Filtered new 9/2
Posted September 2nd, 2007 by RKing
The ban began sometime shortly after Aug. 22, when Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste was our guest blogger on ThinkProgress. He posted an op-ed that was strongly critical of the President’s policies and advocated a “responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq.” Previously, both the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times had rejected the piece. An excerpt:
It is disappointing that so many elected representatives of my [Republican] party continue to blindly support the administration rather than doing what is in the best interests of our country. Traditionally, my party has maintained a conservative view on questions regarding our Armed Forces. For example, we commit our military only when absolutely necessary. […]
The only way to stabilize Iraq and allow our military to rearm and refit for the long fight ahead is to begin a responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq and replace the troops with far less expensive and much more effective resources–those of diplomacy and the critical work of political reconciliation and economic recovery. In other words, when it comes to Iraq, it’s time for conservatives to once again be conservative.
Not surprisingly, both the National Review and Fox News are still accessible.
And to write again: U.S. Troops Given Misleading, Inaccurate Bios Of Democratic Lawmakers Visiting Iraq The Washington Post has a story on how lawmakers are being “slimed in the Green Zone” when they travel to Iraq for congressional delegation trips. Reps. James Moran (D-VA), Jon Porter (R-NV), and Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) recently returned from such a trip. While there, Tauscher and Moran noticed sheets of paper that “seemed to be everywhere” in the Green Zone, “distributed to Iraqi officials, U.S. officials and uniformed military of no particular rank.”
The sheets of papers were short, thumbnail biographies of the two lawmakers. ThinkProgress has obtained copies of the bios for Moran and Tauscher. Instead of receiving the official bios readily available on the congressional websites, the U.S. troops were given new ones that cherry-pick the representatives’ “most incendiary” statements:
The bios also either ignore or completely misrepresent the lawmakers’ records. The Washington Post notes:
Under “latest Iraq vote,” Tauscher’s bio noted that she had voted in favor of legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days of the bill’s enactment.
She did vote that way — in May. On Aug. 2, Tauscher voted in favor of her own bill, which mandates that troops be granted a leave from combat at least as long as their last combat deployment before being shipped back to Iraq. That vote might have been a little too popular with the soldiers she was meeting, Tauscher said.
Moran’s bio says that he “[v]oted NO on legislation requiring the withdrawal of U S troops from Iraq within 120 days of the bill’s enactment.” In reality, Moran voted “yes.” He also voted for Tauscher’s dwell-time legislation.
When Porter learned about his colleagues’ rap sheets, he stated, “I had never seen that in the past. That’s new. Now I want to see what they’re saying about me.”
ThinkProgress spoke with one of the delegation’s military escorts, Maj. Toby Patterson, who said that he didn’t know who made the bios or why they were created in the first place. He added that his office, the Marine Corps liaison for the U.S. House of Representatives, usually just uses lawmakers’ readily-available bios off of congressionalquarterly.com. ThinkProgress has confirmed that the bios are prepared by the Strategic Effects (STRATEFF) office of MNF-I.
What? Yet another general has added his voice to the crew who have taken the Cheney-Bush regime to task for botching postwar operations in Iraq? Yep. This time, it’s not American generals like Wes Clark, Greg Newbold, Paul Eaton, John Riggs, Paul Van Riper, Charles Swannack or John Batiste doing the pounding. It’s “Macho Jacko,” General Sir Michael Jackson, who ran the British Army in March 2003 when Iraq was invaded. He retired last year and began writing an autobiography, Soldier, which is being serialized in Britain’s Daily Telegraph. (Hat tip to Magnifico.)
According to the Telegraph’s story:
His attack - the first time he has revealed the depth of his anger towards the US administration - highlights the deep-seated tension between the British command and the Pentagon during the build-up to and the aftermath of the Iraq campaign in 2003.
Sir Mike, who took command of the British Army one month before US-led forces invaded Iraq, said Mr Rumsfeld was “one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq”.
Crucially, the general writes, he refused to deploy enough troops to maintain law and order after the collapse of Saddam’s regime, and discarded detailed plans for the post-conflict administration of Iraq that had been drawn up by the US State Department.
In the book, Sir Mike says he believes the entire US approach to tackling global terrorism is “inadequate” because it relies too heavily on military power at the expense of nation-building and diplomacy. Read more…
The White House will not identify a private company which appears to be involved in the disappearance of millions of White House e-mails.
The company was responsible for reviewing and archiving White House e-mails, a White House official told congressional staff in May, according to a letter yesterday from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Congressional investigators asked then for the name of the company and “have repeatedly requested” the information since then, according to Waxman. […]
According to the White House, at least five million e-mails were not properly archived and may be lost forever, in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act. The post-Watergate law states that communications relating to official activity in the offices of the president and vice president are owned by the American public and cannot be destroyed.
Thousands of other Sunnis like Kamal have been cleared out of the western half of Baghdad, which they once dominated, in recent months. The surge of U.S. troops—meant in part to halt the sectarian cleansing of the Iraqi capital—has hardly stemmed the problem. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was slightly higher than in February, when the surge began. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1 million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those in Baghdad governorate alone. Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U.S. troops actually "has increased the IDPs to some extent."
When Gen. David Petraeus goes before Congress next week to report on the progress of the surge, he may cite a decline in insurgent attacks in Baghdad as one marker of success. In fact, part of the reason behind the decline is how far the Shiite militias' cleansing of Baghdad has progressed: they've essentially won.
As Matt Yglesias added, "Maybe Bush can change his line to the idea that if we just keep staying the course for 4 or 5 more years, casualties will drop massively because everyone will already be dead or displaced. Or maybe someone can explain to me again about how we can't leave Iraq because of the ethnic cleansing that'll happen without us around."
Double standards Just in case I haven't said this yet -- driving Larry Craig out of the Senate but leaving David Vitter in place is ridiculous. Also -- making it disorderly conduct to hit on a guy in a public place seems deeply at odds with the non-criminal nature of hitting on a woman in a public place. Yes it makes sense to make it a crime to have sex in a bathroom, but no sex was had. I won't miss Craig as a Senator -- he was a lousy one -- but his successor's not going to be any better.
BTW: Meet the New Guy Craig's likely successor Jim Risch: Why couldn't the folks in New Orleans get off their butts and fix things like we do in Idaho? What an ass.
Revisionist History channel Bill Maher announces the new channel’s Friday night lineup. 
Download (5318) | Play (6637) 
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"Yeah, I can't remember" In most interviews and press conferences, the president seems almost allergic to contemplation. Bush avoids discussion of his legacy, his previous decisions, his place in history, even what he might do after his presidency ends. Robert Draper, however, a former writer for Texas Monthly, spent hours with the president at the White House, getting Bush to open up on these subjects for an upcoming book, which Draper agreed to share with the New York Times. It led to an NYT piece today that is almost impossible to read without feeling incredibly frustrated.
On the subject of his life after the White House:
First, Mr. Bush said, "I'll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol' coffers." With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, "I don't know what my dad gets -- it's more than 50-75" thousand dollars a speech, and "Clinton's making a lot of money."
Then he said, "We'll have a nice place in Dallas," where he will be running what he called "a fantastic Freedom Institute" promoting democracy around the world. But he added, "I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch."
Bush sure is an impressive one, isn't he?
This might have been the most maddening revelation:
Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, "The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen."
But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush's former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army's dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' " But, he added, "Again, Hadley's got notes on all of this stuff," referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.
Let's not brush past this too quickly. The disbanding of the Iraqi army was one of the biggest mistakes of an administration burdened by near-constant missteps, one that was largely responsible for the creation of an Iraqi insurgency. On the subject, Bush sounds like a confused child -- he didn't understand the decision, he's not sure how the decision was made, and asked for his reaction to the decision, Bush is left to conclude, "Yeah, I can't remember."
Finally, there was this gem:
[Bush] said he saw his unpopularity as a natural result of his decision to pursue a strategy in which he believed. "I made a decision to lead," he said, "One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?"
Does Bush really want an answer to that "fundamental question"?
Friday night’s Worst Person In The World segment on Countdown features the drunken mother who let her 5 year old son drive because she was too intoxicated, military censors who banned Think Progress from their network in Baghdad and the Worst Person honors went to disgraced former Speaker of the House, Tom Delay. Keith lays wood to the Bug Man, who likes to quote the right wing, bald, nutjob talk show host, Mark Levin, who has repeatedly claimed that Olbermann wears a toupee. As the picture shows, Keith gives an on-air demonstration to prove him wrong. Download (5198) | Play (6591) Download (1989) | Play (3783)
Olbermann: “Tom, hate to break it to you, I’m still involved in politics, what are you doing these days? I mean, since your own party ran you out of Congress.”
Arnie, being stupid is no excuse The Courage Campaign has been trying to raise awareness in California over the latest electoral power grab on the part of Republicans that I blogged about here. You can sign the petition protesting the “Dirty Tricks” initiative here. However, when confronted with whether or not he supported the initiative, Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger dodged by saying he hadn’t read the initiative.
Well, that just doesn’t fly here in the Golden State. So Calitics’ Julia Rosen asked the blogosphere to supply Arnie with a copy of the initiative and 2,148 Courage Campaign members came through:
On August 23, Gov. Schwarzenegger said:
“I haven’t looked at the language and I’m not saying I’m against it or I’m for it or anything.”
Well, now he has 2,148 opportunities to read the thing and say whether he is for it or against the dirty trick initiative. Thanks to you.
We asked the blogosphere and thousands of Courage Campaign members to send him a copy and boy did you deliver. I had to get my weightlifter friend to help me cary them in to the Governor’s office. Mind you it is about 100 degrees in Sacramento today. [..]
Like Rick Jacobs, the Chair of Courage Campaign says:
Thousands of Californians have made one simple request of the governor: please spend five minutes and read the initiative closely. The next time the Governor is asked publicly about this initiative, he will no longer have an excuse to play dumb about this partisan dirty trick.
The Republicans are pushing this dirty trick in an attempt to steal the election and our “post-partisan” governor is claiming ignorance. Has he failed to grasp the lessons of the 2005 election? In California, partisan power grabs are unacceptable and divisive. It is time for him to do the right thing.
Thank you to all who took action. If you have not done so already, please join the Courage Campaign and pledge to defeat this initiative. No matter where you live, you can help us beat back this dirty trick.
In memoriam ABC’s This Week runs a segment every Sunday called In Memoriam, paying tribute to people of note who have passed away and at the end they show the names of U.S. soldiers and marines killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. This week the Pentagon released 21 names. Americablog has been posting these segments for some time now, I thought it was time we did as well. Download (571) | Play (535) Download (332) | Play (277) Every week I watch this segment with immense sorrow and anger, sometimes bordering on rage. It makes it worse to know that the Democrats have stood by and allowed the bloodbath to continue, giving King George every penny he wants…and more. Seeing all those names brings it all home. Kudos to This Week for continuing to put a human face on this tragedy…
Neocon media at play Yesterday, Kevin Drum explained that independent of Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus has run a masterful, methodical p.r. campaign that effectively "outplayed" Democrats and other opponents of the president's war policy. Atrios held lawmakers at least partially responsible, because they "have chosen to play along."
But in order to really change the conventional wisdom, Petraeus needed a hand from a pliant press corps. Greg Sargent makes the case today that the media made Petraeus' media blitz a success by buying into faulty assumptions.
...I think it's necessary to add another explanation for the apparent success of Petraeus' PR push: The media, in some cases out of incompetence and in others by design, helped him get away with it, and indeed actively enabled it.
If you step back and survey the totality of media's performance this summer on the Iraq debate, it becomes a good deal clearer just how awful it's all been -- and just how complicit these failings were in helping to shift the debate.
It's persuasive stuff; take a look.
Corruption watch An American-owned company operating from Kuwait, Lee Dynamics International, “paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to American contracting officers in efforts to win more than $11 million in contracts.”
Katrina and the failure of Conservatism Bill Scher’s Liberal Oasis radio program this Labor Day weekend with guest Rick Perlstein focused on the failures that Conservatism played on the Gulf Coast after Katrina http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3XVxD6GzEw Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgYyDraiaKI Mentioned on the broadcast…
Huffington Post’s Eric Deggans post on the shallow media coverage of Katrina is
here.Read the Heritage Foundation white paper, “Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.”
Hear Newt Gingrich blame the victims of Katrina for “failure of citizenship” here.
We ain't #1 Hilzoy takes a look today at how the United States is doing on the Iraqi refugee front. Answer: not so good. With just a little more effort, we might surpass Norway.
Craig vs. Vitter - redux It looks like the Republicans have settled on a talking point.
A GOP leader Sunday denied a double standard in pushing Sen. Larry Craig to resign after a sex sting guilty plea, while remaining silent over GOP Sen. David Vitter's involvement with an escort service.
A senior Democrat said a double standard by Republican leaders is exactly what occurred.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., the Senate Republican campaign chairman, said Craig "admitted guilt. That is a big difference between being accused of something and actually admitting guilt."
While Ensign was repeating the line on ABC, Ed Gillespie, White House counselor and a former chairman of the Republican Party, was on Fox News making the same argument. "The fact is that Sen. Craig pled guilty to a crime, and therefore was convicted of a crime," Gillespie said. "Sen. Vitter has not been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one. So there's a pretty big distinction here."
This may not be wisest strategy. For one thing, confronted with evidence that made use of a prostitution service, Vitter conceded immediately that he'd "sinned." I'm not an expert in the subject, but as I understand it, paying for sex is a crime, and Vitter publicly conceded that he'd violated this law. He would have been subject to criminal charges, but the statute of limitations ran out. For the GOP, that makes the "pretty big distinction" fairly small -- Craig pleaded guilty to a recent crime, Vitter acknowledged guilt of a less recent crime.
Moreover, the whole argument seems premised on strained legalisms. Remember when the president urged Republicans to hold themselves to the highest moral standard? "We must always ask ourselves not only what is legal, but what is right," Bush said in 2001. "There is no goal of government worth accomplishing if it cannot be accomplished with integrity."
So much for that idea.
Moyers Responds To Wallace’s Baseless Slander: Repeated Requests To Rove Went Unanswered On Aug. 17, PBS’s Bill Moyers criticized Karl Rove for cynically invoking Christianity for political purposes while telling others that he is an agnostic. Moyers called Rove “a skeptic, a secular manipulator.”
Two days later, Rove appeared on Fox News Sunday and took on Moyers’s criticism. “I’m a Christian. I go to church. I’m an Episcopalian,” responded Rove. “You know, Mr. Moyers ought to do a little bit better research before he does another drive-by slander.”
Then on Aug. 26, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace criticized Moyers, stating that he needs to do “reporting 101“:
If you want to find out about someone’s religious beliefs, a good first step might be to ask him. … Of course, you never called Rove. That’s reporting 101, but it would have gotten in the way of a tasty story line about a non-believer flimflamming the Christian right. I guess, Bill, reporting is easier when you don’t worry about the facts.
Watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlwmWC4eW00
But on Thursday, Rick Byrne, Director of Communications for Bill Moyers Journal, wrote that the show repeatedly tried to contact Rove. It never received a response:
For the record, Bill Moyers did ask Karl Rove to come on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, by fax and by mail. These requests were made before Chris Wallace responded on-air on Fox News Sunday to Bill Moyers’ letter, and we still haven’t heard from Karl Rove.
Wallace should have spoken to Moyers and asked him if he tried to contact Rove, before baselessly accusing him of sloppy journalism. “That’s reporting 101.”
Wallace Brings Up Moyers Dispute, Refuses To Acknowledge His Own Inaccurate Reporting For the last several weeks, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace has attacked PBS’s Bill Moyers for criticizing Karl Rove for cynically invoking Christianity for political purposes while telling others that he is an agnostic. Moyers called Rove “a skeptic, a secular manipulator.”
On Aug. 19, Rove appeared on Wallace’s show and responded Moyers. “I’m a Christian. I go to church. I’m an Episcopalian,” responded Rove. “You know, Mr. Moyers ought to do a little bit better research before he does another drive-by slander.”
Then on Aug. 26, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace personally criticized Moyers, stating that he needs to learn “reporting 101“:
If you want to find out about someone’s religious beliefs, a good first step might be to ask him. … Of course, you never called Rove. That’s reporting 101, but it would have gotten in the way of a tasty story line about a non-believer flimflamming the Christian right. I guess, Bill, reporting is easier when you don’t worry about the facts.
Yet as ThinkProgress pointed out yesterday, Moyers’s show did contact Rove — repeatedly — and never received a response. Rick Byrne, Director of Communications for Bill Moyers Journal wrote on Thursday:
For the record, Bill Moyers did ask Karl Rove to come on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, by fax and by mail. These requests were made before Chris Wallace responded on-air on Fox News Sunday to Bill Moyers’ letter, and we still haven’t heard from Karl Rove.
Nevertheless, this morning on Fox News Sunday, Wallace once again brought up the Moyers dispute, but did not correct his false allegation. He read viewer mail — two supporting Wallace, one supporting Moyers — yet never acknowledged that the Bill Moyers Journal did attempt to contact Rove. Watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgfNtLcgTVA Write to Wallace at fns [at] foxnews [dot] com and ask him to publicly correct the record and admit his error. (Be polite.)
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