conclusion. They agreed this possibility is being looked at because of the sophistication of the attack and the level of coordination.
“This was beyond what we have seen militias or foreign fighters do,” the second official said.
A few quick points just to make a go of it. The possibility is being looked at because of the sophistication of the attack and the level of coordination. So, not likely that any native Iraqis could have pulled off this attack. Check.
And it’s possible that the attackers were Iranian or “Iranian-trained”. Again, just for the sake of conversation — our current angle in Iraq is to cozy up to SCIRI (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) as the moderate Shi’a grouping over and against the al-Sadr and possibly al-Maliki, the current prime minister. SCIRI’s paramilitary is the Badr Brigade. They were formed in Iran and by Iran from pro-Iranian Iraqi Shia. They fought alongside the Iranian army during the Iran-Iraq war. Before we toppled the Hussein government, they were still headquartered in Tehran.
Anyway, I’d stop by Juan Cole’s site to hear from someone who really knows about this stuff. But even our feeble knowledge here at TPM is enough to tell us that when we start hearing catch-alls like ‘Iranian-trained’ for anything that happened in southern Iraq, we’re dealing with meaninglessly vague words meant to bamboozle and hoodwink. Remember too this incident occurred in Karbala, where the Badr Brigade is headquartered.
To be clear, I’m not saying the Badr Brigade was behind this, only that in the context of paramilitaries in southern Iraq, ‘Iranian-trained’ is a meaninglessly broad category.
Really Friggin’ Late Update: Ahhh, and of course news of the secret Iran meddling ‘dossier’ has been vouchsafed to Fox News.
Party Like it’s 1999 Update: Bob Baer picks up on rumors in Iraq that the Karbala incident might be the work of Iranian Revolutionary Guards retaliating for the capture of their comrades in Erbil earlier this month. But he’s careful to identify them as just rumors.
The Inspector General for the Defense Dept. is concerned that the U.S. military has failed to adequately equip soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially for nontraditional duties such as training Iraqi security forces and handling detainees, according to a summary of a new audit obtained by BusinessWeek.
The findings come as the Pentagon prepares to send another 21,500 troops to Iraq and as Democratic leaders levy threats to restrict funding for a war that’s already cost about $500 billion. The Army alone expects to spend an extra $70 billion on an additional 65,000 permanent troops from fiscal year 2009 through 2013. According to Army officials, $18 billion of that will be spent on equipment.
The Inspector General found that the Pentagon hasn’t been able to properly equip the soldiers it already has. Many have gone without enough guns, ammunition, and other necessary supplies to “effectively complete their missions” and have had to cancel or postpone some assignments while waiting for the proper gear, according to the report from auditors with the Defense Dept. Inspector General’s office. Soldiers have also found themselves short on body armor, armored vehicles, and communications equipment, among other things, auditors found.
Matt Yglesias has an interesting series of posts on his site about just what the big deal is when Republicans call the Democratic party the ‘Democrat party’.
As it happens, a few months back I got an email from a TPM Reader who I think was a linguist. And he explained that there is something about the concatenation of syllables, the sound or structure of the phrase ‘Democrat party’ that actually sounds somehow inherently grating or awkward on the ears. When I got the note I think I was busy with something else. And I never really got a chance to work through and understand just what the guy was saying. I think I’ll probably try to dig it up.
But that is a secondary point. The whole issue of ‘Democrat’ party — other than as an example of Republican infantilism — is an issue of respect or rather intentional and repeated expression of disrespect as a means of asserting dominance.
There’s a certain conservative columnist named James X. who shall remain unnamed. At some point a few years back I had cause to exchange an email with him. And I called him ‘Jim’. I don’t think I gave it a second thought. I’m Josh or Joshua — doesn’t matter to me. But a short time later I got a half questioning, half barely repressed anger email from the guy asking whether I was intentionally disrespecting him by addressing him as ‘Jim’, the dimunitive form of the name. Now, as I say, it was accidental. I apologized and explained that it was totally unintentional. And if he preferred to be called James I would certainly do so. As it happens, in the intervening years, my lack of respect for him has grown apace. But I’d still always call him James and not Jim. And this is the point. You address people the way they choose to be addressed. You address them by what they consider to be their name. In the ordinary course of life, when people do otherwise, we rightly recognize that they’re trying to pick a fight or demean the person in question.
It is, as Matt points out, another illustration of the ‘bitch-slap theory of politics‘. You assert dominance over someone by mangling their name and continuing to do so even after the correct pronunciation or style is pointed out. It’s right off the schoolyard and it’s no surprise that it’s a stock and trade of this president.
Today’s Must Read: the Iraqi government’s not-so-sterling record of meeting benchmarks.
What a way for Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) to roll out his presidential campaign.
âI mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy… I mean, thatâs a storybook, man.â
Don’t miss Chalmers Johnson writing at TPMCafe today about the precarious balance of democracy and empire.